LAURENCE MACKINreviews Earthbound: A Rough Guide to the World in Pictures,Rough Guides, £20

This is a collection of images from around the world from the Rough Guide archives, a kind of Google Earth bird’s-eye view of the planet taken by the guide book’s photographers. The glossy, large-scale format is a strong showcase for the work, and each image comes with longitude and latitude co-ordinates and QR codes, both of which can be used to pinpoint, on Google Maps online, the exact spots where the pictures were taken.

The contents are divided into categories, from beliefs and activities to traditions and time-wasting, and each picture comes with a long caption explaining its location and significance. There is a terrific warmth and vibrancy to many of the images, and there seems to have been an effort to capture the everyday life of people in these extraordinary places rather than simply a collection of jaw-dropping natural phenomena, be it children playing football in Buenos Aires, the elegant skeletons of the Convento dei Cappuccini in Palermo in Italy or the domino players in Soufrière in St Lucia.

Inevitably, though, the natural world seems to steal the show, and it is these pictures that are most likely to have you reaching for the travel brochures: the shots of Petra, in Jordan, seem to hum on the page, the cover shot will have you heading straight to Google Maps to find that shipwrecked bay, and there are more than a few surprises closer to home, such as the Gruta de las Maravillas in Spain and a truly outstanding shot of Customs Wharf in Leith in Scotland. Some shots seem forgettable, such as a standard swimming pool in Magaluf, and some bland Miami shots, but these are occasional bits of the ordinary amid the truly extraordinary.