The Best Travelers' Tales 2004: True Stories from Around the World (Best Travel Writing) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1932361022 ISBN 13: 9781932361025

Publisher: Travelers' Tales, 2004

Synopsis

This title launches a new Travelers’ Tales series, an annual collection of the best travel writing, to celebrate ten years of publishing the world’s best travel writing from Nobel Prize winners to complete unknowns. Many of these stories will be published for the first time in this book, while some will have appeared in other Travelers’ Tales titles or elsewhere. But the common thread connecting them will be fresh, lively storytelling and compelling narrative to make the reader laugh, weep, wish he were there, or be glad he wasn’t.
These 25 stories cover the globe, from battling snakes in Costa Rica to probing your own relation to the caste system in India to charting your way through the "oldest tourist trap in the world" in Egypt to learning to cook an octopus in Mexico. The writers come from many countries, not just the United States, so the points of view and perspectives are global in reach. Themes are as eclectic as all of our books, including stories that encompass spiritual growth, absolute hilarity and misadventure, high adventure, romance, women’s solo journeys, stories of service to humanity, family travel, and encounters with exotic cuisine.

About this title

About the Author

James O'Reilly, president and publisher of Travelers' Tales, was born in England and Raised in San Francisco. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1975 and wrote mystery serials before becoming a travel writer in the early 1980s. He's visited more than forty countries, along the way meditating with monks in Tibet, participating in West African voodoo rituals, living in the French Alps, and hanging out the laundry with nuns in Florence. He travels extensively with his wife, Wenda, and their three daughters. Larry Habegger, executive editor of Travelers' Tales, has been writing about travel since 1980. He has visited almost fifty countries and six of the seven continents, traveling from the frozen Arctic to equatorial rain forest, the high Himalayas to the Dead Sea. In the early 1980s he co-authored mystery serials for the San Francisco Examiner with James O'Reilly, and since 1985 their syndicated column, "World Travel Watch," has appeared in newspapers in five countries and on WorldTravelWatch.com. As series editors of Travelers' Tales, they have worked on some ninety titles, winning many awards for excellence. Habegger regularly teaches the craft of travel writing at workshops and writers conferences, and he lives with his family on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

Sean O'Reilly is director of special sales and editor-at-large for Travelers' Tales. He is a former seminarian, stockbroker, and prison instructor with a degree in Psychology. Author of the groundbreaking book on men's behavior, How to Manage Your DICK, he is also the inventor of a safety device known as Johnny Upright. Widely traveled, he most recently completed a journey through China, Southeast Asia, and the South Pacific. He lives in Virginia with his wife and six children.

Review

"Machetes are like Central American Visa Cards--nobody leaves home without one. They're everywhere. the machete is part of the Central American male identity. the machete is the Swiss Army knife on steriods, practicality manifest, the solution to every problem by which an American is rarely confronted: need to hack a path through the jungle? Open a coconut? Kill a deadly reptile? the answer is a shining silver blade."

About this edition

• Publisher: Travelers' Tales
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1932361022
• ISBN 13: 9781932361025
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: O'Reilly James, Habegger Larry, O'Reilly Sean