Thank you to NetGalley and Amber Books Ltd for providing an advance reading copy.

South America is the kind of book that reminds you there’s a difference between seeing something beautiful and knowing how to photograph it beautifully.

Organized geographically through the continent, the book pairs light, informative text with large-format photography covering landscapes, cities, architecture, wildlife, plants, waterways, glaciers, and culturally significant places. The written information gives each location enough geographic, ecological, historical, or cultural context to understand what you’re seeing—and then wisely gets out of the way and lets the photographs tell the story.

And those photographs are stunning.

There were plenty of beautiful landscapes, but my favorites were often the images that made me stop because I couldn’t immediately process what I was looking at. A flamingo photograph and a landscape filled with intensely red water remained undefeated favorites all the way through. There were glaciers surrounded by brilliant autumn foliage, unusual wildlife, striking architecture, and compositions that made familiar subjects feel entirely new.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped only thinking, Wow, South America is beautiful, and started thinking, Wow, photographers see the world differently.

That became my favorite part of the book. The framing, perspective, color, contrast, and relationships between foreground, background, architecture, and landscape repeatedly made me notice not just what had been photographed, but how the photographer had chosen to see it.

The country-by-country structure works especially well for such an enormous subject. It gives the book organization without making it feel rigid and creates a strong sense of just how geographically, ecologically, and visually diverse South America is.

This feels less like a book you simply read once and more like a photography or coffee-table book you browse, revisit, and leave open just to look at the images again. I can especially imagine it having even more meaning for someone who has traveled to these places and has their own memories attached to them.

A gorgeous visual exploration of South America—and an unexpected appreciation of the photographers behind the lens.

4.5⭐, rounded to 5⭐

This is another fab travel photobook from Amber Books, this time all South America.
The book is split up into 8 chapters including an Introduction, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay, Argentina and Chile, plus the all important picture credits!
As to be expected from Amber Books, this was full of beautiful photos and short explanatory texts.
Some of my favourite photos were of the St. Peter and Paul Basilica, Paramaribo, in Suriname, which also happens to be one of the largest wooden structures in the western hemisphere! A gorgeous Sparkling Violet Hummingbird, visiting a red hot poker flower, Catacombs Desert in Colombia, salt pans in Bolivia, bottle dancers from Paraguay, and Petito Moreno Glacier in Argentina.
Definitely recommended if you’re interested in South America or you’re just a keen armchair traveller!