American anthropologist Ralph Linton wrote the following essay, which appeared in the American Mercury in 1937. Published half a decade before "globalization" became a buzz-word, it humorously illustrates how everyday routine in modern America is the sum of years of global human ingenuity. "One Hundred Percent American" There can be no question about the average...

"Once globalization and development have homogenized and sanitized the world - quite often for the best - it will no longer be possible for even the most self-indulgent and romantic among us to maintain the illusion that what we are doing is anything other than not-particularly-glorified tourism. If all the classic elements of backpacker stories...

"The rigid distinction between romantic world travelers and a locally based, sedentary population is rapidly being erased. Cities are no longer waiting for the arrival of the tourist -- they too are also starting to join global circulation, to reproduce themselves on a world scale and to expand in all directions. As they do so,...

"The same details that make foreign travel so confusing -- Do I tip the waiter? Where is this train taking me? -- turn out to have a lasting impact, making us more creative because we're less insular. We're reminded of all that we don't know, which is nearly everything; we're surprised by the constant stream...

"A life spent in transit like this is bound up with equal degrees of hope and fear. On the one hand, artists are now given the possibility of evading the pressure of prevailing local tastes in a relatively painless way. Thanks to modern means of communication they can seek out like-minded associates from all over...

"There is an almost Orientalist presumption [on the part of travel guidebooks] that the citizens of places like Cuba or Afghanistan have made a choice in rejecting globalization and consumerism. From the perspective of the disaffected Westerner, poverty is seen as enviable, a pure existence unsullied by capitalism. [ Lonely Planet: Cuba co-author Brendan] Sainsbury...

"I beg young people to travel. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Take a summer, get a backpack and go to Delhi, go to Saigon, go to Bangkok, go to Kenya. Have your mind blown. Eat interesting food. Dig some interesting people. Have an adventure. Be careful. Come back and you’re going to...

"If 19th-century travel writing was principally about place -- about filling in the blanks of the map and describing remote places that few had seen -- the best 21st-century travel writing is almost always about people: exploring the extraordinary diversity that still exists in the world beneath the veneer of globalization." --William Dalrymple, from the...

As China and America's relationship draws them ever closer together, it was inevitable that some influences would cross borders. UPI had a great photo essay dedicated to this topic: American brands in China . How do you feel when you encounter American brands abroad? My reactions have varied. In Europe, I shunned Starbucks like the...

"The accepted snobbery is that the world was great until we all started going to have a look at it as traveler, tourists and refugees. Travel writing is also part of the illusion of global familiarity, the constant stream of images from over there that flood through the media combined with air travel, telephones, faxes,...