To me, books are as important as water, air, and food. I would be a sad fellow indeed without them, and this has been true for as long as I can ![]() James O’Reilly You can buy the books below by clicking the image or link
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The Greek Islands by Lawrence Durrell I can’t think of a better book to travel around Greece with, which is exactly what I did, sharing it with my aunt and mother chapter by chapter as we island-hopped with my wife and daughters. Of course thus inspired I am reading Durrell’s novels about Alexandria, Egypt. |
![]() An incandescent book about Greece and the Greeks that still rings true today. I had forgotten what a good writer Miller was! |
The Greek Way by Edith Hamilton I read this while boning up on things Greek—a most rewarding intellectual journey, and a reminder of the riches that have come before us—thousands of years before us! Inspired by Hamilton, I couldn’t help marveling while I tread the Acropolis and the ruins of Delos that for its inhabitants, the birth of Jesus was in the far future. |
![]() Must-reading for anyone interested in travel to Europe, for anyone interested in the human spirit, inter-generational understanding, the perspective of history, and racial amnesia. The horrors of World War I are a real awakening, and will have a dampening effect on your own whining and complaining. This book’s fictional reading companion should be Pat Barker’s superb trilogy, Regeneration, The Eye in the Door, andThe Ghost Road. Many of the real-life people in Fussell’s book show up in Barker’s harrowing novels. |
![]() This delightful book by the Tom Miller, author of Trading with the Enemy, The Panama Hat Trail, and the editor of Travelers’ Tales Cuba, will give hours of pleasure not only to those who live in the marvelous Southwest, but to those who have adopted it as their own after a visit or two. |
Home from the Sea: Robert Louis Stevenson in Samoa by Richard A. Bermann This is a lovely and imaginative recreation of the last two years of Robert Louis Stevenson’s life in Samoa, where he died in 1894. Anyone who grew up reading books such as Kidnapped and Treasure Island will enjoy reading about the author, a truly fascinating guy, and his life in Samoa as a Scottish expatriate and would-be meddler in Samoan politics. It is also worth reading as a portait of a waning south sea culture. |
![]() A poignant and powerful little book, intended to be her last. Full of highly readable history and observations on empire (her trademark), but also on the traveler’s soul and the span of the life journey. |
![]() Written in 1989 and winner of the National Book Award, you couldn’t find a better book to help sort out in your mind what is going on in the Middle East today. Staggeringly good. One of those books which will change your mind about, well, just about everything. Makes you deeply aware of the abysmally shallow level of media coverage of Israeli-Palestinian issues. |
![]() A mind-bender of a book. If you care about genocide, racism, or you love Africa, you’ve got to read this book about the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. You will be utterly dismayed by UN, European, and US inaction, and you will fall over faint with the beauty of those who remained human while the Beast stalked this beautiful little country. |
![]() Disclosure: Sean is my older brother, who works with me at Travelers’ Tales; I wrote the introduction to this book under the pseudonym B.A. Boone. This is an outrageous, one-of-a-kind book written by one of the strangest people I’ve ever met. After you read it, you will wonder why phrases such as “peace process,” “anger management,” “sexual addiction,” and a host of others are even used, when leaders instead should be talking about Dick Management in national affairs, educational policy, and matters of crime and punishment. |
![]() I started reading this at a friend’s house recently and couldn’t put it down. It’s a well-done combination of the journal entries of Robert Falcon Scott on his doomed race to the South Pole, along with wonderful expedition photographs and very good contextual commentary on the part of the editor. My God Victorians knew how to suffer! |
![]() If you haven’t read any of the huge numbers of books out now on Shackleton’s desperate South Pole voyage, read this one first. My mother used to rave about it when I was small, and when I finally read it, I had to agree with her. A testament to courage and human will. |
![]() This account of Wallace Stegner’s boyhood on the U.S.-Canadian border taught me more about western American history than anything I’ve read. You don’t have to be a Stegner fan (I am) to love this book. |
![]() I read this book while traveling around Cuba, and it was an unforgettable travel companion. Tom Miller brings it all alive—Fidel, the Revolution, the struggle with the U.S., the beauty and sadness of Havana, the charm of ordinary Cubans and the beautiful landscape of Cuba itself. |
![]() This is the guidebook to take with you on any journey around Cuba. The author has not only done his homework, he’s put it all together in a very readable fashion. Would that all guidebooks were so approachable! |
![]() This is one of those books that defines a genre, or sub-genre-highly idiosyncratic travel writing. If you’ve never written about your own travels but want to, read and study this book. |
![]() If a book were a pill, and you could take a pill to understand India, this is the pill you should take. Dalrymple, like H.V. Morton and Jan Morris before him, weaves culture and history and his own experience together in a manner that makes other travel writers seem like simpletons. |
![]() This book is a great introduction to a complex country and people. But even if you’ve been to France a lot, you’ll be rewarded by the read. |
![]() Ina Caro not only brings the history of Gaul and then France into focus, she’s so good you actually remember it! A must-read for Francophiles of all ages and levels. |
![]() This book is delightful from beginning to end: simple and sly, it conveys a love of France and the French. |
![]() A wonderful and very readable history of the creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914.
Mystic Isles of the South Seas (The Bestsellers of 1921). by Frederick O’Brien
FICTION:The Quiet American by Graham Greene Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone… by JK Rowling A Small Death in Lisbon by Robert Wilson The Prodigal Spy by Joseph Kanon |
About James’s Corner:
James O’Reilly is the publisher and series editor of Travelers’ Tales. He lives with his wife and three daughters in Palo Alto, CA, where they also publish children’s art games at Birdcage Books.