Astra Crompton's Blog: A Literary Diary - Posts Tagged "time-travel"

The Time Traveler's Handbook by David Goldblatt, James Wyllie, and John Dalberg-Acton is a fun romp through history presented as a series of excursions booked through a Time Travel Agency, similar to booking excursions through a cruise line.

The excursions are as varied as sporting events (The Rumble in the Jungle) to explorations (Kublai Khan's Court with Marco Polo) to historic music moments (Woodstock Festival) to natural disasters (The Eruption of Vesuvius at Pompeii). Each event is given grounding in the social, political, and geographic climate of the day, before launching into the goal of what you will experience on the 'excursion'.

In this clever framework, the authors speak directly to the reader, looping you in to momentous events of human history. They provide maps of the region, including outlining the standard costs of the day for food, lodging, or entertainments. They cover what manner of cuisine you can expect, with often tongue-in-cheek side notes (for instance, in Kublai Khan's court, they recommend vegans skip this excursion on grounds of being unable to eat anything on offer). They also cover what manner of garb would be appropriate, including addressing gender norms where possible, as well as ensuring to place their 'clients' in inconspicuous positions so that they can blend in with the folk of the day without inadvertently causing space-time continuum collapses.

Fun, engaging, and diverse, the book was an excellent introduction to famous occurrences. They took care to include many graphics (from photos to paintings), direct quotes from contemporary scholars, and references to the differences from the modern world. This keeps the reader simultaneously grounded in their own experience while comparing that to the vicarious experiences offered by their Time Travel Agency.

The Time Traveler's Handbook was attractively presented, with a gorgeous gold-foil embossed orange and black hardcover, and glossy pages with plenty to satiate the senses—so at $10 on a discount rack was one of the best book finds I've had the fortune of discovering. The topics were all interesting in their own ways, and I was inspired to do further reading after the behind-the-scenes looks at riots and revels. There were even some locations I've personally visited (Checkpoint Charlie and Herculaneum, especially) that I relived in these pages thanks to the minutiae the authors picked up on that matched my own experiences.

The only detractor was a number of typos throughout the book that seemed strangely incongruous with the care of its design. Most merely tripped up the prose, but a couple of these required me to reread passages to determine who they were referring to (he instead of she, for example), or references to on XX page, where the page number had not been filled in. All in all, these typographical gaffs can be forgiven for the multiple strengths of this small but dense volume.

It really just made me wish such an Agency were real, so I could take their various excursions! But remember, travellers are forbidden from bringing back souvenirs. After all, a paradox would completely spoil your vacation!