Stubbs with guns and books.

Travel Literature and Books

Book Reviews:

First Stop in the New World- a review of David Lida's quintessential book about Mexico City. First Stop in the New World, is an anecdotal joy ride through Mexico City at street level. Told in short glimpses, Lida pieces together a rich menagerie of life in a city that is predicted to bloom, prosper, and grown out of control in the 21st century. Interview with David Lida.

"The capital of the 21st century," reads the subtitle, and this prediction is the heart and soul of the book. By showing the highs and lows of life in Mexico's capital, Lida sets out to pave the way for the world's acceptance of Mexico City as the next global capital of culture and commerce.

The Drifters- This is a book by James Michner about many aspects of traveling and travelers. It asserts that traveling is not just a whimsical act of the young, but that it can become a worthy and respectable way of life for people of all ages. From The Drifters:

Gretchen suggested, 'Why don't you try India? A lot of people find the answers...the illumination...in India.'

Now Big loomis broke in: 'You would be out of your mind to waste one minute in that country. No fable of our time is more ridiculous than the one which says that India has the answer to anything.'

'I was speaking of the spirituality,' Gretchen replied.

'So was I,' Loomis said. 'I lived in India for the better part of a year....also in Sikkim and Nepal....good grass.....good conversation among the Europeans. But the illumination referred to by starry-eyed kids in Greenwich Village and Bloomsbury...it's not there. That's an illusion sponsored by half-ass professors in half-ass American colleges.'

1001 Historic Sites You Must See Before You Die is a giant compilation of photographs and short descriptions of great historic sites around the world. The book is close to a thousand pages long, weighs as much as - and sort of looks like - a brick, and was put out in collaboration with UNESCO. I was sent this book to review by its publisher, and I must say that I am happy to have received it. I have no qualms with receiving free books, and 1001 Historic Sites is a great conversational piece and can be easily be browsed through in comfort at brief intervals. It is one fine coffee table book (too bad I do not carry a coffee table with me).
 

The Royal Road to Romance was the first work of the adventurous, horizon chasing romantic, Richard Halliburton. It, essentially, is an account of a Walkabout around the world that he undertook around 1926 and later wrote down in a New Jersey mental institution.

The Royal Road to Romance is just that: the story of one man’s search for the Romance of life- not the romance of women, but the Romance of the pure, essential underpinnings of the human spirit and the quest for pure substance.

“The romantic- that was what I wanted. I hungered for the romance of the sea, and foreign ports, and foreign smiles. I wanted to follow the prow of a ship, any ship, and sail away, perhaps to China, perhaps to Spain, perhaps to the South Sea Isles, there to do nothing all day but lie on a surf-swept beach and fling monkeys at the coconuts."
-Richard Halliburton

A Vagabond Journey Around the World is the classic, seminal work of Harry A. Franck, who was life long traveler and writer. In this book, Franck describes rather than explains; show rather than tells. Simply put, he wrote this book from the hip, with the seeming intention of documenting his experiences and impressions of the world as he found it- and nothing more. His focus seems to have been more on travelling the world than writing a book, which I feel is a necessary recipe for compiling a good travel book. Travel first, write second. This book is about adventure- pure and simple. It is about the simple human urge to GO!
Photo taken from http://www.harryafranck.com/vagabond.htm

The book Rajasthan: Houses and Men is the photographic outpouring of a journey through the Rajasthan by the architect, Tito Dalmau. He takes as his theme the ways that people interact with their environment through architecture and demonstrates this with his camera. Dalmau’s mission was to show, in photographs, the Rajasthan, its ancient buildings, and its modern people moving together as a unified whole that defeats the bounds of linear time.