The Best American Travel Writing 2014 - Couverture souple

"The Best American Travel Writing has been the gold standard for short-form travel writing from newspapers, magazines and the Internet since its inception 15 years ago.  This year’s guest editor – a different one is chosen for each volume – is none other than the godfather of contemporary American travel writing, Paul Theroux.  A generation of travel writers owes a debt to Theroux’s immersive, first-person narratives, captured with unflinching, sometimes merciless candor...In essay after essay, a theme runs through this volume – people journey, sometimes great distances, often enduring great hardship, only to be redeemed by human connection."  -- The New York Times Book Review "Will gratify both armchair travelers and the most seasoned and fearless thrill-seekers...refreshingly original stories, alternately humorous, nostalgic, exhilarating and horrifying...A thrilling, surprising collection—one of the best in the series." --Kirkus 

"Will gratify both armchair travelers and the most seasoned and fearless thrill-seekers...refreshingly original stories, alternately humorous, nostalgic, exhilarating and horrifying...A thrilling, surprising collection—one of the best in the series." --Kirkus 

Praise for BATW 2013:"Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love, 2006), guest editor of the latest volume in this always rich yearly anthology, boldly avers that she chose travel stories that "were told the most marvelously in 2012." To her, each piece "contains awe in strong enough doses to render the reader enchanted, delighted, compelled, or forever unsettled." Such strong billing is not misleading, as readers will learn when they step into the pages of such delights as John Jeremiah Sullivan’s beautifully eloquent "A Prison, a Paradise" (from the New York Times Magazine), about travel to Cuba ("I’ve never stood on a piece of ground as throbbingly, even pornographically, generative"); Colleen Kinder’s "Blot Out" (from Creative Nonfiction), a punchy, even scary, account of a Western woman trying to pass as Muslim on the streets of Cairo; David Sedaris’ hilarious account of dentistry in Paris, "Dentists without Borders" (from the New Yorker); and Marie Arana’s gripping and sobering report on gold mining in Peru, "Dreaming of El Dorado" (from Virginia Quarterly Review). All the pieces included here are treasures of excellent writing, regardless of genre."—Booklist

“Travel connoisseurs divide the world into those places they’ve been dying to visit or revisit and places they’d never set foot in but are glad someone else did. This year’s volume of travel writing . . . focuses mostly on the latter with derring-do dispatches.” — USA Today

A far-ranging collection of the best travel writing pieces published in 2013, collected by guest editor Paul Theroux. The Best American Travel Writing consistently includes a wide variety of pieces, illuminating the wonder, humor, fear, and exhilaration that greets all of us when we embark on a journey to a new place. Readers know that there is simply no other option when they want great travel writing.