Globe-Trotting Page-Turners

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Americans are buying travelogues and guidebooks like never before, says Walter Turney, manager of the Complete Traveller Bookstore in New York—even if they’re not using them to prepare for travel. The latest in escapist literature, these books “are very much like mysteries were 15 years ago,” he says.

Turney notes that “there’s a sense of humor and irony in much of the writing today, whereas the travel writers of the past were writing from a universalist point of view.” Indeed, Tim Cahill, who documents his globe-hopping in Pass the Butterworms (Vintage, 1998), and other “adventure travel” writers have little in common with the essayists of the past. Freya Stark immersed herself in the cultures of the Middle East for years in order to create her lyrical portaits of the area, some of which can be found in Oxford University Press’ Unsuitable for Ladies: An Anthology of Women Travellers, edited by Jane Robinson. Authors like Stark had the luxury of time and distance that modern technology obliterates: “They weren’t in constant touch with their editors via satellite,” syas Turney.

Tony Stucker, editor of Trips magazine, agrees that technology has changed travel and the way we write about it. But he says the end of the Cold War is also significant: “It wasn’t that long ago that a lot of places on the map were off-limits to Americans.” Now Rough Guides and Lonely Planet have produced a whole genre especially for those roads less traveled. Lonely Planet has even begun publishing travel narratives; Sean & David’s Drive Thru America, the second in a road trip series, will be out this spring.

GOING PLACES Trips magazine: (415) 431-5133 or www.tripsmag.com; Complete Traveller: (212) 685-9007; Lonely Planet: (800) 275-8555 or www.lonelyplanet.com.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate