The Best American Travel Writing 2008

by Anthony Bourdain (Editor), Jason Wilson (Series Editor), Karl Taro Greenfeld (Contributor)

In his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2008, editor Anthony Bourdain writes that the pieces that “spoke the loudest and most powerfully to me were usually evocative of the darker side, those moments fearful, sublime, and absurd; the small epiphanies familiar to the full-time traveler, interspersed by a sense of dislocation—and the strange, unholy need to record the experience.” With this in mind, Bourdain and series editor Jason Wilson have assembled a wide-ranging and wonderfully eclectic collection that delves headlong into those darker moments and subtle realizations, looking to absorb, provoke, and offer a moving record of what it means to travel in the twenty-first century.

Here you will find Seth Stevenson’s extraordinary experience of “Looking for Mammon in the Muslim World” as he makes his way through sweltering and paradoxical Dubai. Exotic tastes and larger-than-life personalities abound as Bill Buford accompanies the chocolate maker Frederick Schilling to the rain forests of Brazil. And on the other side of the world, Calvin Trillin trolls Singapore for the ultimate street food, while Kristin Ohlson delves into the harrowing challenges faced by proprietors of restaurants in Kabul, Afghanistan.

The twenty-five pieces in this collection have their fair share of the absurd as well. David Sedaris explains the hilarious highs (sundaes) and woeful lows (sobbing with your seatmate) of flying Business Elite. Gary Shteyngart goes “To Russia for Love” during St. Petersburg’s vodka-soaked wedding season. And Emily Maloney gets up close and personal with her fellow travelers — and their massage devices — in a South American hostel.

Culled from an amazing variety of publications, “the writing in this volume is so vibrantly good, you’ll feel like you’ve armchair-traveled around the world” (Chicago Sun Times).

Genres: Travel, Nonfiction, Essays, Short Stories, American, Journalism, Politics

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

About the author

Anthony Michael Bourdain was an American celebrity chef, author, and travel documentarian. He starred in programs focusing on the exploration of international culture, cuisine, and the human condition.
Bourdain was a 1978 graduate of The Culinary Institute of America and a veteran of many professional kitchens during his career, which included several years spent as an executive chef at Brasserie Les Halles, in Manhattan. He first became known for his bestselling book Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2000).

Bourdain's first food and world-travel television show A Cook's Tour ran for 35 episodes on the Food Network in 2002 and 2003. In 2005, he began hosting the Travel Channel's culinary and cultural adventure programs Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations (2005–2012) and The Layover (2011–2013). In 2013, he began a three-season run as a judge on The Taste and consequently switched his travelogue programming to CNN to host Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. Although best known for his culinary writings and television presentations, along with several books on food and cooking and travel adventures, Bourdain also wrote both fiction and historical nonfiction.

Reviews

[RandomAnthony · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw Bourdain's name plastered across the front of this book while passing my local library's "new releases" shelf. I've never read anything from "The Best American..." series before; the books seemed like the kind you passed quickly when browsing at a church booksale, so I was pleasantly surprised by this collection. The Best American Travel Writing 2008 houses more hits than misses, reads like a dream, and more than serves its wandering purposes.

As one would expect, with Mr. B. at the editorial helm, many of the book's essays are laced with testosterone and set far off the tourist path. In fact, there were essays in this book that made me very happy to live in the calm American midwest, where I don't have to take Malaria pills, dodge crocodiles, or bribe officials. The chapters featuring African travels are particularly harrowing; Darfur was just a place where some bad shit was happening until I read this book and got a feeling for the ground level narratives. In fact, that might be my only criticism of this book; after a while I found myself wondering if Mr. Editor Bourdain should have laid off the "we are in the middle of nowhere and in danger" travel essay, although 1) I understand he's reacting well against the "I went to Tuscany and the food was great!" travel genre and 2) it was interesting to read two separate "falcons wear S and M masks" analogies in the same small book.

The highlight essays enlightened me to some of the weird and fascinating ways in which the world is changing, like the ragtag vertical boarding house/market/ungovernable social structure in Asia (straight out of a William Gibson novel), the isolated eastern European capitols studded with waving gold statues, and the lovely ending essay about a woman trying to decide if the perfect, isolated Pacific paradise is really all she ever wanted.

The Best American Travel Writing 2008 is worth the read. Well done, Mr. B.

[Doug · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had my reservations about a collection of travel essays edited by celebrity chef (and author of food-themed gangster novels) Anthony Bourdain. As it turns out, he has impeccable taste. I'd expected, of course, a few more essays on food than in past years, a few more taking place in zany or dangerous locations—and there are a few—but it's the uncommonly high quality of the writing that really unites these pieces. As I flipped through the book, trying to make a list of which essays deserved a mention, I found I'd copied down half the table of contents. And the other half was pretty great too. The collection starts out with one of its strongest, Extreme Chocolate, by Bill Buford. It follows an impulsive slacker who enters the world of organic chocolate on a whim, and rises to become one of its stars. Buford has a wonderful, deadpan style of reporting events—often things happening to his own person. "Wild tobacco is toxic," he tells us, matter-of-factly, after popping a large chunk of it into his mouth, then proceeding to chew it and observe the effects. In another scene we find him staring into an extremely hot vat of fermenting cacao beans, when... "I took off my shirt, shoes, and pants, and, with my boxers on, I swung myself over the side and into the beans. They really were very hot." His article delivers fully on its title, and is simply enormous fun to read.

An essay in this collection that influenced me personally was John Lancaster's Next Stop, Squalor. In it, he describes a pair of young entrepreneurs, one British, one Indian, who conduct tours of Mumbai's Dharavi slum—billed as the largest in Asia. It struck me as appalling at first, as it did the author, but in reading the essay you find that the tours are ethically run, putting most of their proceeds back into charity, and promote a positive view of the slum, as a place, not of crime and depravity, but of hard-working yet disadvantaged families. I read it while in India, shortly before going to Mumbai, and took the tour while I was there. It turned out to be one of the most affecting experiences of my trip.

Other strong pieces here include an in-depth story on those pirates we've been hearing so much about, an essay on the rich-man's sport of falconry, as practiced by the wealthy of the Gulf States today, portraits of Hong Kong's infamous Chungking Mansion and of Georgia's jewel-like capital, Tbilisi, an affectionate memory of Brighton Beach seediness by the very funny and talented Simon Doonan, and a trip on China's ominous new train to Tibet. Special mention must also go to two long-time favorites of mine, Peter Hessler, who contributes an excellent article on driving in China, and Paul Theroux, who delivers one of his very best, on the rule of Turkmenistan by "one of the wealthiest and most powerful lunatics on Earth." Finally, two pieces I found near-poetic in their beauty: Jeffrey Tayler's The Woman in the Kuffiya, a snapshot of a brief, intense meeting between himself and a woman in the ancient land of Harran, and Catherine Watson's moving recollection of the time she spent, twenty-five years ago, living on Easter Island.

Series Editor Jason Wilson begins this collection with a rather lame defense of travel writing, in the face of many recent, embarrassing travel tell-alls. He really didn't need to bother. There could be no better statement about the health of travel writing today than the one made by this collection.

[Chloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a bit of a sucker for the Best American collections. They always tempt me from the sale shelves at Powell's with their ever-descending prices and the promise of shorter reads to break up my regular diet of longer fiction. The 2008 Best American Travel Writing was no different. Compiled by everyone's favorite gourmet curmudgeon, Anthony Bourdain, this collection features a host of interesting tales culled from "the darker side, those moments fearful, sublime, and absurd..." Accordingly there are essays on the pirates of the Malacca Strait in Indonesia, finding good pork to eat in Kabul, the treacherous shifting border of the Sudan(woe unto they who misguess which side of the line they're on), and a look at China's continuing repression of the Tibetans through the vehicle of the Beijing-Lhasa Express railway.

There are few throwaway articles in this collection and I found odd syncronicities appearing between the articles and the novels I would shift between. For example, shortly after reading the opening article, about the birth of the cocoa plantations in Bahia, Brazil, I began reading Mario Vargas Llosa's The War of the End of the World, also set in Bahia. Likewise, no sooner had I finished John le Carre's Mission Song about a coup in the Congo than I read an essay about how the Congo River is emerging from decades of strife and war to become a liquid hope for a better tomorrow for the people of the region.

I still have a large stack of these collections- somehow I am unable to resist travel writing, science and nature collections, or Dave Eggers' always interesting non-required reading- and I'm debating about whether I should just always keep one on deck to rotate between when long form fiction seems too arduous of an endeavor. Still, as mercurial as my reading habits have been this year, I have serious doubts as to my ability to plan my reads more than a book in advance.

[Patrick McCoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoy travel writing and I thought that since I'm a fan of Anthony Bourdain that I'd enjoy his selections for The Best American Travel Writing 2008. All in all it was a strong collection, the only selection I struggled with was the first one, "Extreme Chocolate" by Bill Buford-it felt like much more than I wanted to know about cacao and Frederick Schilling. There selections from some of my favorite contemporary writers: "The Golden Man" (about Turkmenistan's former dictator Saparmurat Niyazov)by Paul Theroux- incidentally Matthew Teague also had a great essay on an equally inept leader (Tongan king Akilisi Pohiva in "While the King Sleeps"), Ian Buruma's ""Phnom Penh Now," David Sedaris' "Journey Into Night" (about air travel), and Gary Shteyngart's "To Russia With Love." There were also a couple of contributors from Slate online magazine who had entertaining pieces as well-Simon Doonan with "Brighton Beach Memoir" and Seth Stevenson's "Looking for Mammon in the Muslim World" (about Dubai). I enjoyed Karl Taro Greenfeld's "Hope and Squalor at Chungking Mansion" since it was the location of one of my favorite Wong Kar-wai films, Chungking Express, and I plan to visit the site on my next trip to Hong Kong. I'm a big fan of Singaporean food and visited there multiple times, so I also enjoyed Calvin Trillan's essay "Three Chopsticks" about Singaporean street food. Painful travel experiences make for mesmerizing reading as well and there were a couple of pieces that fit the bill include Bryan Mealer's essay about a trip down the Congo River during an election, "The River is a Road" and James Campbell's retracing the 130 mile trek soldiers took in WWII on the Kapa Kapa Trail in Papua New Guinea in the essay "Chasing Ghosts." Some other standouts included Peter Hessler's "Wheels of Fortune" about the driving culture of China in 2007, Pankaj Mishra's report on "The Train to Tibet," and Annie Nocenti's essay about falconing in Pakistan, "The Most Expensive Road Trip in the World." Honestly I enjoyed all of the pieces, however, some more than others. I think I will check out other editions from editors I like-I see there are volumes from the likes of Theroux and Bil Bryson in the series as well.

[Gina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Here's the thing that has struck me the hardest so far:
"In January 2006, the corruption [in Chad:] became so apparent that the World Bank, which helps finance Chad's oil boom, suspended $124 million in loans and grants, and stopped payment of an additional $125 million in oil royalties after the government resisted pressure to invest its oil profits in projects to aid its impoverished people, who survive on an average income of $30 a month. Chad's president, Idriss Deby, threatened to shut down the country's oil production unless the WB released the funds. The WB stood firm. Deby then demanded that Chad's oil consortium, led by U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil, pay at least $100 million to tide the country over until the WB released Chad's royalities. U.S. diplomats acted on behalf of American oil companies. Deby received his money, thank you very much, and the roads, hospitals, running water, schools remain little more than dusty dreams..." (p. 61). Learning a lot -- about writing styles, word usage, and America's attitude in world affairs as perceived first-hand by these writers. Great read thus far!

[Grace Mortensen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I first picked up this book expecting essays from travel writers that had a more Samantha Brown vibe-essays that would help people plan a trip, where to get the best croissant in Paris, or maybe which ice hotel to stay in while visiting Norway. But I should have known better seeing Anthony Bourdain's name attached to the project.

While it is certainly not what I expected, it is much more interesting and educational than that. Bourdain chooses essays written by people who go to places that won't be featured in Fodor's. These essays cover topics from political difficulties in Chad, to a group of men hiking an arduous trail used by WWII soldiers in Papua New Guinea. There are some essays that feature more traditional destinations, like Brighton, but I found myself skimming those stories for ones featuring more exotic locations. I realized that this is travel writing, not a travel guide. I can't easily go to Mali, but I can read in great detail the experiences of someone who did. And what is the use of literature if it cannot take you to places?

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

If those who lack the means to travel read travel literature, those who lack the time to read travel literature are stuck with travel literature anthologies. The one-shot celebrity editors of these series are mainly a marketing gimmick, I suspect, as there is consistency from year to year. Perhaps the best observation in this edition is from an article on China, which notes that part of that country are changing so rapidly that not even long-term residents know what to expect. Essentially everyone there is a visitor, learning to adapt on-the-fly, with the guideposts of experience. This could be a vision of our own shared future.

[Jrobertus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this series every year, and love to nibble my way through it, sharing vicariously in the adventures of others. Bourdain is a famous chef, so this issue has some food stuff, like a description of chocolate production, and Calvin Trillin's gustatorial tour of Singapore. Otherwise,it the usual fun stuff.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed most of the selections and learned a fair bit about some parts of the world that I'd never really thought about before (both from the essays and from further investigation). This wasn't a book I'd sit down and read cover to cover, but it was a good one to read gradually between other things I was doing.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was overall a pretty good read. More than half the articles were very enjoyable (though in a couple cases "enjoyable" really isn't the right word, as I recall). The others were just okay. Since none of them are very long, even those weren't hard to get through, and certainly you learn things about the world we live in from any decent travel article.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another year of travel writing, another year of highly satisfying reads. I love, love, love this annual collection. It is the ultimate cure for the third-rate travel pieces so often published in newspapers.

[Lyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

These complilations are hit or miss for me from year to year - whether I enjoy really depends on the guest editor. That being said, I did enjoy this year's edition - Anthony Bourdain apparently likes to read the same travel writing that I do.

[Adam · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection of essays, though I'd read some of them before in the New Yorker (like Bill Buford's great "Extreme Chocolate"). Bourdain deliberately picked pieces that showed the dark side of human nature, but the stories on Africa are especially heartbreaking.

[Dustin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice collection. Obviously influenced by Bourdain's culinary background. Made for interesting reading since I don't get into that topic much.

[Rhonnie Cough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Raw, immersive...so much cheaper than traveling

[Ellie Wolf · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Golden Man,
by Paul Theroux (pages 243-266 of 2008's The Best American Travel Writing)

“One afternoon in Ashgabat, I caused a diplomatic incident.” This fantastic sentence is quite at home in Paul Theroux’s rich and funny The Golden Man essay, which was first featured in The New Yorker in May 2007 before its publication in 2008’s The Best American Travel Writing collection, edited by Anthony Bourdain.

The Golden Man, which chronicles the quirks of Turkmenistan’s bizarre dictator Turkmenbashi, operates in senses. Above all, travel writer Theroux develops a sense of place. The piece’s first word is “Turkmenistan,” whose capitalized print immediately grounds the reader somewhere new. Turkmenistan, bordered by Iran and Afghanistan, has been comparatively neglected by Americans familiar with its neighbors. Theroux brings it to life. Other geographic descriptions, like “lizards skitter through a landscape like cat litter,” thoughtfully carry the reader on Theroux’s shoulders through the new landscape. His description of the giant Ashgabat bazaar twinkles on its pages with its long lists of eclectic wares.

The Golden Man also demonstrates an unmatched sense of humor. When describing Turkmenistan’s self-absorbed tyrant, Theroux lets himself be funny, in a way that does not redeem, glorify nor wreck the dictator. Theroux says that Turkmenistan is “a land in which everything belonged to [Turkmenbashi:], including the country’s plentiful natural gas – must of which issued into the air from his own person in the form of interminable speechifying.” He also calls Turkmenbashi a “wearer of bling” and a “fat and grinning Dean Martin,” lines whose quirky American details familiarize a world most readers will not ever know. Theroux also uses likeable self-deprecation: “[Turkmenbashi:] regarded himself as an accomplished writer – a clear sign of madness in anyone.”

Turkmenbashi’s wackiness is a great subject: “A London newspaper reported that he had renamed bread after his mother.” He also renamed months and years after members of his family. Theroux depicts a fantastic exchange between two Turkmenistanis struggling to keep straight the newly named months: “I don’t remember July. What is it?”

Theroux also employs a careful attention to sound and color, saying that “People tended to whisper when they spoke” or describing “trinkets for warding off the evil eye” as something that “looked like the kind of multicolored lanyards I had made at camp.” Together, this attention to detail does what any successful travel writing should: lets the reader use her five senses to appreciate a faraway place from the comfort of her home.

The entire piece paces itself, allowing thoughtful breaks to add pregnant pauses. To illuminate the tense and often violent climate for writers visiting Turkmenistan, Theroux describes a journalist who was arrested on a “trumped-up charge,” tried without a lawyer and sent to prison, where she quickly died of a mysterious head injury. Then, the reader pauses over a break, and an important one, before Theroux casually talks about his flight.

Theroux presents himself as an expert, but lets the readers be experts too. Dialogue with the Russian-speaking official is not translated; rather, the reader understands the Russian via Theroux’s English retorts and context. This is a nice touch in travel writing, which can often distance the reader from the heart of the subject with lengthy translation. His expertise fosters a great deal of reader trust. He lets his Turkmenistani friends do the talking and their brief, side-scanning quotes brilliantly legitimize Theroux. One of his guides, a nervous man named Merdan, said, “We have problems, but we cannot address problems, because there are no problems.”

This piece shines in an otherwise problematic collection of travel writing.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read the last seven years of Best American Travel Writing (skipping the occasional, or even more than occasional, piece, no doubt), and this may be my least favorite. I jumped straight to the Bryan Mealer piece Bourdain (?!) praised so highly in his intro, a piece on the Congo River from Harper's, and it was very good. Then I went back to the beginning and found, well, a bunch of food pieces mixed in with a bunch of political pieces. Mind you, each of these can be great in its own right, but an article than manages to combine the two to good effect can be stellar: it interweaves the personal and political. (This is obviously just one example of a great kind of "travel" essay, the one that springs to mind from Bourdain's selection.) With the above and below exceptions, none of the food or political pieces I have read in this collection has been great.

The Calvin Trillin piece on Singapore hawkers was fun; the Bill Buford profile/essay about chocolate was seriously good; "Georgia in the Time of Mischa" was one of the best, beautifully written and informative. I'm not going to write about the ones I didn't like. Altogether this was a tepid collection.

Lastly, there are maybe three or four (one name does not immediately identify a gender for me) essays by women in the book. Though I am far from a quota queen in this arena, I do think travel pieces by women taste, sound, feel, are different from those by men; the experience of travel is often distinct in both identifiable and subconscious ways. This is, of course, Bourdain's choice, and not one I'd have him change at my behest; perhaps his reading ear is simply more attuned to the writing of male explorers, and perhaps that gestalt was what sounded a little tinny in mine.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

The stories I liked most in this collection surprised me. I was captivated by megalomaniac(al) dictators and monarchs, from Tonga to Eastern Europe. And I want to travel up the Congo. And go to the Easter Island of thirty years ago.

I think Anthony Bourdain said it best. (Not surprising.) "...a successful show or book or article is seen and enjoyed by many, and perhaps inspires others to travel. And the next time I roll through town, the place is packed with Americans. There's a Starbucks next door - and the whole neighborhood is going straight to hell.

In this way, writers are indeed, as Henry Miller suggested, traitors to the human race. We may turn a light on inequity, injustice, and oppression from time to time, but we regularly kill what we love in the process. As the scorpion with the frog, we can't help it. It's our nature. We change the charming and unspoiled by visiting and telling others." (xiv)

The problem with reading travel stories is that they don't catapult me into that place. I want so much to be standing there at a hawker stall in Singapore, sampling fish head soup with the writer, or on a floating town barge on the Congo. Imagination isn't enough when the place is real and waiting to be explored.

At least for me. I've got the travel bug again.

[Arja Salafranca · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Best American series collects work that has been published in American magazines and periodicals the previous year in various volumes ranging from travel writing to short fiction to essays and so on. This latest volume of travel writing, selected by chef and travel writer Bourdain isn’t the best, for my money but it still provides some examples of compelling travel narratives. Highlights include Peter Hessler’s ‘Wheels of Fortune’ which looks at driving in China and the lack of rules, whether you’re taking a driving test or even hiring a car. John Lancaster explores Indian slum tourism in ‘Next Stop, Squalor’ while in ‘The River is a Road’ Bryan Mealer journeys down the Congo River aboard a falling apart jalopy of a vessel used by the locals. Calvin Trilling’s ‘Three Chopsticks’ is a mouth-watering voyage through Singapore’s street food.

[Jade · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is so far the best "The Best American series" book I have ever read. I have read quite a few, like The Best American Short Stories, 2007 & 2008, The Best American Mysteries 2007, etc. In these books, I could always found a couple of stories that were not my cup of tea. But in this book, I read each and every writing, and they were all good and very interesting to read. They brought the readers to all over the world, Africa, Cambodia, Russia, and China. I like the editor Anthony Bourdain, I guess he is the one whose taste is quite close to mine. I cannot wait to read his "Kitchen Confidential" that was recommended by a couple of people I know. I have already bought it, only I can find time to read it!

[Mitch · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a lot of travel appetizers from Americans but about everywhere else. The three stars, in this case, is an average. If you like travel writing, you're bound to find several short pieces here that will please your palate.

It's a bit strange that I am using a food analogy because the pieces that featured food were probably the least interesting to me; I am not big on exotic food descriptions.

Some of the pieces were depressing glimpses of man's inhumanity toward man under other circumstances than those I am most familiar with; others offered interesting insights into the positive yet different ways people are living elsewhere. (Or were, anyway, back in 2008)

This is a good, reliable travel series.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

If I could give this book two different ratings, I would give it one star for the first half and four stars for the second half....so I'm giving it a rating somewhere in between. I think the turning point was when the stories transitioned from being merely informational to more along the lines of personal refelctions. There were a few authors I was not familiar with before that I will definitly be seeking out more of. The final story about Easter Island especially hit home for me. It dealt with the urge to find a sense of home in the world, choosing to return from places that you love and connect with due to an urge to always explore new areas and cultures.

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think Anthony Bourdain must be one of those people who craves an adrenaline rush. This was appealing, even captivating, in Kitchen Confidential , but somehow I didn't care for how it carried over to this essay collection, which he edited. Nearly every essay was about some extreme situation -- revolutionary Burma, eating poisonous food, whatever -- as if there wasn't enough to say about a simple visit to a commonly visited place. I did like some of the essays, but not enough to recommend the book overall.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Best American Travel Writing book is a compilation of various articles from different sources including the Atlantic and New Yorker and as such reads similar to an anthology of magazine articles. There are stories that are interesting, there are stories that aren't very interesting but each story, at most, takes 20 minutes to read. To liken the book to a meal, I consider this book a compilation of a bunch of different appetizers. Some you like, some you don't. However, the apps just don't have enough je ne sais quoi to consist of a meal. It's a good book to read 15 minutes at a time, but its not a book that I really enjoyed.

[Elaine · Rating 3 out of 5]

My last book to close out 2008. I found some of the travel stories quite interesting. I like other people's perspectives on various geographical locals. I find that even though Americans are all vastly different we still have a common thread that transcends age/social status, so that reading other American's travel experiences is a bit humorous and familiar. I enjoyed reading about the far flung central asian counries of Georgia and Turkmenistan. (I told Stuart that if we ever have a lot of money to blow I would love to see Georgia). I also liked the piece on modern day pirates of Malaysia.

[Bill Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had mixed feelings about this book. Some of the stories were good, but not what I think of as travel writing. They're more like journalism stories from foreign places. When I think of travel writing, I think of stories that a person such as myself might experience on a trip, whereas a lot of these stories are about reporters doing their jobs overseas. Also, being edited by Anthony Bourdain it seems a lot of the stories are about food more than about travel. So I'll give this one an overall meh.

[Jonathan Worlde · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now I've found another annual addiction, the Best American Travel Writing books. Like the Best Mystery Stories and Best True Crime Reporting, which I read every year, once I stumbled across this edition and thoroughly enjoyed it I ordered the volumes for 2009 and 2010.

I don't read the stories so much as prospective tourist wondering if I should travel to a certain place, but rather, these mostly well-written pieces dig into the cultures and history of people and places, often with an eye for irony and compassion.

[Jillian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most of the travel writing I read is by touring cyclists, Outside magazine contributors, or Bill Bryson. I'm used to humor and movement - active traveling. This collection of essays interprets "Travel Writing" more broadly - as Americans writing about anywhere else - which was fine once I adjusted to the idea. I didn't care for the style of many of these pieces, but there's a nice range and I always learned something interesting, from the histories of chocolate and falconry to the deranged policies of dictators in Tonga and Turkmenistan. 3.5 stars.

[Ashley · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was something I picked up to read between books and, while I didn't like all the stories within, a lot of them stuck with me for a while. The pirate article was particularly well done, considering what is and has been going on in Somalia, and the chocolate article was fascinating, too. A lot of these are "talkers" as in, "I just read this fascinating travelogue about _______ " and that's what makes this worth reading.

[Saki Takasu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this while traveling, specifically for a 23-hour bus ride. It was a delicious escape from the bus seat. The title is somewhat deceiving, because it is actually a compilation of stories "published in the US within 2008". Some of the writing is superb, while others I could have lived without. Regardless, it kept me entertained. Paul Thoreaux's tale of Turkmenistan and David Sedaris' hilarious account on a Virgin Atlantic flight are especially noteworthy for me.