It's a dry-as-dust information dump on a city I've come to like much more the second time I visited than the first (when highlights were my girlfriend's camera being stolen from our hotel room and the two of us being followed by a dude in sweatpants who was all spinning his pistol round his finger), but not much more could be expected from a tourist board publication, yes? I'm sure it would have a little bit of utility for people who wanted to see the sights of İz (although let's be clear, if you don't have bros here, there are, let it be said with understatement and a gentle heart, or at least the intent thereof, better places to see in the vicinity), but this still offends me because it starts with all these blurbs from Herodotus and a reminder that the city was founded by Tantalus, mythically, and refounded by Alexander, and Homer was supposed to have been born here, and that is a serious pile of Greeks, but when it comes to the modern war and fire and expulsion and massacre, nary a word. The İzmir expo bid blithely dismissed it with a "the Greeks and Armenians caused the fire so they deserved what they got, not that we're admitting anything" (I wonder if they get why they didn't win the expo), and I would have thought that attempt at self-justification would have repulsed me more, but no, in fact, an incompleat history that jumps from 1676 to the plucky-up-and-comerism of "And today, there is a city called İzmir!"--that butter-wouldn't-melt smarm offends me more. ( )