"Like embassies, five-star hotels go to great lengths to isolate, and insulate, themselves from the host country. It is possible to spend many days at a five-star hotel engaged in all sorts of productive activities — holding meetings, eating meals, exercising, getting married, watching movies — without ever stepping foot in the actual country where...

"Travel, at its best, transforms us in ways that aren't always apparent until we're back home." --Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss (2008)

"Space and time, the two dimensions that we humans inhabit, are closely linked. 'Landscape is personal and tribal history made visible,' wrote the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan in his book Space and Place . What he means, I think, is that places are like time machines. They transport us back to years past. As Rebecca Solnit...

"Culture is the sea we swim in -- so pervasive, so all-consuming, that we fail to notice its existence until we stop out of it. It matters more than we think." --Eric Weiner, The Geography of Bliss (2008)

Recent weeks have seen me travel out to Bermuda for World Hum , across Kansas for The Believer , and off to Russia for Afar ; articles about these experiences will debut in coming months. Here's what else has been going on for me in the travel-publishing world: My Italian publisher, Ponte alle Grazie ,...