The Best American Travel Writing 2013

October 14, 2013
Guest editor Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) anthologizes a variety of pieces that adhere to her maxim, "No story is automatically interesting; only the telling makes it so." Among the 19 contributors, John Jeremiah Sullivan reflects on a journey to Cuba to visit his wife's family, capturing both the picturesque landscape and the inherent strangeness of being an American there. Colleen Kinder recalls wearing a niqab to a marketplace while on assignment in Cairo. In "The Year I Didn't," Daniel Tyx lampoons self-indulgent travel trend pieces, writing about the road not travelled at all as he opts out of his plan to walk the U.S-Mexico border. Peter Jon Lindberg embraces the idyllic at Pine Point, Maine, and David Farley seeks an elusive recipe in Vietnam made exclusively by one family for generations. Sam Anderson muses on the nature of literary tourism on his trip to the English theme park Dickens World, while Marie Arana provides a hard-hitting look at child labor and the exploitation of workers at a Peruvian gold mine, articulating a powerful plea for the education of young girls. Lynn Yaeger's "Confessions of a Packing Maximalist" addresses the preparation stage of travel and adding a light-hearted touch to the collection. Gilbert made excellent choices for this collection, not a single piece is out of place here.

September 15, 2013
The latest installment of the travel-writing series upholds the tradition of world-expanding excellence. Series editor Jason Wilson begins this collection with a tale of overcoming adversity. After years, he found volume editor Gilbert's (Committed: A Love Story, 2010, etc.) schedule finally jibed with his, and thus, the 2013 collection was born. This is not a book full of traditional travel stories. Instead, under Gilbert's stewardship, the articles are tidbits from another place, time or culture, and one from the mind of a man who contemplated travel but never got around to it. Readers won't find any pieces to help them plan a trip, but they will be inspired to travel somewhere. "Some of these stories find their authors flinging themselves into mad acts of danger and some do not," writes Gilbert, "but every piece contains awe in strong enough doses to render the reader enchanted, delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled." The stories range from typical subjects with atypical treatments--e.g., Kevin Chroust's recounting of running with the bulls in which he examines not the thrill of the terror, but the sheer stupidity of it--to the completely unexpected--e.g., Sarah A. Topol's "Tea and Kidnapping," in which an event that should be terrifying is surprisingly giggle-inducing. "Travel should be just as much about light delights as about dark daring," writes Gilbert, and both are represented here, well-balanced. So Grant Stoddard's article about making up his own Manhattan tours and David Sedaris' piece about his dentist in Paris slide into the collection seamlessly while offering a needed comedic break. Other contributors include Ian Frazier, John Jeremiah Sullivan and Christopher de Bellaigue. The wonder continues in the fact that, regardless of subject, each story takes its place in the collection proudly and deservedly.

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October 15, 2013

This highly anticipated annual collection of essays comes this year from Eat, Pray, Love author Gilbert and series editor Wilson. This well-told story takes readers around the world, letting them dip their literary toes in many aspects of travel from understanding another culture to learning a place's history and current political situation to finding out new things about ourselves. Travel the streets of Egypt first dressed fully covered in a niqab and then as a Westerner. Learn the history of pirates in New Orleans. Run with the bulls in Pamplona. Visit the illegal gold mines in Peru. Relish the peace of returning yearly to the same vacation spot. Go snowboarding in Sarajevo and experience cockfighting in Afghanistan. Laugh as David Sedaris describes his French dental care. See the changes in modern Cuba. Essays in this year's edition focus primarily on earnest reporting rather than the reflective, adventurous, or humorous aspects of travel but nonetheless are a treasure to read. VERDICT Once again, this collection is a delight for armchair travel readers and will be of interest to anyone who wants a broader understanding of the world.--Sheila Kasperek, Mansfield Univ. Lib., PA

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2013
Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love, 2006), guest editor of the latest volume in this always rich yearly anthology, boldly avers that she chose travel stories that were told the most marvelously in 2012. To her, each piece contains awe in strong enough doses to render the reader enchanted, delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled. Such strong billing is not misleading, as readers will learn when they step into the pages of such delights as John Jeremiah Sullivan's beautifully eloquent A Prison, a Paradise (from the New York Times Magazine), about travel to Cuba ( I've never stood on a piece of ground as throbbingly, even pornographically, generative ); Colleen Kinder's Blot Out (from Creative Nonfiction), a punchy, even scary, account of a Western woman trying to pass as Muslim on the streets of Cairo; David Sedaris' hilarious account of dentistry in Paris, Dentists without Borders (from the New Yorker); and Marie Arana's gripping and sobering report on gold mining in Peru, Dreaming of El Dorado (from Virginia Quarterly Review). All the pieces included here are treasures of excellent writing, regardless of genre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

September 21, 2020
Macfarlane opens this provocative but unfortunately timed entry in the long-running series with a sobering message: “I write from a world in which travel has stopped.” Indeed, readers may feel a jarring sense of dissonance delving into suddenly anachronistic essays on unfettered travel, though they often are framed with still-relevant political conscience. Kyle Chayka probes what it means to have an “authentic” experience in Iceland, where tourists outnumbered inhabitants. Alejandra Oliva accompanies Central American migrants traveling north in hopes of entering the United States, and Jackie Bryant deposits water jugs in the Sonoran Desert for those who surreptitiously cross the border and risk dehydration. Lacy M. Johnson attends a memorial service for an Icelandic glacier that melted due to global warming. In a standout piece, Ashley Powers illuminates an essential Sicilian sense of multiculturism through the lives of migrants who are revivifying Palermo’s once abandoned alleyways. “We don’t say, when we were invaded by Arabs,” a Sicilian tells her. “We say, when we were Arabs.” Shanna B. Tiayon similarly distills the U.S. into its essential parts when she describes a family vacation to the Grand Canyon marred by racism. These layered explorations of who travels how (and why) offer a discomfiting but rewarding armchair experience of the world at large. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Nov.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated Ashley Powers's last name.