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The Best American Travel Writing 2003
Edited by the acclaimed author of On the Rez, the latest volume in the annual series presents a wide-ranging anthology of the finest travel writing published over the past year, selected from a wide variety of magazines, newspapers, and websites and encompassing contributions by Geoff Dyer, Daniel Mendelsohn, Christopher Hitchens, Bruce McCall, and other notable authors. Simultaneous.
352 pages, Paperback
First published October 10, 2003
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About the author
Ian Frazier
51 books251 followersIan Frazier (b.1951) is an American writer and humorist. He is the author of Travels in Siberia, Great Plains, On the Rez, Lamentations of the Father and Coyote V. Acme, among other works, all published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. He graduated from Harvard University. A frequent contributor to The New Yorker, he lives in Montclair, New Jersey.
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
February 18, 2024
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Auerbach, Lisa Anne. "Pope on a Rope Tow" describes visits to locations in the mountains of Poland where Pope John Paul II (born Karol Wojtyla) used to visit to ski and to meditate.
Barry, Rebecca. "The Happiest Man in Cuba" details of the author's visit to Cuba with her steam-engine obsessed father. The economic conditions invite preservation and use of these engines.
Benz, Stephen. "A Cup of Cuban Coffee" despite the rarity of coffee in Cuba, the author with locals who share interesting tidbits about Cuba and ask her a lot of questions about American life.
Brink, Graham. "Stranger in the Dunes" laments the damage done to the Aral Sea near Nukus, Uzbekistan done by the former USSR setting up water-hungry cotton crops in a desert landscape.
Canby, Peter. "The Forest Primeval" accompanies Stephen Blake, a biologist who studies elephants native to the Republic of Congo and threatened by logging. They observe various jungle inhabitants.
Carrier, Scott. "Over There" navigates war-torn Afghanistan while reporting on the damaged infrastructure, supply lines, and trust of cities such as Mozar-e-Sharif, Sheberghan, and Kabul.
***Chilson, Peter "The Road from Abalak" at first glance describes a stretch of Niger's National Highway between Abalak and Agadez, which is a distance of 150 miles. The essay is a lyric collection of various aspects of Niger--politics, history, culture--united by dust moved by the wind. I want to read this every day for a week so that I can better examine the components and how Chilson artfully structures his essay on the paragraph level and sentence level.
Clynes, Tom, "The Shoot Poachers, Don't They?" Mercenaries, some of whom are more dedicated to military life than the cause of wildlife conservation, are funded by conservation groups. These particular soldiers for hire were hoping to clear out (kill) poachers in an area of Central African Republic to help preserve the life of elephants, who were the poachers' main prey.
Dyer, Geoff, "The Despair of Art Deco." I didn't like the tone and focus of this essay. Yes, the author describes Art Deco hotels in South Beach Miami, but the dominate purpose seems to be to showcase the author's wit. It was too self-aware.
Handey, Jack. "The Respect of the Men." This is an odd selection. It's not really about travel and more a little comedy bit (SNL writer) about the complexities and ridiculata of men trying to earn the respect of other men. It was insightful in it's satire, but it wasn't really travel-y.
***Hitchens, Christopher. "The Ballad of Route 66." This was an engaging read! I have done quite a bit of highway driving, so I was very interested in his depiction of life on this road. Hitchens is a great writer, may he rest in peace. I read his book _Mortality_, which I did not enjoy as much as this essay.
Maloney, Emily. "Power Trip." An American studying in japan takes a day trip to a nuclear power plant and observes various absurdities in the presentations, the attitudes of the native students, and in the situation itself."
McCall, Bruce. "Winter Cruised for Under Ten Dollars." Rapid-fire short descriptions. Satire.
Mendelsohn, Daniel. "What Happened to Uncle Shmiel?" The writer and a handful of relatives travel to Ukraine in an attempt to verify a story about their ancestors' experience during WW2 only to find that story false but learning a bit more but coming to terms that war obliterates legacies.
Millman, Lawrence. "Lost in the Arctic." The author hires two Inuits to take him to a distant island only for them to be marooned in a harsh environment short of their goal.
Rinella, Steven. "Gettin' Jiggy." A detailed description of how to fish for squid off the piers of Seattle, WA. Very slimy and inky but fun.
***Salak, Kira. "Mungo Made Me Do It." The author--a young white woman--paddles the Niger for three weeks. ALONE!
Silverstein, Jacob. "The Devil and Ambrose Pierce." This was an interesting investigation of the place where Ambrose Pierce may have died in Texas rather than in Mexico as legend has it.
***Solomon, Andrew. "My Dinner in Kabul." The author discovers a feast in war-torn Afghanistan, complete with musicians. War can create unexpected situations.
Specter, Michael. "I Am Fashion." I guess this is about a place, but it is more about a person--Puff Daddy (Sean Combs) and his carefully crafted persona, which includes his fashion choices.
Stuever, Hank. "Just One Word: Plastic." This is about the credit card industry. Yes, it's in Wilmington, DE, but this is really an article about finance / economics.
Symmes, Patrick. "Blood Wood." This is similar to the one about elephants, but what is endangered is mohogany wood. But the same kind of chaos, politics, corruption, and violence is described here in Brazil as the article about elephant poaching in Africa.
Vollmann, William T. "Where the Ghost Bird Sings by the Poison Springs." The writer strives to better understand the dynamic of the Salton Sea in Southern California and the New River / Nuevo River that feeds into the sea. His findings are inconclusive, but he documents the odd phenomenon of life and decay that exist side by side.
Auerbach, Lisa Anne. "Pope on a Rope Tow" describes visits to locations in the mountains of Poland where Pope John Paul II (born Karol Wojtyla) used to visit to ski and to meditate.
Barry, Rebecca. "The Happiest Man in Cuba" details of the author's visit to Cuba with her steam-engine obsessed father. The economic conditions invite preservation and use of these engines.
Benz, Stephen. "A Cup of Cuban Coffee" despite the rarity of coffee in Cuba, the author with locals who share interesting tidbits about Cuba and ask her a lot of questions about American life.
Brink, Graham. "Stranger in the Dunes" laments the damage done to the Aral Sea near Nukus, Uzbekistan done by the former USSR setting up water-hungry cotton crops in a desert landscape.
Canby, Peter. "The Forest Primeval" accompanies Stephen Blake, a biologist who studies elephants native to the Republic of Congo and threatened by logging. They observe various jungle inhabitants.
Carrier, Scott. "Over There" navigates war-torn Afghanistan while reporting on the damaged infrastructure, supply lines, and trust of cities such as Mozar-e-Sharif, Sheberghan, and Kabul.
***Chilson, Peter "The Road from Abalak" at first glance describes a stretch of Niger's National Highway between Abalak and Agadez, which is a distance of 150 miles. The essay is a lyric collection of various aspects of Niger--politics, history, culture--united by dust moved by the wind. I want to read this every day for a week so that I can better examine the components and how Chilson artfully structures his essay on the paragraph level and sentence level.
Clynes, Tom, "The Shoot Poachers, Don't They?" Mercenaries, some of whom are more dedicated to military life than the cause of wildlife conservation, are funded by conservation groups. These particular soldiers for hire were hoping to clear out (kill) poachers in an area of Central African Republic to help preserve the life of elephants, who were the poachers' main prey.
Dyer, Geoff, "The Despair of Art Deco." I didn't like the tone and focus of this essay. Yes, the author describes Art Deco hotels in South Beach Miami, but the dominate purpose seems to be to showcase the author's wit. It was too self-aware.
Handey, Jack. "The Respect of the Men." This is an odd selection. It's not really about travel and more a little comedy bit (SNL writer) about the complexities and ridiculata of men trying to earn the respect of other men. It was insightful in it's satire, but it wasn't really travel-y.
***Hitchens, Christopher. "The Ballad of Route 66." This was an engaging read! I have done quite a bit of highway driving, so I was very interested in his depiction of life on this road. Hitchens is a great writer, may he rest in peace. I read his book _Mortality_, which I did not enjoy as much as this essay.
Maloney, Emily. "Power Trip." An American studying in japan takes a day trip to a nuclear power plant and observes various absurdities in the presentations, the attitudes of the native students, and in the situation itself."
McCall, Bruce. "Winter Cruised for Under Ten Dollars." Rapid-fire short descriptions. Satire.
Mendelsohn, Daniel. "What Happened to Uncle Shmiel?" The writer and a handful of relatives travel to Ukraine in an attempt to verify a story about their ancestors' experience during WW2 only to find that story false but learning a bit more but coming to terms that war obliterates legacies.
Millman, Lawrence. "Lost in the Arctic." The author hires two Inuits to take him to a distant island only for them to be marooned in a harsh environment short of their goal.
Rinella, Steven. "Gettin' Jiggy." A detailed description of how to fish for squid off the piers of Seattle, WA. Very slimy and inky but fun.
***Salak, Kira. "Mungo Made Me Do It." The author--a young white woman--paddles the Niger for three weeks. ALONE!
Silverstein, Jacob. "The Devil and Ambrose Pierce." This was an interesting investigation of the place where Ambrose Pierce may have died in Texas rather than in Mexico as legend has it.
***Solomon, Andrew. "My Dinner in Kabul." The author discovers a feast in war-torn Afghanistan, complete with musicians. War can create unexpected situations.
Specter, Michael. "I Am Fashion." I guess this is about a place, but it is more about a person--Puff Daddy (Sean Combs) and his carefully crafted persona, which includes his fashion choices.
Stuever, Hank. "Just One Word: Plastic." This is about the credit card industry. Yes, it's in Wilmington, DE, but this is really an article about finance / economics.
Symmes, Patrick. "Blood Wood." This is similar to the one about elephants, but what is endangered is mohogany wood. But the same kind of chaos, politics, corruption, and violence is described here in Brazil as the article about elephant poaching in Africa.
Vollmann, William T. "Where the Ghost Bird Sings by the Poison Springs." The writer strives to better understand the dynamic of the Salton Sea in Southern California and the New River / Nuevo River that feeds into the sea. His findings are inconclusive, but he documents the odd phenomenon of life and decay that exist side by side.
July 18, 2021
Like any anthology, there are some good, some average and some bad writings involved, the bad mostly being (arbitrarily) mostly about subjects that I can't find it in myself to care about.
-Like that first entry about skiing. Like that last pollution piece about the disgusting Salton Sea.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other entries to offset those. I particularly liked the episode in Mungo Made Me Do It, by Kira Salak, where she buys and sets free two slave women. In Mali, not twenty years ago now.
Armchair travelers would be well advised to pick up probably any volume in this series if they want a quick postcard excursion to places both known and unknown. Odd adventures await!
-Like that first entry about skiing. Like that last pollution piece about the disgusting Salton Sea.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of other entries to offset those. I particularly liked the episode in Mungo Made Me Do It, by Kira Salak, where she buys and sets free two slave women. In Mali, not twenty years ago now.
Armchair travelers would be well advised to pick up probably any volume in this series if they want a quick postcard excursion to places both known and unknown. Odd adventures await!
July 21, 2021
Ian Frazier edits and puts together a strange brew of stories and subjects. If you’re looking for adventure and amazing foreign places, this is not it. These stories focus on some of the more depressing and strangely sad aspects of human nature, foreign places, and situations. Each story was well written by some of the world’s best correspondents and authors but I was happy to finish these mostly bleak stories.
January 16, 2023
I found many of the stories were not so much about travelers but experiences, and mostly bad ones, by the writers. Maybe that was the overwhelming tone to this book--people are crap and the world is being ruined by people.
February 17, 2025
The piece about Diddy aged like wine
January 21, 2026
Little free library find. Throwback and a good one. Enjoyed these.
February 4, 2019
The vast majority of these essays were focused more on political/environmental types of issues that are obviously close to the editors hearts, but it wasn't what I was expecting from a travel writing anthology. While most of the selections were well-written, I think I might have enjoyed each one more had I read it standing alone and not as part of an anthology. Put together, the repetition of general topics made them seem redundant and somewhat dull.
May 1, 2007
Each year (I usually wait for a used version on amazon) I pick up a copy of The Best American Travel Writing series. And each year there is a different editor, which for this purpose means a different person choosing the stories. And that is what makes all the difference. Being a little behind, I just finished reading 2003 Best American Travel Writing ed. by Iam Frazier.
I have to say that the 2002 version was edited by Frances Mayes most famous for Under The Tuscan Sun and both of these years have left a lot to be desired. They are too topical, too much like the editors clipped the stories for their own benefit. Too much like their own writings.
If anything, travel stories should expose the reader to diversity. After all, isn't that one of the reasons we read them ... since we can't be traveling everywhere ourselves, we use the stories, the genre, to provide us with a way of traveling without incurring the expense or taking time off from our jobs.
An editor should have the audience in mind, not just pick what are his or her favorites. And in the case of this series, at least for 2002 and 2003, they did not do their jobs as editors.
With all that said, there are still some very good stories in the 2003 book and I will probably continue to read the series (and actually I think I've already read the 2004 book and the 2005 one is on my shelf).
I have to say that the 2002 version was edited by Frances Mayes most famous for Under The Tuscan Sun and both of these years have left a lot to be desired. They are too topical, too much like the editors clipped the stories for their own benefit. Too much like their own writings.
If anything, travel stories should expose the reader to diversity. After all, isn't that one of the reasons we read them ... since we can't be traveling everywhere ourselves, we use the stories, the genre, to provide us with a way of traveling without incurring the expense or taking time off from our jobs.
An editor should have the audience in mind, not just pick what are his or her favorites. And in the case of this series, at least for 2002 and 2003, they did not do their jobs as editors.
With all that said, there are still some very good stories in the 2003 book and I will probably continue to read the series (and actually I think I've already read the 2004 book and the 2005 one is on my shelf).
September 12, 2015
Well first I want to say that there was a couple of stories from this book I really liked, unfortunately they are largely overshadowed by some other not so interesting stories and some pretty crappy editing.
I don't understand why the editor just put the stories in alphabetical order by the authors name rather than ANY OTHER ORDER but yikes. Geographical would have been better or by general subject matter, literally anything resembling a narrative would have been better.
One story compared to the Hindu Kush mountains to a vagina, several read more like some sort of campaign speech, one was about P. Diddy at fashion week (and while interesting) was about 1% about travel and probably belongs in E! Magazine. One story was about credit cards and Wilmington, Delaware...I assume I've made my point. Bleh.
I don't understand why the editor just put the stories in alphabetical order by the authors name rather than ANY OTHER ORDER but yikes. Geographical would have been better or by general subject matter, literally anything resembling a narrative would have been better.
One story compared to the Hindu Kush mountains to a vagina, several read more like some sort of campaign speech, one was about P. Diddy at fashion week (and while interesting) was about 1% about travel and probably belongs in E! Magazine. One story was about credit cards and Wilmington, Delaware...I assume I've made my point. Bleh.
February 7, 2017
A nice collection of all kinds of travel bits from a solo kayak expedition up a river in Africa to trip on Route 66 to a trip to visit the issuers of America's credit cards in Delaware. Given that the collection is now more than a dozen years old, I found it interesting how much of it seemed topical. I was particularly interested in the discussion of the effects of pollution in many areas and other ecological issues, including California's accidental desert lake the Salton Sea and the disappearance of the Aral Sea under the Soviets and the succeeding governments in the region.
February 9, 2010
The Despair of Art Deco by Geoff Dyer started out this anthology, and I did like Lost in the Arctic by Lawrence Millman, as well. But it went down hill from there... although I also liked The Happiest Man in Cuba by Rebecca Barry. I can't really recommend this group of stories.
Travel writing should be interesting. Most of this seemed on the boring side, and there was enough self-centeredness in the writing that didn't help.
Travel writing should be interesting. Most of this seemed on the boring side, and there was enough self-centeredness in the writing that didn't help.
August 17, 2016
I found this book in a free pile and was excited because I thought the summery cover was beckoning me to exotic summery type places.
It was not beckoning me to islands and palms but bizarre marginally travel related tales, the best of which was about a free tour of a Japanese nuclear plant. I also enjoyed the one about JP2 skiing but again it odd just like the entire collection.
Someone please explain to me how the Puff Daddy selection was travel writing?
It was not beckoning me to islands and palms but bizarre marginally travel related tales, the best of which was about a free tour of a Japanese nuclear plant. I also enjoyed the one about JP2 skiing but again it odd just like the entire collection.
Someone please explain to me how the Puff Daddy selection was travel writing?
September 11, 2007
It was more of a social commentary than a travel book. Not really what I expected. After reading these stories, I felt depressed. If you wish to learn about all the terrible things humans do to the environment and each other throughout the world, I highly recommend this book. Definetely not light reading.
Currently reading
November 7, 2007Absorbing this in bits and chunks when I can't sleep, and am enjoying the great variety of writing styles and locations (from dingy homestays in modern Cuba, to traveling on the Concorde with Sean Puffy Combs, to visiting a Polish historic site and determining Pope John Paul II to be a daredevil skiier by the condition of his skiis on display)
May 15, 2009
I love these collections of travel writing! This volume is a particularly good one. My favorites included "What Happened to Uncle Schmiel?" by Daniel Mendelsohn (which actually made me cry) and "Eternal Winter" by Tom Bissell about the disappearance of the Aral Sea. Each story gave a unique insight into a particular place and I found the collection inspiring.
June 8, 2010
Really good! I love travel stories. And the people who write these are not writing "I took a vacation to the caribbean"; they've gone to the ends of the earth and the hearts of jungles for all sorts of reasons. Got this at a thrift store; what a good buy.
July 14, 2011
A fantastic and eclectic mix of travel tales from partying in Paris with P. Diddy to kayaking to Timbuktu in the wilds of Africa, these stories touch the core of why we travel. A great read for travelers and those who dream of travel alike.
December 15, 2011
For the first ever with this series, it was terrible. I did not like any of the passages. Usually the editor selects at least a fee interesting articles, but I did not read any all the way through. This one can be missed.
October 16, 2007
I was surprised how many of these I had already read in magazines. Always good to see what other travel writers are up to. A great collection made even better by the welcome absence of Dave Eggers.
April 21, 2008
If this is "The Best American Travel Writing", I think I'll not be reading any more travel writing. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
December 3, 2009
Interesting, well balanced collection. Frazier's introduction is worthwhile, too.
December 11, 2012
The first story was phenomenally funny and a few were interesting. Overall a good reading experience.
May 10, 2014
A hit and miss collection of essays. I enjoyed the variety and about half of the stories.
December 21, 2011
Good writing. Some essays are better than others, but that is to be expected.
August 15, 2014
Some really good stories about places I never been with a spin I had never thought about
March 17, 2015
Only 4 women writers out of 20 or so stories! Hoping future editions better on this score.
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews