Roads Less Traveled: Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth

By Catherine Watson and Charles H Bayer

This collection of Catherine Watson's popular travel essays, often requested by her readers and reprinted by permission from the Star Tribune, spans thirty years and seven continents. Vivid, lyrical,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0929636457
• ISBN13: 9780929636450
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Syren Book Company
• Length: 280 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

A wonderful book!

Nominated for a prestigious Minnesota Book Award, 2006 "A tourist goes away but a travel writer comes back and tells others about the trip." For 30 years (1978 to 2004) as travel writer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune (where these columns first appeared), Catherine Watson takes us traveling. If traveling to you is only things you see, then you will find this book "too soft." Watson takes us to visit the people and each area's oddities (that's a good thing) or uniqueness. The chapters are each a column titled and dated so you get a historical reference as well. This is the perfect book if you have only small bursts of reading time. The cover is of the magnificent Taj Mahal in India. The building is captured in her wonderful descriptions of sites and sounds there. Now I know the history: Taj was the beloved and adored wife of the Shah, and at her untimely death, he had the Taj Mahal built across the river from the palace so he could look at it every day. With Watson we travel the world to these places and dozens more: -- Visiting Vietnam and its people in 1996, 20 years after the "American war," as they call it, ended there. She saw abandoned American military trucks now fully engaged in their commerce. -- Getting a cleansing/cure/healing in Sonora, Mexico. -- Renting a villa in Acapulco. -- Crossing into East Germany in 1995 where the second language for most adults is Russian (not the English of West Germans). Here she writes about the spectacular glass-blown Christmas ornaments and the families who've made them for generations. -- Polar bears in Churchill, Canada, where she gets up close and personal with nature. In 1996 she even wrote about Minnesota, her and my home state. She was the tour guide for a visiting journalist from Holland to whom Minnesota was America as she had not visited any other city. Watson has seen and done things I've always wanted to--and things I'd never be brave enough to attempt--and everything in between. Armchair Interviews says: Travelers (those who go and those who dream of going) will love Roads Less Traveled: Dispatches From the Ends of the Earth. The book is really more about the people who happen to live in destinations admired by tourists.

A fun compilation of the sights, sounds, smells, and one-of-a-kind experiences present all around th

Roads Less Traveled: Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth is a collection of travel essays by Catherine Watson, the chief travel columnist and photographer of the Minneapolis "Star Tribune" newspaper from 1978 to 2004. Divided into segments that devote a short and sweet 4-10 pages or so to each destination, Roads Less Travels recount highlights of the author's journeys to Spain, India, Mexico City, Vietnam, Australia, Bhutan, Antarctica, Kilimanjaro, and many more exciting and far-off places. A truly eclectic and fun compilation of the sights, sounds, smells, and one-of-a-kind experiences present all around the world.

The best travel book you've never heard of

I love Catherine Watson's stories because she strikes a perfect balance between lyricism and accessibility, and between the personal and universal. There's room for the reader in her sometimes tender, sometimes brave stories of world (and backyard) travel. The pieces, which originally ran the Star Tribune Travel section, are short in length, but long on beauty and insight. If you haven't read Watson's work, try it. It's a satisfying antidote to the overhyped, PR-driven world of travel writing.

Makes me want to travel more.......

Catherine has the unique ability to transport you with her words.....you feel the story coming alive....and you want nothing more than to go to these places and experience them yourself.

Trips down Memory Lane

Upon opening the package I had received, my breath was taken away when I discovered the magnificent cover of the Roads Less Traveled: Dispatches from the Ends of the Earth. The glorious Taj Mahal awaited me-but this time with a perspective off the beaten path. This book offers various in-depth tales from far-off lands around the globe that many of us do not have the chances to visit much less feel a part of. With the Roads Less Traveled, the reader is offered the opportunity to globetrot without a passport-to feel the cold Antarctic winds, the heat of Honduras and to experience an Andean Trek. For those domestic tales, readers may reminisce about stories of their own, but have a new twist on past experiences. Many kudos to Ms. Watson on this book!! Hopefully there are future excerpts and essays to come!