This was an okay read, but I have a few issues with it:
-They had to start with North America? It's so typical, and they really blew through their picture budget on the U.S., leaving the rest of the world's locations mostly to the imagination. The U.S. locales have about twice the number of pictures as say, African locations, places most of us have never seen pictures of; instead, we get more pictures of places like Mt. Rainier and Crater Lake, places which even an amateur nature enthusiast has most likely seen many pictures of or even visited. Even though these pictures were a bit redundant, they're still nice to look at and were well taken, I only wish they'd saved the pictures for the lesser-known and lesser-photographed places of the world.
-Do you guys need an editor? I found numerous spelling errors and constant overlapping between the contributors. If the editors had been a bit more careful, there'd have been less repetition of information and less glaring errors like "Montertay Canyon" and rainfall "per yeart."
-The spine doesn't seem very durable; granted, I had a library copy that was already a couple of years old, but still, this isn't the kind of book you can cradle in your hands off the table for more than a couple of minutes before its weight compels you to set it down on a table with both flaps down. Then you notice the pages starting to separate from the spine and it crackles a bit. Come on, for a book that's over 1000 pages and weighs about ten pounds or more, they really could use some stronger craftsmanship.
-Too much emphasis on discoverers and place-naming for a book about natural wonders. I'll say it again: a book of this nature is incredibly dependent on its visuals to make it an engaging read. After 500-some pages I found myself just skimming the text entries, especially if there were no accompanying picture. And the captions were really worthless in the few spots where they actually appeared, just telling you that yes, this picture is the place that the bold text at the top of the page hinted at.
Hopefully later editions of the book will have many more pictures and a better format for their descriptions. I do appreciate the effort of this project and believe in its importance, I just think they could have gone about it in a better fashion.