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Title: The Best American Travel Writing 2003 by Ian Frazier, Jason Wilson ISBN: 0-618-11882-9 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Not Travel -- Social Activism!
Comment: I get the "Best American" series to stay current with what some of our best writers are saying, but this year's editor has led me down the garden path.
At least 50% of the articles dwell on environmental or social causes. Yes, I suppose the writers had to travel somewhere to get their data, but their essays are not about travel; rather, they are about causes.
I will hope that, for 2004, the series publishers get a handle on things and place social essays in the "Best American Essays..." collection and reserve the Travel volume for just that.
Rating: 5
Summary: Travel on the edge
Comment: Though there are a few funny pieces in this year's travel anthology, Frazier's ("On the Rez") bent is for serious things happening in unhappy and often unlovely places. Tom Bissell's "Eternal Winter" explores the death of the Aral Sea, a hopeless Soviet-made ecological disaster with endless ghastly repercussions in a surreal landscape. Peter Chilson writes about the Tuareg rebellion at the edge of the Sahara, in Niger, which perpetually resumes with the harmattan, the dust and sand storms that cripple visibility, allowing swooping raids on merchant caravans through the desert.
Scott Carrier witnesses the Afghan view of war and life in Mazar-e-Sharif and makes a harrowing road trip to bombed-out Kabul, while Andrew Solomon, there for much the same purpose, discovers the wonders of Afghan food and hospitality.
Ecological warriors are the focus of Patrick Symmes' "Blood Wood," and Tom Clynes' "They Shoot Poachers, Don't They?" Symmes journeys along the Brazilian Amazon meeting fierce and endangered activists striving to stem the lucrative, illegal, and often deadly mahogany trade. Clynes reports on American conservationists in the Central African Republic. "Their mission was to drive out the marauding gangs of Sudanese poachers who were rapidly wiping out the region's elephants and other animals. Their authority: shoot on sight."
There are pieces on journeys made for their own sake, but these are no vacations. Lawrence Millman has a funny, scary piece on being stranded on an uncharted, uninhabited desert island - in the arctic. And Kira Salak follows the trail of doomed early-19th century explorer Mungo Park, paddling 600 miles down the sometimes very hostile Niger River in an inflatable kayak.
For lighthearted contrast there's Michael Specter's profile of rapper Puff Daddy, now a fashion designer, in Paris for Fashion Week, and Lisa Anne Auerback's "Pope on a Tow Rope," exploring Pope John Paul II's Polish skiing days.
Off the beaten track and often intense, from Wilmington, Delaware to Timbuktu, this all-around fine compilation has all-around appeal.
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Title: The Best American Essays 2003 by Robert Atwan, Anne Fadiman ISBN: 0618341617 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Short Stories 2003 by Katrina Kenison, Walter Mosley ISBN: 0618197338 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2003 by Richard Dawkins, Tim Folger ISBN: 0618178929 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Sports Writing 2003 by Glenn Stout, Buzz Bissinger ISBN: 0618251324 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 10 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Best American Travel Writing 2002 by Jason Wilson, Frances Mayes ISBN: 0618118802 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 15 October, 2002 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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