Longitude Books newsletter offers a selection of new children's books that aim to empower kids to be global citizens. (Scroll down to item #6--but there are other interesting travel books recommended along the way.)
TraveLit--A blog about travel literature.
Even with the best of maps and instruments, we can never fully chart our journeys.
Guest Blog: "Misguided" (A Traveler Grapples with Guidebooks)
May 4, 2017
The leaning tower of Pisa
Misguided: The Elusive Truth
By Elizabeth Marcus, the author of Don't Say a Word, a memoir, and many wonderful essays on travel and other topics. For more of her writing, visit her blog, eLizwrites, and be sure to link to the Archive.
Once it was Baedeker or nothing. Now a slew of guidebooks compete for the privilege of answering the traveler’s every question. Usually I take along only one book, but on one trip to Northern Italy many years ago, I packed four: Fodor’s for the basics, Michelin for authoritative facts and maps, and, just in case our then-teenagers awoke from their adolescent comas and I struck a vein of curiosity, the more thorough Cadogan’s Tuscany and Umbria and Cento Citta by Paul Hofmann. It was an illuminating experience — but less for what we learned about Italy than for what was revealed about the books. With guidebooks as with cooks, it seems, it is possible to have too many.
All we wanted was a simple, clear account, but in Verona we began to realize we were getting more of a murky stew. Read More