Holiday Bestsellers of 2009
Top Selling Travel Narrative and Armchair Travel Books
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1. Strange Maps: An Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities
by Frank Jacobs
Spanning many centuries, all continents, and the realms of outer space and the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-color illustrations with quirky statistics and smart social commentary. The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world.
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2. Boston Noir
edited by Dennis Lehane
In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city–the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between.
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3. The Billionaire’s Vinegar: The Mystery of the World’s Most Expensive Bottle of Wine
by Benjamin Wallace
The Billionaire’s Vinegar tells the true story of a 1787 Chateau Lafite Bordeaux – supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson – that sold for $156,000 at auction and of the eccentrics whose lives intersected with it.
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4. The Cellist of Sarajevo
by Steven Galloway
In a city ravaged by war, a musician plays his cello for twenty-two days at the site of a mortar attack, in memory of the fallen. Among the strangers drawn into the orbit of his music are a young father in search of water for his family, an older man in search of the humanity he once knew, a young woman, and a sniper.
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5. How to Read Buildings: A Crash Course in Architectural Styles
by Carol Davidson Cragoe
This practical primer is a handbook for decoding a building’s style, history, and evolution. Every building contains clues embedded in its design that identify not only its architectural style but also the story of who designed it, who it was built for, and why.
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6. The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire
by Tilar J. Mazzeo
A young witness to the dramatic events of the French Revolution and a new widow during the chaotic years of the Napoleonic Wars, Barbe-Nicole Clicqout Ponsardin defied convention by assuming the reins of the fledgling wine business she and her husband had nurtured.
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7. Bicycle Diaries
by David Byrne
Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour with his band. The more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided.
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8. The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World
by Eric Weiner
The author takes readers on a whirlwind tour of countries that are quietly pursuing the most American of obsessions – the pursuit of happiness – or, in the crabby author’s case, moments of “un-unhappiness.” Weiner doesn’t profess to know what happiness is, but with a mixture of psychological insight, scientific research, geopolitical analysis and wry humor, he successfully shows us where happiness is.
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9. The Sharper Your Knife the Less You Cry: Love, Laughter, and Tears in Paris
by Kathleen Flinn
In 2003, Flinn, a 36-year-old American living and working in London, cleared out her savings and moved to Paris to pursue a dream diploma from the famed Le Cordon Bleu cooking school.
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10. 6 Billion Others: Portraits of Humanity from Around the World
by Yann Arthus-Bertrand
The latest project from bestselling photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand, 6 Billion Others presents the photographic portraits and transcribed responses of 500 men and women, interviewed on video over the past six years. This understated yet compelling look at ways of life both familiar and strange creates an instructive, affecting biography of modern humanity.
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11. City of Thieves
by David Benioff
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a chance by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake.
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12. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson
An international publishing sensation, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.
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13. My Life in France
by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme
This is a delightful memoir of Julia’s years in Paris, Marseille, and Provence. Funny, earthy, forthright – Julia is with us on every page as she relishes the French way of life that transformed her, and us.
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14. Paris Underground: The Maps, Stations, and Design of the Métro
By Mark Ovenden
In this follow-up to Transit Maps of the World, Ovenden now turns his attention to the famous Paris transit system with its inimitable Art Nouveau inspired stations and Art Deco signs. This overstuffed book — packed with vintage maps, photographs and posters — is a train spotter’s delight.
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15. Smile When You’re Lying: Confessions of a Rogue Travel Writer
by Chuck Thompson
From Bangkok to Bogota, a hilarious behind-the-brochures tour of picture-perfect locales, dangerous destinations, and overrated hellholes from a guy who knows the truth about travel. Travel writer, editor, and photographer Chuck Thompson has spent more than a decade traipsing through thirty-five (and counting) countries across the globe, and he’s had enough.
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16. State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America
edited by Sean Wilsey & Matt Weiland
Inspired by the example of the legendary WPA American Guide series of the 1930s and ’40s, now 50 of our foremost writers have produced original pieces of reportage and memoir that capture the 50 states in our time, creating a fresh portrait of America as it lives and breathes today.
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17. Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters
by Ted Gioia
Tracing the history of the Delta blues from the field hollers and plantation music of the nineteenth century to the exploits of modern-day musicians in the Delta tradition, Delta Blues tells the full story of this timeless and unforgettable music.
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18. Sibley Guide to Trees
by David Allen Sibley
Similar in size and format to The Sibley Guide to Birds, this illustrated guide identifies more than 600 tree species in North America.
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19. The Way of the World
illustrated by Thierry Vernet, text by Nicolas Bouvier
In 1953, twenty-four-year old Nicolas Bouvier and his artist friend Thierry Vernet set out to make their way overland from their native Geneva to the Khyber Pass. They had money to last them a few months and a Fiat to take them where they were going, but above all they were equipped with the certainty that by hook or by crook they would reach their destination.
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20. In Other Rooms, Other Wonders
by Daniyal Mueenuddin
In the spirit of Joyce’s Dubliners and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of linked stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the family farm in the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan.
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21. Stones into Schools
by Greg Mortenson
Picking up where Three Cups of Tea left off in late 2003, Stones into Schools traces the Central Asia Institute’s efforts to work in a new area, the secluded northeast corner of Afghanistan.
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22. Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen
by Christopher McDougall
McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons where a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners shares their secrets.
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23. Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way
by Peter Kaminsky & Francis Mallmann
A trailblazing chef reinvents the art of cooking over fire. Gloriously inspired recipes push the boundaries of live-fired cuisine in this primal yet sophisticated cookbook introducing the incendiary dishes of South America’s biggest culinary star.
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24. The Elegance of the Hedgehog
by Muriel Barbery
In this enthralling international bestseller, two girls live inconspicuous lives in the center of an elegant Paris apartment building. It is only when a stranger moves into their building–and sees through the girls’ disguises–that Paloma and Rene discover their kindred spirits.
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25. The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography
by Katharine Harmon
Maps can be simple tools, comfortable in their familiar form. Or they can lead to different destinations: places turned upside down or inside out, territories riddled with marks understood only by their maker, realms connected more to the interior mind than to the exterior world. These are the places of artists’ maps, that happy combination of information and illusion.
