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| The Best American Travel Writing 2008 (The Best American Series) | 
 enlarge | Creators: Anthony Bourdain, Jason Wilson
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $8.38
You Save: $5.62 (40%)
New (37) Used (6) from $8.11
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 6731
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.5 x 1
ISBN: 0618858644
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.5408
EAN: 9780618858644
ASIN: 0618858644
Publication Date: October 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: 100% Brand New! - Ships Today! Identical to Amazon's book in every way. Flawless! Not a cheap Remainder or Book Club Copy! *We recommend Expedited Shipping option for much faster mail delivery
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Product Description
In his introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2008, editor Anthony Bourdain writes that the pieces that "spoke the loudest and most powerfully to me were usually evocative of the darker side, those moments fearful, sublime, and absurd; the small epiphanies familiar to the full-time traveler, interspersed by a sense of dislocation?and the strange, unholy need to record the experience." With this in mind, Bourdain and series editor Jason Wilson have assembled a wide-ranging and wonderfully eclectic collection that delves headlong into those darker moments and subtle realizations, looking to absorb, provoke, and offer a moving record of what it means to travel in the twenty-first century.
Here you will find Seth Stevenson's extraordinary experience of "Looking for Mammon in the Muslim World" as he makes his way through sweltering and paradoxical Dubai. Exotic tastes and larger-than-life personalities abound as Bill Buford accompanies the chocolate maker Frederick Schilling to the rain forests of Brazil. And on the other side of the world, Calvin Trillin trolls Singapore for the ultimate street food, while Kristin Ohlson delves into the harrowing challenges faced by proprietors of restaurants in Kabul, Afghanistan.
The twenty-five pieces in this collection have their fair share of the absurd as well. David Sedaris explains the hilarious highs (sundaes) and woeful lows (sobbing with your seatmate) of flying Business Elite. Gary Shteyngart goes "To Russia for Love" during St. Petersburg's vodka-soaked wedding season. And Emily Maloney gets up close and personal with her fellow travelers ? and their massage devices ? in a South American hostel.
Culled from an amazing variety of publications, "the writing in this volume is so vibrantly good, you'll feel like you've armchair-traveled around the world" (Chicago Sun Times).
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| Customer Reviews:
 Love this collection! October 27, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I loved almost every piece in this collection. The River is a Road is amazing. Dark Passage is amazing. David Sedaris' piece... amazing. I read through this way too quickly. Must go back and really savor some I went over too fast!
 The problem is corrected October 17, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
The problem of misprinting disclosed by Terri Ph.D. below seems to have been fixed. I received my copy of this book today, and it contains none of the problems she discussed. Thanks to Terri Ph.D. for the helpful warning, but the problem appears to have been corrected, so don't be discouraged now from purchasing this excellent collection.
 Missing/Wrong Pages - Wait until they get it right! October 7, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
I pre-ordered the book and was excited when the book finally arrived. I settled in reading in bed and then I got to page 46 and had a rude shock. The next page was numbered "45" with a different title. The next 5 chapters were not travel stories but science articles! This went until page 108, where it then went to page 111, and back to the travel stories. ARGH! I contacted Amazon and they swiftly sent me another copy, which I got today. It has the SAME problem! Stay away from the book until they FIX the problem! I love this series and the writing was great, but wait.
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