Travelers whose interest goes beyond the latest luxury hotel or high-end cruise line will adore this collection, since most of its essays concern unorthodox voyages. None come from travel magazines, although several were published by adventure magazines Outside
and National Geographic Explorer. Guest editor Frazier's selections range from sidesplitting ("Pope on a Rope Tow" by Lisa Anne Auerbach, concerning John Paul II's Poland, published in Outside) to tragic (Tom Bissell's "Eternal Winter," about the death of the Aral Sea, printed in Harper's). The best pieces, such as Scott Carrier's "Over There" (also from Harper's), contain a good mixture of humor and misfortune. Some stories have precious little to do with travel, like Hank Stuever's excellent "Just One Word: Plastic," first printed in the Washington Post Magazine. Writing about the American relationship with credit-card debt, Stuever focuses on the town of Wilmington, Del., where he and millions of others send their interest payments every month. If there's a slant to the collection, it's environmental. Many of the pieces deal directly or tangentially with the degradation of a faraway ecosystem or the demise of a species on someone else's continent. As Frazier says in his introduction, he believes travel writing "is environmental by definition; the travel writer is unavoidably stuck with relating the sights and smells and general chaos he or she happens to find." The book's loose definition of the travel genre means it will appeal to any reader who enjoys high-quality nonfiction. (Oct.)
