The idea for In the Footsteps of Paul by Ken Duncan is a good one.  A kind of a photo-journal of the places the apostle Paul visited on his various missionary journeys.  The pictures in the book are beautiful.  Some of them look exactly as I imagine the Biblical locations to have looked.  Some show a more modern portrayal of these old cities. And still others demonstrate how cities often decline and fall into disrepair over time.

While I really enjoyed the photography, I found the rest of the book to be lacking. I would have preferred to have only Biblical text, and of course captions identifying the photos, as the entire text of the book. Instead, there were also many quotes used, as well as narrative by the author. The quotes used on many of the pages were distracting. Some of the narrative provided was OK, but much of that, like the quotes, was a distraction to both the photos and the Biblical text.

The other thing I found off-putting about this book was the number of times the author listed a photo as a place Paul “probably” saw, or “must have” seen.  If we do not know for sure it is a place he actually traveled to, saw or experienced, I don’t understand it’s place in the book. I prefer accuracy, not probably or might have.

This would make a good coffee table book, if you just want to flip through it and look at some amazing photos, but the written content leaves something to be desired.