One of my favorite things about teaching writing at the Paris American Academy every summer is the chance to see our students find success in print, onstage, and onscreen in the months and years that follow. A number of Paris writing students from 2006 and 2007 have recently debuted new work in venues around the...

As you read this, I'll probably be sitting in the sun at a cafe in Prague (unless it decides to pour heavily!). Yes, I'm on a short though long needed break from Madrid and my computer! A friend asked me what book I'll be taking for the flight; I've just started reading Jack Keroauc's On...

I've never been one of those uptight literary types who thinks that you have to have actually read a book in order to recommend it to others. So I feel no trepidation in suggesting Eric Weiner's new travelogue-slash-memoir The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World . The premise...

Travelers Tales recently released a great new anthology, Encounters With the Middle East , which is based on a simple (yet very worthy) premise: To humanize the people behind the news headlines in a turbulent and misunderstood part of the world. "A dizzying amount of media coverage bombards us from the Middle East," editors Jim...

When I was in Ecuador recently, I came across a novel in a bookstore with the words "Takes place in Ecuador!!" scrawled in pen on the cover. It looked like an interesting book-- something a hip, young, twenty-something such as myself might enjoy. The book was Indecision , by Benjamin Kunkel, and it is the...

I wanted to get my hands on this book the minute I read the title. However, since I didn't manage to get hold of it in the spur of my excitement, I forgot about it until recently when a fellow travel-writer handed it to me. And what a great collection of stories, well most of...

Budget Travel is a fine magazine; it’s always good for solid travel advice, even runs the occasional travel narrative. But its 20 Tips section – travel tips from BT’s readers – has always seemed to me a little weak. There are always a few good ones, but the rest are just kind of, “gee whiz”....

The UK's Guardian is one of my favorite newspapers - I think the reporters and writers of the paper are some of the best in the industry. I'm currently reading ' The Ghosts of Spain' by Giles Tremlett -- Guardian's Spain correspondent -- and it is fantastic. I have no doubt that their latest travel-adventure...

The latest volume in Houghton Mifflin's annual Best American Travel Writing series came out this month, and as always it makes for great armchair travel reading. New Yorker writer Susan Orlean edited this year, and the anthology features stories from Peter Hessler , Ian Frazier, Elizabeth Gilbert, David Halberstam, George Saunders, and Gary Shteyngart ....

. Graffiti Travel Guide: Singapore by Lim Sio Hui et al. Reviewed by Jason Erik Lundberg As the readers of this blog are well aware, we are now living in a world saturated with guidebooks. It's almost difficult to imagine a time when we couldn't go to the local library or bookshop and easily find...

DK Publishing's new "China: People, Place, Culture, History" is a wonderful addition to any travel library. But a travel-sized book it is not. Weighing in at over five pounds, it is the perfect size for a coffee table tome, hardcover, glossy, and beautiful, but it is not the book to throw in the pack and...

The V!va List Latin America: 333 Places and Experiences That People Love is what you get when you combine the writings of 140 writers and photographers worldwide who have, until now, used the medium of the internet via the V!va Travel Guides web-based community to share their stories and adventures in Latin America. The book...

This summer New Orleans writer and publisher Joshua Clark released a Hurricane Katrina memoir entitled Heart Like Water: Surviving Katrina and Life in Its Disaster Zone . Josh is an old friend from my days of living in the French Quarter in early 2005, so I won't presume to objectively review the book here --...

Above : 2007 Paris American Academy writing students relax in the classroom: (front row) Lexi Apfelbaum, Tess Vella, Catherine Butler, Rea Frey; (middle row) Annalise Proctor, Dawn Turek, Deborah Nyuli, Alethea Brown, Jenna Weber, Gabi Flam, Tyler Mollenkopf; (back row) Joanne Lappas, Razvan Marc, Dulci Pitagora, Cass McGovern, Erik Olsen, Jenny Nauss, Andrea Ronkowski, Anna...

src=https://g-ec2.images-amazon.com/images/I/513R73HEFEL._AA240_.jpg> Many multi-million dollar empires have humble beginnings. In the case of Lonely Planet, it all began with 27 cents. That is exactly how much money Maureen and Tony Wheeler , the founders of Lonely Planet, had to their names in 1972, shortly after arriving in Australia from their overland journey through Asia. The Wheelers...

Patients Beyond Borders by Josef Woodman High on the list of the average American's concerns today is health care. Costs of treatment, medication, and consultations have skyrocketed with the continued privatization of the US health care industry. Many people are having to second guess whether they can afford that dental procedure or preventative surgery when...

Sharp-eyed readers might have noticed that a Vagablogging contributor recently landed a book on the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller lists. And here's a hint: It wasn't me. Rather, Vagablogging's newest author is Tim Ferriss, who writes language-learning advice for this blog. Tim's book is called The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live...

I am proud to admit membership in the tribe of Moleskine (pronounced "mol-a-skeen-a"). I've been using the pocket-sized black notebooks for years, gathering them up and hoarding them before their popularity recently surged; they are portable and fit perfectly in your pocket, their hard (but not too hard) covers give enough support to write anywhere,...

There are nearly a dozen guidebooks to Germany, and over the three-plus years I’ve lived here, I’ve traveled with almost all of them. Only a few are worth your travel dollars. Here are my top five. (Vagabonders will do best with the first three.) Rick Steves’ Germany & Austria 2006 The Rundown: Minus the Austria...

Need a book to read (and swat at mosquitoes with) on the float down the Mekong? Or perhaps inspiration for the commuter train rider, the breed of cubicle dweller covertly stashing funds away in anticipation of resignation day and leaving the world of paisley ties and stale office coffee for good? National Geographic has composed...