Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home [Paperback]

Brad Newsham (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 26, 2002

It was the dream of a euphoric young traveler awed by the crystalline silence of Afghanistan’s Hindu Kush: “Someday, when I am rich, I am going to invite someone from my travels to visit me in America.” Twenty-five years later, Brad Newsham set out from his home in San Francisco to make good on his youthful vow–and this irresistibly charming, deeply humane book is the chronicle of what happened along the way.

Giving himself one hundred days to journey around the world, Newsham began in the Philippines and immediately found himself embroiled in serendipitous adventures and unexpected relationships. An affable young Filipino father led him on a challenging hike into the secret green heart of Luzon. He savored the panorama of the Himalayas from a two-dollar hotel room in Darjeeling, drank tea with an Egyptian family in the Valley of the Kings, and struck up an impromptu friendship with a Tanzanian shopkeeper on the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro. And through all the exotic encounters, Newsham kept an eye out for that special person, the one stranger he would invite back to America.

As engrossing as a novel, Take Me With You is an enchanting account of one man’s mission not only to see the world, but to leave it just a little bit different.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After two decades of travels around the world, Brad Newsham decides to pack his bags again to return the gift of magic that travel has brought into his life. His plan is to give a little of that back to someone he meets along the way--to invite a new untraveled friend to visit him, all-expenses paid, in America. Over the course of 100 days through the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, he asks, "What would these [people] make of my culture? Wouldn't the Grand Canyon or a redwood grove or a Safeway store, gleaming and fully-stocked at two o'clock in the morning, amaze them the way their culture and all the other cultures I've stumbled into recently have amazed me?"

Three months through so many diverse countries could easily be nothing more than a superficial jaunt. But Newsham's goal gives him and the book a purpose, for any chance encounter is significant. His stance is no longer, "What does this person want from me?" (a valid concern in countries where begging takes a hundred forms), but "What miracle might our meeting produce?" Newsham easily makes friends with his quick and quirky sense of humor and ability to elicit their wishes, truths, pains, and pleasures. He asks each person he meets--from a sadhu at the banks of the Ganges to a 110-year-old Tanzanian on the flank of Mt. Kilimanjaro--what the best and worst times in their lives have been, and the answers take us straight into their lives. While Newsham is skilled in drawing each exotic city and village, it is these meetings with strangers-quickly-turned-friends that make Take Me with You such an engrossing read.

The "round-the-world journey to invite a stranger home" plan could be just a gimmick, but Newsham is too self-aware for that. In India, he recognizes that his desire to add some small joy to someone else's life is nothing more than a frivolity amidst the masses of people sleeping under newspapers at a train station. And watching a linked line of elephants walking noiselessly across a river in Kenya, the babies' wee trunks grasping their mothers' tails, he asks himself, "How do I repay this?" Whoever ends up winning this lottery (will it be the Kenyan safari guide who saves him from the lions, the ear cleaner with his Q-tip and tweezers in the park in New Delhi, or the teenager with the boom box playing "What a Wonderful World" at Victoria Falls?), we have been blessed with a terrific travel memoir that takes us to some fascinating places and shatters plenty of assumptions along the way. --Lesley Reed --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

“Newsham brings back treasures that every wanderer might envy. His journey, at heart, is into humanity.”
–PICO IYER


“TAKE ME WITH YOU IS NO LESS THAN A PAGE-TURNER OF A TRAVEL MEMOIR.”
–MSNBC.com


“What gives this offbeat travelogue its interest is . . . the spirit of innocent generosity that inspires it, and that generally infuses Newsham’s experiences of people and places.”
–The Boston Globe

“UNFAILINGLY ARRESTING AND PROVOCATIVE.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (February 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345449126
• ISBN-13: 978-0345449122
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (49 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #998,837 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I feel like I have made friends all over the world, October 24, 2000

By 

Nicholas Beatty - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Me with You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home (Travelers' Tales Footsteps : the Soul of Travel) (Hardcover)

While reading Take Me With You, I sometimes felt as if I were evesdropping or looking into a private conversation. In out of the way places and big cities, Newsham takes the time to get to know some incredible personalities. I realized that there are like-minded people living all over the world. Environmental concerns, family issues and dreams and desires being a major part of our lives. Whether you own half of Kenya or a 1,400 sq foot apartment in Portland, Oregon, we're all the same.

Newsham tells the truth about travel. The great expectations, the letdowns, and the surprises. The feeling of dread when you realize that your trip is almost over, and soon you'll have to board the airplane back to your normal life. Everyone at some point wishes they could chuck everything, pick up a backpack and head out into the overlooked parts of the world. When that time comes in my life, I will look for Newsham's most recent book.

Not since reading the Neverending Story when I was 11 years old have I been so totally engrossed and captured by a particular book. Keep up the good work Mr. Brad Newsham, I hope you sell a million copies!

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Unique Delight, November 7, 2000

By 

A 54 year old reader (Edina, Minnesota) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Take Me with You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home (Travelers' Tales Footsteps : the Soul of Travel) (Hardcover)

I don't think I've read a book with this premise before, but I do think it captures perfectly what lies at the pure heart of the backpacking hippie revolution. When I was a college kid travelling in Morocco and Europe we judged the authenticity of each other's trips by how much time we'd spent in the company of locals. If you got invited into someone's home that was the ultimate. In "Take Me With You" the tables are turned. One local, very surprised no doubt, is invited back across the seas to visit the home of the traveler, Newsham's home. It's an irresistible scenario, expertly told. Funny, moving, thoughful, challenging. It has 50 short chapters, each introduced by a funny or poignant quote. It's a breeze to read. You want it to go on and on, but the end is perfectly satisfying. I can't recommend it more highly. Make mine five diamond-studded stars.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Around the world in search of humanity, June 28, 2002

By 

therosen "therosen" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home (Paperback)

This is the type of adventure I wish I made, and the story I wish I had written about it.

It's the story of a San Francisco taxi driver who wants to see the world, and share his place in it with a stranger. To do so, he maps a journey through the Phillipines, India and Africa, in search of the perfect guest.

The story has all the elements of a great travel yarn: A purpose beyond the journey itself, well written details of exotic lands, a descent into our shared humanity, and a self-deprecating sense of humor.

I'm inspired to travel! I may not invite someone back with me, but I'll certainly look for a new adventure to undertake.

If you like Tony Hawks, you'll love Brad Newsham.