Books and Movies

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt – Travel Book Reviews

Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil is a portrait of Savannah, an isolated town in Georgia where John Berendt, a journalist from New York found himself by chance ...

"China Blue", Sweatshops and Jeans - World Film

China Blue is an outstanding and tragic documentary that will make you never want to wear a pair of jeans again.

Micha Peled’s film was shot secretly inside a Chinese ...

The Seventh Gate by Peter Greave - Travel Book Reviews

The Seventh Gate is the autobiography of Peter Greave, born in Calcutta in the time of the Raj and he tells his tragic tale with wit and grace that make ...

The Names of Things by Susan Brind Morrow

The Names of Things belongs in a category all of its own. At times travel memoirs, at times etymological musings, the personal and the academic blend in a unique story ...

Born Into Brothels - The Kids of Calcutta

Born into Brothels is an amazing, touching film by Ross Kaufman and Zana Briski that takes us inside the world of the red light district in Calcutta, India and of ...

Black Earth City by Charlotte Hobson – Book Reviews

Black Earth City is one of the most delightful traveler tales you’re likely to come across. By turns funny, poignant and tragic, Charlotte Hobson records her year spent in Continue reading >>

What is the What by Dave Eggers - Travel Book Reviews

The life of Valentino Achak Deng, a Dinka from southern Sudan, is one of constant motion in Dave Eggers’ What is the What. From the age of six, Valentino (who ...

Into the Wild - Movie Reviews

Into the Wild is Sean Penn’s adaptation of the tale of Christopher McCandless, a young man who rejects the values and goals of a sick, hypocritical society to head off ...

Arabia by Jonathan Raban - Travel Book Reviews

When does a travelogue cease to be a work of journalism and become instead a historical record? Jonathan Raban wrote Arabia in 1979 when the first rich Arabs were coming ...

Budget Travel in India by David S. Kauffman

One of the very occasional perks of editing Road Junky is the odd parcel that arrives with someone’s book in it for us to review. A Road Junky book review ...

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi - Travel Book Review

Reading Lolita in Tehran is probably the best introduction to modern Iran to be found anywhere. By turns, lyrical and personal, Azar Nafisi offers us a portrait of her ...

Dark Star Safari by Paul Theroux - Travel Book Review

Dark Star Safari is one of Paul Theroux’s best travel books to date. He sets out to journey from Cairo to Cape town shortly before his 60th birthday in a ...

101 Experimental Travel Ideas

The Lonely Planet have decided that they’ve squeezed all the fun out of travel with their homogenising guidebooks and have released the Experimental Travel Guide to inspire people to ...

Thumbs Up Australia, Hitchhiking Oz - Travel Book Reviews

Thumbs Up Australia by Tom Parry is a pleasant tale of a meek English journalist and his volatile French girlfriend hitching around Australia. Parry’s girlfriend, Katia, thinks he’s half-crazy but ...

Voyageur by Robert Twigger - Travel Book Reviews

What put off most modern canoeists was that the journey went over a mountain range. And to climb that range meant paddling over a thousand miles against the current, largely ...

A Death in Brazil by Peter Robb – Travel Book Reviews

A Death in Brazil is a book that demonstrates a great writing talent with lush, florid passages that sweep the reader onto the stage of a slum in Rio ...

Down and Out in Paris and London By George Orwell

Down and Out in Paris and London was one of the most remarkable travel books of its time and inspired generations of writers to transcend their comfortable backgrounds and discover ...

The Places In Between - A Travel Book Review

The Places in Between
by Rory Stewart

There are three types of travel writers. First there are the ones who know important people worth including in their books, authors like Paul ...

Papillon by Henri Charriere

Book Review, “Papillon” by Henry Charriere Review by Tom Thumb

In 1970 “Papillon” was published and set the world on fire. It is the autobiography of Henri Charriere, a man sentenced ...

Arabian Sands Book Review

Wilfred Thesiger never imagined he would write about his experiences out in the sands of Arabia. When he was later asked to do so by his friends he initially refused ...

Amitav Ghosh - "In An Antique Land"

In An Antique Land is written by the anthropologist, Amitav Ghosh and the publishers marketed it as ‘..a subversive history in the guise of a traveler’s tale… a magical, intimate ...

Adrift Book Review

A Book by Steven Callahan

Have you ever just wanted to just get away from it all and spend some time traveling on your own terms? Well, if this urge has ...

"Further Up The Road" - Hitching from San Fran to Argentina - Travel Books

Further Up the Road is the tale of a young freak hitchhiking from San Francisco to Argentina and halfway back with barely a coin in his pocket. Set in the ...

Deccan Tamasha – South India on a Motorcycle - Travel Books

Deccan Tamasha by Robin Brown is the definitive book on touring India by motorbike, written by one of the original freaks to have survived the overland journey to India ...

Holidays in Hell by P.J O'Rourke - Travel Books

Holidays in Hell is something of a crossover between a travel book, political reportage and P.J O’Rourke telling the world what he thinks of it. It’s loud, obnoxious, crude and ...

Round Ireland With A Fridge by Tony Hawks - Travel Books

Round Ireland with a Fridge is the slightly surreal tale of Tony Hawks, a stand up comedian who, for a bet, resolves to hitchhike around the circumference of Ireland with ...

Touch the Dragon by Karen Connolly - Thai Travel Book

Touch the Dragon by Karen Connolly is one of the most beautiful travel books you’re ever likely to read. With a poetic voice and a maturity rare to be found ...

Richard Burton - Harar Travel Book

In 1854, ever ready to appropriate, exploit and plunder the resources of the world, the British Empire desired to know what treasures the ancient city of Harar, in East Africa, ...

Motorcycle Diaries Che Guevara - Movie Review

Spanish, with English Subtitles
Directed by Walter Salles

The captivating film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) depicts young medical student Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, known later throughout the world as ...

Hashish - A Smuggler's Tale by Henry de Monfreid - Book Review

Book Review of “Hashish – A Smuggler’s Tale” by Henry Monfreid Review by Tom Thumb

“Hashish – A Smuggler’s Tale” (Henry de Monfreid, 1935)

“Hashish” is a classic tale of adventure in ...

California Dreaming by Lawrence Donegan Book Review

California Dreaming is the tale of Lawrence Donegan, an ex bass player turned journalist, living out a grim life in Glasgow. He’s always dreamed of going to live in Continue reading >>

Blaine Harden - Africa, Dispatches from a Fragile Continent

If you want to understand anything at all about the state of modern Africa then Blaine Harden is the man to read. A reporter for the Washington Post, his ...

J.W Schultz - My Life As An Indian

Published over a hundred years ago in 1907, J.W Schultz was too early to know that future generations would have preferred him to title his memoirs ‘My Life as a ...

Pete McCarthy - McCarthy's Bar Ireland Travel

Pete McCarthy is a man who thinks he’s English but would kind of like to be Irish and so, in McCarthy’s Bar, he sets off to see if he might ...

Dispatches, Vietnam Michael Herr

“We have all spent ten years trying to explain what happened to our heads and our lives in the decade we finally survived – but Michael Herr’s Dispatches puts all ...

Eric Newby Traveler's Tales

Eric Newby is one of the established English travel writers, making his mark with classics like A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. Self-deprecating and light-hearted, he now shows himself ...

Heart of Darkness Joseph Conrad

This isn’t a travelogue but rather a novel whose theme of search and desolation will be familiar to many a traveler. In addition, it’s one of the greatest works of ...

Marco Polo's Travels

Marco Polo doesn’t exactly qualify as a travel writer – in the age he lived the only books in circulation were the Bible, some religious and philosophical works and the ...

The Pillars of Hercules by Paul Theroux - Travel Book Review

Review by Tom Thumb

A great travel writer will not always write a great travel book but with Paul Theroux you can always be sure of a laugh along the ...

Paddle to the Amazon by Don Starkell Book Review

We’ve all heard of the father who wants to live out his dreams through his sons, but Don Starkell took it a step further by dragging his sons along with ...

Travel Book Review: Dust On My Shoes

Dust on my Shoes by Peter Pinney is quintessential travel before the whole deal became commoditized. Before waves of backpackers, hippy types in vans, and throngs of adventuring ecotourists the ...