General

More than the articles, when I think of National Geographic Magazine I think of the photography. I have long considered the photography in National Geographic to be some of the best magazine photography that I have seen. The images are typically stunning and give me a visual idea of locations that I would not even be able to imagine. I cannot speak to the technical craft of photography because I know nothing about that. Since I also have not looked at other National Geographic Collections, I cannot speak as to what is included in those collections and how it compares to this collection. What I can speak to is what I thought about this particular collection.

Bottom line: I liked it. Since I am not a regular reader of National Geographic, all of the pictures were new to me. This is an excellent collection of photography for someone who just wants to look at some wonderful pictures. One can look through the book casually and enjoy the pictures (as I did), or one can study the pictures and see exactly what is going on and find nuance within the pictures. Either way works. Good pictures, good book, and it was an enjoyable time looking at some of the best of National Geographic's photography.

I'll give 3 stars to this book for the hidden gems in it, and for the expansive collection of photographs. However, National Geographic seems to have chosen quantity over quanlity. I was genuinely surprised at the lack of pictures even worth being denoted 'good'. Some of them looked like the sort of thing the average person takes on a short vacation.
Most photos in it are across both pages, and the large size makes almost every picture look grainy. It also makes the book seem like there are more pictures than there really are. The truly wonderful photos are pretty much all ones we've seen printed elsewhere, multiple times, like a humpback whale with seabirds about it by Flip Nicklin. I've even seen that one used in advertisements.
Don't waste your money or time buying this book; there are others of much better quality and lower pricing. In short they are NOT the "Greatest" photographs.

An avid reader and fan of Nationl Geographic for 5 decades, I was
disappointed in the book. More than half of the featured photographs were recent, many taken in the last 5 years. So many of the breath taking pictures that I remeber were not included. I cannot even guess at what the critera was for photographs to be included in this book but, in my opinion, these are not the best of National Geographic.