Backpackers' Best Travel Books 2009

From Kathleen Crislip, former About.com Guide

On the list of best backpackers' travel books: "The Lost City of Z":

Lost City of Z author David Grann told Frank Bures at Worldhum.com earlier this year, "In travel writing there's a tendency to want to glorify one's own experiences, to pretend as if one stands apart. The best travel writing -- or indeed any nonfiction writing -- is when the narrator is a vivid but faithful recorder of the world." We like that attitude, and we love the story: an account of British-spy-turned-explorer Percy Fawcett, who went into the Amazon in 1925 on a quest for El Dorado, the fabled lost city of gold, and never came out. Many have searched for both the city and the lost explorer, but Grann's own journey to the jungle (for which he took an extra life insurance policy) -- and his findings -- will entertain and instruct, perhaps causing the reader to examine the nature of seeking and obsession (not to mention what modern man's intrusion into the Amazon has wreaked). The Lost City of Z

Readers Respond: What's Your Favorite Travel Book of 2009?

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• Rough Guide's First Time Around the World
• The Lost City of Z
• Bicycle Diaries - David Byrne
• Best Womens' Travel Writing 2009
• The Best Travel Writing of 2009
• Marco Polo Didn't Go There
• Best Travel Phrasebooks - Best Backpackers Travel Books 2009

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