Category Archives: Travel

Book Review: A Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith by Timothy Egan

I decided to read this book not because of its religious content but because I enjoy good travel memoirs. Egan has sound secular credentials: he writes for The New York Times, has won a Pulitzer Prize, and has published several … Continue reading

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Another Look:  After the Rosy-Fingered Dawn: A Memoir of Greece

Greece has always been regarded as the birthplace of western civilization and a Mediterranean paradise.  In The Iliad and The Odyssey Homer uses the magical epithet rosy-fingered dawn to describe the sunrise over a land of myth, fascination, and mystery.  … Continue reading

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Book Review:  A Savage Dreamland: Journeys in Burma by David Eimer

It is oddly appropriate that I am writing this during a rare power cut of several hours (and counting) in my apartment complex – appropriate because normally we here in Seattle can count on having electricity and other utilities twenty-four-seven, … Continue reading

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Book Review:  Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas by Harley Rustad – Part Three

(For the background to this article, see Part One and Part Two below.) Except for major classical works of literature, usually I only write one review per book. However, Lost in the Valley of Death evokes so many memories and … Continue reading

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Book Review:  Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas by Harley Rustad – Part Two

In my previous essay about Lost in the Valley of Death, I came down somewhat hard on the author’s negative attitude concerning spiritual quests that lead people to the Indian Subcontinent and other exotic locales. As I continued to read … Continue reading

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Book Review:  Lost in the Valley of Death: A Story of Obsession and Danger in the Himalayas by Harley Rustad – Part One

Usually I wait until I have finished or almost finished a book before I write a review of it, but I am just over halfway through Lost in the Valley of Death, and it has already provoked so many thoughts … Continue reading

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Another Look: World Without Pain: The Story of a Search

In the 1970s, after the Altamont Rock Festival, the Manson Family cult murders, and the fiasco of the Vietnam War many young people, disillusioned by the hippy movement, began to leave their homelands and travel to the far places of … Continue reading

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Book Review:  The Sun Is a Compass: A 4,000-Mile Journey into the Alaskan Wilds by Caroline Van Hemert

The Sun Is a Compass is a wonderful book. I enjoyed it through and through. In it, a young couple travel by rowboat from Bellingham, Washington up the Inside Passage to a town called Haines, hike and canoe through the … Continue reading

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Book Review:  Riverman: An American Odyssey by Ben McGrath

Riverman tells the story of Dick Conant, an itinerant canoeing enthusiast. Self-describing as homeless, he might have been like many other wandering vagabonds, albeit with a preference for waterways rather than dry land, had he not bumped into McGrath, a … Continue reading

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Book Review:  River of the Gods: Genius, Courage, and Betrayal in the Search for the Source of the Nile by Candice Millard

River of the Gods is a powerful, well-written book about some fascinating historical characters on adventurous journeys. Although the central focus is the expedition of Richard Burton, John Hanning Speke, and Sidi Mubarak Bombay through East Africa from Zanzibar to … Continue reading

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