Beautifully photographed and well documented book of unusual structures. Got me hooked on the topic of "outsider constructions". Thanks for the inspiration.

Fantasy Worlds is worth at least twice its price. It is a showy, large-format hard-cover "coffee table" art photography book worthy of purchase for yourself or as a gift.

Its 340 pages are crammed with full-page photos of bright and saucy gems of personal architecture. The subject matter consists of the creations of untrained visionaries who are obsessed with the desire to decorate and embellish their dwellings.

The book features 73 environmental creations -- 37 in Europe, 27 in America and 9 in Asia and Africa. The works vary from famous sites such as the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, the Gaudi creations in Barcelona and the Tiger Balm Gardens in Hong Kong to largely unknown jewels such as Salvation Mountain near Niland in the Salton Sea area of California.

The text is in English, French and German.

Maizel has collected more than just the art of the emotionally disturbed and has illustrated, implicitly, the links between modernism and primitivism, folk art and creative genius. Both disturbing and provocative, his selections force one to confront and view these creations with a fresh perspective. Of particular interest is his writing on French artist Jean Dubuffet, who was among the first to recognize such works as real art with something worth exploring and accepting, on par with "formal" art. This book though is not overly intellectual and is primarily a collection of illustrations and prints, sometimes light on the text. I like the way the footnotes are treated on each page and would suspect that these footnotes could serve as a source for further explorations.