"In this collection of essays and articles written over the last fifteen years, Paul Theroux demonstrates how the traveling life and the writing life are intimately connected. Not simply an escape from the mundane, travel has always been a creative act for Theroux. His journeys in remote hinterlands and crowded foreign capitals provide the necessary perspective to "become a stranger" in order to discover the self." "From the crisp quiet of a solitary week spent in the snowbound Maine woods, to the expectant chaos of Hong Kong on the eve of the Hand-over, to a small Pacific island where atomic bombs were detonated, Theroux is the perfect guide - casually informative, keenly observant, wry, and entertaining."--BOOK JACKET.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [463]-466).

Introduction: Being a Stranger 1. Time Travel Memory and Creation: The View from Fifty The Object of Desire At the Sharp End: Being in the Peace Corps Five Travel Epiphanies Travel Writing: The Point of It 2. Fresh Air Fiend Fresh Air Fiend The Awkward Question The Moving Target Dead Reckoning to Nantucket Paddling to Plymouth Fever Chart: Parasites I Have Known 3. A Sense of Place Diaries of Two Cities: Amsterdam and London Farewell to Britain: Look Thy Last on All Things Lovely Gravy Train: A Private Railway Car The Maine Woods: Camping in the Snow Trespassing in Florida Down the Zambezi The True Size of Cape Cod German Humor 4. China Down the Yangtze Chinese Miracles Ghost Stories: A Letter from Hong Kong on the Eve of the Hand-over 5. The Pacific Hawaii The Other Oahu On Molokai

Connected in Palau Tasting the Pacific Palawan: Up and Down the Creek Christmas Island: Bombs and Birds 6. Books of Travel My Own The Edge of the Great Rift: Three African Novels The Black House The Great Railway Bazaar The Old Patagonian Express The Making of The Mosquito Coast Kowloon Tong Other People's Robinson Crusoe Thoreau's Cape Cod The Secret Agent: A Dangerous Londoner The Worst Journey in the World Racers to the Pole PrairyErth Looking for a Ship 7. Escapees and Exiles Chatwin Revisited Greeneland V. S. Pritchett: The Foreigner as Traveler William Simpson: Artist and Traveler Rajat Neogy: An Indian in Uganda The Exile Moritz Thomsen 8. Fugues Unspeakable Rituals and Outlandish Beliefs Gilstrap, the Homesick Explorer The Return of Bingo Humpage.