The Best American Travel Writing 2001

When I saw that Paul Theroux, one of my favorite travel writers, edited two editions of the The Best American Travel Writing, I ordered both from 2001 and 2014. Inconveniently the 2014 volume arrived first,Patrick Symmes visits Columbia to interview the guerillas  so I read that volume first and it was a strong collection. The same can be said of the 2001 volume. I think this is one of the strongest collections of the The Best American ... Writing series, a lot of great writing and interesting subjects. Some of the most compelling for me were: Scott Anderson's autobiographical essay on how he and his brother became war correspondents in "As Long as We Were Together, Nothing Bad Could Happen to Us," "Michael Finkel's harrowing first person account of trying to leave Haiti by engine-less boat in "Desperate Passage, " "Susan Minot's comprehensive and heartbreaking piece on child soldiers in Joseph Kony's army in "This We Came to Know Afterward," and Bob Shachochis' story of dear friends who lived in Turk and Caico Island years before they became a tourist destination in "Something Wild in the Blood." There were many more essays that educated me on a place or opened up new worlds such as: Gretel Ehrlich's travel with Greenland Eskimos in "The Endless Hunt," Peter Hessler samples life in China on the border between it and North Korea in "View from the Bridge," Kathleen Lee describes life in Sichuan province in China in her essay, "Into the Heart of the Middle Kingdom," Janet Malcom travels to Chekhov's Yalta in "Travels with Chekhov," Lawrence Millman introduces us to the Mediterranean island of Pantelleria in "Daughter of the Wind," David Quammen explains about wolves and life in post-Ceausescu Romania in "The Post-Communist Wolf," Edward Said laments on the lost charms of the Lebanese mountains as a summer retreat in "Paradise Lost," Thomas Swick is among the early travelers in post-war Croatia in Split in "Croatian Rock," Patrick Symmes goes to Columbia to interview guerillas on the renewed American commitment to defeat in "Miraculous Fishing," Jeffrey Tayler travels to Belarus to see what life is like there post USSR breakup in "Back in the USSR?", Jason Wilson's survey of Iceland and the food they eat there (yuck!) in "Dining Out in Iceland," as well as "Beyond Siberia," where Simon Winchester falls in love with Sakhalin Island that Chekhov thought was hell on earth. Great collection of essays, I learned a lot and found a lot of inspiration.