The Best American Travel Writing

About the Author

Anthony Bourdain, best-selling writer, chef, television host, and traveler, edits this year's collection of the finest travel writing from the past year. Easy to read and hard to put down, these essays capture with fine detail the extraordinary wonder of travel (Chicago Sun Times).
In his introduction 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 cto 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 entury.
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 amazingvariety 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).

A Hunt for Justice: The True Story of a Woman Undercover Wildlife Agent

About the Author: Lucinda D. Schroeder was a special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service from 1974 to 2004. She was not allowed to write about her experiences until she retired, but in 1994, she appeared on A&E to discuss the operation. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Synopsis:An explosive first-person account of an illegal Alaskan big-game hunting camp brought down by one woman.

For thirty years, Lucinda Delaney Schroeder held an unusual government position: she was one of the handful of women special agents with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Her job: to investigate crimes against wildlife. Unlike the majority of hunters who respect both their prey and the laws, evidence was piling up against an unscrupulous outfitter who was decimating populations of big game in Alaska's Brooks Range. In August 1992, she accepted an assignment that forever changed and endangered her life. She left her husband and seven-year-old daughter behind in Wisconsin and posed as a big-game hunter in Alaska in order to infiltrate an international ring of poachers out to kill the biggest and best of that state's wildlife.
A Hunt for Justice recounts her dramatic story a story she was not legally permitted to write about until her retirement in 2004.
Risking personal safety, Schroeder joined a team of government agents to expose and arrest the poachers. Posing as "Jayne," a divorcee who was willing to break the rules in order to hunt trophy animals, the diminutive blue-eyed blonde fooled criminals so wily that their crimes could only be cracked from within. A Hunt for Justice takes readers along on Schroeder's dangerous and exciting mission. More than simply an adventure or true-crime tale, it's a story of a woman surviving in a male-dominated field, a woman against the wilderness, and a wife and mother risking it all for a cause she believes in. Whether you are a crime buff, nature lover, sports hunter, or someone who just loves a gripping-first-person tale of justice triumphing over evil, this book is for you.

"This consistently engrossing first-person account by a retired special agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gives readers the inside track on a 1992 undercover hunt for illegal poachers in the Alaskan wilderness. One of nine women in an often misogynist agency of 210, Schroeder brings to life a motley crew of characters. Lewd, unreliable and usually drunk Roy Hanson is a paid informant who poses as the happily married Schroeder's 'boyfriend' and hunting partner. Moose James, a poacher and cunning guide who treats his wife like a servant, bolsters his big ego with the carcasses of hundreds of grizzly bears, bighorn sheep and other trophy animals. The mastermind behind a secret operation that guarantees rich hunters their quarry by herding animals with small planes, Bob Bowman brags that he'll kill any undercover cop who infiltrates his camp. A Spanish client, Pedro, is shameless about his greed: 'Every hunter should get what they want, no matter what it takes.' Although the penalties imposed by the undercover sting seem unusually light given the danger, and the time, money and energy expended, and the line between legal 'harvesting' and illegal poaching will blur for nonhunters, Schroeder illuminates an unusual, insular world with unflinching grit and good humour."

About the Author: Rob Rogers lives in the Dallas/Fort Worth area of Texas. Devil's Cape is his first novel.

Synopsis:

A city where corruption and heroism walk hand-in-hand, and justice and mercy are bought and paid-for in blood, Devil's Cape is a city like no other. Rogers blends the gritty crime novel with a heavy dose of the supernatural and weaves a tale of superhuman heroes and villains.

If New Orleans has earned its "Sin City" nickname for its debauchery, then its nearby sister Devil's Cape has earned its "Pirate Town" moniker for the violence and blatant corruption that have marred the city since its founding. A city where corruption and heroism walk hand-in-hand, and justice and mercy are bought and paid-for in blood, Devil's Cape is a city like no other.

Devil's Cape is a novel like no other. It blends the gritty crime novel with a heavy dose of the supernatural and weaves a tale of superhuman heroes and villains. Briskly written and highly readable, Devil's Cape will appeal to a wide audience.

I would love to use it as a class novel, but it might be a touch too violent -- or at least for their parents.

The Book of Getting Even

Author: Benjamin Taylor is the author of the novel Tales Out of School, which won the 1996 Harold Ribalow Prize and is available in paperback from Zoland Books, an imprint of Steerforth Press. He is editor of The Letters of Saul Bellow, scheduled for publication in 2009. His travel memoir, Naples Declared, will be published in 2010.

Son of a rabbi, budding astronomer Gabriel Geismar is on his way from youth to manhood in the 1970s when he falls in love with the esteemed and beguiling Hundert family, different in every way from his own. Over the course of a decade-long drama unfolding in New Orleans, Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, and the Wisconsin countryside, Gabriel enters more and more passionately and intimately into the world of his elective clan, discovering at the inmost center that he alone must bear the full weight of their tragedies, past and present. Yet The Book of Getting Even is funny and robust, a novel rich in those fundamentals we go to great fiction for: the exploration of what is hidden, the sudden shocks, the feeling at last of life laid bare.

"In this delightful, character-driven coming-of-age novel, Gabriel Geismar grows up in mid — 20th-century New Orleans as the only son of a rabbi, maturing into a brilliant, homosexual mathematician who is out of sync with his father's values. At Swarthmore in 1970, Gabriel meets the twins Daniel and Marghie Hundert, the children of Nobel Prize — winning physicist Gregor Hundert, one of the so-called Hungarian Eight who emigrated to America and worked with Robert Oppenheimer on the bomb. Fascinated by the stately, Old World professor and his kindly wife, Lilo, and deeply attached to Marghie, a cinema-obsessed vegetarian, and to Daniel, an angry counterculture figure, Gabriel spends the summer with the family at their Wisconsin retreat, which yields cherished conversation and understanding. As Gabriel departs to study astrophysics at the University of Chicago, the tempo of Daniel's activism builds, and Marghie begins running a movie house. When the once great professor sinks into senile dementia, Lilo makes a necessary but terrible decision for them all. The editor of Saul Bellow's forthcoming letters, Taylor turns in a smart, humane look at what Gabriel calls the era's 'intergenerational rancor.'" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Author: Esther Freud is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud. She trained as an actress before writing her first novel. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in London.

From the author of Hideous Kinky comes a charming, surprising, and utterly irresistible tale of adolescent love and self-discovery.

When seventeen-year-old Lara accepts her father's invitation to accompany him to a Tuscan villa for the summer, she's both thrilled and nervous for the exotic holiday. To her delight, she soon discovers that the villa's closest neighbors are the glamorous Willoughbys, the teenaged brood of a British millionaire. Caught up in their torrential thirst for amusement — and snared by Kip Willoughby's dark, flirtatious eyes — Lara sets off on a summer adventure full of danger, first love, and untold consequences that will irrevocably change her life.

"Freud, who is Sigmund Freud's great-granddaughter and Lucien Freud's daughter, echoes some of the autobiographical material that enlivened her debut and biggest success, Hideous Kinky , in this sixth novel. Lara, 17, is already a veteran of a transformative journey to the Far East with her mother as she sets out on a very different trip, from London to Italy with her reclusive father, Lambert. Lara's adolescent turns of mind, her changing relationship with 'Lamb' and her utterly contradictory (and utterly human) desires to be both in the world and safe at home make for a surprising and convincing character study. But Freud's engaging, insightful writing is undermined by antique plot devices: is Lamb also the father of Kip Willoughby, the cute boy at the adjacent villa? Was Kip conceived in an act of sexual revenge? Did the Willoughbys' grandfather once renege on a promise to bring Lara's grandparents out of WWII Germany? Still, the soap-opera drama doesn't ruin the book: one wants to remain with Freud's lively voice and to see what Lara makes of it all." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Maps and Legends

Author: Michael Chabon is the author of two novels, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys, and of a previous collection of stories, A Model World. He lives in Berkeley, California, with his wife and two children.

Michael Chabon's sparkling first book of nonfiction is a love song in 16 parts — a series of linked essays in praise of reading and writing, with subjects running from ghost stories to comic books, Sherlock Holmes to Cormac McCarthy. Throughout, Chabon energetically argues for a return to the thrilling, chilling origins of storytelling, rejecting the false walls around "serious" literature in favor of a wide-ranging affection. His own fiction, meanwhile, is explored from the perspective of personal history: post-collegiate desperation sparks his debut, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh; procrastination and doubt reveal the way toward Wonder Boys; a love of comics and a basement golem combine to create the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay; and an enigmatic Yiddish phrasebook unfurls into The Yiddish Policeman's Union.

"You would hardly think, reading Chabon's new book of essays, that he won the Pulitzer Prize for a book about comics. Rather, he is bitter and defensive about his love for genre fiction such as mysteries and comic books. Serious writers, he says, cannot venture into these genres without losing credibility. 'No self-respecting literary genius... would ever describe him- or herself as primarily an 'entertainer,' ' Chabon writes. 'An entertainer is a man in a sequined dinner jacket, singing 'She's a Lady' to a hall filled with women rubber-banding their underwear up onto the stage.' Chabon devotes most of the essays to examining specific genres that he admires, from M.R. James's ghost stories to Cormac McCarthy's apocalyptic work, The Road. The remaining handful of essays are more memoir-focused, with Chabon explaining how he came to write many of his books. Chabon casts himself as one of the few brave souls willing to face ridicule — from whom isn't entirely clear, though it seems to be academics — to write as he wishes. 'I write from the place I live: in exile,' he says. It's hard to imagine the audience for this book. Chabon seems to want to debate English professors, but surely only his fellow comic-book lovers will be interested in his tirade." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Waiting for the Barbarians

Author: J. M. Coetzee was born in Cape Town, South Africa, in 1940. His many literary prizes include the 2003 Nobel Prize for Literature, Lannan Award for Fiction, the CNA Prize, the Booker Prize, the Jerusalem Prize, and the Irish Times International Fiction Prize.

Moving and powerful, this book presents the dark tale of an aging magistrate in an African frontier settlement, who finds himself becoming increasingly sympathetic toward the indigenous "barbarians" that the colonial empire's forces brutalize.

For decades the Magistrate has been a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement and ignoring the impending war with the barbarians. When interrogation experts arrive, however, he witnesses the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war. Jolted into sympathy for their victims, he commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state.

J. M. Coetzee's prize-winning novel is a startling allegory of the war between opressor and opressed. The Magistrate is not simply a man living through a crisis of conscience in an obscure place in remote times; his situation is that of all men living in unbearable complicity with regimes that ignore justice and decency.

"The book makes for compelling reading, largely due to the successful use of the present tense throughout and the vivid presentation of unfolding events."

Fool on the Hill (A Tess Camillo Mystery)

Author: Morgan Hunt was raised along the Jersey shore. A stint in the Navy brought her to San Diego, the location of her Tess Camillo mysteries, where she lived for 27 years. Now a resident of the Pacific Northwest, this cancer and mastectomy survivor hopes her mysteries provide laughter, distraction, and zest to others facing personal challenges.

For Tess Camillo and her roommate Lana, attending the concert of guitarist Cody Crowne should be excitement enough. But the next day, Tess discovers the singer dead-crucified, actually. Was this some religious nut? A jilted lover?His jealous writing partner? Tess finds herself drawn to a case that takes her from the Los Angeles music scene to a creepy religious organization, with danger shadowing her every move.

"Morgan Hunt's follow up to "Sticky Fingers" was everything I hoped it would be: the lyric-related title, the unusual method of murder...and the complex capers of Tess Camillo, San Diego lesbian computer-jockey/math-lover

/cancer survivor/lusty lady on the verge of menopause looking for love, justice and Italian food."

The Man in the the White Sharkskin Suit

Author: Born in Cairo, Lucette Lagnado is a senior special writer and investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where she has received numerous prizes for her work, including Columbia University's Mike Berger Award, as well as honours from the National Press Club and the New York Press Club. She is the co-author of Children of the Flames: Dr. Josef Mengele and the Untold Story of the Twins of Auschwitz, which has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. Lagnado resides with her husband, journalist Douglas Feiden, in Manhattan and Sag Harbor, New York.

"The author speaks from the heart about her family's life with respect and candor. Mostly autobiographical in content, the history of the family (and particularly the patriarch) is the backbone on which it is written....The suffering of the father trying to raise his family in the ways of both a strict religion and a strict culture is described with the perspective of both a little girl with great love for her father and as a young lady gradually breaking with tradition."

In vivid and graceful prose, Lucette Lagnado re-creates the majesty and cosmopolitan glamour of Cairo in the years between World War II and Gamal Abdel Nasser's rise to power. Her father, Leon, was a boulevardier who conducted business on the elegant terrace of Shepheard's Hotel, and later, in the cozy, dark bar of the Nile Hilton, dressed in his signature white sharkskin suit. But with the fall of King Farouk and Nasser's nationalization of Egyptian industry, Leon and his family lose everything.

As streets are renamed, neighborhoods of their fellow Jews disbanded, and the city purged of all foreign influence, the Lagnados, too, must make their escape. With all of their belongings packed into twenty-six suitcases, their jewels and gold coins hidden in sealed tins of marmalade, Leon and his family depart for any land that will take them. The poverty and hardships they encounter in their flight from Cairo to Paris to New York are strikingly juxta-posed against the beauty and comforts of the lives they left behind.

An inversion of the American dream set against the stunning portraits of three world cities, Lucette Lagnado's memoir offers a grand and sweeping story of faith, tradition, tragedy, and triumph.

The Girl with no Shadow

Author: Joanne Harris is the author of seven previous novels — Chocolat, Blackberry Wine, Five Quarters of the Orange, Coastliners, Holy Fools, Sleep, Pale Sister, and Gentlemen & Players; a short story collection, Jigs & Reels; and two cookbook/memoirs, My French Kitchen and The French Market. Half French and half British, she lives in England.

Hailed as an "irresistible confection" (Entertainment Weekly), "as sweet, rich and utterly satisfying as a fine truffle" (Wall Street Journal), and "an amazement of riches" (New York Times), Chocolat won the hearts of readers and critics everywhere. At last, Joanne Harris returns with The Girl with No Shadow, an exquisite treat that continues the story that began in her international bestseller.

Since she was a little girl, the wind has dictated every move Vianne Rocher has made, buffeting her from place to place, from the small French village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes to the crowded streets of Paris. Cloaked in a new identity, that of widow Yanne Charbonneau, she opens a chocolaterie on a small Montmartre street, determined to still the wind at last and keep her daughters, Anouk and the baby, Rosette, safe.

Her new home above the chocolate shop offers calm and quiet: no red sachets hang by the door; no sparks of magic fill the air; no Indian skirts with bells hang in her closet. Conformity brings with it anonymity—and peace. There is even Thierry, the stolid businessman who wants to take care of Yanne and the children. On the cusp of adolescence, an increasingly rebellious and restless Anouk does not understand. But soon the weathervane turns...and into their lives blows the charming and enigmatic Zozie de l'Alba. And everything begins to change.

Zozie offers the brightness Yanne's life needs. Anouk, too, is dazzled by this vivacious woman with the lollipop-red shoes who seems to understand her better than anyone — especially her mother. Yet this friendship is not what it seems. Ruthless, devious, and seductive, Zozie has plans that will shake their world to pieces. And with everything she loves at stake, Yanne must face a difficult choice: Run, as she has done so many times before, or stand and confront this most dangerous enemy...

"Harris revisits characters from 1999's bestselling Chocolat in this equally delectable modern fairy tale. More than four years have passed since Vianne Rocher pitted her enchanted chocolate confections against the local clergy's interpretation of Lent in smalltown France; since then, Vianne has renounced magic, changed her name to Yanne Charbonneau and moved with her two daughters to Paris's Montmartre district. There, Yanne embraces conformity and safety, much to the dismay of her increasingly troubled older daughter, Anouk. When Anouk becomes entranced with Zozie de l'Alba, an exotic itinerant who happens upon a job at the new shop, and the relationship grows increasingly sinister, Yanne must call up all of Vianne's powers, culinary and mystical, to save her family. Harris again structures the narrative (told in alternate chapters by Zozie, Yanne and Anouk) around a liturgical season (in this case Advent). Harris gives fans much to savor in this multilayered novel, from the descriptions (including Yanne's mouthwatering chocolate confections, Zozie's whimsical footwear and Anouk's artistic efforts) to the novel's classic, enduring theme of good vs. evil — and the difficulty of telling the difference.

What to Drink with what u Eat

About the Author:

Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg have been called the brightest young author team on the culinary scene today's on NPR. Their previous books Becoming a Chef, Dining Out, and The New American Chef have all been finalists for or winners of James Beard and/or IACP Book Awards.

"Dornenburg and Page, authors of Becoming a Chef and Culinary Artistry , demystify the challenge of food and beverage pairing in this exhaustive, accessible resource. Believing that the best matches create peak experiences, the authors consult with the world's most discriminating palates, who see food and drink as inseparable. With stories from such noted chefs as Daniel Boulud, Traci Des Jardins and Patrick O'Connell and a host of top sommeliers, this comprehensive collection provides a wealth of guidelines for pairings, not only by specific food, but by food type, time of day, characteristics, season and personal mood. From fast food to ethnic cuisine, they include unlikely entries such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (Pinot Noir, Gewurztraminer), oxtails (Barolo), moussaka (Retsina, Rioja), potato chips (beer, champagne) and saag paneer (Pinot Gris). While focusing primarily on wine, the authors include matches for a variety of other beverages, including tea, water, coffee, beer and spirits, and offer the pairings in reverse. what to serve if you've already selected your beverage. This encyclopedic collection is highly recommended for those who give serious thought to the flavor of each dish. 70 full-color photographs."

The most comprehensive guide to matching food and drink ever compiled, by the James Beard Award winning author team of Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg, with practical advice from more than seventy of America's leading pairing experts.

In a great meal, what you drink is just as important as what you eat. This groundbreaking food and beverage pairing reference allows food lovers to learn to think like a sommelier, and to transform every meal, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, from ordinary to extraordinary.
Exceptional in its depth and scope with over fifteen hundred entries What to Drink with What You Eat is based on the collective wisdom of experts at dozens of America's best restaurants, including Alinea, Babbo, Bern's, Blue Hill, Chanterelle, Daniel, Emeril's, French Laundry, Frontera Grill, Inn at Little Washington, Jean Georges, Masa's, The Modern, Per Se, Rubicon, Tru, and Valentino.

You'll find authoritative recommendations for stocking your cellar and kitchen with must-have beverages, from wines to waters. You'll also learn what to drink with everything from French toast to Chinese food, and what to eat with everything from Pinot Noir to green tea, to create mouthwatering matches. Follow the authors' three simple Rules to Remember when making a match or just dive into the wide-ranging listings in chapters 5 and 6.
This "incisive, hip writing team" (Publishers Weekly) distills history, geography, science, expert technique, and original insight to create a remarkably user-friendly and engaging reference. Lavishly illustrated with gorgeous four-color photographs, What to Drink with What You Eat is an instant classic essential to every connoisseur's bookshelf.