Essays & Travelogues Books - Page 4

China Road: A Journey into the Future of a Rising Power

Rob Gifford

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 64 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.

In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong?

Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise.

The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.

As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.

“Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford’s acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China’s explosive development open readers’ eyes and reward their minds.”
–Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004


From the Hardcover edition.

Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found

Suketu Mehta

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 79 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Well written but woefully inaccurate 2 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Amazed though I am about how author tried to fit all stuff about Mumbai in this book the cost is that- without even reasoning and just mentioning facts it shows a level of inability to understand the actual ground facts and false of authority which is immature though not wrong. Being a Mumbai native does not give any one right to mention or come to indigenous conclusions with stated sense of accuracy. One needs high level of maturity and thorough knowledge to mention facts briefly but with sense of comprehensive authority.Mr.Mehta is seriously lacking these abilities and writing a book does not make one a master of subject as is understandable from this experience.Mr.Mehta needs to update his woefully inadequate sociopolitical knowledge and rewrite this book for everyone's sake and for accuracy.

Editorial Review:

A native of Bombay, Suketu Mehta gives us an insider’s view of this stunning metropolis. He approaches the city from unexpected angles, taking us into the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs; following the life of a bar dancer raised amid poverty and abuse; opening the door into the inner sanctums of Bollywood; and delving into the stories of the countless villagers who come in search of a better life and end up living on the sidewalks.

Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe

Bill Bryson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 169 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Grouchily amusing. 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This was an enjoyable, undemanding read. At his best, Bryson is grouchily funny, though not as hilarious IMO as some other reviews would have you believe. He is better when describing the rough spots of travel than its pleasures. At times, an unattractive whining tone takes over - for instance, when he complains how a particular location, like Florence, is overrun by tourists. But I'd be lying if I didn't admit to finding his skewering of the Swiss and the Austrians pretty much on target.

Three stars, because Bryson never approaches the level of a travel writer like Jan Morris, whose essays are infinitely superior.

Editorial Review:

Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies -- in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales. Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies--in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales.

Blue Highways: A Journey into America

William Least Heat-Moon

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 116 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

First published in 1982, William Least Heat-Moon's account of his journey along the back roads of the United States (marked with the color blue on old highway maps) has become something of a classic. When he loses his job and his wife on the same cold February day, he is struck by inspiration: "A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity."Driving cross-country in a van named Ghost Dancing, Heat-Moon (the name the Sioux give to the moon of midsummer nights) meets up with all manner of folk, from a man in Grayville, Illinois, "whose cap told me what fertilizer he used" to Scott Chisholm, "a Canadian citizen ... [who] had lived in this country longer than in Canada and liked the United States but wouldn't admit it for fear of having to pay off bets he made years earlier when he first 'came over' that the U.S. is a place no Canadian could ever love." Accompanied by his photographs, Heat-Moon's literary portraits of ordinary Americans should not be merely read, but savored.

The Lost Continent: Travels in Small-Town America

Bill Bryson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 288 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Only read this book if you want to develop and intense dislike for the author 1 out of 5 stars.
2 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I gave this book one star only because Amazon doesn't allow the option to select zero stars.

My husband and I have read and enjoyed many of Bill Bryson's books. In the past, we considered him one of our favorite writers. After reading this book, it will be a long time before I open another of his works.

Mr Bryson's petty criticisms of the small towns through which he drove and his obvious contempt for all things Southern will leave any American who loves her country feeling a deep disdain for all things Bryson. While reading this book, there were many times my husband and I would look at one another and ask, "What could have happened to him to make a man from the Midwest develop such a negative view of all things American?" and "Do you think this book was REALLY written by 'our' Bill Bryson?" (BTW, we no longer consider him 'our' Bill Bryson.)

I mentioned that Mr Bryson 'drove through' small towns in America because that's exactly what he describes in the book. After a quick, judgmental glimpse of a town, he bypasses it altogether as totally unworthy of his time, money, or attention.

Bryson didn't bother to visit many of the historical attractions along the way. Apparently, he was on a very tight budget. He DID, after all, borrow his mother's old Chevette for the journey. The cost of admission to these sites require him to cut back on his beloved beer and chicken-fried steak.

Last, but definitely not least, Mr Bryson showed himself to be a bigot. His contempt for 'all things white and all things Southern' along with his propensity for revisiting every bit of negative racial history every recorded during his BRIEF drive through the deep South demonstrated just how out of touch he is with the country of his birth and his, obvious, disdain for truth. He chose to ignore any progress made in race relations during the past 40 years. He chose to see, and share, his view that America is, and will always be, the country he would most like to see in 'his rearview mirror'. I, for one, welcome him to return to his country of choice and not bother to darken the doors of the home I love. The last thing the United States of American needs is one more person to describe our country in such negative terms.

Editorial Review:

An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town.

Shadow of the Silk Road (P.S.)

Colin Thubron

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Purple Prose and Victorian Nostalgia 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Thubron's prose seems tired compared to some of his earlier writing, almost as if he's forcing himself to write well. On occasion, it results in prose on the darker end of purple, very stilted to a modern ear (or at least to my ear). My larger criticism has to do with the lenses through which he sees the world: the glories of a romanticized past are juxtaposed against a sad, dysfunctional present. The pattern is old hack, and would be harmlessly irritating if Thubron wasn't following the same formula used by 19th century European writers to justify colonialism in places such as Egypt, viz. the natives are too socially and politically inept to govern themselves, and it is up to the Europeans to rescue the past from them, a past that is part of world heritage rather than that of the people who occupy the land about which one is writing. Against a glorious Silk Road of silks and ceramics in a completely fictitious past (as he notes, there was not one Silk Road but a multitude) we have a difficult present in specific rather than imaginary places, which is not recognized as fleeting in historical terms (as all presents tend to be). The author is only happy when he is with misfits, miscreants and the indigent, whose company he can enjoy because they make for his brand of colorful writing and (more importantly) because he is free to leave whenever he wants. If you actually want to get some sense of life in the places in question, look elsewhere. And if you're planning a trip along the Silk Road, do yourself a favor and don't read this book before you go. On the other hand, if you want to be reaffirmed in your belief that the 'natives' only make a mess of things, buy the book!

Editorial Review:

To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months—out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey—and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.

Istanbul: Memories and the City

Orhan Pamuk

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 46 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

neo-nostalgia 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I remember the Boston of my childhood, though I remember Marblehead (a small town to the north) much better because I actually lived there. The two places had certain sights, sounds, smells, and "feelings" that, for the most part, have vanished like a morning fog off the Atlantic. But anchoring all those sensory aspects of the places was history, a giant kaleidescope of shifting people, institutions and events that created the then present, that created the new present, and will create the next present. I can't imagine Boston or Marblehead without that history.

Orhan Pamuk chose to write his great love for his city in a strange form. He weaves himself and his personal history into the picture, but completely avoids any historical details. I wonder whom he wrote for ? If for that "western audience" he refers to so often, there is not enough history to make sense of why Istanbul became such a melancholic, declined, fallen, poor, neglected place (at least he says it was). Fires and accidents, rain and snow, the hiss of tires slipping on old cobblestone alleys in a city that once ruled a big part of the world. If he wrote for a Turkish audience, his style of describing his family and his personal behavior would probably turn them off, along with his emphasis on Turkish cultural poverty. Maybe he wanted to "send a message" to those who insist too much on "Turkishness", by mentioning the now-mostly-disappeared non-Muslim minorities quite often. Maybe, but I conclude that he wrote it for himself---full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes to come. Pamuk writes of western painters and travellers and their views of the city in the 19th century and how they influenced him. He also writes of Turkish authors and how they viewed the city, though I have never seen any of their work in translation (meaning I have no idea how they would resonate with me). I liked this gambit, though I knew nothing about those Turkish writers. What I liked best is how he describes the city itself, how he walked around it as a child and a youth, how he steeped himself in the decay of the old Ottoman heritage before all the old mansions burned, before concrete apartment blocks sprang up like toadstools to sweep away the sad wooden houses that had seen better days. I loved the chapter on smoke from the funnels of steamships in the Bosphorus, and above all I liked the dozens of black and white photos of bygone days that fill the pages. It's a world class essay of nostalgia, but done in a very new way.

It's an interesting way to describe a city and write the first part of an autobiography. It's not a travelogue. There's not a single map---as if all the readers would know the geography of Istanbul. This is not Istanbul for visitors, this is Istanbul for those who loved it (who could AFFORD to love it) back in the Fifties and Sixties, when it had not been inundated in a huge tide of immigrants or refugees from the countryside and abroad, when Turkey was a poor, slow country. I saw it, once, briefly then, when Pamuk was an eleven year old kid. The dynamic, vital, amazing city of 2008 bears little resemblance to that other Istanbul. I understand why he wrote the book; I know a little of what is lost. To know that, you couldn't find a better book than this.

Editorial Review:

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy–or hüzün– that all Istanbullus share: the sadness that comes of living amid the ruins of a lost empire.

With cinematic fluidity, Pamuk moves from his glamorous, unhappy parents to the gorgeous, decrepit mansions overlooking the Bosphorus; from the dawning of his self-consciousness to the writers and painters–both Turkish and foreign–who would shape his consciousness of his city. Like Joyce’s Dublin and Borges’ Buenos Aires, Pamuk’s Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.)

Peter Hessler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 165 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

River Town 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Reading this narrative, one feels a sense of both Mr. Hessler's sense of adverture and his eye for detail in all things. His sense of humor is crisp and dry. Having just returned from China myself, I can vouch for his extraordinarily accurate descriptions,even in spots where the armchair traveller would shake his head in disbelief. And I was immediately transported back to the Yangtze River--I could smell it, see it, and observe the uniquely Chinese character of everything around. His ability to capture the essence of Chinese personality and expression while avoiding stereotype is amazing. When I left, I thought that there was something, well, different about all Chinese, not a racial thing but a cultural and perhaps historical thing. But I could not really say what it was. Fortunately for me and for all readers who enjoy travel and cultural subjects, there is this book.

Editorial Review:

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his students who taught him about the complex processes of understanding that take place when one is immersed in a radically different society.

Poignant, thoughtful, funny, and enormously compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Centennial Edition)

John Steinbeck

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 188 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

State of the Nation 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

In Travels with Charley, Steinbeck is on a journey to discover if he still knows the country he memorializes in almost all of his other works. Steinbeck manages to express in this memoir of his journey through America a whole host of emotions that many of us still feel today, a conflicting love for our country and disgust with our countrymen, appreciation for our past and worries about what we have become. Like all of his best works, the writing is natural, warm, and often funny. This is a beautiful book that captures America, both the good and the bad, in it's pages.

can't get much better than a Steinbeck 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Steinbeck's Travels with Charley was his last book I believe. This is a memoir of John Steinbeck's drive from Long Island, New York to the tip of Maine to California and back to Long Island. Of course it's well written, as you'd expect from any Nobel Prize winner in Literature, but it also captures that turbulent time in the early 1960s when Martin Luther King Jr. was trying to achieve Civil Rights and Khrushchev was banging his shoe in the United Nations.

Editorial Review:

With his dog Charley, John Steinbeck set out in his truck to explore and experience America in the 1960s. As he talked with all kinds of people, he sadly noted the passing of region speech, fell in love with Montana, and was appalled by racism in New Orleans.

Lost on Planet China or How I Learned to Love Live Squid

J. Maarten Troost

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Total reviews: 31 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China—a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained.

Maarten Troost has charmed legions of readers with his laugh-out-loud tales of wandering the remote islands of the South Pacific. When the travel bug hit again, he decided to go big-time, taking on the world’s most populous and intriguing nation. In Lost on Planet China, Troost escorts readers on a rollicking journey through the new beating heart of the modern world, from the megalopolises of Beijing and Shanghai to the Gobi Desert and the hinterlands of Tibet.

Lost on Planet China finds Troost dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai; eating Yak in Tibet; deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as Cattle Penis with Garlic); visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead, very orange); and hiking (with 80,000 other people) up Tai Shan, China’s most revered mountain. But in addition to his trademark gonzo adventures, the book also delivers a telling look at a vast and complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think. As Troost shows, while we may be familiar with Yao Ming or dim sum or the cheap, plastic products that line the shelves of every store, the real China remains a world—indeed, a planet--unto itself.

Maarten Troost brings China to life as you’ve never seen it before, and his insightful, rip-roaringly funny narrative proves that once again he is one of the most entertaining and insightful armchair travel companions around.