Comments (0) Best place to plan that little getaway to Northern Germany (circa 1877), Palestine and Syria (circa 1894), or Mexico (circa 1909) - 2007

Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore

If your present financial situation is such that you can't afford to cross the street—much less the Atlantic—indulge your inner wanderer with a couple of red-backed, vintage Baedeker travel guides from Complete Traveller Antiquarian Bookstore. Since 1837, these astonishingly comprehensive volumes, offering well-researched, accurate (at the time of publication) information about travel and customs in various foreign lands, have been (and are still) an enormous pleasure to read—even for those who never actually leave home. So ubiquitous were they to the burgeoning late-19th- and early-20th-century leisure class that Baedekers are name-checked in works by E.M. Forster, Agatha Christie, and Thomas Pynchon, among others; so accurate that the Nazis used one to plot a series of retaliatory air raids targeting picturesque English towns in 1942. Though rare volumes will be out of reach for all but the serious bibliophile—a 1914 first edition of Indien, Handbuch Für Reisende in near-fine condition currently lists for $2,000—many lesser prizes are available in the $40 to $60 range. These little gems also make excellent presents for your pet historian or map fetishist.