href="https://www.processmediainc.com/press/mini_sites/getting_out/"> Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America by Mark Ehrman. Reviewed by Jason Erik Lundberg Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (previously mentioned here ) is volume 2 in Process Media's Self-Reliance series, and aspires to be an all-purpose guide for expatriation from the USA. Written with a pessimistic slant toward the current...

Lois on the Loose , by Lois Pryce Reviewed by Diana Moxon Lois Pryce’s debut travelogue, Lois on the Loose , details her solo motorcycle journey from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego’s town of Ushuaia. Bored to distraction by office life in London, Lois decides she needs to find adventure before she is consumed by...

Brother One Cell , by Cullen Thomas In the early 1990's, Cullen Thomas was a middle-class American 23 year-old living the post-collegiate dream of international travel: pick-up basketball games inside Beijing's Forbidden City; fever-stricken hikes up the Rif Mountains in Morocco; riding the rails across Russia on the Trans-Siberian Express; teaching English in the booming...

Sometimes the best travel writing isn’t called “travel writing,” and chances are you won't find it in the travel section of your local bookstore. Autobiographical works such as Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies and Maya Angelou’s All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes – aside from being personal favorites – are beautifully written stories of journeys, both...

Although the Books page of RolfPotts.com outlines my contributions to a number of literary travel anthologies in recent years, it doesn't mention my appearance in three small-press fiction anthologies between 1999 and 2002. This is because, until recently, I never even knew these books existed. All of the stories in question were originally written when...

Last week, the Campaign for the American Reader featured Vagabonding in its "page 69 test." This blog project, which is an independent initiative encouraging people to read more books, tests Marshall McLuhan's old assertion that you should choose your reading by turning to page 69 of a given book and -- if you like it...

Code Green , by Kerry Lorimer Reviewed by Kristin Van Tassel Lonely Planet’s recently published Code Green , a guide to ecologically responsible world travel, is an important addition to their substantial collection of travel service literature. Compiled by Kerry Lorimer, Code Green features close to 100 destinations—spanning Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, New...

[ Above : Allen Ginsberg performing during his 1966 "Wichita Vortex Sutra" journey.] For the second month in a row I have literary criticism appearing in The Believer -- and my new essay, " The Last Antiwar Poem ," moves beyond travel themes to discuss the poetry of Allen Ginsberg. As the American literary community...

How One Egyptian's Bad Haircut from a Greeley, Colorado Barber in 1949 Provided Ideological Fuel for 9/11 Discussed : Sayyid Qutb's experience in Greeley, Colorado, bad haircuts, the anthropology and sociology of tourist behavior, the weirdly colonialist assumptions of post-colonialist scholars, the idea that Arabs can be just as touristically dorky as their American counterparts,...

In the Sierra Madre , by Jeff Biggers Reviewed by Sara Levine “The Sierra Madre. No other mountains in the world posses such a timbre of intrigue and wonder.” So opens Jeff Bigger’s book In the Sierra Madre , and so he would like us to believe. In 1998 author Jeff Biggers and his companion...

I'm happy to announce that "Tantric Sex for Dilettantes," my India travel tale from Perceptive Travel , was selected by Tim Cahill for inclusion in the 2006 edition of Houghton Mifflin's Best American Travel Writing , which came out this month. This is the first time I've had a story among the main selections of...

I've long been looking forward to the release of Lonely Planet's latest literary anthology, Tales from Nowhere: Unexpected Stories from Unexpected Places -- not just because it contains one of my new stories, but because I found the theme so compelling. As editor Don George says in the introduction, "Nowhere is a setting, a situation...

I have short pieces appearing in two new books from Travelers' Tales -- "Mandu Rolf Bap," a food sidebar appearing in Susan Brady's The World Is a Kitchen: Cooking Your Way Through Culture ; and "Embracing Unpredictability," a travel tip section in Tim Leffel's Make Your Travel Dollars Worth a Fortune: The Contrarian Traveler's Guide...

[ Above : Rolf poses with students and teachers from the 2006 Creative Writing Workshop at the Paris American Academy.] I've been so busy with travel this summer (journeying through Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and the Czech Republic) that I never properly reported on the creative writing classes I taught at the Paris American...

My sister, Kristin Van Tassel, has reviewed some new travel books for World Hum in recent weeks, including Mark Twain: On Travel , edited by Terry Mort; Mark Twain’s Helpful Hints for Good Living: A Handbook for the Damned Human Race , from the University of California Press; and J. Maarten Troost's Getting Stoned With...

I was pleased to learn recently that Vagabonding is included among the influential books mentioned in the newly released You've GOT to Read This Book!: 55 People Tell the Story of the Book That Changed Their Life . Edited by Chicken Soup for the Soul guru Jack Canfield, You've Got to Read This Book! explores...

Women Who Run , by Shanti Sosienski Reviewed by Melanie Mock The runner I most admire is my sister, Amy. She hadn't run a step -- save for PE class -- until several years ago, after the added weight of birthing three kids sent her shuffling to the track in cotton shorts and too-small shoes....

. Tales from the Expat Harem: Foreign Women in Modern Turkey Edited by Anastasia M. Ashman and Jennifer Eaton Gokman Reviewed by Aly Young As a self-proclaimed travel freak currently teaching English in Korea, I love venturing into new places and letting the unknown surroundings stimulate my senses. I am particularly curious to hear how...

In this week's "Traveling Light" column at Yahoo! News , I take a look at Jeffrey Tayler's latest literary journey, River of No Reprieve , which takes the author down the waters of Siberia's remote Lena River, home to sprawling wildernesses, dying villages and a brief white-summer season known for its wind storms and freezing...

Warning: Failure to Buy This Book Could Result in Death or Serious Injury. Mark Batty Publisher: New York, 2005. Reviewed by my nephew Cedar Van Tassel, who is seven years old This is a book about warning signs. The author wrote the book because he thought warning signs from other countries are neat. The book...