Paul Theroux celebrates fifty years of wandering the globe bycollecting the best writing on travel from the books that shapedhim, as a reader and a traveler. Part philosophical guide, partmiscellany, part reminiscence, The Tao of Travel enumerates “TheContents of Some Travelers’ Bags” and exposes “Writers Who Wroteabout Places They Never Visited”; tracks extreme journeys in“Travel as an Ordeal” and highlights some of “Travelers’ FavoritePlaces.” Excerpts from the best of Theroux’s own work areinterspersed with selections from travelers both familiar andunexpected: Vladimir Nabokov J.R.R. Tolkien Samuel Johnson Eudora Welty Evelyn Waugh Isak Dinesen Charles Dickens James Baldwin Henry David Thoreau Pico Iyer Mark Twain Anton Chekhov Bruce Chatwin John McPhee Freya Stark Peter Matthiessen Graham Greene Ernest Hemingway The Tao of Travel is a unique tribute to the pleasures and painsof travel in its golden age.
In January 2003 Nicholas Sparks and his brother Micah set offon a three-week trip around the world. An adventure by any measure,this trip was especially meaningful as it marked another milestonein the life journey of two brothers who, by their early thirties,were the only surviving members of their family. As Nicholas andMicah travel the globe, from the Taj Mahal to Machu Picchu, thestory of their family slowly unfolds. Just before Nicholas'marriage he and Micah lost their mother in a horseriding accident;a week short of Nicholas' triumphant debut as a novelist with THENOTEBOOK, the brothers lost their father to a car crash, and just afew short years later they were forced to say goodbye to theirsister who died of brain cancer at the young age of 36. Against thebackdrop of the main wonders of the world the brothers cometogether to heal the wounds of this tragic legacy and maintaintheir determination to live life to its fullest.
