Most travel books skate across the surface of the cultures they encounter. But as someone who has lived in a variety of places, studied the languages, and undergone a certain amount of acculturation, I feel like these books often miss the true strangeness and wonder of the world. The books here get at how things look different from inside another culture and language. The travel, in other words, not just to another country, but into another world.
I wrote
The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death, and the Search for the Meaning of the World's Strangest Syndromes
In this book, Frank Bures investigates magical penis theft, voodoo death, and other “culture-bound” syndromes, tracing each seemingly baffling phenomenon…
Peter Hessler is one of my favorite writers, and this is my favorite of his books. It is, in some ways, a continuation of his first book, River Town, about teaching English in the Peace Corps in a fast-changing China, but this one is a deeper, richer book.
It covers a time when Hessler was finding his footing as a freelance writer while all his former students were finding theirs in the new China. Woven into this is the story of the so-called ‘oracle bones,” on which Chinese writing first emerged, and a powerful meditation on the meaning of stories and language.
Peter Hessler's previous book River Town was a prize-winning, poignant and deeply compelling portrait of China. Now, in Oracle Bones, Hessler returns to the country, excavating its long history and immersing himself in the lives of young Chinese as they migrate from the traditional Chinese countryside to the booming ever-changing cities and try to cope with their society's modern transformation.
This isn't normally shelved in travel, but I think of it that way, and it is definitely a book about culture and the power of the beliefs of those around us.
Buford was also an American living in England, as he plumbed the depth of soccer hooliganism. At once hilarious and terrifying, this is one of my all-time favorite books, and I will never get tired of rereading it.
The author of this book has spent most of his spare time "among the thugs", the hooligans whose violence scars the face of English football. He has written a work of investigative journalism and a meditation on the violence that lies just beneath the surface of English life.
This is an amazing book, gorgeously written, but I love it most because it takes us into a world we would never have access to: the Indian slum, where lives are hard, where the margins are impossibly thin, and where people make their living sorting through the waste of others.
But what Boo shows is that, no matter how hard those lives are, they are every bit as rich and complicated and full of drama as our own.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF TIME’S TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE DECADE
“Inspiring . . . extraordinary . . . [Katherine Boo] shows us how people in the most desperate circumstances can find the resilience to hang on to their humanity. Just as important, she makes us care.”—People
“A tour de force of social justice reportage and a literary masterpiece.”—Judges, PEN/John Kenneth Galbraith Award
ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times • The Washington Post • O: The Oprah Magazine • USA Today •…
Culture is a powerful force in our lives, but often, we don't realize just how powerful it is.
That’s precisely what Ethan Watters shows in this book: Not only has American culture been influential in the global marketplace, but our cultural illnesses, like anorexia, PTSD, depression, and others, have spread to places where they were never known.
“A blistering and truly original work of reporting and analysis, uncovering America’s role in homogenizing how the world defines wellness and healing” (Po Bronson).
In Crazy Like Us, Ethan Watters reveals that the most devastating consequence of the spread of American culture has not been our golden arches or our bomb craters but our bulldozing of the human psyche itself: We are in the process of homogenizing the way the world goes mad.
It is well known that American culture is a dominant force at home and abroad; our exportation of everything from movies to junk food is a well-documented…
There is perhaps no better book to convey the disorienting sense of what it's like to be immersed in another culture and language. Everett’s anecdotes are hilarious, moving, and bizarre, and the book is well worth reading for those alone.
But it’s also much more than that: Everett is a missionary turned linguist, and in his story, he also writes about his discoveries regarding Pirahã language and culture that have rocked the field of linguistics to its foundation.
Part passionate memoir, part scientific exploration, a life-changing tale set among a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in Brazil that offers a riveting look into the nature of language, thought, and life itself.
"Immensely interesting and deeply moving.... One of the best books I have read."—Lucy Dodwell, New Scientist
A riveting account of the astonishing experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel Everett while he lived with the Pirahã, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil.
Daniel Everett arrived among the Pirahã with his wife and three young children hoping to convert the tribe to Christianity. Everett quickly…
In this book, Frank Bures investigates magical penis theft, voodoo death, and other “culture-bound” syndromes, tracing each seemingly baffling phenomenon to its source.
It’s a fascinating, and at times rollicking, adventure that takes the reader around the world and deep into the oddities of the human psyche. What Bures uncovers along the way is a poignant and stirring story of the persistence of belief, fear, and hope.
