The Traveler's reading guide : ready-made reading lists for the armchair traveler / edited by Maggy Simony

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Africa -- The Middle East -- Asia -- The pacific Ocean -- Europe -- Latin America -- North America.

My interest in armchair travel as a theme for library-browsing and reading goes back so many years I can't remember when it started. I do know it was largely due to my father's influence. After one adventurous spurt when Seth (my father) emigrated from Stockholm to Brooklyn at age seventeen, he could never afford to travel more than a few hundred miles from home. But he was an ardent armchair traveler. A trip to Maine led to Kenneth Roberts' novels. His characteristic parting comment to me (leaving by car to move to California in 1948) was "Be sure now to stop at a library before you leave Reno to read about the Donner party." And he was right-crossing the mountains into northern California for the first time having just read the Donner story was a far more memorable experience with the heartbreak of those earlier travelers vividly in mind. For me, then, using the local library both before I go on a trip and after I get back, to re-enjoy and enhance the experience, is an integral part of travel planning and something I've just always done. The catalyst for moving from that avocational interest to compiling this book occurred some fifteen years ago when I happened upon two books in the library, within five minutes of each other, both of which made a persuasive case for pre-travel reading as part of planning for travel. One of them-World Travel Planner even gave suggestions for readers on how to go about using the library to compile a reading list for travel. I'd not seen this kind of advice before in a travel book. I didn't need convincing-that day at the library I was putting together a reading list for a trip to Hungary and Austria with my husband—but it struck me that ready-made reading lists for travelers would be a great idea for a reference book. And I thought also that one day (if no one beat me to it ) I'd like to attempt the job myself. This reading guide for travelers, many years later and with many false starts and sidetracks along the way, is the end result.