“For everyone who believes that travel is mostly about kindness and an open heart, Newsham is an ideal guide. His journey, at heart, is into humanity.”
—Pico Iyer, author of Video Night in Kathmandu
A free trip to America? To many this either sounds like a scam or a dream come true, but to traveler and writer Brad Newsham it was the fulfillment of a promise made to himself as a young man traveling outside his own country for the first time. What would a Kenyan safari guide think of New York City or the Grand Canyon, a villager from the Philippines think of a Las Vegas casino or California’s redwoods? Would they feel the same sense of wonder Newsham felt as he first encountered their countries and cultures? Twenty years later, he set out to answer this question, and to repay the hospitality that had been extended to him throughout his many years of travel.
In Take Me With You, Brad Newsham tells of his 100-day journey to the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. His plan: at the trip’s completion, he will surprise one of the people he meets along the way, someone who has never been out of his or her native country, with an invitation to visit and travel around the United States with him for one month–his treat! Along the way, you see the world through Newsham’s eyes, always colored by the individuals who people the varied lands he visits: Tony, the young Filipino shop-owner and guide; Mohammed Ali, the professional ear-cleaner in New Delhi; Mahmoud, the Egyptian, donkey-riding teenager; Honest George, a young Tanzanian with a small store on the slopes of Kilimanjaro; and many others. An immediacy and suspense permeate: around any corner, the author might bump into someone whose life will be changed forever by their meeting. Who will it be? How will he choose?
Take Me With You tells a story that changes lives–the author’s, the life of a stranger he has yet to meet, and the lives of those who read this hopeful, heartwarming account. How often do you encounter such a tale–the story of a traveler whose central purpose is to give a trip to someone else, someone he randomly meets on the road? The world, according to Newsham, is a place in which individual people matter, in which the dream of one may touch the life of another. With poignancy and persuasion, he demonstrates the power individuals have to make the world a better place.
About the author
Brad Newsham believes that the reason none of his careers–underground miner, newspaper reporter, waiter, bank secretary-have lasted more than a couple of years had something to do with the fact that he wandered into Afghanistan when he was twenty-two years old and made himself a promise. Take Me With You is the fulfillment of that promise. Newsham’s first book, All the Right Places(Villard) was also a travel memoir. He is a writer, a guest columnist for The San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco Yellow Taxi driver. He lives in Oakland, California, with his family.
About Travelers’ Tales
Founded in 1993, Travelers’ Tales publishes the best in travel and spiritual writing from world-famous authors as well as new writers. Our goal is to inspire and enlighten readers through true stories by travelers who have explored the depths of their experiences. The series includes: country and regional guides; books on adventure and the outdoors, women’s travel, spirituality, food, trouble and survival, and travel advice; and Footsteps: The Soul of Travel, a series that features single-author travel narratives, in which Take Me With You is the fourth title. In Fall, 2000, Travelers’ Tales launches Travelers’ Tales Classics, a new series which introduces out-of-print favorites of travel literature to a whole new audience.
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Take Me With You: A Round-the-World Journey to Invite a Stranger Home
by Brad Newsham
Travelers’ Tales, August 2000
$24.00 ($36.00 Canada), hardcover, 376 pages, 5.625″ x 8.25″
ISBN: 1-885211-51-1