19 Books Like The Way of the World

A deserved, all-time classic, this book seems to transcend time to capture the spirit of wanderlust. I was young and impressionable when I read it for the first time, and it inspired a sense of profound restlessness to explore, grow, and hit the road to see for myself. 

Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac are wild, occasionally unhinged protagonists, and their journey consists of hustling, romance, and drinking their way to a good time. Kerouac’s writing made me long for similar misadventures, where life is simple and finding the road is all that matters. Subversively, the novel promotes a full life and whole human experience, which makes working 9 to 5 that much more difficult.

I first encountered Evelyn Waugh’s classic novel Scoop in a backpacker guesthouse in Kowloon in 1987. Some traveler had left it behind, and I read it insatiably, cover to cover, and then started again from the beginning. It was even more hilarious and bitingly satirical on the second read and is the one book I’d take along were I banished to a desert island where luggage allowance was severely restricted.

First published in 1938, Scoop delivers a timeless and elegant roasting of the profession of journalism and self-important foreign correspondents. I have to admit–up to a point–that the bumbling exploits of William Boot, the book’s reluctant protagonist, played more than a small role in my own decision to both pick up a camera and put pen to paper!

Another classic—this one, from 1955, which was twice made into a movie, in 1958 and in the superior 2002 remake, with Brendan Frazier and Michael Cain. The Quiet American is described as many things—as a Vietnam war book, as a critique of American imperialist impulses. But at heart, it’s the story of a love triangle.

And the woman at the center of the love triangle, Phuong, is an all-time favorite character of mine. With watchful attention and subtle silences, she dictates the fate of the two men. More important than anything we ever see her say are the things we see her do and not do. 

I love the novel’s spare prose and its observations and asides, which are astute and oftentimes quite funny. And in the book’s pages, Vietnam, in the years just before the disastrous French then American wars, comes vividly to life. But Phuong is the reason… show more.

Another book about youthful innocence and optimism.

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the story of Laurie Lee leaving England in 1935 on a boat for Spain with just a violin and a blanket and few possessions.

He busks his way around Spain heading south to Andalucía, playing in cafes and town squares for a few coins.

Life in Spain was poor and primitive and the country was on the verge of civil war but his cheery demeanour was always met with warmth and humanity. It’s a life-affirming story.

It was first published in 1937 and the book is an account of a journey Robert Byron made through Persia and Afghanistan in 1933.

The Oxiana he writes about no longer exists having been torn apart by wars and revolutions. I read of his visit to see the Buddhas in Bamian with an ache. I wish they had never been destroyed.

His conversational narrative vividly describes life in towns and villages and the people he meets and their ways of living. He is driven by a love for Islamic architecture that lures him to make this journey.

He attends tea parties and fancy dress balls in remote consulates that now seem absurd but they were no doubt fun at the time and a welcome break.

Travelling in India is never easy or predictable and it is a great test for ones resilience and sense of calm.

I read Slowly Down the Ganges before making my first trip to the north of India and I found it to be a great source of information and wisdom.

Newby travels with such a positive outlook open to all happenings and eventualities.

He set himself a difficult talk in sailing the Ganges but he shares beautiful and fascinating descriptions of the landscapes and villages. Newby talks with great respect about the sacred importance of the River Ganges and tells us all her 108 names.

The book makes you realize that travelling in India will be difficult but ultimately so rewarding.

I have read and re-read News from Tartary countless times, and the pages of my paperback copy are no longer attached to its spine. Its author, Peter Fleming, was the elder brother of writer Ian Fleming, who, it is said, modeled his fictional hero, James Bond, upon the exploits of his elder sibling.

The book is a rip-roaring, real-life adventure set in the mid-1930s (the best time for exploration). Peter, a special correspondent for The Times newspaper, sets off on a six-month trek overland, by horse and camel, from Peking, China, to Kashmir, in British India. It is superbly written—travel literature at its finest—and an evocative record of a lost era in history, just before WW2 and the Chinese Civil War. 

Robert Capa is the photographer I admire most. He died young, but he is forever remembered for his early work in the Spanish Civil War and later during the D-Day landings of WW2. His images and his character were, of course, much more nuanced, and I think he, of all the Magnum photographers, gets closest to capturing the human element of both war and its aftermath.

Whenever I begin to doubt why I continue in the thankless task of photojournalism, I read Capa’s Slightly Out of Focus again. Yes, the Hungarian emigre tells a tall tale, and his friend Ernest Hemingway helped him brush up the text—which was originally intended as a screenplay—but, my God, what a humorous and inspiring autobiographical record of Capa’s adventures in World War 2 this is! 

It is an interesting fact that Hamilton and Gallatin, who served as Treasury Secretary during most of the republic’s first quarter-century, were immigrants from commercially more active locales, Hamilton from the sugar island of St. Croix, Gallatin from the stony Calvinist banking center of Geneva, Switzerland.

As congressman from the Pennsylvania frontier, Gallatin opposed Hamilton’s national debt and Bank of the United States, that gave the infant republic circulating money and workable finance. But as Jefferson and Madison’s secretary of the Treasury Gallatin maintained the bulk of Hamilton’s system and managed—with help from fellow immigrants John Jacob Astor and Stephen Girard—to finance the War of 1812.

The 1949 Geneva Conventions are often viewed as a progressive and self-evident response to the horrors of the Second World War, but this book shows that their development was a highly contested and deeply politicized process.

I greatly appreciated the depth and rigor of the author’s research. By examining archival sources from ten countries and in multiple languages, van Dijk shows that the drafters of this landmark development in international humanitarian law had competing priorities and interests. The decisions and compromises they made in the 1940s shaped the future of warfare in profound ways.

In addition to teaching me about history, this book helped me to understand the consequences for civilians caught in today’s global conflicts.