Below are reviews of books I've read recently that I liked or loved. I’m not one to read something, decide it is crappy and then tell the world why I think it was a waste of a tree. This page is just to let friends know about books that they might enjoy. GO TO THE LIBRARY first and if you just NEED to own a book, shop for used books at a local bookshop. There are some great deals on hardcover and lightly used paperbacks and it supports a local business. Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, et al… have great selections, prices, and all the new books, but they are driving the small bookstore owners out of business. So, if you can, shop at the little stores first or see if they can maybe order a used copy of what you’re looking for. Also, check out Project Gutenberg for interesting and free reading - 40,000+ English titles to download and read at no charge.
Into the Unknown: The Remarkable Life of Hans Kraus (Paperback), by Susan E.B. Schwartz, 306 pages, iUniverse, Inc., 2005, New York, ISBN: 0595357520
In the summer of 2006 I spent a week climbing with our usual group of misfits in the Shawangunks of New York State. On our second day there, we hopped on what was said to be THE ultra classic route: High Exposure. It had a relatively low rating (5.6 YDS), but was crazy exposed, with a reach around a blind corned and then a scramble onto a face leaving nothing but 150’ of air between you and the ground. Later, when I found out that it had first been ascended by a NYC doctor named Hans Kraus using a hemp rope and soft pitons (in the 1940’s), I was duly impressed. When I saw a biography of the guy on a store shelf a year later, I naturally picked it up. It took me some time to wade through my “to read pile”, but when I finally cracked it open, I couldn’t put it down.
Kraus was born Austria and his family fled to Switzerland just prior to World War I. As a young man Hans fell in love with the mountains during outings with his father and learned to climb in the Dolomites. (One trivial yet interesting note: as a child, Hans was taught English by James Joyce) The family returned to Austria with Hans in the 1920s and instead of following his father into the lucrative family shipping business, Kraus went to medical school and trained in Orthopedic Medicine, eventually establishing himself as a successful surgeon. Just as Germany invaded Austria, the entire Kraus family (each of Hans’s parents had a Jewish parent and Austria under NAZI rule wasn’t safe for them) immigrated to New York City and Hans had to start his medical career all over again.
Hans missed the mountains and climbing of Europe, so it wasn’t long before he met and started climbing with Fritz Wiessner, a world renowned mountaineer who had ascend to within 800’ of K2’s summit in the 1930’s. What follow was an explosion of rock climbing in New York and on the East Coast led by Kraus and Wiessner.
While the man’s impact to the world of American rock climbing was interesting, I found that the historical frame of time in which he lived, the people that he interacted with, the world events that unfolded seemingly in his lap, and his advances in sports medicine and back pain really drew me to the man. Dr. Kraus was called to White House meetings with President Eisenhower and was instrumental in starting the President’s Council on Physical Fitness. He secretly (from the press and American public) became JFK’s back doctor and worked with President Kennedy for over two years to correct the damage wrought by injury and two disastrous back surgeries. In addition to the President, he had as patients a long list of other celebrities including Olympic medallists, Arthur Godfrey, and Katharine Hepburn. He became one of the fathers of sports medicine and physical medicine and rehabilitation.
While Kraus’s story was an amazing read, the author, Susan E.B Schwartz, left me wanting more detail and fact. Mrs. Schwartz was a friend of Dr. Kraus and he approached her to write his biography. Consequently, she pulled a few punches and left out some probably messy facts that left the reader reading between the lines to decipher chronologies and certain peoples’ place in Dr. Kraus’s life. The thing for me in reading biographies is I want ‘warts and all.’ We are all imperfect and to leave that imperfection on the editing table doesn’t do justice to the man or to the reader. While looking for a book image for this review I came upon a website by Franz Kraus, Hans’ younger brother that points out some problems with Schwartz’s biography, including pocket psychoanalyzation, errors with names dates and places, and some blatant misinterpretation of facts. I will include the entire text by Franz Kraus here. Overall I give the story of Hans Kraus an A+, but the writing gets a C.
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism, by: Thomas Kohnstamm , Three Rivers Press, New York, 2008, 288pages, ISBN-10: 0307394654
My loathing for Lonely Planet Guide Books (LP) is profound. I have discussed this issue a number of times on addictedtocookies and when I heard some press about a former LP writer digging dirt about their practices and guides I was onboard to buy the book without hearing another word. I picked up my copy on a recent trip to the US and finished it on the plane ride home and before bed the next night -I really liked it.
While I did enjoy the exposé part of the book discussing LP’s questionable practices concerning the payment of writers and how research for the guides is conducted and I appreciated Kohnstamm’s acknowledgement that because of the existence of guide books, LP in particular, hidden treasures on the road are now few and far between because of what has become known as the “Lonely Planet Trail,” what really held my attention and interest was Kohnstamm’s self-deprecating sense of humor. He excels at describing people and places that one ordinarily wouldn’t want to meet, sleep with, or go to. Though Kohnstamm does lapse into frat-house war-story mode a couple of times too many and seemingly gets more action than Ron Jeremy in 1978, his story and his humor make up for those lapses in discretion and style.
The basic premise of his tale is that he leaves a Dilbert/Office Space-like existence one night on a whim (there, but for the grace of God, go I...) to live the dream of travel writing for the largest and most well known guide book company on earth. What he gets is an object lesson in the economics of being under-funded, hungover, and overworked in a foreign country. Kohnstamm finds himself in all sorts of situations that makes one wonder about his level of common sense, naiveté, and/or poor judgement, but his misery makes for a fine story. Although the author has travelled extensively in South American (speaking both Spanish and Portuguese), he seems to get himself into situations that would make anyone any average-Matt’s Spidy-Sense tingle: Sharing a flat with a "model" who is working at a sting of tourist clubs on the beach in Brazil – how does that not scream hooker?!? On what planet does cheating on an Austrian Amazonian blond twenty-something and getting caught by said young lady NOT lead to a beat down? Who know that Brazilian cops patrolling the shore at night MAY be corrupt?
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell? makes for great beach reading or arm-chair traveling and I am not at all sorry for buying it and contributing to the author’s further delinquency.
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Fight Terrorism and Build Nations...One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin, 338 pages, Viking/Penguin, New York, 2006, ISBN-10: 0670034827
On the surface this is just a biography of one Greg Mortenson, a former Nurse and climber who happens to build schools in the remote mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan. But once going it turns out to be so much more that just memoir of some dude from the West Coast.
In 1993, Greg Mortenson attempted to climb K2 via a little used and dangerous route. After more than 70 days on the mountain and after rescuing a seriously debilitated climber from the upper mountain, Mortenson was utterly spent and had to descend the mountain, giving up his bid for the summit. After getting lost during the trek out, he stumbled sick and exhausted into a small and village WAY off the trekking trail. He was taken in by the village headman and was nourished back to health. Upon leaving the village, he promised to return, as so many in the past ha done, to build a school. What set Mortensen apart was that he honored his promise.
After months of saving, typing grant letters on an old typewriter, posts requesting funds for the project, and dead ends trying to raise money, Mortenson by chance encountered Jean Hoerni, a Swiss Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and convinced him to put up the balance of the money for the school. The book highlights how even after the money was in hand, there were still frustrating obstacles to overcome to get a school for the village built. The amount of sheer will, perseverance, and single mindedness that Mortenson displayed is inspiring. As I read this book, I got more and more juiced to do something for the cause myself or find some little thing in the world that I could make better. I loved this book and it is one of the few books that I have read in the past couple of years that makes me think that may be a glimmer of hope for humanity yet.
I will say that while Mortenson get equal billing, David Relin wrote the book and it is at times an almost worshipful account of Mortenson and his projects. Relin acknowledges this in the prologue and a little objectivity is the only thing that would have made this book better.
lue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, by: Tony Horwitz, Picador, 2003, 499pages, ISBN-10: 0312422601
I am not one to have sea-lust. When at the beach, I like to either be under the waves with a tank on or in the shade getting very drunk, but now and again I like to escape onto the salt spray splattered foredeck of my mind and read a little something nautical. I love Horwitz’s work and jumped right on a $7.50 copy of Blue Latitudes when I saw it at a decent used bookstore in Huntington Beach, CA. The book is a fine read about Captain James Cook's three epic 18th-century journeys in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Horwitz retraces many of the famous explorer’s steps well as having a few adventures of his own – meeting the king of Tonga.... He is at his best when discussing Cook the man and the men of his crew. Horwitz gives these men a voice and a face. He does not, however, shy away from the social and environmental ramifications of Cook’s explorations and makes it a point to compare pre-contact Polynesian society to that of today on many of the islands Cook encountered. Horwitz is hysterical and that balances some of the horrific consequences that he writes about: Christian missionaries decimating native cultures, the loss of language and identity, and the ravages of European venereal disease.
The book left me wanting to know more about Cook and his men as well as visit some of the destinations covered in its pages – all that a travelogues should be.
So, I am perusing my favorite bookstore after work one day and happen upon a magazine that I had never seen before - MONOCLE. Hmmm… There was a bicycle wheel on the cover and articles about bikes interspaced with design and articles about global politics. I have a mistress and she has two wheels, so anything that is smartly bike related catches my attention. I sat down, read a little and fell in love. The premiere issue of Monocle was launched February 15th. 2007 and the bike issue happened to be the third issue of the magazine. Monocle is headed by Tyler Brûlé, a Canadian-born journalist who also writes a good weekly editorial for the International Herald Tribune and has some serious chops as a journalist and writer: BBC, The Guardian, Stern, The Sunday Times, Vanity Fair, runs a design firm, and was shot by a sniper while covering the war in Afghanistan…
The magazine is stylish, insightful, intellectual, laid out like a good monthly should be with lots of wide ranging and concise articles, well-designed fonts (I grow nerdier every day…), and the pages aren’t littered with flashy advertising. The cover price is somewhat steep at 12Euro, but it is more than worth it. No complaints.
Blink, by: Malcolm Gladwell, Back Bay Books (Little, Brown), New York, 2005, 320pages. ISBN 0-316-01066-9
As I do not typically read psychology tomes for pleasure, so this book sat on my to-read shelf for over a year and a half after a buddy gave it to me before I picked it up to give it a quick chance. I am really glad I did as it was insightful and hummed along without getting bogged down in statistics or references to the DSMIV abnormal psych handbook. Gladwell’s book opens with a detective story concerning the purchase of an ancient statue by the Getty that initially fooled a group of art experts who believed it was genuine. It was later shown to be a fake by another group who took one look at it and somehow subconsciously knew it was not as advertised. He calls this fist glance decision making “thin-slicing” or ”blinking” and gives a bunch of great examples of how this techniques is and can be used in things ranging from war games (very cool bit, but wish there was more…), predicting physician malpractice lawsuits, and predicting divorce. Not a bad read for a morning train commute or for a rainy weekend.
The Undercover Economist, by: Tim Harford, Little, Brown. 2006, ISBN 0-19-518977-9
Harford is defiantly a free market champion and reading The Undercover Economist is partial an introduction to his take of the virtues of globalization and barrier free international trade. You don’t get bogged down in it though and the book’s pace clips right along. I bought this book on a whim. I was in a Hamburg bookshop, drinking coffee and reading for free. His introduction points out that the reader is probably doing just that and asks you to ‘this one time’ to buy the book. I laughed and it hooked me. I was not sorry. His writing concerning the real cost of coffee and why poor countries stay poor was both entertaining and enlightening. This book, like Freakonomics, doesn’t use technical jargon to over complicate the premise and is an insightful read.
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything, by: Steven Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, 336pages, William Morrow, New York, 2006, ISBN 0-06-123400-1
Freakonomics is one of those books that helps you see things in another light: Why do crack dealers live with their mother? I had never thought of it before, but after reading Chapter 3 of this book it all seems so obvious… I read this last Christmas in a cabin in the Oregon woods. I was relaxing and not trying to exercise my brain. Levitt and Dubner’s book got me to think without drilling their hypothesis or particular spin into me. This is not heavy economic theory in a dry textbook, but a lively read that applies the universal truth concerning reward for action to various facets of everyday life. I loved the chapter dealing with information control as applied to the Ku Klux Klan and real-estate agents. A must read.
Miles
from Nowhere: A Round the World Bicycle Adventure,
by: Barbara Savage, 324pages, Mountaineers Books, 1985, ISBN-10: 0898861098
I found listing and synopsis for this great book at the Newport Beach Public Library while looking for a volume to feed my armchair travel appetite. It was out for months and I finally read it only after I received a used copy as a Christmas gift. Mrs. Savage wrote in a journal style that is engaging and gave me a sense of training and peddling along with her as she faced crappy weather, possibly rabid monkeys, new people, vivid landscapes and the freedom of bike travel. The indomitable spirit that both she and her husband Larry displayed as the third-world threw all its misery at them is remarkable to read about. By the end of the book you feel like Barbara and Larry Savage are your best friends that are sending you anticipated progress reports from the road as they make their way. This volume has become a classic in bicycle touring circles and although a few years old the writing isn’t dated one little bit. I highly recommend this book for any cyclist, trekker or sofa-bound adventurer. One note: The back cover of the dust jacket gives away the end. Don’t read it or Google the book until after you have read it cover to cover.
The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, By: Michael Pollan, 464pages, The Penguin Press HC, 2006, ISBN: 1594200823
I was listening to NPR one afternoon (Stop laughing at me!!) and heard this guy talking about corn and its role in our everyday lives. I was amazed with what he had to say and wrote down his name and the title of the book that he was discussing. I ordered it a few days later and was frightened, amazed, and enthralled while pouring over its pages. Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma has made me check for corn and corn products in everything I put into my mouth or use at home.
The author tries to follow complete meals and individual foods back to where they began asking ‘Where does your food come from and what is it made of?’ It seems that the answer is corn about 90% of the time… Pollan has given me a completely new view of corn: how #2 field corn has become a commodity shipped all over the world like oil, how farmers grow and ship it as a commodity, and the industries who are buying it – the range is staggering. You will be amazed at the evil that plain old field corn has wrought. Quick fact from the book: It actually costs more for a US Farmer to grow a bushel of corn than it is worth on the market, but he can still grow the crop because of the government farm subsidies that only drive the price lower. It is a cycle that is almost impossible to break.
The entire book is not all about corn. Pollan also provides incite into the world of industrial farming, small organic family farms, “Industrial Organic” farms, the organic movement in general, the ethics of our food, the use of petroleum based fertilizers, the ethics of gathering one’s own food, and the effects of all of this on our health and the health of US farm land and watersheds.
This book, along with Fast Food Nation, will maybe change the way you view food and your relation to it.
MotherJones ran an artical recently that is basically a excerpt of Pollan's book I have included it here.
Walking Up and Down in the World: Memories of a Mountain Rambler, by Smoke Blanchard, 299pages, Random House, Inc/Sierra Club Press. 1984, ISBN: 0871568276
I found this book on e-Bay while looking for something else and thought, “What the hell, it is only $4.” The book languished on my shelf for over a year until I’d had my fill of fiction for a while and turned to Smoke’s book as a possible literary escape into the mountains. Ten pages in, I was hooked and the more of it that I read the more I wanted to know. Mr. Blanchard’s tales of old-school climbing and mountaineering on Mt. Hood were enthralling. The book goes on to detail his walks, climbs and bicycle rides in the Sierra’s, Alaska, India, Japan, Nepal, among other places. It details his friendship with uber-climber, Norman Clyde and his wanderings with so many notable mountaineers and climbers of the day. His writing style was humble, yet often very amusing, like it seems he himself was. His tale isn’t told with the usual balls-out - ‘We almost fvcking died!’ inflection that seems to be the trap of many of today’s travel/adventure writers. Instead of leaving me breathless, Walking Up and Down in this World left me with a smirking smile and a want to take a week off from work, strap on my crampons, and head up into the winter clouds and snows of the high Sierras. His book ends in 1985 and left me wanting to know more about the man and his life. That search was a long an involved one told here. The book itself is a good read and I highly recommend it to anyone who climbs in the California Sierras, boulders in the Buttermilks, or just want to read about an extraordinary mountaineer.
The Pack Goat, By John Mionczynski, Hannah Hinchman 156pages, Pruett Publishing Company, 1992, ISBN: 0871088282
This is a great read whether you have ever packed into a far flung range with goats or are just curious about goat/horse/llama packing. Trust me, once you have carried 85lbs of gear for 12 miles over the Continental Divide, you will think of it… Goat Packing offers advantages that the other means of animal packing do not: Goats can go anywhere, they are friendlier, you do not need to carry separate food for them for the trail and they do no environmental damage. Goat packing is a great way to keep getting into the remote country you love without breaking your back or knees and will save you much energy to off track hikes, climbing and peak bagging. This book give you the basics on choosing and using goats for packing gear and points you to other more detailed vet, breeding, and training resources. Mionczynski's years of experience of actually working with goats really shows and can give one a head start if you are planning a trip with an outfitter using goats or if you are thinking of doing it yourself.
Metal Cowboy: Tales from the Road Less Pedaled, By JOE KURMASKIE, 336pages, Three Rivers Press, 2002, ISBN: 0609809113
If you cycle then you need to read this book. If you are thinking about cycling, then you need to read this book. If you remember how to cycle, then… The author has been addicted to the freedom of a bicycle and the road ever since he “borrowed” his big sister’s banana-seat bike at the age of five. The title for this book came from a time when cycling through Idaho Kurmaskie met up with a blind man who, after tapping his cane over Joe and his bike, dubbed him a "metal cowboy." Contained here are some funny and quirky tales of Kurmaskie drifting around the US and the world, meeting up with colorful and eccentric people, sleeping wherever he found a dry patch of ground, eating whatever he could carry or scrounge. This collection of essays focuses on the unexpected and the little known. Travelogues are a dime a dozen, but the ones that find something fresh and unusual to talk about are rare. This one achieves that. The author introduces readers to Elvis impersonators in Utah, he lives through a goose attack by climbing a tree, and finds the simple joy of a path well pedaled and a life less ordinary. I laughed all the way through it and highly recommend the book.
Riding Outside the Lines: International Incidents and Other Misadventures With the Metal Cowboy, By JOE KURMASKIE, 272pages, Three Rivers Press, 2003, ISBN: 1400047986
The author is a columnist for Bicycling magazine, and of the above “Metal Cowboy.” He is also like me a four-year old trapped in a man’s body. This book, like his last, is structured as a series of short trips rather than a single extended trek. It is unpretentious and covers such far-flung locations as Ireland, Peru and New Zealand with a central theme of: the world is a much smaller place when you view it from the seat of a bicycle. Kurmaskie runs into some odd and interesting characters: an insurance agent turned Acapulco dumpster diver and a Mexican bounty hunter. I liked this book as much or more than his first book and after reading the two I wanted to have my own “traveling carnival" and planned two yet to be taken bike dependent road trips. My favorite sort of book or article is one that makes me want to go and see and do the thing that I have just read about. Kurmaskie succeeds in doing that here.
The Time Traveler’s Wife, By: Audrey Niffenegger, Harvest Books, New York, 2004, 560pages, ISBN: 015602943X
I really hate Sci-Fi Fantasy books, so I hesitated when this one was recommended to me. The title alone bespoke of content that I would find boorish after the first twenty pages. Nothing could have been further from the truth: I found it difficult to put down and by the end I didn’t want to finish it because I didn’t want the story to be over. Niffenegger pulled off a plot where Henry DeTamble, an involuntary time-traveling librarian, knows the love of his life, Claire, from her early childhood. It is a story that is so complex that the reader could have gotten lost and aggravated, but the author does a fantastic job in both telling a fascinating story and in keeping the reader on-track. The book is simply a love story, also not something that I ever read, but Niffenegger has crafted a compelling story about two people in this world who were made for no one else but each other. I laughed all the while reading this book and I finished it on an airplane crying like a little bitch. There I sat between an Indian (dot not feather) man doing math for fun and a skinny nervous white guy, trying to hide the tears. I haven’t cried reading a book since my second grade teacher read us Where the Red Fern Grows in class. I recommend this book whole-heartedly.
The Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific, by Paul Theroux, Ballantine Books, New York, 1992, 538pages, ISBN: 0449908585
It took months for me to finish this book. Not that it wasn’t a good book: I read a couple more books in the interim, I read primarily on the road & I haven’t been traveling for work a lot and have just had a bunch going on in general. Despite the word “Happy” in the title, the Isles of Oceania as Theroux experienced them were only very occasionally carefree paradises. He went on and on in the last chapters about the beauty, history and people of Hawaii and those parts of his tale made me want to go and see and experience that land for myself, but he wasn’t so cheery about Western Australia, Rapa Nui, Tonga (Theroux discussed world politics with the king of Tonga), the Trobriands (discussed the first Gulf War with a fisherman in the middle of the Ocean), Samoa, New Zealand, etc… His story is somewhat biased and there are all sorts of generalizations made about every one of the native peoples he encountered and his views about the places he visited were highly opinionated, but that was because his trip was a very personal travel journal of a lonely, cranky middle-aged man going through a divorce who paddled a kayak in the Pacific and it's entertaining because his tale is so personal. Theroux’s story doesn’t need to be unbiased. It is a great read, but I would find a map of Pacific to look at while reading this book because unless you are/were a geography major the places mentioned, their distance apart, and their exact location relative to your world will be confusing.
Outside 25: Classic Tales and New Voices from the Frontiers of Adventure, Hal Espen, Ed., 2002W.W. Norton& Company, New York, 598pages
Outside is one of the few magazines that I actually pay for and the only one that I have a subscription to (I read the rest at Barnes & Noble for free. Yes, I’m a cheap-ass.). One of the main reasons for that subscription is the quality of the writing. It is always outstanding and thought provoking! Outside's 25 is a broad collection of subject matter that has been published in the magazine during the last 5 years or so. While I enjoyed the entire book, some of the narratives were especially good: Krakaurer’s tale of Chris McCandless struck a nerve in me. How many times have I let one or two small bad decisions snowball into a giant mess? That is exactly what happened to McCandless and it could have easily been me or any number of my like-minded buddies. Threroux’s article, when I read it in the magazine, is what made me start sea kayaking and it was wonderful to experience the tale again in this book. Bill Vaughn’s story reminded me of an uncle who worries about every single blade of grass in his yard and pats the trees as if they were old friends as he walks by. I really, really enjoyed this book and it will be surprise treat for those who like tales of mountains, rivers and the people who inhabit them, but that don’t read Outside magazine regularly.
Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel, by Rolf Potts, Villard, 2002, 224pages, ISBN: 0812992180
I LOVED this book. It truly captures everything I love about other cultures and how one goes about experiencing them as a traveler rather than a tourist with a big camera. Potts packs the book with practical travel tips for transportation, eating, sleeping and survival. He steers clear of politics completely and just gives the reader a no-nonsense guide to long-term travel. He covers: earning money, avoiding cultural misconceptions, interacting respectivly with locals, buying a great guidebook, and the nouance of catching a taxi in various locals. Other guides give you hundreds of unnecessary pages of crap and unwanted detail that you'll never need. Potts doesn’t. There is no fluff or advertising to be found. He makes it clear that the learning experience itself is invaluable. Above all, Potts shows the reader how financially feasible long-term world travel really is. I read few books more than once, but this one will be read again and again until be becomes deeply creased, tattered and scribbled in unmercifully.
The Size of the World, by Jeff Greenwald, Globe Pequot Press, 1995, 420pages
I read this in 1999 and loved it. I just picked it up and read it again on a trip and loved it even more. The author decides to take a trip around the world without ever setting foot aboard an airplane. He takes a ship, hikes, hitchhikes, takes trains, ect… Greenwald shows the good, the bad, and the dirty (he goes into grafic detail concerning earwax buildup) of long-term travel. His descriptions of the sights and odors around him is so vivid that one can smell the food cooking aboard containership he traveled across the Atlantic on and one can taste the fresh squeezed orange juice in Marrakech. His trip was a 40th birthday present to himself and who could have asked for a better gift. A really entertaining read.
Hitchhiking Vietnam: A Woman's Solo Journey in an Elusive Land, by Karin Muller, Globe Pequot Press, 1998, 288pages
I first got turned onto Karin Muller’s trip after reading her PBS website, http://www.pbs.org/hitchhikingvietnam/ Her story was engrossing and I think that I read every page on the site. I picked up the book a few days later and saw her film footage on PBS shortly after that. One needs to look at all three to get the complete picture. The book is good and stands out by itself, but the film and website add so much flavor and texture to the story. Karin Muller spent seven months in Vietnam as a simple vagabonding tourist. She experienced broken down motorcycles, breathtaking farmland, sketchy border crossings, scurvy, fields of rubies, she saved leopard cubs at an animal market, survived arrests and the planting rice with rural farmers. She does dwell a bit on the negative aspects of the "New Vietnam" and the book leaves a lot of the story out. Again, read the book, watch the movie and visit the website (in that order) for the entire experience.