Food: True Stories of Life on the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides) [Paperback]

Richard Sterling (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Series: Travelers' Tales Guides | Publication Date: November 1996

It's winter. The holidays are over. For those living in areas where it's still snowing, and even where it's just cold or rainy, it's the time of year when magazines, newspapers, radio, and television are tantalizing us with ads of warm beaches, sunshine, relaxation, water sports, and foo-foo drinks with little umbrellas sticking out of them.

Many of us would love to be able to travel to someplace warm, or to a far away place for a new adventure. However, we may not have the time or the resources to do so. Fortunately, Travelers' Tales has just the armchair adventure travel anyone can experience -- the beaches of Thailand, dining on the banks of the Seine, running with the bulls of Pamplona, purchasing a suit in Hong Kong, climbing the Himalayas -- all for only $17.95 (no shots or visa required).

O'Reilly and Travelers' Tales have created a national campaign to help you promote Travelers' Tales titles as the "great getaway -- for cheap". We'll provide you with marketing materials (signage, T-shirts, buttons, postcards, special discount for inventory order, ad slick, and book displays) to create a window or in-store display during the month of May 1997. The store with the best display wins an overstuffed armchair fully equipped with an airline style seat belt.

We'll also provide you with shelftalker coupon books with space on the front for you to stamp your store name and address. The coupon is redeemable for 10% off the purchase of a Travelers' Tales book. Your customer simply tears off the coupon from the shelftalker, completes the information (name and address) on the back, and gives it to the cashier when they're ready to purchase a book. At the end of each month you send us thecoupons used by your customers, and we'll credit your account. We understand that you might be hesitant to send in coupons with the names and addresses of your customers. The reason for retrieving this information is so you can build your customer list, and so we can send a Travelers' Tales newsletter to your customers informing them of new titles available from their local bookstore -- including a reference to your store.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

Many people will tell you that they travel, in large part, to eat, to break bread with strangers and leave the table with friends, to discover the world through the medium of cuisine, to deepen their understanding, broaden their horizons, and make their travels the richer. This collection of stories furthers the proposition that humanity is revealed through cuisine just as surely as it is through any other art or social activity. Through the personal experience of the writers, in rollicking adventure, humor, and even pathos, the reader will agree that, as Napoleon said of the army, we travel on our stomachs. Just a few of the many stories and notable authors you'll find in the book: "All Guns, No Butter," by P.J. O'Rourke; "There Was a Train," by M.F.K. Fisher; "Then I Slept," by Colin Thubron; and "Pilgrims All," by Gary Paul Nabhan.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Travelers' Tales Inc; First Edition edition (November 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885211090
• ISBN-13: 978-1885211095
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,572,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must-read for lovers of food and/or travel, April 22, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Food: True Stories of Life on the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)

These are stories of how travelers made connections with people and places through the medium of food. Some of the stories are hilarious, others make you want to hug someone you love. Almost all of them will make you want to learn more about other places and cultures. This is simply one of the best books on food I have ever read.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Savor every morsel of this delicious book!, April 20, 2006

By 

Odysseus "A Traveller" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Food: True Stories of Life on the Road (Travelers' Tales Guides) (Paperback)

As a new, first-time parent, I expected that my poor, sleep-deprived brain wouldn't be fully capable of the sensory imagination that would make this book worthwhile.

But the first story transported me immediately with its introductory account of the narrator landing in southern Mexico: the opening of the plane door is "as if the stewardess had opened the door of a blast furnace fueled by jasmine, corn husks, bacon grease, and Clorox bottles." What a striking medley of aromas, and what a spot-on take on what it feels like to land in a strange place with your senses on full alert. Everyone who has fully experienced the excitement of travel can imagine the mindset of the narrator, the way that we become so stimulated by our new, strange surroundings, almost like being a child again.

That is essentially what gave this the potential to be a fantastic book. For it combines three aspects of the world that can make life more immediate and powerful: travel, with its capacity to turn us all into wide-eyed kids; food, with its tastes and smells and rituals that may comfort or stimulate us; and literature, the sheer joy of words, and the electric spark one feels when one reads great writing.

I say "potential" because it took great writing to turn the concept into a successful reality. At the risk of gushing, I literally felt a surge of happiness as I read this book, simply because of my aesthetic pleasure over how well almost every story was written. Not that my pleasure was unmixed with a bit of humility; travel brings out the literary genius in so many people, this book caused me to despair a bit over ever writing as well as so many others do. It was even interesting to read the little author profiles at the end of each section, and to see what types of nomadic, improvised lives many of these fine writers are leading.

I am a great fan of the Travelers' Tales series, but this just might be their best book yet (I have raved about a few other volumes on Amazon, but readers of my other reviews may want to consult the review dates to see which have been supplanted by this one.)

The selections are almost universally strong; most anthologies contain a few weak selections, but this one had very few, and even those were enjoyable enough. I would single out the following pieces as exceptional: "Apron Strings" (quoted above), "Breaking Bread," "Bananas," "India on an Empty Stomach," "The Monsoon Cocktail," and "Momos at Tashi's."

"Bananas" is a story of the kindness of strangers, but I loved it mainly because it conveys how the tropics can make a Coca-Cola more refreshing than you ever thought possible. I related to "Momos" because of the way the author separated herself from group festivities while abroad, leaving herself available for a more meaningful, individual connection. "The Monsoon Cocktail" made me want to book a seat on the train that it describes, but I loved it most for the way it conveys how a fulfilling trip can linger in comforting memory; the author, caught in a monsoon during a SE Asia train trip, forever after associates the beating of raindrops with that cherished memory. And this happens to all travelers, I suspect; these associations become as powerful and comforting for us as those that connect us to early childhood.

I could easily have written a much longer list of favorite selections. I indulge a silly quirk as I read the Travelers' Tales books; after each group of five stories, I rank them in my journal, and at the end of the entire volume, I then try to pick out the 5-10 that I like the most for future reference. Boy was that tough in this instance, as there were easily a dozen stories that I hope to read repeatedly.

My advice to readers; don't swallow this one down too fast. Read it slowly, repeat the good parts, and milk the experience for all it's worth. Savor!