Tales From the Alhambra (Classic Reprint) Hardcover – August 24, 2018

I have been to the Alhambra before; so I was able to picture the life that must have been at the time of Washington Irving. Apparently, he lived at the palace while he was writing this book. I enjoyed the Arabian tales and the author's own expression of his experience. I gave this book, at a gift exchange for book club. I know the recipient will enjoy Mr Irving's stylized writing.

I bought this edition under the mistaken belief that it's the complete book. Nowhere does it say "abridged." The only clue that this is anything other than the full version is the phrase "formatted, edited, and redesigned" on the back cover. I was happily reading the book, thinking I was reading the actual Washington Irving volume when I came to page 35 and saw something very odd--an incomplete sentence. A typo, I thought? I then went to Gutenberg online and saw the actual thing, which is much longer and richer than this slim volume. I felt cheated because I thought I was reading the whole thing. So I consider this book a rip-off, both because it disguises the fact that it's an abridgment and because the actually Irving volume is a masterpiece, something you'd only know if you saw the whole thing.