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This study verifies whether the number of criteria of Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) satisfied by a site in the UNESCO World Heritage List (WHL) can be considered as an ordinal measure of its quality against the alternative hypotheses that: a) quality can be measured just dichotomously, by inclusion in the WHL); b) the multiplicity of existing OUV is just meant to capture alternative aesthetic criteria expressed by different cultures. This issue is important for both scientific and policy reasons. To avoid problems of endogeneity and reverse causality, we examine the correlation between the number of satisfied criteria and the evaluation of the site’s quality made by an authoritative travel guidebook that pre-existed UNESCO, the Baedeker’s guide of the early twentieth century. Exploiting a newly assembled dataset on 234 UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHS) in 10 European countries from 11 Baedeker’s guidebooks, from 1899 to 1911, we proxy the Baedeker’s evaluations of quality by four measures: (1) total number of citations of the site; (2) weighted number of citations; (3) average length of the paragraphs with at least one citation; and (4) sentiment expressed in the text. All these measures appear positively and significantly correlated with the number of UNESCO criteria that the site satisfies, using a variety of strategies and robustness checks, confirming that they are an informative ordinal proxy for the quality of UNESCO WHS. Moreover, this analysis brings evidence to bear on the debate about the formation and persistence of UNESCO experts’ evaluations over time.

This article demonstrates the value of scalable reading of historical travel guides, combining traditional close reading with computer-assisted distant reading. Aiming to scrutinize the persistence of older tourist attractions under communism, we analyse guidebooks intended for similar audiences but produced under different political regimes. More specifically, we compare three travel guides to the same geographical area produced between 1905 and 1959: one to communist cold war Czechoslovakia, one to democratic interwar Czechoslovakia, and one to the Habsburg-era Czech lands and Slovakia. We analyse the geographic distribution of attractions by geolocating the guidebook toponyms and visualizing them with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This distant reading is complemented with a hermeneutic analysis grounded in a close reading of the guidebook text. The combination of these approaches documents the similarities in the symbolic representation of the country’s attractions across political caesuras and provides a methodological template for future explorations of travel guides with historical GIS.

Mina Loy—poet, artist, exile, and luminary—was a prominent and admired figure in the art and literary circles of Paris, Florence, and New York in the early years of the twentieth century. But over time, she gradually receded from public consciousness and her poetry went out of print. As part of the movement to introduce the work of this cryptic poet to modern audiences, Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy provides new and detailed explications of Loy’s most redolent poems. This book helps readers gain a better understanding of the body of Loy’s work as a whole by offering compelling close readings that uncover the source materials that inspired Loy’s poetry, including modern artwork, Baedeker travel guides, and even long-forgotten cultural venues. Helpfully keyed to the contents of Loy’s Lost Lunar Baedeker, edited by Roger Conover, this book is an essential aid for new readers and scholars alike. Mina Loy forged a legacy worthy of serious consideration—through a practice best understood as salvage work, of reclaiming what has been so long obscured. Poetic Salvage: Reading Mina Loy dives deep to bring hidden treasures to the surface.

This article addresses the critically neglected relation between Baedekers and nationalism, in order to articulate the reasons for the decline of the Baedeker empire in the early twentieth century. Conditions in the First World War undermined the Baedekers' foundational concepts of landscape description. Additionally, the guidebooks emblematized a lost pre-war style of international journey. However, evidence in unexplored archival and fictional sources qualifies our understanding of these changes. This article revisits and reconciles such assessments, by explaining how the war also recast the Baedekers' mediation of international access as a form of nationalist expansionism, and hence a suspect project.

In these super-sensitive times, it is inevitable that a modern guide to Egypt no longer includes a chapter entitled Intercourse with Orientals (about conversing with your dragoman, actually), but one is left with a sneaking feeling that a century ago travellers had so much more fun. Come sunset in Luxor, New Baedeker recommends we sit down and admire its temple ruins in the atmospheric light, whereas Old Baedeker points out that this is a good time to go off to the Ramesseum and shoot a jackal. When faced with hassle from vendors at the Pyramids, New Baedeker suggests maintaining \"a healthy distrust\" of all offers. Old Baedeker has no time for such shilly-shallying. If confronted with a \"light cavalry\" of importuning donkey-boys, he recommends threatening use of a stick. Sturm und Drang, that was the way to travel. When compared with competing guides from Time Out or Dorling Kindersley, the new Baedekers appear dull - but they do their job efficiently and without any posturing, which has its appeal. Their sudden reappearance, nearly 10 years after [Karl Baedeker] published its last title in Britain, flies in the face of the much-predicted demise of the guidebook (and print in general) in favour of online and digital alternatives. Thankfully, there are many of us who still prefer pages to screens, and while this 21st-century Baedeker will in time be backed up with a searchable website offering downloads and updates, the company holds true to the traditional view that when you are on the road a book is still the best companion. \"We don't believe that in five or 50 years this is going to change,\" a spokesman told Telegraph Travel. \"The Baedeker guide has many years left. Our readers use them for planning, while travelling, then keep them as a reminder of a very good holiday.\"

Tracks and card rooms will continue to oppose Proposition 70, which would lock in tribal gambling agreements negotiated by [Arnold Schwarzenegger], but also require tribes to pay the same taxes as other businesses, [Rick Baedeker] said.

FUNNY FOURSOME . Surreal San Francisco-based comedy troupe Kasper Hauser, made up of Rob Baedeker, Dan Klein and identical twins John and James Reichmuth, appears at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater. 8 p.m., $5. 161 W. 22nd St. (212) 366-9176. NICHE EN LA NOCHE . Grupo Niche brings its brand of salsa music to New York via Colombia. With supporting act percussionist Edwin Bonilla. 9 & 11 p.m., $20-$25. SOB'S, 204 Varick St. (212) 243- 4940.

If Karl Baedeker could see just how bedecked with typos and awkward mistranslations his once-proud California Guide has become, he'd be overturning in his grove: