Whether your loved ones are armchair travelers or real-world travelers, consider one of the new travel books out this fall as a gift. They range from big lush coffee-table books to travel-themed tales about marathons and food.
First, the big guys. Lugging these tomes on an airplane may put your luggage over the weight limit. But if you’re tucking gifts under your tree or shipping from an online retailer, these beautifully illustrated hardcovers are ideal for folks who like to dream about faraway places as well as for those looking for real-world ideas.
The Travel Book: A Journey Through Every Country in the World, from Lonely Planet, US$50
The folks at Lonely Planet started with a list of the United Nations’ 192 member countries, then added nearly 40 places that do not get their own UN seats, like Caribbean islands, Antarctica, Tibet and Taiwan. Each destination gets photos, description, map, lists of top things to do and see, plus recommendations for ways to experience the place through books, film, food and music.
Where to Go When: Italy, from DK Eyewitness Travel, US$40
Italy remains the fifth most popular international destination for American travelers (according to last year’s statistics from the US Commerce Department), but when is the best time to go? “January through December,” according to Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun, who wrote the foreword for this book. It offers recommendations for every month of the year. February travelers might choose between the Calabrian town of Scylla or the lagoon islands and basilica mosaics in Aquileia, while July visitors might consider the Umbria jazz festival or the hilltop spa town of Sarnano.
Drives of a Lifetime: 500 of the World’s Most Spectacular Trips, from National Geographic, US$40
For the worldly road-tripper, this book offers itineraries from US 1 on the coast of Maine or Big Sur in California, to the Silk Road in Central Asia and the outback in Australia. The book is divided into eight chapters by type of trip (such as mountains, coasts, cities, history), each offering a detailed selection of itineraries and top 10 lists. For foodies on the road, the top 10 include Hermann Wine Trail in Missouri, pumpkins and chocolate in Pennsylvania and pick-your-own fruit in Idaho. For European lakeside drives, the top 10 range from England’s Lake District to Italy’s Lake Garda and Sweden’s Lake Vanern.
Unexpected USA, from Travel + Leisure, US$25 (softcover US$15)
This book offers great inspiration for those who want to ferret out unexplored corners and surprising places in the US. A road trip through the Midwest is recommended as a way to see great architecture and design by Zaha Hadid, Santiago Calatrava and Mies van der Rohe on a route that includes Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. Other chapters look at an into-the-wild trip in Alaska, a barbecue quest from Kansas to North Carolina, and why Walla Walla, Washington, is the “next great wine destination.”
Next up, the big picture in paperback:
Make the Most of Your Time on Earth: 1,000 Ultimate Travel Experiences, from Rough Guides, US$30
This second edition adds 200 suggestions to the original edition. Organized by region, it is a load of fun. Try laughter yoga in Mumbai, platypus-watching in Australia, whitewater-rafting on the Nile, lassoing reindeer in Lapland, a tapas crawl in Madrid, and in the US, eating bagels in New York, hang-gliding the Outer Banks in North Carolina and cruising the Inside Passage in Alaska.
The Traveller’s Guide to Planet Earth, from Lonely Planet, US$23
This book looks at 50 destinations from a BBC documentary of the same name, with chapters on mountains, fresh water, caves, deserts, ice worlds, great plains, jungles, shallow seas, seasonal forests and ocean deeps. Destinations range from Ethiopia’s Simien Mountains to Lechuguilla Cave in New Mexico to Madagascar, home of the lemur.
And finally, a couple of travel-themed books small enough to tuck in a carry-on bag, telling tales worthy of Odysseus.
Second Wind: One Woman’s Midlife Quest to Run Seven Marathons on Seven Continents, by Cami Ostman, from Seal Press, US$17
Traveling to another city or country to run a marathon is increasingly common. The author of this book is ending a marriage, questioning religion, and hoping to find solace in running when she decides to tackle a race on every continent. But she is not out to set records; she dedicates the book to “back-of-the-packers everywhere.”
Adventures in Eating: Anthropological Experiences in Dining From Around the World, edited by Helen Haines and Clare Sammells, from the University Press of Colorado, US$30
“Have you tried cuy? Did you like it?’’ Cuy is guinea pig, and those are questions typically asked of visitors to Peru, according to a chapter in this book, which is a collection of essays by anthropologists. (The writer says guinea pig tastes like — you guessed it — chicken.) Durian fruit, eaten on a visit to Malaysia, has “the texture of ripe avocado and the flavor of onion ice cream.” A sojourn in the Philippines leads to a contemplation of food taboos as the author politely declines dog, but finds lizard delicious. Although the text is peppered with academic explanations of concepts like “commensality” (sharing a common gustatory and social experience), Adventures in Eating is readable and entertaining. Each story explores foods that might sound repulsive to Westerners but are beloved by locals somewhere.
A Moveable Feast: Life-Changing Food Adventures Around the World, edited by Don George, from Lonely Planet, US$15
This is a collection of 38 stories from chefs, food writers and travel writers, including Anthony Bourdain, Jan Morris, Andrew Zimmern and Simon Winchester. They range from cooking a lamb-and-eggplant dish as a prelude to an Arabic-language lesson in Jerusalem, to the tale of a chicken shared with travelers on a train to Moscow, to bowls of fermented yak milk consumed in Mongolia.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would