The Best American Travel Writing 2014

October 14, 2013
Guest editor Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love) anthologizes a variety of pieces that adhere to her maxim, "No story is automatically interesting; only the telling makes it so." Among the 19 contributors, John Jeremiah Sullivan reflects on a journey to Cuba to visit his wife's family, capturing both the picturesque landscape and the inherent strangeness of being an American there. Colleen Kinder recalls wearing a niqab to a marketplace while on assignment in Cairo. In "The Year I Didn't," Daniel Tyx lampoons self-indulgent travel trend pieces, writing about the road not travelled at all as he opts out of his plan to walk the U.S-Mexico border. Peter Jon Lindberg embraces the idyllic at Pine Point, Maine, and David Farley seeks an elusive recipe in Vietnam made exclusively by one family for generations. Sam Anderson muses on the nature of literary tourism on his trip to the English theme park Dickens World, while Marie Arana provides a hard-hitting look at child labor and the exploitation of workers at a Peruvian gold mine, articulating a powerful plea for the education of young girls. Lynn Yaeger's "Confessions of a Packing Maximalist" addresses the preparation stage of travel and adding a light-hearted touch to the collection. Gilbert made excellent choices for this collection, not a single piece is out of place here.

October 1, 2014
A lavish and often revelatory assortment of travel writings. Adventure off the beaten track is the guiding theme of this latest collection in the long-running series, and most of the contributors deliver it on a level that will gratify both armchair travelers and the most seasoned and fearless thrill-seekers. These writers provide dispatches from all corners of the globe-from South Sudan to Paris to Brazil to Calcutta to the Adirondacks-and in most cases, they deliver refreshingly original stories, alternately humorous, nostalgic, exhilarating and horrifying. On the whole, the quality of the writing is high, with only two or three descents into bombastic machismo. Elif Batuman pursues a mysterious local kidney disorder in Croatia; Stephanie Pearson explores the lesser-known areas of Colombia; Amanda Lindhout describes her "460 Days" as a prisoner of Somali insurgents; Michael Paterniti explores an extraordinary type of cheese in an adaptation from his outstanding memoir, The Telling Room (2013); and Matthew Power, who died tragically this year, plunges into the world of "urbex," the exploration of secret places in some of the most-visited cities of the world. Not all the essays will be to everyone's taste, but in most cases, this is a matter of personal preference, not quality. One low point is Harrison Scott Key's strained comedy on traveling by Greyhound, in which he finds only the caricatures he went looking for. Some pieces provide contemplative breaks in the action, including Thomas Swick's "A Moving Experience," which considers how unexciting travel can be. In the foreword, series editor Jason Wilson provides another fine essay about rediscovering his first great wine experience, and second-time editor Theroux introduces the book with thoughts on his own career of risky explorations and the pleasures of reading about the most challenging "adventures and ordeals-the traveler's baptism of fire." Other contributors include A.A. Gill, David Sedaris and Colson Whitehead. A thrilling, surprising collection-one of the best in the series.

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September 21, 2020
Macfarlane opens this provocative but unfortunately timed entry in the long-running series with a sobering message: “I write from a world in which travel has stopped.” Indeed, readers may feel a jarring sense of dissonance delving into suddenly anachronistic essays on unfettered travel, though they often are framed with still-relevant political conscience. Kyle Chayka probes what it means to have an “authentic” experience in Iceland, where tourists outnumbered inhabitants. Alejandra Oliva accompanies Central American migrants traveling north in hopes of entering the United States, and Jackie Bryant deposits water jugs in the Sonoran Desert for those who surreptitiously cross the border and risk dehydration. Lacy M. Johnson attends a memorial service for an Icelandic glacier that melted due to global warming. In a standout piece, Ashley Powers illuminates an essential Sicilian sense of multiculturism through the lives of migrants who are revivifying Palermo’s once abandoned alleyways. “We don’t say, when we were invaded by Arabs,” a Sicilian tells her. “We say, when we were Arabs.” Shanna B. Tiayon similarly distills the U.S. into its essential parts when she describes a family vacation to the Grand Canyon marred by racism. These layered explorations of who travels how (and why) offer a discomfiting but rewarding armchair experience of the world at large. Agent: Jim Rutman, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Nov.)Correction: An earlier version of this review misstated Ashley Powers's last name.