Like any anthology, there are some hits and misses in here but on the whole they were mostly winners. I think that my favorites were "Venance Lafrance is not Dead", which is about the Haitian earthquake, "Twilight of the Vampires", about myths in Serbia, and "Stuck", about traffic in Moscow. The last one was sort of a sleeper surprise, given that the subject seems so mundane but turns out to be amazingly interesting. "Aligning the Internal Compass", about both the sport of orienteering and the science of finding your way, was also a very good story. Another surprise was Maureen Dowd's "Girl's Guide to Saudi Arabia"; I don't really care for Dowd's NY Times columns but I found this piece to be very engaging.

Overall, the anthology was a fun read.