The tao of travel : enlightenments from lives on the road / Paul Theroux.

The importance of elsewhere -- Travel in brief -- The navel of the world -- The pleasures of railways -- Travel wisdom of Henry Fielding -- Murphy's rules of travel -- Travelers on their own books -- How long did the traveler spend traveling? -- Travel wisdom of Samuel Johnson -- The things that they carried -- Fears, neuroses, and other conditions -- Travelers who never went alone -- Travel wisdom of Sir Francis Galton -- Travel as an ordeal -- English travelers on escaping England -- When you're strange -- Travel wisdom of Robert Louis Stevenson -- It is solved by walking -- Travel feats -- Staying home -- Travel wisdom of Freya Stark -- Imaginary journeys -- Everything is edible somewhere -- Rosenblum's rules of reporting -- Travel wisdom of Claude Lévi-Strauss -- Perverse pleasures of the inhospitable -- Imaginary people -- Writers and the places they never visited -- Travel wisdom of Evelyn Waugh -- Travelers' bliss -- Classics of a sense of place -- Evocative name, disappointing place -- Travel wisdom of Paul Bowles. Dangerous, happy, alluring -- Five travel epiphanies -- The essential tao of travel.

A collection of writings from Paul Theroux's fifty years of travel. Included are writings from other travelers such as Charles Dickens, Eudora Welty, Anton Chekhov, Ernest Hemingway and many others.