Looking for a guidebook

 I’ve been trying to find a good guidebook on Santa Fe, N.M., where my friend Alvin lives. I want to travel by book: that is, I want to learn about the place my friend talks about without leaving my library.

I’m looking for a guidebook that gives a sense of the place — that tells what it’s like to live there.

It’s surprising how few guidebooks try.

The world is full of books that say something like this: You can’t possibly understand what this place is like unless you eat this particular dish at that particular taco stand and stay at this particular hotel before visiting that particular museum.

The concept is that you can experience a place only if you rush from spot to spot and sample what’s been tasted and seen before and judged excellent. This concept holds that experiencing a place involves checking items off a list.

I think the concept is flawed. I think that repairing broken concepts is the work of philosophy. And so I’m wishing there were a few more guidebook writers who were also philosophers.