Gifting travel books? Here are some suggestions.: Travel Weekly

Arnie Weissmann

This year has been a good one for travel-related books, and some of them even come from familiar names — both personal and corporate. As you’re putting together your list for armchair and flat-bed travelers — and yourself — here are a few you might consider:

Intrepid Travel has come out with “The Intrepid List” (2024, Hardi Grant Explore), which recommends 100 destinations in 55 countries across 10 themed sections that are, explicitly, not on bucket lists. Rather, it focuses on places and events that provide “a deeper interaction.” Its format is more “1,000 Places to See Before You Die” than glossy coffee table book; many of the photos could have been taken with a phone, and most images have travelers in them. To me, that’s part of its appeal: It shows what meaningful travel can look like, from natural beauty to city scenes to a bunch of people posing for photos on bicycles.

“Design: The Leading Hotels of the World” (2024, Monacelli) is a beautiful coffee table book featuring 74 Leading Hotels properties around the globe. The photography is inviting, and the writing takes it above the level of promotion: Leading Hotels hired art, architecture and design critics as well as luxury travel writers to provide descriptions that include notes citing some of the boldface-name designers and architects who gave the hotels their looks of distinction.

Not a new book but rather newly relevant is Mejdi Tours co-founder Aziz Abu Sarah’s “Crossing Boundaries: A Traveler’s Guide to World Peace” (2020, Berrett-Koehler Publishers). Abu Sarah’s experiences growing up in East Jerusalem led him to devote his life to finding ways to use travel to promote empathy and reconciliation. The book covers everything from “How to Meet People While Traveling” to “Resolving Conflict and the Art of Responsible Travel.”

Former Celebrity Cruises CEO Lisa Lutoff-Perlo’s “Making Waves: A Woman’s Rise to the Top Using Smarts, Heart and Courage” (2024, Matt Holt) is both a biography and a how-to business book. It’s not a cruise industry tell-all but rather is intended as a blueprint for leadership; Lutoff-Perlo reflects  on the guiding principles that she believes led her from sales rep to CEO.

The Atlas Obscura people, who began as publishers but now are also tour operators, have come out with a third volume to go with “Atlas Obscura” (2016, Workman Publishing Co.) by Joshua Foer, Ella Morton and Dylan Thuras, and “Gastro Obscura” (2021, Workman Publishing Co.) by Cecily Wong, Dylan Thuras and Atlas Obscura. “Atlas Obscura Wild Life” (2024, Workman Publishing Co.), by Cara Giaimo and Joshua Foer, describes the critters, minerals and flora that travelers typically come within a stone’s throw of but never see (or if they do see, do not fully understand). Focusing on the nonobvious but glorious, it’s a welcome addition to the Obscura collection.

We have featured Steve McCurry’s photography in Travel Weekly, and in his latest large-format book “Devotion” (2024, Prestel), he picks up the title’s theme and applies it to photos he has taken around the world. From spiritual devotion to that expressed in personal and even professional relationships, he brings viewers into the most intimate settings; the combination of subject, light and color simply dazzle.

Earlier this year I reviewed “The New Tourist: Waking Up to the Power and Perils of Travel” (2024, Scribner) by Paige McClanahan. It’s an exceptionally thoughtful look at the impact of travel on various places around the world that neither condemns travel nor endorses it in all its forms. It’s a clear-eyed take on the pros and cons of our industry (and traveler behavior) written by someone who approaches the task with humility and insight.

If you’re a fan of desolate landscapes, eerie architecture, geothermal wonders and similar manifestations of Earth’s and human-built wonders, you will enjoy “Go to Hell: A Traveler’s Guide to Earth’s Most Otherworldly Destinations” (2024, National Geographic) by Erika Engelhaupt. Voodoo practitioners, bone-filled catacombs and mountaintop monasteries are included, as well an exhaustive list of lakes of lava. Engelhaupt makes a good Virgil, and NatGeo mapmakers and photographers provide exceptional graphics and images.

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Two books I read this past year are not specifically about travel but have everything to do with the journey everyone alive in 2024 is on. Both “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything” (2024, Penguin Press) by Nate Silver and “Nexus” (2024, Random House) by Yuval Noah Harari give us a glimpse of where AI is potentially taking us.

Silver’s book looks at risk in many forms (he’s a professional poker player in addition to being the best-known election forecaster), and he frames the risks (and possible rewards) of AI in the context of the people working on it, which is sometimes reassuring but mostly not.

Harari, a historian, puts AI in the context of how information systems have been developed and manipulated over the centuries. After hundreds of pages of cautionary tales, he does declare that not all hope is lost. The two books together are must-reads to understand what adventures and misadventures may lie on the road ahead. 

Correction: “The Intrepid List” recommends 100 destinations, not 1,000 as originally noted.