The Best American Travel Writing 2012

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.

October 29, 2012
The contributors to the latest entry in this series give readers a good sense of placeâthey fold you into the setting. Vollmann (Europe Central) has gatheredâfrom National Geographic, the New Yorker, and elsewhereâa deft mix of high and low, far and wide. "Letter from Paris," for example, from Michael Gorra, sits alongside "Garbage City" by Iraq veteran-turned-journalist Elliott D. Woods. The former evokes wonder: "The Eiffel Tower is always there⦠and on some nights it seems to go off like a sparkler, its lights popping red and gold as if it were shorting itself out." The latter hones in on Izbet Az-Zabaleen, "a hive of entrepreneurial recyclers⦠nestled at the edge of Manshiet Nasser, a teeming slum on Cairo's eastern outskirts." Monte Reel's "How to Explore Like a Real Victorian Adventurer," an ironic anthropological guide to a shopping mall in suburban Illinois, shares book-space with Luke Dittrich's "Walking the Border," about borderlands between the United States and Mexico. Not every selection here will work for every reader. Aaron Dacytl's "Railroad Semantics," for example, about life on the rails in the Pacific Northwest, eventually goes off track. But it's a rare disappointment in this volume of mostly enlightening essays.

September 15, 2012
The latest intriguing batch of travel writing from the venerable series. With series editor Wilson, National Book Award winner Vollman (Imperial, 2009, etc.) pulls together a wide range of pieces, including Monte Reel's look at how to explore the world like a Victorian gentleman and Elliott D. Woods' essay on the zabaleen, or garbage pickers, in the Garbage City of Cairo. "There are real-life garbage kings in the village with informal businesses worth millions of dollars," writes Woods, "but most of the 60,000 in the Garbage City live modest lives defined by hard labor and strong family obligations." Indeed, many of the pieces will not make readers hurry to follow the narrator's footsteps--e.g., Henry Shukman's visit to Chernobyl, where a strange lushness permeates the region, or J. Malcolm Garcia's haunting and brutal piece on a murder where everyone knows what happened, but no one is willing to talk for fear of reprisal. Other narratives may entice fellow travelers, however--e.g., Paul Theroux's short piece on the Maine coast and, for those with a religious bent, Kimberly Meyer's essay on the elaborate Passion play performed each year in the Holy City of the Wichitas. From crossing the border in Tijuana in search of the Tijuana Sports Hall of Fame, to walking the border fence between the United States and Mexico, these stories, from such publications as National Geographic, Outside, Esquire and the Atlantic, undoubtedly bring a taste of adventure to readers. Though not filled with glamor and glitz, they open a window onto the strange, seedy and beautiful in the world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers. Mostly engaging, diverse tales of offbeat travel adventures.

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Starred review from September 15, 2012
Bold and questing writer and world traveler Vollmann is at the helm of the thirteenth edition of this superb travel annual, which has always been distinguished by its stellar guest editors. Guided by his unceasing curiosity about complex places and authentic voices, Vollmann has chosen 19 electrifying essays originally published in the Believer, Ecotone, Virginia Quarterly Review, and even a travel zine as well as such perennial sources as Harper's and National Geographic. Reaching from Timbuktu to Vietnam to Bulgaria, the collection begins with Monte Reel's immersion in Victorian how-to-explore books, a revelatory genre meant to teach the acquired art of paying attention, which is practiced to perfection by each contributor. Henry Shukman's riveting account of his atomic safari in Chernobyl feels like a postapocalyptic sf novel. Iraq veteran and journalist Elliott D. Woods charts the volatile dynamics of Cairo's Garbage City. Thomas Swick profiles Sicilians who are courageously standing up to the Mafia, while Robin Kirk reports on dark tourism in Belfast. Closer to home, Kimberly Meyer visits the rusty red granite replica of ancient Jerusalem in Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains, and Luke Dittrich walks the U.S.-Mexico border. Vollmann's best assemblage profoundly extends the reach of the ever-vital and enlightening art of travel writing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, 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.