Dr. Dolittle would treasure this book by Don E. Wilson.

For those unfamiliar with the good doctor, he was a fictional character dreamed up by Hugh Lofting in 1920. A physician who turned de facto veterinarian after he learned how to talk to animals, Dr. Dolittle would close his eyes, open an atlas in front of him, wave a pencil over the page, and poke it down. Wherever that pencil point landed, the good doctor would visit.

Natural Wonders of the World would be a perfect stand-in for an atlas. Touching on fascinating destinations in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, and Oceania, this large format, full-color book provides insights on lands (and national parks) as diverse as the Himalayas, New Zealand, the Scottish Highlands, the Strokkur Geyser in Iceland, Lake Victoria in Africa, and the Great Basin of the United States, home to Great Basin National Park.

The author comes to this book with more than a little knowledge of these places, having written 25 books and authored more than 250 scientific articles. On top of that, he’s curator emeritus for the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian, so he knows more than a little about the world and its fascinations.

In this thick volume, American national parks include Yellowstone, Yosemite, Carlsbad Caverns, Crater Lake, Sequoia, Mount Rainier, and Devils Tower. Internationally, he writes of Australia’s Nambung National Park with its pillars of stone, the Philippines’ Puerto Princesa Subterranean River National Park with its five-mile-long underground river, and Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park, one of the most visited spots in Patagonia.

This is a book for ambitious dreamers looking to add stamps to their passports. Though the text is limited (no doubt to make more space available for the spectacular photos), Mr. Wilson finds room to touch on such topics as geology, wildlife, flora, and even climate. These brief overviews of these destinations might be enough to make you book a trip.