I am grateful to NetGalley for providing an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Abandoned Towns (previously published as Ghost Towns) is a photographic book covering a topic that is becoming increasingly popular on social media , video and publishing. This book provides a nice overview of examples from different types of manmade places, now mostly abandoned. Divided into geographic chapters (Central Asia, India, Middle East and so on) the author present examples from ancient times to very recent times. Buildings, infrastructure, transportation, public venture. All are presented with a brief description giving context of the past, the present and future.

Some areas and topics are well known already from previous publications of one sort or another. For example, deserted Chinese cities, constructed due to over-optimistic planning and population growth. Always fascinating to view, even if relatively well known. Other example are probably less well known, perhaps due to their isolated locations or troubled pasts. Central Asian examples are particularly interesting as whole towns and areas are abandoned due to various conflicts, damage, destruction, forced migration and other man-inflicted reasons.

Examples from Asia and India are something the result of former colonial powers being no longer needed or fondly remembered. Other cities and places may have declined due to more recent impacts from totalitarian regimes and changed economic circumstances. In addition to political, economic and geographical reasons, natural causes sometime cause adverse changes. Earthquakes, volcanos and severe climate has resulted in population movements and abandonment. Examples are presented from Europe, North America and Australia . The Middle East and Africa are represented by more ancient places, both grand as well as humble, testament to changing circumstances.

Although the reader may be familiar with some example (China, Pompeii and of course Pripyat in Ukraine (with a strategically placed child toy of course, in a school room or house near Chernobyl), other often newer examples are quite fascinating. The global housing bubble in 2008 has left Spain with newly constricted areas of abandoned residential apartments, office buildings and public infrastructure. Not overgrown ancient relics but modern places. Just with very few inhabitants ! Other economic ruins , for example in North America, although appropriate for this book, do seem a little shabby and squalid, and of little beauty.

South American examples of abandonment are often due to changing economic needs of the world with regard to minerals and materials. Fordlandia, Henry Ford’s great experiment in the jungle of Brazil is rightly included in the book. Perhaps a unique and certainly fascinating example of abandonment.

But for the most part, the photos are nicely selected and presented. They are fascinating, sad, sometime shocking and often atmospheric. The author provides a brief written description to give context. The circumstances that brought about the cities and town in the first place. And the reason or combinations of reasons for their decline. The future is also discussed. Be it a slow return to what was previously present, jungle or a barren landscape. Other times, these areas can provide tourism for cultural and academic visitors.

In summary, a pleasant and engaging book, with brief accompanying text, providing context and background. The 150 photos from all over the world show a wide geographic spread of abandoned places and explain their downfall due to variety of reasons. Readers may be left wanting more and seek further information on how these cities and areas developed, once thrived and subsequently declined.

One word to describe this book…. exhilarating!

The ideal read for anyone looking for a quick and light read.

I was pleasantly surprised by seeing this abandoned history.

My favourite was Pompeii :)

I loved that each picture gave a small explanation as well.

Go read this book! You will be amazed.

An interesting collection of abandoned places shown in a geographic order.

This book was a slight disappointment because it’s essentially a collection of stock images with snippets of information. The places which are featured have often been covered before and with more information.

I liked the organisation by geographic region but wished there was more writing about each place. I would also have preferred original photos as many are ones that have been used in many other similar books.

Another stunning collection of photography, charting the abandoned towns across the globe, and the stories behind them.

I've always been fascinated by the abandoned cities and towns around the world and it is fascinating to see such a variety of them collected together here - the differences in architecture, setting and the backgrounds as to why they were built and why they now lay deserted.

The architecture is beyond stunning - and often weird! - and it goes from the sublime to the simple across all the continents. Some of the stories that accompany the photos are sad to read and it's such a shame to see so many beautiful places as ghost towns now.

The quality of photography is outstanding and exactly what I've come to expect from this publisher!

An interesting overview of abandoned towns and villages around the world, with some beautiful photography and intriguing captions. The book provides brief descriptions of each location covered, with the captions leaving you wanting to look up each location in more detail. It's a good introduction to abandoned settlements, though I could certainly have read about more places than those covered, and perhaps included more than a few sentences on each. A nice reference to culture interest in the subject at hand.

I have always been interested in learning about abandoned crimes / ghost towns so it was great to read this book and see what they look like.

This book was an easy sell for me. Pictures of ghost towns? Short blurbs about the towns and locations? Cleanly laid out? Perfect. The pictures are beautiful and haunting and I left knowing a little more about the places than I did before. Not a heavy lift, read the full book in an hour. My favorite section was the Americas, but maybe that's just because I live here. Highly recommended for a coffee table/back of the toilet book. Thanks to Chris McNab and Amber Books for the ARC!

2018 saw this book called "Ghost Towns". 2024 sees it with this current title, for some purpose best known by itself. Not that anybody informed the text as I saw it, which still keeps calling these by the old term. Either way, this was pretty decent – doing what I expected an Amber Book to do, in entertaining me about a random fact of life, in highly pictorial way. I'd never have really worried about my ignorance of these places, but the chance to get the basics here from the typical snappy captions was just right for the quirky kind of light browse I sought.

The issue however was the age – it's alright having a photo of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, taken in 2011 showing the sky-scrapers that might as well still be shrink-wrapped. A quick check suggests it's full enough now. I came here for the instant pleasure, not to get googling – but luckily enough the merits of this still managed to shine. Here are places blighted by nuclear problems (Fukushima, Pripyat of course), and curses. Egypt alone has recent mining settlements quit in 2000, and things that never saw anyone seriously after the calendar changed to AD. Spain has a failed attempt at a new city; France suffered a village moving out because of the noise and risk from being under a major flightpath.

There is a bit of a lesson about the hubris of man, as all the best he can make is still forced to sink in marshland, become the victim of volcanoes, get nuked – or, in the case of one desert oasis, flood badly. The regular imagery you get of books featuring abandoned urban scrawl, the innards of factories and the warehouses only awaiting a rave or total collapse, is here, on perhaps a larger, more town-sized scale. Some of the photos looked ropy, however, and that and the initial quibble I mentioned mean this isn't one of Amber's finest. I still enjoyed seeing what I could of the literal dead ends of the world, though – three and a half stars.

A fine effort. The coverage is global, which is an attractive element of the project. The photos are stock, and some of the info seems dated, but for a book like this that's not a serious criticism. Each regional chapter has a brief but engaging introduction, and the factoid style captions are informative enough to give the photos reasonable context. I would suspect that most readers will find of few items of special interest, and the balance makes this a nice browsable sort of book.

I mean, the title sells this book pretty well, doesn't it? Abandoned Towns by Chris McNab is exactly what you expect and that's a good thing.

I am the type of person who can lose a couple of hours on Wikipedia running down rabbit holes on ghost towns, desert islands, and anywhere humanity gave up on. This is to say that I am the target audience for this book.

Photography books come down to two factors. How are the pictures and how is everything else? The pictures are for the most part fantastic. There are a few which underwhelm but that is too be expected in a 200+ page book. The captions are a slight letdown. They are very short and I think it would have helped more to add just a little bit more background to each photo. That said, I would be happy to have this on my coffee table for guests to peruse.

(This book was provided as an advance copy by Netgalley and Amber Books LTD.)

Some of the photographs in this book are really stunning. The book is separated by continent and each continent has, generally, more of a reason why some of its towns have been abandoned - for example, in the Americas the reasons are mainly economic, due to mines being depleted, whereas in Asia and Europe, towns have been affected by natural disasters. It's essentially a coffee table book, so it's more about the pictures than the accompanying snippets of information, which tease but don't give much depth of information since there isn't much space to do so. Another reviewer said they thought the photography credits ought to be on the same page as the photo rather than stuffed away at the back - I hadn't thought about it myself, but agree that seems more appropriate given that this book is 99% about the pictures and not the words.

This beautiful book of photography showcases abandoned towns across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Canada, the USA, South & Central America, Australia and Antarctica. I’ve always been enamored of photos taken of abandoned houses, barns, grain elevators, etc. as I find them very atmospheric. This book encompasses whole towns that have been abandoned due to man made disasters such as Chernobyl, the collapse of local industry such as whaling stations in Antarctica and nature events such as earthquakes and volcanoes. I think the author did a wonderful job putting this collection together evoking the eeriness factor but also sadness – these were places that people built lives and memories, earned a living, raised families but had to walk away from for various reasons. I was especially delighted to see abandoned buildings from former hamlets and towns in Saskatchewan where I reside. I really enjoyed this book and gave it 4/5 stars. It will be available for purchase in America on June 11, 2024.

Thank you to Netgalley and Amber Books for a review copy.

In this collection of pictures of abandoned cities and derelict religious sites across the world, Christ McNab gives us a glance into the rise and fall of history.

The pictures are divided geographically, each section highlights a continent or subcontinent, and spans millennia: from the ruins of ancient capitals of Indian kingdoms, to the mining towns of South Africa and California. Each picture features a short caption that provides a little context into each abandoned settlement or ruin.

I was a bit underwhelmed by the book and wish it had gone more in depth in its research, maybe showing more pictures and expanding a bit on the captions - but at the same time I know I can't expect a run down of every ghost town in the world.

I do think it would make for an interesting coffee table book to leaf through in an afternoon, though!

Access to the ARC acquired thanks to NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Abandoned Towns by Chris McNab is utterly stunning. The book is structured by continent and is a stark reminder of historical events and a warning about the effect of current events

Each picture has a description and an overview of the history of the area and the events that lead to the locations abandonment. From financial failure, to natural disaster, and sadly, man made disaster, However, theyy not only serve as a warning, but in many cases, monuments to be preserved (such as the Wat Phra Si Sanphet temple complex in Thailand, the Tkvarcheli Power Plant in Abkhazia, the Vijayanagara, in Karnataka , India and the Jahaz Mahal. This list is not exhaustive as there are structures in every chapter that have a story

The architectural styles are described clearly and succinctly and it is interesting to see which have stood the test of time and travesty, and which have not. It is also interesting to see the different architectural styles adopted globally

Another aspect which was beautifully captured, is how nature returns, taking over and growing through structures, sometimes destroying them, sometimes sheering them up, but prevailing. While this does not happen in every instance, it happens in the majority of them

I really, really enjoyed this book and it is well worth reading as a chronicle of history and the tenacity of the natural world

Thank you very much to Netgalley, Chris Mc Nab and Amber Books Limited for this stunning and thought provoking ARC. My review is left voluntarily and all opinions are my own

This book has a publication date of 2024. However, the first thing I noticed when opening it was a small print in the impressum that specifies this book was previously published under the name of “Ghost Towns”. Considering this, it makes a lot of sense that the introduction repeatedly discusses “ghost towns” rather than “abandoned” towns and places as a keyword. I feel like this would have worked better if the language had been edited to match the new title.

“Ghost towns” was originally published in 2018 and I’m not sure how much the book has been edited since. Some of the information seems quite outdated, for example it describes Chenggong, China as an abandoned place. It’s true that when it was first built as a land development project in 2013 many houses in Chenggong were left empty but it seems like over a decade later it is a much more bustling satellite town. Ordos, Mongolia has a similar story and also appears as one of the first “abandoned towns” in this book. I wish the author and publishers had used the opportunity to include some updates on these cities in the text.

My biggest disappointment, however, was that the images are all taken from stock websites. Don’t get me wrong, the stock photographers have all done a fantastic job but I had expected a photography book that contains a smaller and more curated sample of artwork by one photographer or maybe a small group of photographers. When using so many different stock images it is impossible to give the book a coherent look, the images are very different in style. Moreover, if taking this approach it would have been nice if the artists were honoured alongside the image description not hidden away somewhere in the back pages that no one reads.


The photo descriptions are what I assume to me Chris McNab’s contribution. They’re OK, short informational snippets, but lack any soul, passion or creativity, I’m afraid. It reads like information I could get from Wikipedia. I don’t get the impression the author has travelled to any of the places he talks about.

This unfortunately fell very short of my expectations. It does not work as a photography book due to the varying art styles. It does not work as a travel book or documentation of the social history of the places simply due to the lack of content. Giving this two stars as it does not quite deserve the minimum rating - it does not contain problematic or offensive elements.

What a fantastic book with such gorgeous pictures! I was disappointed that the abandoned locations didn't seem haunted, because there were logical reasons the places became uninhabited. A lot of the abandoned towns used to be mines, while others were victims of weather, volcanoes, and/or war. One place was, ironically, an oasis that was abandoned after being destroyed by heavy rain.
I love how the author pointed out that, while some of these locations are the most beautiful places in the world, that didn't mean that people living there would necessarily be able to appreciate that when living conditions are harsh.
Thanks to NetGalley for letting me read this! I'm going to go through it again, because it's just so interesting