Marion James's Blog – February 2008 Archive (1)

Reading Marco Polo's "The Travels" this week, I was struck how like a very early Lonely Planet Guide this 13th century manuscript is. Except, the venerable Marco desperately needs a great modern editor to make his chapter titles a bit more zappy, and to create history boxes and culture boxes to highlight features of interest. Maps and some illustrations would make the text a bit less stuffy, too.

That got me thinking ... how much of a book's success is from the original content, and…