Best American Travel Writing 2012 (2012)

The Best American Series(R)

The Best American series is the premier annual showcase for the country's finest short fiction and nonfiction. Each volume's series editor selects notable works from hundreds of magazines, journals, and websites. A special guest editor, a leading writer in the field, then chooses the best twenty or so pieces to publish. This unique system has made the Best American series the most respected -- and most popular -- of its kind.

The Best American Travel Writing 2012 includes

Bryan Curtis, Lynn Freed, J. Malcolm Garcia, Peter Gwin,

Kimberly Meyer, Paul Theroux, and others

What happens when today's most brilliant writers journey to the planet's most astonishing, forgotten, and dangerous corners?

• Post-Apocalyptic Travel: A journey into Chernobyl's Exclusion Zone, a strange and teeming Eden where irradiated wildlife thrives in humanity's absence.
• Literary Journalism: From the scribes of Timbuktu facing down al Qaeda to the brave citizens of Sicily standing up to the Mafia, these stories uncover cultures at a crossroads.
• Extreme Exploration: Descend into the world's largest cave in Vietnam and follow in the ski tracks of Roald Amundsen across Norway's deadly Hardangervidda plateau.
• American Landscapes: An unflinching walk along the US-Mexico border, a pilgrimage to the "Holy City" of the Wichitas, and a ride on the rails with America's freight train hoppers.