Spring is the season when many travelers start to pull out the planners and think about upcoming summer vacations. But it’s a wary and changed world now, and it remains to be seen how long it will take travelers to return to their old ways. Perhaps a few hours spent with the season’s crop of travel books will inspire them.
SOME OF THE NEW TITLES are practical, the kind of handy guidebook you want to keep by your side for that next museum trip. Others take the reader on a journey he or she may never duplicate - buying a restaurant on a Caribbean island, or digging for dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert. But it’s that second type of book that may send more of us off to call our travel agents or search for online airfares, showing that there is still much that only travel can teach us.
Traveling into the past
“Walking the Bible, A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of Moses,” by Bruce Beiler (HarperCollins Perennial $14.95) published in 2001 and just out in paperback, is both a travel diary and a religious history book, and it succeeds at being both. Author Bruce Feiler is not the world’s most sparkling writer, but his tale is engrossing and inspiring. The book takes readers along as Feiler retraces the first five books of the Bible, re-reading the works in the very locations where they took place.
Readers have barely been introduced to him and his journey, and suddenly we’re off with Feiler on a search for the real Noah’s Ark. As he travels, he learns about geology, history, science, and sociology, but it’s all wrapped around an understanding of the book that brought him there. This book is at its best when Feiler is interpreting the events of the Bible in the context of the land in which it was born, and even a biblical-studies scholar is sure to learn something. One fascinating bit involves Feiler and a companion attempting to determine exactly where God might have parted the waters of the Red Sea so that Moses and the Israelites could flee the Egyptian army. They pull out their Bibles and hunt for clues as others might refer to a map.
Feiler was lucky to make his journey at a time of relative peace. But tension lurks always under the surface — at one point he lies that he is not carrying a Bible because a guard, fearing fanatics, will not let him pass. And Feiler makes it a point throughout his travels to talk about the differences between the Koran and the Bible with the various Muslim guides and friends he meets along the way. Their easy conversations and honest attempts to understand the differences are inspiring, especially in the shadow of today’s headlines.
With current conditions as they are in the Middle East, Feiler’s readers may not be able to recreate his journey any time soon. Thankfully, his experience is described vividly enough that readers may think they’ve been along.
Digging dinosaurs
There are scenes in the “Jurassic Park” movies, before all the dinosaurs begin to stomp and chomp, where the main characters are seen actually working on a dig, making discoveries, dusting off bones, teaching students. They give viewers a fascinating glimpse into a profession that most of us know next to nothing about.
“Time Traveler: In Search of Dinosaurs and Ancient Mammals from Montana to Mongolia,” by Michael Novacek (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, $26), is the perfect book for those who wished for more of these scenes. Novacek is curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History. Like so many children, he was fascinated with dinosaurs from the moment he knew they had existed; like very few of those children, he went on to make his obsession a career.
His adventures take him to Chile, to Mexico, to Yemen and other spots rich in fossils and lore — and sometimes in danger. The ancient world of the dinosaur bones makes an odd juxtaposition with the automatic weapon-bearing soldiers and riots that weave in and out of Novacek’s story. Fossils do not always land in friendly and peaceful territory, it seems.
Either Novacek has a photographic memory or he took remarkable notes, as the descriptions of his expeditions are rich and detailed. Sometimes he dwells too long on extraneous, non-dinosaur related details, but mostly he comes across as a genuinely interesting and lively man who’s been lucky enough to make a living doing exactly what he loves. One of his college friends once told him that he went through “a lot of trouble for a few old bones.” Novacek’s reply? “But what sensational bones! And what a sensational experience!”
Living the dream
A whole genre has developed within travel books - call it the “living the dream” category. These books are written usually by Americans, usually by married couples, who decide to uproot their lives and move to a new land, where they start a new adventure.
In “A Trip to the Beach,” mentioned below, the land is Anguilla and the adventure is opening a restaurant. In “French Spirits: A House, a Village and a Love Affair in Burgundy,” by Jeffrey Greene (William Morrow, $24.95), the couple is poet Jeffrey Greene and his biologist wife, Mary; and the adventure is the restoration of a 300-year-old presbytery (priest’s residence).
You’d expect a poet to have an amazing command of the language, and sometimes Greene describes a scene so thoroughly that the reader can easily picture it unfolding. But this is a quiet, unemphatic book. The couple work on the house, meet the neighbors, and settle into village life. Most appealing of those they meet is Coco, a neighbor who comes across a bit like a French version of “Seinfeld”‘s Kramer.
If escaping to Burgundy appeals to you, it’s likely the book will as well. If you’re fascinated with France, you’ll find much to like and laugh at in the Greenes’ friendly home. But the slow meandering pace of the narrative - much like life in their village - is not for everyone.
Life’s a beach
If you’ve ever dug your toes into the sand on a tropical island and wished you never had to go home, “A Trip to the Beach: Living on Island Time in the Caribbean,” by Melinda and Robert Blanchard (Three Rivers Press, paperback $13), is the book for you. Melinda and Robert Blanchard fell in love with the Caribbean island of Anguilla and moved there to open a restaurant. Truly, “A Trip to the Beach” makes their decision feel that instantaneous.
It’s pretty obvious from the first page that the Blanchards aren’t your average American couple. Previously, they had run a specialty-food company out of their Vermont home, and “in almost no time we had over a thousand accounts,” boasts Melinda. While taking this plunge might not have been as frightening for them as it would be for most, Anguilla and its traditions were still new to them. And they’re good-humored and smart enough to let their story unfold honestly, with both successes and failures highlighted. The details of opening and running the restaurant are fascinating — if you’ve ever thought running a restaurant was easy, let this be your wake-up call.
The book is at its best when life for the Blanchards was at its worst. Hurricane Luis sweeps through Anguilla and wreaks havoc on the restaurant, and neither of the couple are there. Melinda is in Vermont and Bob ends up battling through the storm in a St. Martin hotel, both of them fearing the restaurant they worked so hard for will be washed out to sea. The hurricane chapters are engrossing, and the reader is relieved right along with the Blanchards to learn that the damage, while severe, can be repaired. Although the Blanchards’ dream may not be everyone’s, their story is intriguing, and their award-winning restaurant sounds like a must-visit for any Anguilla traveler.
Art of travel
Remember those practical guidebooks mentioned earlier? “In the Footsteps of Popes: A Spirited Guide to the Treasures of the Vatican,” by Enrico Bruschini (William Morrow, $30) is one of them. Visitors to Rome and Vatican City can be easily overwhelmed by the sheer number of artistic treasures in such a tiny area. What to see, what to skip? And perhaps more important — how to appreciate and understand the works of art that a traveler does manage to see?
Bruschini is the official art historian of the U.S. Embassy in Rome, and his book is a decent substitute for having him by your side as a tour guide. The book marks the most important masterpieces with a star, but what’s almost more fun is to look for the items marked by a drawing of a key. That pulls your attention to what Bruschini calls “comments, historical descriptions and curiosities.” That’s the fun stuff, telling readers that a certain painting was once confiscated by Napoleon’s troops, or to look for Michelangelo’s signature on a copy of the Pietà, the only sculpture he ever signed.
The book’s appearance is off-putting for those looking for a guidebook. It’s not printed on shiny white paper with colorful photos on every page; instead, from the outside, it looks more like a novel. There are black-and-white photos throughout, but the color photos are all gathered in the middle of the book. Perhaps it was deemed too expensive to print in more traditional guidebook form, but if so, that’s a shame. The artworks are breathtaking, and a reader would benefit from having those color photos next to Bruschini’s helpful descriptions. Still, a Rome-bound traveler will get much more out of its museums with this book in hand.
Museum musing
“America’s Art Museums: A Traveler’s Guide to Great Collections Large and Small,” by Suzanne Loebl (W.W. Norton, $18.95)
This museum guide is nothing if not practical. Organized alphabetically by state, it summarizes the collections at major art museums across the nation. Helpful details include activities for children, parking information, and an easy-to-scan list of each magazine’s strengths.
What’s less clear is how this book is meant to be used. Are there really people out there traveling America with visiting art museums as their main goal? Are they meant to pack this book whenever a different state is visited? Or is it mainly a reference work for journalists and others who are seeking a one-stop shop for art museum information?
A book of this kind rises or falls on its accuracy, and while it’s impossible to check every fact presented, I paid special attention to the museums with which I’m most familiar. Loebl’s guide to Minneapolis’s Walker Art Museum and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts certainly covered the high points, but didn’t really put the two museums in perspective as relating to each other and to the city. And her straightforward description of the University of Minnesota’s Frederick R. Weisman Art Museum fails to match my memories of the joyful, shiny, steel-clad museum that stands out like a lightening bolt amidst the campus’s more sedate brick buildings. Still, the book earns points for being easy to follow and certainly fulfills the mission set forth by its title.Gael Fashingbauer Cooper is MSNBC’s Travel Editor.
