Let's Get Lost: Adventures in the Great Wide Open

by Craig Nelson and Craig Nelson

Book Overview

Craig Nelson has experienced places most people only dream about. He has walked the Great Wall of China; taught New Guinea cannibals how to dance; communed with a sign-language-speaking orangutan in... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0446523666
• ISBN13: 9780446523660
• Release Date: January 1999
• Publisher: Warner Books (NY)
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 5.6" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

The Original Survivor

A reality seeker long before it was cool, Craig Nelson is the ultimate travelling companion through the kind of forbidding destinations where "the airport wind sock really is a sock." Whether growling like a leopard with celebrity lookalike residents of Tanzania, good naturedly eating wet pine needles, or describing the symptoms of "tchotchke fatigue," Craig Nelson's singularly brilliant combination of wit and wanderlust is a camp classic. If Gogol collaborated with Indiana Jones, with a polish by John Waters, they might evoke Craig Nelson's LET'S GET LOST. Let's have more LET'S GET LOST--a series, a movie, a cookbook?

Travel Writing at its Best

Let's Get Lost is warm-hearted, candid, hilarious, and refreshingly honest. Travelers will recognize the truth of Nelson's captivating tales and appreciate his sardonic wit. Anyone who's lived and traveled in less developed countries--as I have--will love the characters, tribulations, and uniquely beautiful experiences that Craig Nelson captures so well.

Laughing out loud

For those of you who have all condemned Craig's book, do any of you have senses of humor? Why would you want to read a travel book in which the writer simply says everything is nice, clean, interesting, pleasant and he loves every single person he encounters? I think this would make for an absolute bore. Craig writes as if he is an old friend telling you funny and beautiful tales of his travels and he lets you into his private thoughts that many would be to afraid to share because they may not be very PC. It you want a candy coated travel experience, go to a travel agent. If you want the truth, (at least as he sees it), go to a real traveler.

So nice I read it twice; so good, I think you should (too)

Let's Get Lost is about a regular guy who takes exoticvacations anyone can go on themselves, if they only thought aboutit. This isn't Into Thin Air or Redmond O'Hanlon; it's more like an around-the-world Bill Bryson, but funnier and more informative. He has great insights and funny stories, and this book really inspired me to make my next vacation something I'll remember the rest of my life.

Funny, informative: Who wouldn't want to travel with Nelson?

This book is the perfect getaway trip for armchair travelers--all the insight and acute observations of Paul Theroux without the snottiness and superiority complex. (Plus Nelson is ten thousands times funnier.) And for all of us who long to do the Grand Tour but forgot to file for our IPOs, here's real-life travel (okay, he does seem to be able to take longer trips than the average working stiff adventurer) from a regular-salaried Everyman who helps you hit the high points but also clues you in to the byways with forgotten or hidden treasures the guidebooks won't tell you about. I don't understand the other reviewers; the "racist" slams are aimed at ill-mannered fellow tourists and local opportunists who deserve what they get--although most of the humor is pretty self-deprecating--and I give Nelson credit for his honesty in admitting his lust for un-PC souvenirs we'd all grab for for if we were lucky enough to have the chance. Nelson's a terrific writer; I've already read about a quarter of this out loud to my travel-crazed husband.Mr. Nelson, dump that Brenda babe and take me on your next jaunt.