Having been on the road in Africa, Europe and North America since late May, it’s been hard to keep up with various non-travel events in my life (including many of my inbox messages — sorry if I’ve been slow in replying to email lately). Hence, I almost missed it when my new book, Marco Polo Didn’t Go There, suddenly appeared in stock at Amazon.com a few days ago. Since the book doesn’t officially release in most bookstores until mid-September, this caught me off-guard.

Nonetheless, I’m happy to see my new book on sale (better early than late, to be sure) and if you’re an Amazon.com shopper, I encourage you to check it out! I’ll have a more formal announcement of the Marco Polo Didn’t Go There book release (including book tour info for places like Chicago, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Kansas City, Wichita, Salina, New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles) in coming days. For now, its Amazon page has some decent introductory information. And, interestingly enough, my first piece of tie-in press about the book appeared in Italy’s La Repubblica newspaper (of all places) a few days ago.

Here is some more Rolf news from recent weeks and months:

• The 2008 edition of The Best Creative Nonfiction includes my travel-writing meta-satire “The Art of Writing a Story About Walking Across Andorra,” which originally appeared in World Hum. The annual Best Creative Nonfiction anthology is overseen by Creative Nonfiction magazine — which is interesting, since that very publication turned down the same Andorra story with a generic rejection note in 2005. I guess that goes to show that the anthology editors sometimes love what the slush-pile interns reject. Other authors of note in the anthology include Heidi Julavits, Stefan Fatsis, Pagan Kennedy, Donovan Hohn, and William deBuys.
• A couple of stories from my winter journey to South America have recently appeared on newsstands. “My Own Private Falklands” appeared in the July/August issue of National Geographic Traveler, and “Pure Brazil” (about the islands of Fernando de Noronha) appears in the September issue of Islands. Both stories were edited down from their original word-count (and thus tend to suffer a bit in the stylistic sense) but nonetheless offer an interesting window into two very different Atlantic archipelagos. Later this fall, when I have more time, I’ll post a penguin-centric gallery of my Falklands wildlife photos.
• Elsewhere in the magazine world, the August “Big Issue” of Surfer featured my essay “Vagabonding: The Lost Art of Total Immersion Travel” — which argues for slow, meaningful travel in an era of increasingly quick, micromanaged surf trips. Additionally, the September print issue of The Believer features my article “The Henry Ford of Literature” — an in-depth look at the fascinating life of a Kansas socialist publisher who sold more than 300 million copies of his books and revolutionized working-class reading habits in the early part of the 20th century.
• My summer travels included a stint in Paris for my annual creative writing workshop at the American Academy (photos and report to come later), as well as a journey across Uganda, South Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. I’ll announce more about that Africa journey when my New York Times Magazine article about the experience debuts later this fall.
• Also set to debut later this fall is my first Travel Channel hosting gig — a show about American cultural history that should air sometime on Thanksgiving weekend. I’ll share more details about that show closer to its debut date.