The Best American Travel Writing 2016

Starred review from October 2, 2000
HThe travelers Bryson (In a Sunburned Country) and Wilson (a travel writer) have collected here aren't the high-adrenaline survivor sort so popular these days. What these writers all share is a love of a place, a moment, a people (okay, David Halberstam bemoans the influx of nouveau riches to his precious Nantucket). Culled from the expected travel magazines, plus a couple of more unlikely sources (Coffee Journal), these highly personal accounts represent the best of the best (an appendix lists the many runners-up). From Bill Buford's plan to sleep overnight in Central Park to Dave Eggers's memories of picking up hitchhikers in Cuba; from Tom Clynes's ride through the Outback with "The Toughest Trucker in the World" to Mark Ross's harrowing tale of being kidnapped by rebels in Uganda, every one of these short pieces spins everyday details into memorable life. On the lighter side, Clive Irving rhapsodizes about "The First Drink of the Day" and David Lansing offers the educational "Confessions of a Cheese Smuggler." As Wilson points out in his entertaining foreword, we've all written about "What I Did on My Summer Vacation." These writers have raised that to an art; all of these tales remind us of how amazing the world truly is.

October 1, 2016

Edited by travel writer Bryson (A Walk in the Woods) and series editor Wilson (Boozehound), this is a smorgasbord of different voices weighing in on such varied topics as the vanishing areas of solid ice in Greenland and its effect on the Inuit hunters, the rapidly increasing popularity of plastic surgery in South Korea, a film festival in secretive North Korea, and the nuclear power plant failure at Fukushima. Each writer brings his or her passions and opinions to the subject they have traveled to study and while some pieces may appeal more than others, there is something for everyone in this compilation. Among the more notable contributors are the inimitable Bryson as well as Pico Iyer and Dave Eggers. Equally shining contributions are by lesser-known figures such as Kea Krause, reporting on the seemingly unfixable puzzle of the Berkeley Pit that environmental scientists are still working to resolve. Also of note is Stephanie Pearson's article on Kerala, India, and its interesting and comparatively affluent way of life. Armchair travelers will enjoy this latest edition of selected travel writings and find new favorite writers to follow. VERDICT Featuring a large cross-section of writings and writers of diverse subjects, this title will entertain and educate travel buffs as well as readers of cultural and historical works.--Stacy Shaw, Orange, CA

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2016
Bryson, who also edited the first iteration of the Best American Travel Writing series in 2000, in his introduction muses with characteristic charm on why he loves to travel: for the sense of being in a place where mundane things . . . become fascinating, alarming, delightful, amusing, or otherwise notable, and each of these two-dozen essays gives readers that very sense. Thomas Chatterton Williams, living in Paris, seeks a contemporary version of Richard Wright and James Baldwin's communities of ex-pat African American artists. Patricia Marx heads, face first, into the bewildering prevalence and practice of plastic surgery in South Korea, and Mitch Moxley is one of eight international guests permitted to attend a film festival in Pyongyang, North Korea. In a kind of reverse travel, Helen MacDonald literally hides, in the tiny, camouflaged buildings where wildlife observers can disappear utterly. Clothing is key in both Dave Eggers' day trip to Hollister, California and Michael Chabon's family vacation in Morocco. And, poignantly, Pico Iyer's dazzling essay on the blessings of foreignness melds travel with the everyday.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)