Better than I thought it would be, this financial thriller winds up taking what looks to be a typical good brother/bad brother tale and turning it into a fast-paced whodunit. Nothing fancy, but totally okay for reading on planes.

This book probably took me the better part of a year or maybe even two to finish completely. It was not just a book about travel -- with some amazing long essays by a lot of writers you’ve heard of -- but it was my travel book, tosse dinto my backpack when I went places and did things. As such it was a great companion on a random bus ride or plane trip but was also often left behind when I’d be someplace more interesting than even a terrific travel book.

This book contains a number of very dissimilar essays about travel that are all lumped under the loose heading of -- essays written by people who were not at home. There are a few people searching for deposed dictators, Bill Bryson talking about being in and leaving the US, and a very poignant story by Christopher Hitchens who discusses entering Romania and going to Timisoara the day after the Ceasecus were assassinated which was personally quite interesting to me.