Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

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!

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.

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.

I hope this book is a smashing success. For one thing, the author needs the money. (He gives too much of his away out of kindness). And secondly, because it is a fascinating travelogue written with much warmth and honesty. In his search for a "guest" to invite to the United States, Newsham encountered any number of the types of people that most tourists encounter: street vendors, taxi drivers, tour guides, and strangers met on the street. He befriends them though, and takes time to get to know something about them. But even without this "twist", the book could stand on it's own. The author takes us on some amazing adventures to places that are far, far off the beaten path in the Philippines, India, Egypt and Africa.
It was great fun to learn who was picked to spend a month with the author. This visitor became a minor celebrity during his stay.
For some reason, the author did not include a photo of himself anywhere in the book. You can google his name, if you like, and find a photo of him standing next to his chosen guest. Don't peek though, until you have finished the book!
A travel story with a heart. Highly recommended.

In search of a new book to read, I was listening to a weekly book review on National Public radio. Take Me With You was mentioned, I bought it, and it did. Newsham knows how to travel and how to bring you along for the ride. He does not sit back and just look at where he is going, he gets close to the people, the land and the cultures. How refreshing for the reader to just sit back and be taken along for a great trip around the world. One thing that was obvious in the book was that Brad is a seasoned traveler and has little or no fear of strange cultures and people. Highly recommended!

I'm not a big reader of travel books, but if they're all this good I think I may have to become one. I was charmed from the beginning by the book's premise: an off-duty cab driver wandering the world with something special in his pcket, a magical gift he is going to give away to a complete stranger. And then I was repeatedly charmed and touched by Newsham's interactions with the people he tucked so vividly between the covers of this spellbinding book. And the scenery! I've always wanted to see the animals in Africa and now I feel like I have, feel like I've slept in a tent on the edge of the Serengetti with hyenas and lions and elephants lurking in the bush. I feel like I've stood beside the flaming funeral pyres on a dark night on the banks of the Ganges and watched bodies being cremated and the ashes and remains pushed into the river. I feel like I've stood at the southern tip of Africa and listened to the waves of the Atlantic Ocean crash up on one side of me and the waves of the Indian Ocean on the other. I feel like I went around the world and came back a different person.

I love this book.. This kind of travel is what feeds my soul...new cultures, new people, learning something from everyone you meet....I have learned a lifetime of lessons from the wonderful people who come in to clean hotel rooms, or who crouch on the crowded streets fanning flame-soaked satays, or who hunch over in rice fields for hours on end...those are our my life teachers..my heroes... I am ever grateful for their wisdom and insight...The author must be a wonderful human being (the type of person with whom I'd love to travel and hang out :)......the book is a joy...

For any of you who have been on the road more that a short trip, this is the nostalgic book for you. I found myself hoping there were 500 more pages. The basic premise of the book entered my mind often while on the road myself. Brad Newsham does an excellent job in tackling the question of ethics in introducing a "random soul" to our western world...is this good for whom? Excellent book...enjoy

Brad has written a great travel book, one that will surely give you an "unscratchable" itch for travel. It's more than a narrative on places; it is a study of cultures and human natures. Brad took the time to do what I'm so fearful of; meet a stranger. His trip trip was justly rewarded by taking the time to meet the people. I'm determined to change how I travel from now on.

This book is better than just good reading. It's not just a book that you can't put down. Nope, this book is all about what reading should be, it's about being thrown into another world, maybe not literally but mentally it's as if you're there and experiencing all that he has experienced. Anyone that has travelled anywhere, especially outside Europe, UK and USA will know exactly what I'm talking about. Being daring enough to go to a place where you know it will be like nothing you have experienced before can be throughly rewarding and make you feel such a different person. This book gives you that feeling again and again whilst you're reading it. The laughs are not set-up it's just real life and real people which make it the funniest because you know yourself when you visit these places that you meet the most amazing characters. The book portrays the marvellous blend of cultures you can find on your travels and I have to say I love this book almost as much as I love travelling itself. It's inspiring to anyone reading it. This is what reading is all about.

Mellissa
Yorkshire, England, UK