Fortunate is the man who has found his “favorite place on earth.” William Scott Wilson, noted translator of Japanese classic Samurai texts, is such a man. It is the Kiso Road, an ancient trade route that meanders through mountains... Read More

The Inland Sea of Japan, described by Donald Richie, is “a nearly landlocked, lakelike body of water bounded by three of Japan’s four major islands,” a place where “history lives and superstition is truth.” This is a welcome... Read More

So is it true, as jokester-man Stephen Colbert attests, that there is a laugh to be gotten on nearly every page of Ayun Halliday’s book about her pre-internet world travel misadventures? A random test is called for. Open book. Page 89.... Read More

So Bobby from Dearborn in Michigan and Katya from Dnipropetrovsk in Ukraine (“never the Ukraine,” she scolded) meet on the E.T. ride at Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, flirt for an hour or so, exchange email addresses, say... Read More

Indonesia, the largest nation in Southeast Asia, is an enigma. The nation is not a singular landmass, like most other nations. It is some 17,500 islands, about half of which are uninhabited, scattered along the equator above Australia.... Read More

The metaphorical temptation is unavoidable when it comes to delivering critical judgment on Marc Beaudin’s wedding of prose and poetry in a near fanatical paean to hitchhiking, that most humble manner of travel. So here’s a thumbs... Read More

In 1847, Taos, New Mexico, in the parched hinterland of the nation’s newest territory, was about as remote as it got in America. It was not, however, an unlikely location for a revolt against America’s heavy-handed takeover of what... Read More

The dozen literate and usually affluent hunters and fishermen in the South during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries whose writings comprise this anthology depict an environmental sensitivity that has been undervalued, Jacob F.... Read More