The Best American Travel Writing

This book contains several interesting pieces on travel as well as articles about activities related to specific geographical places. I am a fan of Ian Frazier's, especially his book On the Rez, and was glad to see that he was editing this collection. There are three pieces that stand out for me. The first one is called 'Getting Jiggy' and it is about folks who get together on the Seattle area piers and jig for squid. The piece reads like a funny ethnography. The second piece is called 'The Forest Primeval' and is a reprint from the original in Harpers Magazine. It is about the Congo - - its people, politics, animals, and current issues. The article describes the horrific problems with forest elephant poaching. To date, 700,000 elephants have been poached from this area., Because elephants are the kingpin of forest life, the entire ecological system is off-balance. There is also a lot of violence in the Congo. "Every Tom, Dick and Harry has an AK 47". This is one of the reasons that forest elephants are being killed at such a high rate. I learned that elephants are able to communicate by infrasound below the range of human hearing. This way they are able to avoid human contact. Forest elephants look different from Savannah elephants as they have chocolate brown skin. They also have a different diet. I learned that chimps can mimic antelope calls in order to trap and kill them - - not so different from human beings. Between the logging, civil wars and poaching, much of the forest is gone except for designated wildlife areas. I found this the most interesting article in the book, by far. Another essay I enjoyed is called 'Power Trip'. It is about a woman who enjoys going to freakish places. She once went on a free trip to a mayonnaise factory. She is now planning to go on a free trip to a nuclear power plant. I don't think that a nuclear power plant is particularly freaky but it is a pretty freaky way to spend one's vacation. I think Ian Frazier did a good job of picking out diverse and interesting articles for this collection.

This is one of the best books I've read in years. Every night I would randomly open to a different story and be transported. I think the title is a bit misleading, though. This is not full of tourist stories. They are just very well-written articles that happen to take place in a land foreign to the author. For instance, a Jewish woman's journey to the Ukraine to uncover the story of relatives that were killed by the Nazi's. Not all the stories are quite so serious, in fact there is one by Jack Handey (Saturday Night Live writer) about a men's camping trip that was absolutely hysterical. For anyone who values great writing and well-told story, you will definitely appreciate this book and the others in the series.