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The Best American Travel Writing 2000 | 
 enlarge | Creators: Jason Wilson, Bill Bryson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 133119
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0618074678
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5408
UPC: 046442074674
EAN: 9780618074679
ASIN: 0618074678
Publication Date: October 26, 2000
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Amazon.com Review
The world may be getting smaller, but that doesn't mean it's any less varied, surprising, or exotic--as is made evident by the 25 essays collected in the inaugural edition of the Best American Travel Writing series. In search of America's sharpest, most original, and often, most curious travel writers, editor Bill Bryson and series editor Jason Wilson sifted through hundreds of stories. What the resulting collection demonstrates is that, as Wilson writes, travel stories matter: Having a travel writer report on particular things, small things, the specific ways in which people act and interact, is perhaps our best way of getting beyond the cliches that we tell each other about different places and cultures, and about ourselves. And, as Bryson notes, many of the freshest voices are being drawn to foreign subjects far beyond the trampled paths of tourism. Within these pages, they chart the world from Nantucket to Zanzibar, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco to Australia's Cape York Peninsula with originality and keen observation. Some even go where none would follow: drawn by the allure of danger zones, Patrick Symmes rides a dirt bike to "perhaps the most forbidden city in the world" in search of the Khmer Rouge. Tim Cahill describes his own personal journey in hell--11 long days on a barge on the Ubangi River with 3,000 people packed so close together it's impossible to move without apologizing. (Fortunately, he's befriended by a man named God who is always in the know.) Distance is not a prerequisite for travel writing, though humor is invaluable, as Bill Buford shows in his attempt to do what you just don't do--spend the night in Central Park. When Dave Eggers discovers hitchhiking is what makes Cuba move, it becomes the point of his trip to "pick up and move people, from here to there." Tongue in cheek, he declares, "So easy to change the quality, the very direction, of Cubans' lives!" Then again, sometimes humor is just not appropriate, particularly if you've been kidnapped by Ugandan rebels (as was Mark Ross) or you're trying to help the Dalai Lama choose the next Panchen Lama without jeopardizing lives (as did Isabel Hilton). In any case, it's all happening here--golf in Greenland, cheese smuggling from France, even a ride with the Toughest Truck Driver in the World. This collection proves that travel writing is a genre whose time has come. --Lesley Reed
Product Description
The extraordinary popularity of books and magazines dedicated to travel comes as no surprise, given that more and more Americans are traveling each year for business, pleasure, and especially adventure. Our fascination with travel has never been so well represented as in this new addition to the Best American series: a wide-ranging compendium of the best travel writing published in 1999, culled from more than three hundred magazines, newspapers, and Web sites. This first collection of THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING reads like a good novel. Best-selling author Bill Bryson and series editor Jason Wilson have put together a book that will surprise knowledgeable travelers and entrance newcomers with the glories of new worlds. Articles by such well-loved writers as Bill Buford and Ryszard Kapuscinski are included, as are those by exciting new voices. Ranging across myriad landscapes, from Central Park in New York City to the Ouadane oasis in Saharan Mauritania, THE BEST AMERICAN TRAVEL WRITING 2000 showcases the diversity and creative power of travel writing today.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
 Cassette edition contains only 10 stories December 13, 2008
I bought the audio (cassette) edition of this book partly because the seller advertised it as "unabridged". Hmmmm...
OK, the 10 stories included are unabridged, but I have now become aware that the print edition of this book contains 25 stories. So I'm feeling rather cheated.
I'm awarding four stars for the the product as is, neglecting the fact that it only contains 10 stories and not 25.
The stories that are included in this edition are "From the wonderful people who brought you the killing fields" (Cambodia), "Inside the hidden kingdom" (Bhutan), "Winter rules" (Greenland), "Lard is good for you" (Costa Rica), "Lions and tigers and bears" (Central Park, New York City), "Nantucket on my mind" (Nantucket Island, USA), "Confessions of a cheese smuggler" (Paris, France), "Hitchhiker's Cuba" (Cuba), "Weird Karma" (India) and "Exiled beyond kilometer 101" (Russia).
I liked all of the stories, some better than others, but all of them were interesting.
Three of the stories are read by Bill Bryson, and he does a good job of it. Three are read by the respective authors, and that's a mistake - authors in general are poor readers. The remaining four stories are read by professional readers, which is the way it should be.
Recommended, but be aware that you're getting only 10 stories out of the 25 that the print edition contains.
Rennie Petersen
 Travel Stories- A Great Genre July 27, 2006
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Americans generally care little for the world outside of its borders. And in the rare cases of foreign travel often Americans, "pay large sums to be transported to some distant place and then be shielded from it." This book not only tells of experiences in foreign countries, but it also tells the story of foreign people and their history. This is one of the most enjoyable books I have read this year. Below are short summaries of each writing with my "rating."
#1- Boat Camp by William Booth. (8) A man gets the urge to race a sailboat to Mexico. Very interesting and very well written. "Almost every sailor I know suffers the affliction. We dream the dream of boats on water."
#2- Lions and Tigers and Bears. (8) No, not the land of Oz, much scarier...Central Park (New York City). This writer decides to stay the night in Central Park despite the danger. Why? "Anybody who dnows anything about New York knows the city's essential platitude- that you don't wander around Cenral Park at night- and in that, needless to say, was the appeal: it was the thing you don't do." Not only a suspenseful tale, but it is packed full of Central Park facts.
#3- This Teeming Ark. (4) A writer travels to the African Congo and spends 12 days riding a barge down a river. Written very well and full of humor, the essay provides good insight into African culture, but I felt the author was a bit degrading toward the people.
#4- The Toughest Trucker in the World. (9) The name says it all. This writer rides along with a trucker who delivers fuel to one of the most remote places on Australia. The ride is full of adventure and great insight into Aussie culture and even Aussie vocabulary.
#5- Hitchhiker's Cuba. (7) "Hitchhiking is what makes Cuba move." Several men drive around Cuba giving rides to whoever wants them. It is not only hitchhikers they pick up, they pick up a lot of culture along the way. The author has a lot of interesting social and political insights.
#6- Nantucket On My Mind. (5) "...many of the true pleasures of Nantucket are not easily gained and cannot be purchased on demand, that they have to be, like everything else in life, earned..." This is some interesting insight into the upper class who have swarmed Nantucket Island and the upper-middle class who resent them.
#7- The Nile at Mile One. (6) Like most of the travel writings, this gives good insight into African society. The author attempts to trace Winston Churchill's journey through Africa. Anyone who has visited a third world country can relate to the following quote, "urban Africans seemed caught in a kind of purgatory, somewhere between the seductions of modernity and the habits of tradition."
#8- Spies in the House of Faith. (6) The longest piece in the book, this was the story of one reporters experience with the Dalai Lama and the transitional nation of Tibet. Very interesting (and a bit sad) to see how the government of China handles the faith of the Tibetan people.
#9- The First Drink of the Day. (1) I am not much of a drinker, so this was pure boredom for me.
#10- Lard is Good For You. (10) This short piece had me in constant laughter. The writer, a volunteer teacher, records her experiences in Costa Rica. I especially appreciated her insight into the "two voices in (her) head," referring to the "tourist' and the "traveler." The tourist wanted her comfort and her cute cultural experiences and the traveler wanted to truly experience life with Costa Ricans.
#11- The Truck. (7) Find out how one man almost dies in the Sahara desert in the country of Mauritania. "Without water you can survive in the desert for twenty-four hours; with great difficulty, for forty-eight or so."
#12- Confessions of a Cheese Smuggler. (4) "The worse the cheese smells the better it tastes." It doesn't get much more exciting than that.
#13- Inside the Hidden Kingdom. (7) This is a great little report on the country of Bhutan, the last independent Himalayan Buddhist kingdom.
#14- Weird Karma. (7) A summary of the writer's experience in India, I especially enjoyed the section on his observations about driving in India, "India is really magical. How can they drive like this without killing people?"
#15- Zoned on Zanzibar. (7) This African island is steeped in folk belief, and the author does an excellent job of showing how a somewhat `modern' nation still follows its own animistic beliefs. "(The witches) walk the streets invisible. They have sacrificed their children to Satan for power... I nod, as if it's a routine warning."
#16- Storming the Beach. (7) A very humorous article about the writer's crazy wish to crash the set of Leonardo DiCaprio's movie, The Beach. Set in Thailand, the writer attempts to sneak through security to get onto the set of the movie. The author is trying to make a point about tourism and the dangers it poses. He writes of the distinction between tourism and `true' travel, "tourists leave home to escape the world, while travelers leave home to experience the world."
#17- The Last Safari. (9) It gets serious here. An American safari guide in Africa writes of his tragic hostage-taking experience where five Western tourists died. It is written excellently and shows the horrible war-torn situation Africa finds itself it.
#18- Winter Rules. (10) This was the best and funniest story in the book. A Sports Illustrated writer goes to the arctic (Greenland) to play golf. A golfer myself, I found the story very amusing, showing the folly (maybe stupidity is a better word) of the true golfer. A good philosophical thought comes at the end of the story, "Life is to often like the stomach of the reindeer, I reflected at dinner: neither delicious nor revolting, but somewhere in between."
#19- From the Wonderful People Who Brought You the Killing Fields. (7) An adventurous tale of two men's journey to the mountains of Cambodia to meet with some of the officials of Khmer Rouge, a rebel group who has killed thousands in Cambodia.
#20- China's Wild West. (6) This is more of an educational piece, but interesting nonetheless. The westernmost province of China seems more like the middle east with a hint of Russian. This makes for an interesting society which is actually ruled by the despised Chinese.
#21- Exiled Beyond Kilometer 101. (6) Russia is a land where the rural areas hardly resemble the urban centers. This piece focuses on the contrast and the hardships that face rural Russians.
#22- Two Faces of Tourism. (6) Tourism and travel are the biggest international product. Bigger than oil, bigger than electronics, people spend trillions on travel and this has had a startling impact on the places that attract these tourists. The article focuses on a relatively unknown tourist spot in Mexico that is on the verge of becoming a major tourist area. "..we visitors are woven into the fabric of the places we visit."
#23- The Very Short Story of Nunavut. (2) The author here tries to repel rather than compel people to visit the new Canadian province of Nunavut. I don't really like the attitude of the author and I am glad he doesn't apply his views to America. If he was consistent with his world view, he would say that no outsiders should come to America and spoil our purity. I think this would be racist, but if he says it about a remote area in Canada he is being culturally sensitive.
#24- One Man and His Donkey. (8) This is the humorous retelling of the author's experience in Morocco with a donkey in the Atlas mountains.
#25- Marseille's Monument. (3) I personally found this to be uninteresting, I think I am biased against the writings that take place in Europe. About the French town of Marseille, the author shows the history of this "cool" town.
An Outsanding Collection of Stories May 7, 2003
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
"Best American Travel Writing 2000" is the first edition in yet another outstanding entry in the "Best American" series. It is structured like other "Best American" books, with a series editor and a yearly guest editor putting their heads together and selecting two dozen or so of the best articles to be published in the field during the previous year. Bill Bryson was a very canny choice to be the first guest editor for the travel series, given his recent stature as one of the best selling travel writers around.The best articeles in the debut 2000 edition include Tom Clynes's account of a truck driver in the Australian Outback, a lament by David Halberstam on the yuppie-fication of Nantucket Island, P.J. O'Rourke's amusing piece about driving in India, and Mark Ross's harrowing first person account of the slaying of eco-tourists in Uganda by Interhamwe rebels. Some of the articles are amusing, some are scary, others are full of wonder, but they are all well written and informative. Anyone who enjoys good travel writing, or who simply likes good storytelling, ought to pick up a copy.
Funny how an editor chooses stories written in his style April 5, 2003
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
If you like Bill Bryson's writing (and I do), you'll enjoy this book. The stories are, for the most part, light, entertaining and enjoyable. My favorite was the one about hitchhiking through Cuba! It wasn't until I moved on to the 2001 Best American Travel Writing edited by Paul Thoreau that I realized how much the stories reflect Bill Bryson's writing. As I worked my way through the book, the writing seemed to be uneven, but I did enjoy the book on the whole and do recommend it to anyone who's into travel literature.
A Great Collection of Stories January 26, 2003
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I really enjoyed reading these stories, especially since it is winter in New England at the moment. This book contains a broad assortment of travel stories--they are all quite amazing. Some are laugh-out-loud funny while others have you petrified for the authors. A beautifully put together book.
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