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Travel Literature and Gift Books

Here are some of our favorite Travel Literature and Gift Books that we have previously featured on our home page

Signs: Lettering in the Environment ( Laurence King, $19.95) A collection of European street signs with detailed graphic and historic analysis seems like it would only appeal to a graphic designer. But it's strangely compelling to see all the different 'Bike Lane' demarcations, the various eras of London Underground signage, the Victorian umbrella shops, 19th century Portuguese grocery stores, and ancient Roman street signs standing next to their modern counterparts. The way in which we engage with our past is opened up by the way in which landmarks are sign-posted, how the lettering changes or remains the same on streets signs and on store fronts. - ADD TO CART	Architectura: Elements of Architectural Style ( Barrons, hardback, $50.00) Most coffee-table books about architecture drag the reader along on a forced march through the centuries or across the continents. This beautifully illustrated and endlessly engrossing volume takes a different approach to humankind’s most universal art form. It explores in turn each of the structural elements that are common to all buildings, from the foundation to the rooftop, both functionally and aesthetically. How do various cultures solve the problem of holding a building in place, or holding up the roof, with the materials they have on hand and the technologies available to them? How do they learn from one another, and extend their technology, in the course of finding a solution? Packed with thousands of photos of both grand and vernacular buildings, interiors and exteriors, whole edifices and minute details, the book gives us an evolutionary sense of how and why the forms of architecture have developed. - ADD TO CART
The Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture ( Phaidon Press Limited, $195.00) As the world heads into an economic slump, we may regard this decade's outstanding architecture as representative of an affluent, golden age in history. This nostalgia for the still new is not the intention of the big and fabulous Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century World Architecture. Like its 2004 predecessor, The Phaidon Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture, this enormous book surveys over 1000 noteworthy buildings in 89 countries. The big name architects are all here, but also groups like Rural Studio, architecture students at Auburn University, Mississippi, who build low-cost housing and community space for poor, rural communities. If you want to visit the actual buildings, Phaidon includes a downloadable version for your Ipod. They also include a satchel, just in case you want to carry your book around the world with you. - ADD TO CART	Literature from the 'Axis of Evil': Writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, and other Enemy Nations A Words Without Borders Anthology ( The New Press, $16.95) The absurdity of labeling an entire culture or nation of people ï¿½evilï¿½ not only makes those who said it look foolish, but brings about the need to put a human face on those internationally misunderstood and marginalized cultures. Words Without Borders does just that, presenting a special selection of some of the best writing from Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Libya, Syria, Sudan, and Cuba. For those of us with little knowledge about these places, this collection gives us a glimpse into human realities that our government wants us to fear and/or hate. When we look, listen, and learn we find familiar themes: family, adolescence, ideas of beauty, loneliness, kindness -- a wonderful breath of fresh air. - ADD TO CART
The Architecture of Happiness Alain de Botton ( Pantheon, $16.95) It probably doesn’t come as a surprise that the look and feel of the objects that surround us, and particularly the buildings we live in and move among, have a powerful influence on the way we feel. But what is there about a structure that makes us feely unaccountably lightened, or depressed? And does it have anything to do with what critics of architecture call “beautiful”? De Botton explores these questions, and numerous tangents they give rise to, in a stimulating and profusely illustrated essay, that will enrich the way you look at the places you visit, and the places you live. - ADD TO CART	Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand Alex Kapranos ( Penguin, paperback, $13.00) This collection of pieces originally written as a food column for the Guardian newspaper in England, is at once charming, disturbing and witty. Kapranos writes eloquently and engagingly about food on the road, from more sedate experiences such as eating the best donuts in Brooklyn with, of course, the requisite cop presence, to eating traditional and very regional northern English seaside food. There are excursions into the more extreme and visceral pleasures of non western international food; being physically unable to consume bull testicles in Buenos Aires, and being asked to leave a hotel in Singapore for eating street food in the lobby, then inviting an entire stadium of Franz Ferdinand fans back to the same hotel for a post-show feast in said same lobby. - ADD TO CART
Reykjavik 64.08N 21.54W Ami Sioux ( Scintilla Ltd, paperback, $43.00) Every major city contains (at least) two wholly distinct cities ï¿½ the city that emerges from the guidebooks, and the city that people actually live in. So how can you convey the latter between the covers of a book? Artist Ami Sioux offers a brilliant solution, which, like most brilliant ideas, is utterly simple. Sioux asked 50 residents of Reykjavik to sketch maps leading to their favorite places. Facing these maps are color photos of the sites. Most of the sketches contain enough details to allow us to plot them against a standard map and find the sites, though it might still feel like following a pirate map to buried treasure. And in a sense they are buried treasures since the sites might appear nondescript (ï¿½my home when I was four years old,ï¿½ a fish store with ï¿½really good homemade fishcakes,ï¿½ an old graveyard, a biker bar); but each one is guaranteed to be special,because, by definition, each one is special to somebody who lives there. Siouxï¿½s photos seem to be probing to reveal the personal values hidden in each site. If I were visiting Reykjavik, I would definitely let this book lead me into neighborhoods I might otherwise never know existed, and which no guide book would deign to notice. I would love to see something like this for every great city in the world. Series editors: take note! OUT OF STOCK - ADD TO CART	On Reading Andre Kertesz ( Norton, hardback, $29.95) Hungary, 1915: three children in torn clothes sit against a stone wall, immersed in a book that one holds on his knees. New York, 1944: a boy sprawls on the sidewalk amid discarded newspapers, perusing the funnies. Tokyo, 1968: a street vendor loses herself in a magazine, as pedestrians swirl by. Throughout a career that spanned five decades, and four continents, Andre Kertesz photographed people reading in public places. The resulting collection has been out of print for decades; its reissue is a cause for rejoicing. In every photograph we get a sense of the interpenetration of public and private space, as the readers’ bodies adjust to their physical surroundings while their enraptured spirits are transported far, far away. The book is a meditation upon, and a celebration of, the transcendent power of the written word. It is hard to imagine anybody who loves reading who will not feel happier after looking though it. - ADD TO CART
Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape Barry Lopez, editor ( Trinity University Press, paperback, $19.95) Now in Paperback! Home Ground is a massive collection of words that describe American geography, geology and water. Gathered by 45 writers, including poet Robert Hass, Gretel Ehrlich, Barbara Kingslover and Jon Krakauer, these words, listed in dictionary-fashion, help define our landscape: catena and baraboo, arroyo and moraine. The writers bring their distinctive literary styles and their regional backgrounds to explain the lay of the land. There are definitions of the lava formations in Hawaii, the dry creek beds in the Southwest, the barrier islands of the southeast and the bogs, bogans and bogholes of the Midwest and the East. The entries are illuminating. The writing, often citing literary sources, is lively and free of jargon. Barry Lopez makes the point in his introduction that these words and regional places names are endangered as fewer and fewer people live off of, and therefore know, the land. That alone makes Home Ground an important document. - ADD TO CART	Nella Notte Buia (In the Darkness of the Night) Bruno Munari ( Edizioni Corraini, $29.95) We import this Italian classic children's book written and illustrated in 1956 by the late, great designer Bruno Munari. Its unorthodox design - containing holes, cutouts, flaps, transparent and colored papers - creates a playful sense of mystery: An elusive yellow dot leads you through night skies into a meadow of tall grass; jagged holes reveal caves. Munari's imagination matches the strength of the design of this little book. - ADD TO CART
Nomad's Hotel:Travels in Time and Space Cees Nooteboom ( M ariner Books, paperback, $13.95) "The genuine traveler," writes Dutch poet and novelist Cees Nooteboom, "is always positioned in the eye of a storm. The storm being the world, the eye that with which he views it." This collection of travel essays, spanning thirty years and four continents, is distinguished by the meditative tranquility in which he grounds his observations of the swirl of impressions he records. In journeys extend from the Alps to Africa and across Australia, he conveys a mesmerizing sense of place through precisely observed detail, luminous language, and an unfailing empathy and respect for the dignity of the peoples he visits. In place of the noisy egotism of much current travel writing, he offers a gentle current of metaphysical speculation in the manner of Borges and Calvino. He helps us see that places which are strange to us offer opportunities to reflect on our own strangeness. - ADD TO CART	Camps: A Guide to 21st Century Space Charlie Hailey ( MIT Press, $29.95) Summer Camp. RV Camp. Refugee Camp. Camps are an increasingly prominent part of the contemporary landscape. Their common feature is impermanence, or seeming impermanence, since they can last longer than their inhabitants. Bible Camp. Concentration Camp. They can represent freedom and autonomy, an escape from too much stability; they can represent the direst necessity, the loss of stability through natural disaster or warfare. Camp David. Homeless Camp. This guidebook, rich, imaginative and thorough beyond belief, contains discussions of over a hundred different types of camp, complete with photos, diagrams, thumbnail histories and geopolitical analysis. Peace Camp. POW Camp. Ultimately, it offers a new and profound view of how we inhabit our built environment. - ADD TO CART
Adventure Motorcycling Handbook, 5th ed Chris Scott ( Trailblazer Publications, paperback, $19.95) The latest edition of this comprehensive manual, a “worldwide motorcycling route and planning guide,” covers trip preparation, maintenance, off-road riding, navigation, load carrying and a hundred other details. Included are worldwide itneraries and conditions. "Tales From the Saddle" are first hand stories to learn from or emulate. If you're thinking about hitting the road on motorcycle, this is the book for you. - ADD TO CART	Shadow of the Silk Road Colin Thubron ( HarperCollins Publishers, paperback, $15.95) As Colin Thubron recounts his travels from Xi'an China to Antakya, Turkey one realizes that the sort of traveling he does is becoming a lost art. The roads he travels are bumpy or non-existent, but that isnï¿½t really what interests him. His gift lies in telling us little about himself, while observing and listening to the people he meets. On his own throughout his trip, his encounters with locals form the heart of his experience. Thubron is looking for traces of the Silk Road that have been all but lost to history. Making repeated inquiries he finds out about ruined caravansary in the desert. He tracks down descendents of a Roman army that made its way into present day Xinjiang in western China 2000 years ago. But he finds more than these traces of history. He experiences the political climate on a local scale through the lives of those he meets along his way. The repression of the authoritarian regimes and the economic and political instability affects everyone and is the source of much story-telling. Tubron offers up these fleeting glimpses in a region of shifting borders, allegiances and histories. - ADD TO CART
Connected: 24 Hours in the Global Economy Daniel Altman ( Picador, paperback, $15.00) Who really controls the world's money supply? Is immigration a luxury or a necessity? Is the world's financial system becoming more vulnerable to the actions of the few? How do things like stock markets and oil prices work, and ultimately, what is the overall impact of globalization? Instead of spouting opinions, Connected helps form our own answers. Altman tackles the issue of globalization not with argument or slant, but by recounting a handful of economic events of the world in a single day: June 15, 2005. Chapter by chapter we are introduced to a new set of characters, settings and rules. We hear opinions from the workers of the world themselves: from Los Angeles-based internet music company Napster, to the Chinese mega-appliance company Haier, to an assortment of multinational corporations, merchants and governments in between. This isn't a book for a student of economics, but for the rest of us who wonder about the relationships and the impacts of the world's economies. - ADD TO CART	Silverland: A Winter Journey Beyond the Urals Dervla Murphy ( John Murray Publishers, $15.95) Dervla Murphy is on the road again. In Silverland, Murphy travels on the BAM train (a trans-Siberian route begun under Stalin and completed in the 1990s) east across Siberia. Now in her 70s and still with her signature bicycle and rucksack, she is the consummate traveler who takes sub-zero temperatures and bureaucratic bungling (she is thrown off the train in Belarus for visa irregularities) in stride. That is what I like about Dervla Murphy. Her misfortunes are asides, part of the price of travel, and not the basis for her stories. In unadorned language, conversations are recounted and opinions are freely shared. She completely sympathizes with the nostalgia for the Soviet Unionï¿½s free medical care, free schooling and adequate pensions. On this return trip to Siberia, her friends and contacts are living in a time of rapid change. The forests are threatened with logging; the WTO is demanding that Russia stop subsidizing home heating oil; locals are buying cars and other previously unobtainable consumer goods on credit. But the warmth and hospitality of the Siberians, particularly the non-Russian native peoples, (in sharp contrast to the Russians she meets on the western side of the Ural mountains) is what impresses Murphy most. ï¿½ Lee Azus - ADD TO CART
Field Guide to Roadside Technology Ed Sobey ( Chicago Review Press, $14.95) This comprehensive little book is a guide to every piece of mysterious technological architecture you can imagine, from Geothermal Power Plants to Cell Phone Towers. Perhaps you could use it as a modern day I-Spy for road trips? It reminded me of a grown up version of those children's books that go into extreme detail about say, dump trucks or construction sites. It's a pretty fun book, and, you know, maybe distinguishing between the different types of cooling towers at power plants will come in handy one of these days. - ADD TO CART	Mirrors: Stories of Almost Everyone Eduardo Galeano ( Nation Books, hardback, $26.95) World history is distilled into aphorisms in Eduardo Galeano's lyrical and witty new book. History's footnotes, Galeano shows us, are as important as overarching historical narratives. There is the militant Olympe de Gouges, guillotined during the French revolution for proposing a "Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen." A 51-word entry tells of the first slave rebellion at the sugar mill owned by the son of Christopher Columbus in Santo Domingo. Galeano's mirrors reflect histories of the dispossessed while casting shadows over fixed histories of the powerful. - ADD TO CART
The Secret Lives of Buildings Edward Hollis ( Metropolitan Books, hardback, $28.00) Most histories of architecture treat great buildings as though they were timeless and unchanging. Edward Hollis presents another way of looking at them. In this riveting and vividly written book, he looks at buildings as living and evolving entities, transformed layer by layer, generation by generation, as people come to use them and think about them in different ways. The Parthenon, for example, was a temple, then a church, then a mosque, then a gunpowder storehouse, then a revolutionary symbol, and finally an endlessly reproduced tourist attraction. Notre Dame was rebuilt in the image of a 19th century fantasy of what the middle ages ought to look like; its present incarnation would be unrecognizable to its original builders. And so on, as theft, appropriation, simulation, misunderstandings and even prophesy leave their marks on the monuments that people build and inherit. The history of each building is narrated as a story (often beginning "Once upon a time…"). The result is as entertaining as it is informative, and can change the way you look at architecture. - ADD TO CART	Black Gold of the Sun, Searching for Home in Africa and Beyond Ekow Eshun ( Vintage Paperback, $13.95) Combined travelogue/memoirs dealing with identity and the eternal search for a sense of home would seem to be a bit of a publishing cliché at this point in time. However, Black Gold of the Sun easily and elegantly transcended any low expectations I may have had. Ekow Eshun was born in London to Ghanaian parents, and grew up not fitting in with either the predominantly West Indian black culture, nor the thinly veiled racism of the 1980s Thatcherite white working classes. He travels to Ghana in search of his family’s roots, and maps his journey from the cosmopolitan capital of Accra to the slave forts of Elmina and the historic warrior kingdom of Asante. He intersects his travels, memories and family history with other voyages across the same land by Malcolm X, W. E. B. Du Bois, Richard Wright, and the millions of slaves shipped to the West from the Ghanaian coast. Eshun used to be the editor of the style magazine The Face, and is currently the director of the ICA in London, and his writing also reflects this interest in contemporary culture; he is able to analyse the significance of Tupac, Bob Marley and Osama Bin Ladin as icons of youth subcultural rebellion in a ‘third world’ subjugated by Western economics. The result is a map of the emotional and historical connections between the West and Africa. Moving from slavery to liberation, hip-hop to Hegel and love to loss, Ekow Eshun has crafted an insightful, powerful yet entertaining meditation on cultural identity, race and displacement, which questions the very idea of belonging being tied to uncovering the mysteries of one’s ‘roots’ - ADD TO CART
Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities Frank Jacobs ( Viking Studio, paperback, $30.00) Other oversize books dazzle us with big maps and minimal context. Strange Maps does the opposite: The explanations for each map in the book are consistently informative and interesting. So, let's get Strange Maps one shortfall out there: these maps are way too small, especially compared to the accompanying text. That aside, author Frank Jacobs devotes chapters to propaganda maps, transit maps, art maps, linguistic maps and other maps of the imagination. Like the recently published The Map as Art, Strange Maps encourages you to think about the world in new ways. - ADD TO CART	The BLDG BLOG Book Geoff Manaugh ( Chronicle Books, $29.95) Geoff Manaugh's blog (bldgblog.blogspot.com) is both entertaining as well as intellectually rigorous. His curiosity about geography, architecture and the built environment shares commonalities with the work of the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Working in blog format, however, has allowed Manaugh to write about and revisit a wide range of ideas. The BLDG BLOG Book collects and expands on his many interests. And there is much that Manaugh muses about: The Ebay auction of the presumed 'Lee Harvey Oswald' window from the Dallas Book Depository and its relationship to the work of the artist Gordon Matta Clark; The science of transforming plastic into rock as well; The transformation of monuments into ruins. The BLDG BLOG Book is full of fascinating, idiosyncratic ideas about our world. - ADD TO CART
The Lost Art of Walking Geoff Nicholson ( Riverhead Books, paperback, $15.00) There have been a rather large selection in recent years of books on the so called art of walking. This one is written by an Englishman, and covers the cultural, historical and philosophical nature of walking. From Errol Flynn's use of an almost choreographed walk to navigate the dense streets of New York City in Gentleman Jim through to the way Tom Waits constructs songs around a good amble, this is an easy yet provocative read. The Islamic ritual walk, the hadj, and the patented teenage slouch are covered with equal depth. So too are the numerous dances that incorporate the word or act of walking. Sometimes books that are essentially ruminations on a cultural phenomenon and seeming (ahem) pedestrian activities such as walking can seem a little droll or even smug. Nicholson has a sharp wit and a sarcastic tone that keeps this fascinating volume both incisive and compelling. - ADD TO CART	I Know How to Cook Ginette Mathiot ( Phaidon Press, hardback, $45.00) Referred to (by me) as The Joy of Cooking of France, Je sais cuisiner has been around since the 1930s. Organized around 'sound cooking principles,' yet far from intimidating, the recipes are simple and, being French, sophisticated. Salmon Trout in Aspic? Young Partridges with Grapes? Preparation and cooking time are less than 75 minutes. This English edition, I Know How To Cook, is wonderfully designed with photos, drawings and attached bookmark ribbons. - ADD TO CART
If This Be Treason: Translation and Its Dyscontents Gregory Rabassa ( New Directions, paper, $14.95) Translators are the unsung heroes of global literary culture. They are indispensable guides to the imaginative landscapes of other cultures, yet their artistry is most effective when least apparent. Since the nuances of one language can never be fully captured in another, the translator's work is both essential and impossible. In his lively memoir, Gregory Rabassa ponders the contradictions and gratifications of his craft. The translator of some 60 novels from the Spanish and Portuguese, beginning with Hopscotch and One Hundred Years of Solitude, he is almost single-handedly responsible for the Latin American literary "boom" in the English-speaking world. His chapters on 30 of the authors he has worked with, focusing on the specific problems he faced in rendering their styles, give us both a sweeping survey of modern Latin American literature and an introductory primer on the technical issues of translation. Among the standouts is his word-by-word account of his struggles with the title and famous opening sentence of One Hundred Years of Solitude. - ADD TO CART	Forever on the Mountain James M. Tabor ( W.W. Norton, paperback, $15.95) One of the most tragic mountaineering disasters was the Wilcox expedition up Mount McKinley (present day Denali) in the summer of 1967. The death of many of the climbers is the only thing not in doubt. Almost immediately blame on the expedition leader Joe Wilcox from one of Mount McKinleyï¿½s most distinguished climbers, Bradford Washburn, overshadows the tragic events on the mountain. Author James M. Tabor introduces us to the climbers as they meet and begin their ascent. Tension quickly erupts over leadership and responsibilities. It is clear that in a perfect storm, personalities and egos combined with a notoriously difficult mountain and unforgiving weather were a perfect setup for the disaster that unfolded. This is a good armchair read, one concerned as much with egos and human frailty as with understanding the disaster. - ADD TO CART
Unpacking My Library: Architects and Their Books Jo Steffens, Editor ( Yale University Press, hardback, $20.00) Unpacking My Library works as an authorized glimpse into a stranger's living room as if they've left the curtains open. More accurately, we're peering at the bookshelves of some of the most preeminent architects' offices: Henry Cobb, Michael Graves, Peter Eisenman, Toshiko Mori, Liz Diller and Ric Scofidio, among others. Photographs of each architect's bookshelves, (with details on who designed them of course,) is followed by a closer look at particular sections of the shelves. There are books by Bataille, Calvino and Eisenstein amongst the more expected volumes by Koolhaas and Le Corbusier. An interview with each architect covers how the literature and art, film critique and political theory contained within their shelves have shaped their perspective and work. This volume presents books and bookshelves as a sort of creative map, and is a fascinating and somewhat voyeuristic pleasure. - ADD TO CART	The Great Cities in History John Julius Norwich ( Thames & Hudson, hardback, $45.00) What a concept! This fascinating, endlessly browsable book consists of sixty-eight profiles of cities seen at the historical moment of their finest flowering, from the 3rd millennium BCE (the Mesopotamian city of Uruk) to the edge of the future (Shanghai). The essays are written by such authors and scholars as Jan Morris (New York), Colin Thurborn (Samarkand) and Simon Shama (Amsterdam); and each is gorgeously illustrated by images from the period under discussion, or photographs of what has endured. There is so much to learn here, as historical sweep is joined with pungent detail, so much information covering the range of human cultures. Leafing through the pages you can almost feel the vibrant crowds of people jostling one another across the millennia. - ADD TO CART
The Spice Route John Keay ( University of California Press, $16.95) There was in fact no single spice route (just as there was no single “silk road”). Instead, there was a looping skein of itineraries, arcing through numerous ports-of-call throughout the ancient near and far east. The trade in spices was the major incentive for human voyages into the unknown for three millennia, enticing Indian merchants to Africa and Arab merchants to Indonesia, long before Europeans got into the game and took it over. All of this for substances whose only function are to give pleasure to the senses of taste and smell. (The myth of spices as preservatives or camouflage for bad meat was concocted by historians embarrassed that so much history could be driven by the desire for sensual pleasure). Using primary source materials like merchants’ accounts and mariners’ logs, Keay reconstructs the shifting routes of the spice trade, and reconfigures our mental map of the ancient world. - ADD TO CART	The Traveler's Handbook: The Insider's Guide to World Travel Jonathan Lorie and Amy Sohanpaul eds. ( Globe Pequot Press, $24.95) This exhaustive handbook contains all the information you'll need about any country you might want to visit. Weather, etiquette, red tape, and scenic highlights are topics. There are in-depth articles about surviving a multitude of situations, such as deserts, the sea, or wild animals. Specific travel styles are also covered: you can look up information on traveling by bike, clubbing all night, hitchhiking, and being green. There are chapters addressing women, those traveling alone, students, gay travelers, and even extreme sports enthusiasts. - ADD TO CART
The Life of the Skies: Birding at the End of Nature Jonathan Rosen ( Picador Press, paperback, $15.00) We are all birdwatchers; some of us just go about it in a more conscious and systematic fashion. Rosen here does for birding what Rebecca Solnit did for walking in Wanderlust: following loosely associational paths through science, literature and cultural theory, he meditates on the broader philosophical implications of his favorite pastime. How do we engage the wild? How do we subsume it to our sense of order without destroying the wildness that attracts us in the first place? You don't need to be a birder to find Rosen's exploration of these questions relevant and enthralling. - ADD TO CART	Outfoxing Fear: Folk Tales from Around the World Kathleen Ragan ( W.W. Norton, paperback, $15.95) This engaging and clever collection of folk tales from around the world stretches from Scotland to Kenya to China. Ragan picks over 50 stories centered on themes of fear and courage, inspired by observing her children process the events of 9/11. While a few tales are seemingly selected exclusively for this purpose, rather than for their folklore merit, it’s largely a witty and insightful compilation of universal problems spoken through these timeless children’s stories intended for all ages. - ADD TO CART
Urawaza: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan Lisa Katayama ( Chronicle Books, paperback, $14.95) Urawaza is the book you didn't know you need. It's a how-to book that combines old wives' tales with scientific corroboration. In short entries of less than 100 words, the book identifies home remedies, cleaning tips and minor repairs. Here is a sampling of what this book covers: - Cure chafed elbows with avocado rinds. - Prevent toe frostbite with chili peppers. - Revive dying plants with garlic water. - Get burn marks off pans with crushed egg shells. Who knew? The only unsubstantiated claim I could find in the whole book was a cure for mosquito bite itching. But, that's a minor quibble in this most refreshing reference book. - ADD TO CART	New York Calling: From Blackout to Bloomberg Marshall Berman, ed. ( Reaktion, $25.00) Put together by the Marxist scholar Berman, this collection of essays focuses on New York City as a memory, working as a tribute to a lost city and its poets, immigrants, deadbeats, criminals, punks, and B-boys. It contains pieces from renowned writers like Luc Sante, Richard Meltzer and Tom Robbins but (perhaps reflecting New York’s pre-Giulliani democratic essence) gives the same weight to downtown low-lifes: There is the former graffiti writer who reflects on his and the city’s past during his morning commute on the now impossible-to-tag subway system. While the book mourns the loss of the seedy underbelly that gave New York of the 70s and 80s its creative power whilst keeping the yuppies at bay, it is not all doom and gloom. Manhattan’s pre-gentrified soul has now moved to the outer boroughs, and there are great pieces celebrating this revival. - ADD TO CART
Planet of Slums Mike Davis ( Verso, paperback, $16.95) This is a compelling and provocative look at the unprecedented rise of the sprawling slums in the outskirts of the new mega-cities of the Southern hemisphere. Davis provides an insight into the nightmarish reality under which most of the world's population lives as a result of both the historic and economic imperialism of the West. The devastating effect of the de-industrialization of the West, the global economy and 'free' trade are examined in the context of how they impact the lives of the planet’s most vulnerable populations. His writing is urgent and riveting, and the subject matter has never been more timely. - ADD TO CART	Evil Paradises: Dreamworlds of Neoliberalism Mike Davis, Daniel Bertrand Monk, editors ( The New Press, paperback, $18.95) The “evil paradises” depicted in this anthology are free market utopias built on the unspoken reality of slave labor and robber baron slash-and-burn capitalism. In Davis’ hellish vision of Dubai the divide between the Haves and the Have-Nots seems almost medieval in its brutality and immorality. Huge cartoonish buildings and man-made mega islands built with oil money and the aforementioned slave labor shield the ultra rich from the indignities of having to pay taxes or in some cases serve time in the countries from which they came. Rebecca Shoenkopf’s Orange County is a little less feudal, and makes for a much lighter read though she still, albeit mockingly, covers the disparities between the inland barrios of Santa Ana and the coastal gated communities of Laguna Canyon. The Gated McMansion-residing ladies buy their over-saturated offspring Mercedes convertibles to stave off their baby-bird-like insatiable hunger and empty rage; It reads like an even more soulless Less Than Zero. There are other chapters about faux California-style gated communities in Hong Kong and Cairo and even in Iran’s desert, so perhaps that will be America’s legacy rather than Bush’s promised democracy in the Middle East. - ADD TO CART
Other People’s Letters: In Search of Proust, A Memoir Mina Curtiss ( Helen Marx Books, $17.50) In 1947, Mina Curtiss, professor and bon vivant with a curious habit of reading people's letters, began translating a collection of Marcel Proust's letters for publication in the USA. In search of unpublished letters from the great writer, Curtiss realized that many of Proust's correspondents were still alive and in possession of unknown quantities of letters. With a suite at the Ritz and a new wardrobe, Curtiss arrives in a postwar Paris of black markets and fuel shortages. Many of Proust's aristocratic friends are broke. Her memoir - essentially her 1947 Paris diaries with 1977 additions and footnotes - is full of gossip, observations and opinions, many negative, of her new acquaintances, recalling a world that has been lost to time and myth making. - ADD TO CART	Lust In Translation: The Rules of Infidelity from Tokyo to Tennessee Pamela Druckerman ( Penguin Books, $15.00) This is a fun, light-hearted book on what in what many cultures passes for a fun, light-hearted topic: adultery. As the title suggests, Druckerman examines varying cultural attitudes towards infidelity. While she is the first to admit that her study is none too scientific and somewhat subjective, she does make insightful and surprising observations. The main conclusion she draws is that Americans freak out about cheating way more than the rest of the planet. The book is full of fun little observations about the sexual mores of other nations, like, for example, that the Japanese don’t consider it cheating if you pay for it. Most interesting, however, is the outsider’s perspective of our own moral code, and what many cultures would consider to be an extremist hard-line attitude towards cheating (even though we seem to be doing it as much as the rest of the globe). - ADD TO CART
The No-Nonsense Guide to Tourism Pamela Nowicka ( New Internationalist Publications, $11.95) Watch out Lonely Planet, Rough Guide and all you carbon-offsetters. Rather than a force of good, The No-Nonsense Guide makes it quite clear that there is little benefit from tourism to local communities in the developing world. On topics including all-inclusive resorts, pollution, land grabbing and paternalistic/colonialist interactions with locals, Nowicka makes a case that tourism, as an industry, should be as scrutinized as world finance or the oil industry. This is a handy little book whose intention is to raise your awareness when considering traveling abroad. Even if you don’t follow the logical conclusion, that to reduce carbon output, one must stop flying, there is much to think about before you get on your next long plane ride. - ADD TO CART	One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost Peter K. Austin, Editor ( University of California Press, hardback, $29.95) Language is a continual process of evolution; languages merge with others, shift forms, evolve and also die. This exhaustive work covers major, minor and extinct world languages, detailing how they were formed and, in some cases, how they shaped the world. The book is separated into geographical sections with a segment on each region and its myriad language groups. In the case of Africa and its imposed borders, unnatural demarcations were forced onto many African languages and dialects that did not accurately reflect the nature of cultural exchange, flux and commonality that was inherent. The piece about the now-extinct Ubyk language is particularly illuminating: with 83 consonants it is assumed to be the language with the most complex sound system, containing many single words that worked like sentences. The last known speaker died on October 7, 1992; if that's not true signification of the end of an era I don't know what is. - ADD TO CART
Hungry Planet: What the World Eats Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio ( Material World Books and Ten Speed Press, paperback, $24.95) This is a gorgeous picture book detailing the eating habits of families around the world and makes for a fascinating read. Each family is photographed with a week’s worth of food in a sumptuous layout. Plus the text describes their eating habits and favorite receipes. Other photos of the family shopping for groceries, preparing a meal, or enjoying one are also included. The differences in eating habits, budgets, and amounts of food between refugees in Chad and middle-class Americans, as well as the many other families from places such as Greenland, Bhutan, Cuba, and Kuwait, can entertain well through the dinner hour and on into the night. - ADD TO CART	Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer Peter Turchi ( Trinity University Press, $22.95) Start with a metaphor: mapmaking is like writing, a way of working out where you’re going, where you’ve been, and where you stand in relation to the world around you. Carry that metaphor as far as it can possibly go and you get a sense of what Peter Turchi has accomplished in this unique gem of a book. His treatment of maps as works of imagination, and literature as cartography of experience, yields a flow of brilliant insights about maps, literature, and the human project. Not least of its delights are the illustrations: where else will you find trail maps of the walks taken by cows in a field, a map by a 12th century monk showing the geographical relation between Europe and the Garden of Eden, or on a more sober note, General Sherman’s chart of places to destroy in Georgia? Open any page and wander in; you will get gloriously lost. - ADD TO CART
Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics Rebecca Solnit ( University of California Press, hardback, $16.95) Writer Rebecca Solnit’s keen observations are simultaneously so deep and vast, critics struggle over how to classify her: anti-globalization activist; anti-war journalist; historian; environmentalist, public intellectual. Perhaps Solnit would smile at these categories, the same way her provocative writing seems to poke holes into the amorphous notions of borders and history as nationalist ideals of political folly. Her latest collection of essays, Storming the Gates of Paradise, is Solnit distilled down into her absolute best. Nearly 40 of her most provocative essays are assembled here in a stellar collection, transversing both time and place. From Thoreau’s contemplation of slavery and huckleberries to JFK, the Soviet Union and missiles in Cuba; from discussions of landscape photography to often over-looked connections between Romanticism and the Haitian Revolution, Solnit’s reach is expansive, but never casual. Her work insists on the necessity of being aware of the history a place in order to imagine enthusiastically its future. - ADD TO CART	Travel as a Political Act Rick Steves ( Nation Books, paperback, $16.95) Rick Steves is known as the fellow who helped popularize inexpensive, independent travel in Europe. His travel shows on PBS and his guidebooks and gear are extremely popular. But, over the past few years, Steves has become more outspoken about social justice and America’s role in the world. His most recent travel show on PBS had him touring Iran in order to put a human face on a country that many in government were trying to demonize. Travel as a Political Act, addresses the many assumptions and passive acceptance that most Americans have about the U.S. society, customs and government policies. Poor countries like El Salvador, high tax rates in Denmark, European drug policy, secular Islamic countries: Steves makes the point that U.S. policy is not a model for the world, much as our leaders like to tell us otherwise. - ADD TO CART
Atmospheric Disturbances: A Novel Rivka Galchen ( Farrar Straus Giroux, paperback, $14.00) What would you do if your loved one were suddenly replaced by a simulacrum? Dr. Leo Liebenstein flees from New York to Buenos Aires then down into the glacial regions of Patagonia in search of the "real Rema," the familiar counterpart to the uncanny double who seems to have taken his wife's place. Author Rivka Galchen, MD, weaves theories of (mis)perception, meteorology, and infinite universes into Leo’s quest to find his "disappeared" wife—a term which Galchen troubles in the context of recent Argentinian history. Atmospheric Disturbances ultimately explores the simultaneously loving, paranoid and completely ordinary notion that the person you stay with is never identical to the person with whom you first fell in love. - ADD TO CART	The Savage Detectives Roberto Bolano ( Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, paperback, $15.00) Roberto Bolano, who died in 2003, and whose major works are only now being translated, has been increasingly acclaimed as the most important and original voice to emerge from the generation of Latin American writers who came of age after the magical realist “boom.” Nothing could be further from the villages of magical realism than Bolano’s Mexico City of the mid 70’s, a dingy, jivey, ultra-urban place reproduced as lovingly as Joyce’s Dublin (a conscious model). And nothing could be further from florid rhetoric than Bolano’s combination of vernacular storytelling, pop slang and high theory. The Savage Detectives is an epic, sprawling over time (following two poets from an avant-garde splinter group from the 70’s through the 90’s) and over space (as they search for a legendary poet of an earlier generation across the Sonoran Desert.) Bolano’s imaginary world is a recognizable but somewhat alternate universe in which everybody is either a writer or wannabe writer (which is, come to think of it, not that different from San Francisco). This does not mean they live in a world of otherwordly refinement. Like all Latin Americans, they suffer through history. Violence befalls them accidentally and arbitrarily, and their worst enemies are time and the dying of their hopes. This guy is the real deal: a truly great writer. - ADD TO CART
Street World; Urban Art from Five Continents Roger Gastmen, et. al. ( Abrams, $35.00) This fascinating compendium of images from international youth subcultures covers everything from punk in the Philippines to Russian biker gangs to ubiquitous NYC graffiti crews. The scope of this book is vast, though obviously it focuses on street art, which includes graffiti on all five continents as well as the vivid commercial signage for Jamaican music stands and Indian markets. There are images of kids united by soccer in a post war scarred Serbia, alongside the building of an illegal concrete skate park, girls who cover parking meter stands with knitted covers and guerilla gardeners who garden unkept urban areas by night. It is fascinating to see how the American idea of youth and rebellion changes and shifts as it is adopted by youth in different cultures and countries, each kid making their own idea of youth culture out of the ephemera of hair metal, James Dean, punk rock and hip hop. - ADD TO CART	Lightweight Backpacking and Camping: A Field Guide to Wilderness Hiking Equipment, Technique, and Style Ryan Jordan, editor ( Beartooth Mountain Press, $24.95) Lightweight backpacking has become more popular lately as new technologies have allowed for lighter equipment, leading to longer and more enjoyable hikes. Proponents of lightweight backpacking tend to eagerly proselytize and this book is no exception. The advantage here is that there are tips for gradually moving towards a lighter weight pack rather than an immediate switch. The book includes information from experts about lightweight hiking techniques and debates, such as which footwear to choose, whether to carry a tent or not, and how to cook lightly. It’s a comprehensive look at all the issues involved, including how to pack out your trash, how to survive backpacking as a couple or with young children, and basically how to do more with less. - ADD TO CART
Travels with Herodotus Ryszard Kapuscinski ( Vintage International, paperback, $14.95) Travels with Herodotus is a final and perfect summation of the travels of Ryszard Kapuscinski. Equal parts autobiography and history, Kapuscinski recounts his travels as Poland's foreign correspondent during the Communist era. Whether in India, China, Iran or the Congo, he always travels with a copy of Herodotus' The Histories. For Kapuscinski, Herodotus is not just the first historian, but also a master at reportage. Herodotus’ devotion to investigation, his inquisitiveness and his skepticism fascinate Kapuscinski. In recalling the Greek-Persian wars and the world that Herodotus lived in, Travels with Herodotus is both homage to the first historian/traveler and a long look back at Kapuscinski's own career. - ADD TO CART	The Other Ryszard Kapuscinski ( Verso, hardback, $16.95) How to make sense of those unknown peoples, the 'other' that one comes across in life. From a lifetime of travel, and influenced by the philosopher Levinas, the late, great Ryszard Kapuscinski considers European responses to the Other. His own travels have him consider questions of nationalism and race, as well as his own Otherness. Historically, fear, cooperation or exploitation are some ways peoples approach the Other. (The Crusades, ghetto walls, colonization and trade (as well as the field of anthropology) were some of the obvious results.) Adapted from a series of lectures over fifteen years, this very readable volume is a necessary primer for anyone who considers him/herself a traveler. Personal interactions are, indeed, mediated by history. "The road we are on is very important, because each step along it takes us nearer to an encounter with the Other, and that is exactly why we are there." - ADD TO CART
Firmin: Adventures of a Metropolitan Lowlife Sam Savage ( Dell, paperback, $12.00) We all know that books are a wonderful way to learn about the world; but where would we be if our knowledge of the world was derived entirely from literature? Such is the situation of Firmin, a rat born in the basement of an independent bookstore, in a nest of shredded pages from Finnegans Wake. As he gnaws his way through the classics, the literature he consumes comes to consume him. Those of you with a low tolerance for whimsy need not fear; this is as tough-minded as a fable about an anthropomorphic rodent can be. His yearning curiosity and melancholy will be familiar to book-rats everywhere. When a wrecking ball threatens his beloved bookstore home (the story is set in 1960 and anticipates the virtual wrecking-balls to come) Firmin is forced to come to grips, as we all must, with the limits of the life of the mind. - ADD TO CART	Words Without Borders: The World Through the Eyes of Writers Samantha Schnee, Alane Salierno Mason, and Dedi Felman, editors ( Anchor Books, $14.00) The flipside of American cultural dominance is our ignorance of the world’s peoples and cultures. For example, of all literary translations published worldwide, only 6% render other languages into English (as contrasted with 50% from English). This revelatory anthology begins to redress the imbalance. In Words Without Borders, 28 of the best known writers in world literature, including Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka, Jose Saramago, and Naguib Mafouz, introduce contemporary writers from their homelands, most of whom have never before appeared in English. There is so much to discover in these new voices about the taste and feel of life in countries including (among many others) Bosnia, Nigeria, Iraq, and Iran. - ADD TO CART
West of Jesus: Surfing, Science and the Origins of Belief Steve Kotler ( Bloomsbury, paperback, $13.95) After contracting Lyme disease and losing control over his body and life, Steve Kotler goes on a quest to find the source of a surf myth, “The Great Conductor,” which he’d heard about after two separate but equally brutal wipeouts. This somewhat open ended mission takes him to New Zealand, Indonesia, and finally Hawaii where he attempts to make sense of the quasi-coherent mysticism that surrounds the sport of surfing. West of Jesus provides an entertaining look into the science of belief which elegantly combines biography, travelogue and popular science. In writing from the perspective of a surfer Kotler makes the complicated neuroscience thrown in between each surf excursion a little easier to comprehend. Kotler manages to link the intense feelings of spirituality that surfing evokes to specific brain functions as well as finding the origin of the myth that started him on his journey in the first place. - ADD TO CART	The Archaeology of Tomorrow: Architecture and the Spirit of Place Travis Price ( Earth Aware Editions, $45.00) We all know that uniformity in architecture is creeping up on us on every continent, but this book by architect Travis Price features brilliant photography of both the unique and the mass-produced. The result of increasing mass-production in architecture means a tiny amount (less than 3%) of existing structures are designed by architects. Price cites Antoni Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia, Earo Saarinen’s Dulles Airport Terminal and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house as examples that inspire new architectural design. These three designs are held up as classic examples of the essential themes of stillness, movement and nature. If you’ve always dreamed of being one of the 3% who live or work in a structure designed by an architect, then this book will not disappoint. - ADD TO CART
Riding Toward Everywhere William T. Vollman ( Harper Perennial, paperback, $14.99) America is a myth. America is an imagined limitless space. America does not exist anymore. America only exists in writing and memories. Is it a masculine place? Authentic? What does it smell like? What does it feel like? "Hunkering down against officialdom, we passed through the yard at increasing speed, and off we sped, accompanied by fog, mountains and waterlined fields, with the dim dusk scrolling by, the train shuddering and groaning, the wood groaning." Turns out America is an illicit ride through a train yard hidden in a box car, or maybe it's actually a ride through the canyonlands nestled beneath shifting lumber headed towards anywhere. Riding Toward Everywhere tackles the myth of America as an 'authentic' free and free-ing place, put together by man/boys like Huck Finn, Kerouac, Bukowski, or Hemingway. Written in a forcibly iconoclastic yet deconstructive style which mirrors the Hobo lifestyle he is writing about, an aimless meandering way of life which has become a part of the myth of the American anti-hero, now used to sell cars and computers to college kids. Vollman hops trains in search of freedom, the freedom of hiding from railway bulls and cops, of figuring out who is harmless and who is murderous, of waiting for ten hours under an overpass for something to happen; a train, a cop? - ADD TO CART

Destination Art Amy Dempsey ( University of California Press, hardback, $39.95) Covering over two hundred modern and contemporary art sites, Destination Art encourages you to visit everywhere from the Watts Towers in L.A. to sculptures in Tanzania and museums in the Netherlands. Some of the destinations are well-known (the Guggenheim in Bilbao, Dia:Beacon in New York) while others will open your eyes to the art possibilities you may have been missing (the Rock Garden in India, the Spiral Jetty north of Salt Lake City). There’s information about the pieces including their history, and the artists’ backgrounds. Driving directions and admission prices are also included. The art ranges from very austere abstract structures to very personable wooden figures. With its stunning photographs this book is an enjoyable window into art you can visit. - ADD TO CART	The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art Eileen Myles ( Semiotext(e), $17.95) "I’'m not sure if I’m telling a story or unveiling my mania." Eileen Myles' first entry in this collection of essays is one of the most original pieces of travel writing ever written. Sure, there are geysers, and constant rain, muddy boots and shuttered hotels in her Iceland. But Myles' writing is like a Nina Simone concert where a familiar song is started before being broken up with another tune and some astute observation that finally lead back to the original number. Her several trips to Iceland are as much about class and gender, poetry and friendships as they are about place. Other essays on poets, artists and queer Russia are equally brilliant. - ADD TO CART
Yalo Elias Khoury ( Picador, paperback, $16.00) Khoury’s novel opens in the middle of the interrogation of Yalo, a Beiruti war criminal accused of rape, arms trafficking and planting bombs. As we read on, the story comes into focus through a series of forced confessions, as Yalo alternately denies and admits to the crimes. His story, like the city he inhabits, is repeatedly torn down and reinvented. As the pieces fill in, we get a better idea of Yalo’s and his country’s history, but any absolute truth remains elusive. The novel is at first somewhat confounding, but quickly becomes quite engaging as we assemble the pieces of Yalo’s story. Any clear-cut answers are not laid out for the reader however; whether Yalo is a violent criminal or a pitiful victim of the war and the abuses of his countrymen is left to the reader to ponder. - ADD TO CART	How to Say “Fabulous” in 8 Different Languages: A Travel Phrase Book for Gay Men Gerard Mrylot and Ted Marks ( Quirk Books, $14.95) If you’ve ever wanted to flirt with flight attendants, cruise boys, talk trash, or shop for bargains in a foreign country with your gay friends, this book will allow you to speak with ease. With sections on hair, makeup, and glamour, as well as safe sex and gay icons, this book also includes pronunciation guides and handy real-world basics like ordering food, negotiating prices, and personal introductions for French, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, and Japanese. The most interesting phrases are the euphemisms for being gay in each language with the literal English translation, such as “he’s from the third parish,” “the District 2 queen,” “slipped on an okra,” and “has dust on his ear.” - ADD TO CART
Comrades! A History of World Communism Robert Service ( Harvard University Press, $35.00) Once again, Robert Service makes the interesting more thrilling, and the curious even more hilarious. In his new book Comrades! A History of World Communism, he attempts to sum up the origins and history of the world Communist movement—the first post-USSR analysis of its kind. Service ties a fascinating thread through the October Revolution, China, Cuba—as well as the futile, but important Communist struggles in the U.S. and Western Europe. As is his style, asides and bits of information, like the fact that Khrushchev had to wear floatees because he couldn’t swim, sometimes overshadow dates and statistics. Comrades! also includes full color photographs of nearly a century of pro- and anti-Communist propaganda—worthy of a full-scale art book in and of itself. - ADD TO CART	Nazi Literature in the Americas Roberto Bolano ( New Directions, $23.95) The masterpieces by the late Chilean/Mexican writer keep rolling off the presses as quickly as the translators can render them. As with everything Bolaï¿½o produced, this is one-of-a kind; an imaginary, ï¿½value-neutralï¿½ reference work, complete with bibliography and scholarly notes. The entries do in fact constitute a kind of encyclopedia: a compendium of the ways in which the literary imagination negotiates with, rationalizes, or embraces evil; but the really scary part is the passionate and pure devotion to literature they all share, along with their repugnant politics. This survey of the Nazi literary canon that never actually existed somehow manages to be simultaneously playfully funny and deeply disturbing. - ADD TO CART
Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers Xialou Guo ( Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, $13.95) While not an erotic reference text, this beguiling novel still lives up to the promise of its title. It resembles the recent spate of travel memoirs by British or American women about finding love in distant climes; but reversing the direction of the gaze makes all the difference. A young Chinese woman, spending a year in London to study English, struggles to grasp the strange folkways she encounters, as well as the intricacies of the language. Both sets of difficulties come into play when she has her first love affair, and must come to terms with concepts like intimacy, privacy, possessiveness, romance. In the process we see a new London through her eyes, and learn something about what it’s like to be young and Chinese in this time of wild transition. Making the strange familiar and the familiar strange: isn’t that what travel (like the best fiction) is all about? - ADD TO CART