The Best American Travel Writing 2017

Cover Story: An interesting essay on an American with Turkish heritage on assignment in Turkey, and her struggles to integrate the social mores of her ancestral culture with her American upbringing, especially the Muslim dictate for women to wear a head scarf. A good exploration of the question of personal authenticity vs. respecting the culture and country you are visiting.

Many of these essays are equally thoughtful, of people visiting another country, another city, another culture, than the one they were born into. What I love about travel writing is the syncopation of the exterior and the interior journey. The mind is always behind the body as it relocates, struggling to catch up and adjust. I think it is this process of adjustment show more that is so fascinating, the things we learn in a new place, how a new country makes us change our thoughts and ways. show less

As an armchair traveller, I look forward to the yearly release of ‘The Best American Travel Writing.’ The 2017 edition by Lauren Collins lived up to my expectations.

Collins has included essays from publications as diverse as ‘The Virginia Quarterly Review,’ ‘BuzzFeed,’ and ‘Creative Nonfiction,’ to the usual mix of ‘New Yorker,’ ‘NYT,’ and ‘Harper’s Magazine’ offerings.

I confess that most of the authors are unfamiliar to me, but with the wide variety of style and subject offered, I had no trouble finding essays that I enjoyed reading. I found Tom Bissell’s story, “My Holy Land Vacation,” exploring the connections between the US religious Right and Israel thought-provoking. But it was Kantor and show more Einhorn’s “Refugees Hear a Foreign Word: Welcome” that I found most intriguing.

I can give the potential purchaser a list of others that I particularly enjoyed, but, perhaps, more to the point would be a quick topic list: whale hunting in Alaska, locating a plane wreck in the mountains of Bolivia, and hunting mycorrhizal fungi. The offerings are varied and most, if not all, are both entertaining and informative.

(A free review copy was provided by the publisher.) show less

I am a big fan of travel writing, and certainly enjoyed the set of tales and adventures offered by the authors who contributed to the 2017 edition. I do read a lot of this type of book, and have to admit that these are some of the best written. However, they are not necessarily the ones I enjoy the most, or find the most interesting. One complaint - the publishers have cheaped out on type set and print, so the font is very small and closely spaced. This makes it difficult to read and detracts from the enjoyment of the book. Last words: Its a good read for the armchair and actual traveller alike..

3.6/5