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| Iberia | 
 enlarge | Author: James A. Michener
Creator: Robert Vavra
Publisher: Fawcett Crest Books by Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $8.99
Buy New: $0.01
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Avg. Customer Rating:  (27 reviews)
Sales Rank: 13338
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 960
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 6.9 x 4.2 x 1.4
ISBN: 0449207331
Dewey Decimal Number: 860
EAN: 9780449207338
ASIN: 0449207331
Publication Date: September 1969
Release Date: October 12, 1984
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 My gosh, it is NON-Fiction October 19, 2006
4 out of 13 found this review helpful
As a James Michener fan I thought this would be his usual excellent book. It may be good for others, but it wasn't for me. Well duh, it is NON-Fiction. I'm sorry but it didn't have the usual Michener way of grabbing you. This is probably a great book for a studious reader, someone interest in the details of Spain (Iberia). Unless that's you maybe you should skip this one.
 Trained Brain Explains Spain without Strain May 25, 2006
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I've never been to Spain, but after reading Michener's mammoth work on the country, I wish I had gone long ago. I have this sneaking feeling that the place has changed out of all recognition since he published this 795 page tome in 1968. Perhaps it has become more like the rest of Europe or even more like the rest of the world than it was during the latter part of Franco's long rule. Is it still "Spanish", whatever that may mean ? Maybe, but not the same way. I'm sure I've missed that old Spain of Franco's time and maybe (also) that's not such a bad thing. What role bullfighting and flamenco play in contemporary Spain is probably open to question. Does the Catholic church have the same power that it did ? Does it still have power over the schools ? Certainly censorship has disappeared and we see any number of modern films, full of sex, from the once "protected" society. Prices have increased, poverty diminished, the cities have grown and the countryside been drained of people. Spain is now indubitably a land to which immigrants come, not one from which they go. All big changes in the last 40 years. So, you might ask, why should I bother to read an out-of-date book like this ?
You should read this book if you're going to Spain. Sure, it's not about the society you're going to see, but it's about the recent past there. It tells you a thousand things you could still see, you could find, taste, experience. You might be interested to know what things used to be like if you've already been to Spain in the last 20 years. You should read it as an intense portrait---warts and all---of a particular country, a country that has played a major role in world and European history. What you will get from this superb book is a flavor, whether your taste runs to social analysis, history, architecture, bullfighting, people, nature, or just simple travel. It's one of the great travel books of the English language, not, by the way, one of Michener's eventually rather formulaic, boring novels. Even if his political predictions and those of the Spaniards he interviewed were often off base seen in hindsight, he deals with all the issues--the landowners, the church, the Guardia Civil, the economy, Catalan and Basque separatism, the arts, and the general ability to rule and be ruled. The style is extremely readable, the photographs by Robert Vavra, outstanding, the maps satisfying. Read the other reviews of IBERIA. You'll see I'm not just whistling Dixie here. Viva Espana !
Best travel writing ever May 2, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've been reading "Iberia" in preparation for a trip to Spain, and in it I've found some of the best travel writing I've ever read--and I've read a few. Michener focuses on several cities in Spain, but most of the time these are mere settings for his fascinating discourses on the history, culture and politics of a country he obviously has long been attached to. DO NOT make the mistake I did of reading just the parts that coincided with our trip--every chapter is fascinating, and now I find I'm going back and reading the parts I skipped the first time.
To call this book outdated is a bit silly--it was published in 1968 and represents a highly intelligent and well-informed look at Spain at that time, as Franco's power was waning. If he were alive today I think Michener would have been pleased. Things have turned out far better than he thought they would; he was skeptical that a two-party democracy would ever work in Spain.
I've read much of Michener's fiction but now that I've read this, I wonder if he missed his true calling. The fiction is a good way to get a feel for a place, but I know people who advise skipping the first hundred pages, and skimming through the rest. Of course this book is long too, but quite different--I read 600 of the 900 pages in 2 days--it's that good.
I can't recommend this strongly enough--by now the info on tapas bars is long outdated, but for a quirky, personal, well-informed view of Spain on the eve of democracy, I doubt you'll do better.
A truly great book November 4, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
an avid fan of Michener's fiction, I decided to pick this book up to see how Michener dealt with nonfiction. I can without hesitation say that Michener is at his best in this genre. "Iberia" is a stunning achievement of meticulous care and fascinating recounting of events.
His account of Spain, though dated now by thirty years, made me feel as if I were there travelling side by side with Michener. It is wonderfully detailed and always engaging. A note of caution the spain michenor describes is not present day spain,the book is more a passionate history.
An overlong and somewhat dated love- letter to Spain September 3, 2005
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
This is not a Michener novel but a Michener personal travel journal about the Spain he traveled in for thirty years and knew very well. It is rich with information about all aspects of Spanish culture and life. Michener was a writer who loved people, and loved talking to them . And this book contains the accounts of hundreds of conversations on all aspects of Spanish life.
It describes in great detail some of the main areas and cities of Spain, Madrid, Cordoba, Salamanca, Sevilla, and the Entremurada region.
It gives a tremendous amount of detail on different kinds of food and places of accomodation.It is often in this regard very critical.
Michener is a very good writer but not a great one. And there are passages of the book which are very interesting but fail to reach a higher level of poetic inspiration.
A number of the set pieces in the book are truly wonderful. I greatly enjoyed his account of the medieval Jewish traveler Binyamin Mitudela and the comparison Michener makes between his travels and times and Mitudelas.
The book is dated in certain ways. It is of course not up - to- date politically. But also in attitude. I think no editor today would allow the passage in which Michener talks about why all young married Spanish women are fat and content. And how they know in the land of no- divorce their husbands will not leave them even though all the husbands definitely take more attractive women as mistresses.
Michener writes a lot about bullfighting a sport he admires. I however found many years ago in the one bullfight I attended a lot of cruelty. I think more people today would share my concern that the cruelty to the animals simply does not justify the glorious spectacle of the bullfight.
On the whole I think it is possible to learn a lot from this book about Spain, and too about James Michener.
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