The rare traveler who senses the reason why we travel in the first place.
An anthology covering three decades of calculated serendipity.
For San Francisco–based travel writer Hansen (Orchid Fever, 2000, etc.), travel is an endeavor of empathy, and empathy entails a burning cross-cultural curiosity that rewards itself and the reader with memorable examples of human contact on essential, even primitive levels. These skillfully crafted pieces are void of the usual commercial travel flackery; Hansen conjures romantic adventure not by proclaiming it but letting it creep up and tingle on the back of your neck. He has a cartographer’s eye for the contours of the globe, a naturalist’s sense of impending threat in local ecosystems, and—in certain Australian bars on given evenings—a connoisseur’s eye for the lay of the land. His humor springs like a trap: On Thursday Island, off Australia’s Queensland Coast, for example, checking into a hotel room with the door torn off, floor littered with debris, walls scarred by graffiti and vandalism, Hansen dryly wonders “what the meals will be like.” The idea of becoming a smuggler of a certain dried, smoked fish that is an everyday commodity in the Maldive Islands but a prized delicacy central to the cuisine of Sri Lanka hundreds of miles away is easily justified by the Hansen maxim: “the best way to penetrate a culture and mingle with the people was by getting involved with the local economy.” His literally mind-blowing account of the effects of the core narcotic employed in the Melanesian kava-drinking ritual will probably change the minds of some armchair travelers who up to that point had been envious of somebody who didn’t just talk about adventures but kept going out and having them.
The rare traveler who senses the reason why we travel in the first place.Pub Date: Oct. 12, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-42126-2
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
Esposito may not tell all, but he comes close in this brutally honest, yet loyal, memoir of his days with the King. From when they met in the Army to the afternoon when he was one of the first to discover the dead body of Elvis Presley where he had collapsed from his toilet throne (Esposito was the one who raised his pajama trousers to avoid embarrassment), Presley's right-hand man was in a position to know the inside scoop. He and Oumano (Paul Newman, 1989) describe Elvis as being like a little boy who spent his wealth making himself and the people around him happy. The anecdotes are endless as this pivotal member of the ``Memphis Mafia'' comes clean on the partying Elvis's parade of girlfriends and his suitcase full of sexy videotapes and Polaroids of Priscilla (Esposito handed it to her the moment she arrived at Graceland for the funeral). Esposito tells of the Elvis who stopped passersby to give them money or gifts, who would decide suddenly that ten or so of his friends all needed Harleys to race around Bel Air, who would not flinch at buying a car for family or friends who were loyal to him, and who made an infamous visit to see President Nixon. But he also gives up the goods on the Elvis who was hopelessly self-indulgent, constantly demonstrating his dubious karate skills, buying people off with expensive gifts rather than admitting he was wrong, and finally dying a prisoner in his own bedroom, uninterested in facing new challenges and addicted to prescription drugs. Video rentals of Girls! Girls! Girls! are sure to surge so people can look for the scene in which Elvis sports an erection in his too-tight pants. While apologetic and loyalist at times, Esposito doesn't let the King off too easy. (16 pages of b&w photos, not seen) (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-79507-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
One does not like to apply the phrase too often in a book review, but here is a volume that should be required reading for...
Garrett, Newsday and former National Public Radio reporter, has written an excellent encyclopedic history—and jeremiad—of man versus microbe in the last decades of the century.
"California School Becomes Notorious for Epidemic of TB.'' "In a Panic, Rwandans Die in Stampede.'' No book about to be launched in 1994 could ask for better confirmation of its somber thesis than the front-page headlines in a recent edition of the New York Times. Only a few years ago science was celebrating an end to plagues and an extended life span, but now it appears that we are losing the battle against infectious illness. Microbes mutate as fast as companies synthesize new drugs to combat them. Jet travel, the sexual revolution, and overpopulation are just a few of the whole-earth changes that favor the survival of old and new bugs. In chapter by chilling chapter, Garrett recounts the stories of deaths from Machupo, Lassa, and Ebola diseases—viral infections decimating small villages in South America and Africa. In the best tradition of Berton Rouech, each account is a dramatic narrative with heroes and heroines: the doctors and epidemiologists who round up the usual suspects (rats, mice, bugs) to come up with answers. Modernity brings ironic twists—reused syringes, recycled air conditioning—to amplify infection. But the ultimate compounding factor is a "Thirdworldization,'' an ugly coinage to describe an ugly situation in which the inhabitants of poor nations are malnourished, displaced, terrorized, demoralized, e.g., Rwanda. Garrett chronicles AIDS, the spread of antibiotic-resistant TB and malaria, Legionnaire's disease, last year's re-emergence of Hanta viruses among the Navajo, along with chapters on microbial genetics and resistance. Prejudice and politics are given their due from clearly liberal Garrett, and a glimmer of a solution comes in the form of eternal vigilance and surveillance.
One does not like to apply the phrase too often in a book review, but here is a volume that should be required reading for policy makers and health professionals.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-374-12646-1
Page Count: 784
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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