Why Travel Matters

When you travel, you have a choice: You can be a tourist and have a nice time, or you can be a traveler and change your life. Why Travel Matters is for those who want to change their lives. Why Travel Matters explores the profound life lessons that await anyone who wishes to learn what travel has to teach. With engaging prose, delightful wit and a distinctive style, Craig Storti infuses his own experiences traveling the world for 30-plus years with quotations, insights, reflections and commentary from famous travelers, great travel writers, historians and literary masters. Storti's vast knowledge of the literature makes him an expert curator of astute gems from the likes of St. Augustine, Mark Twain, Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, Bruce Chatwin, Aldous Huxley and more.

What was it really like to take the LNER's Art Deco Coronation streamliner from King's Cross to Edinburgh, to cross the Atlantic by the SS Normandie, to fly with Imperial Airways from Southampton to Singapore, to steam from Manhattan to Chicago on board the New York Central's 20th Century Limited or to dine and sleep aboard the Graf Zeppelin? In the course of The Journey Matters, Jonathan Glancey travels from the early 1930s to the turn of the century on some of what he considers to be the most truly glamorous and romantic trips he has ever dreamed of or made in real life. Each of the twenty journeys allows him to explore the history of routes taken, and the events - social and political - enveloping them. Each is the story of the machines that made these journeys possible, of those who shaped them and those, too, who travelled on them. --

Travel is the opposite of prejudice; it is curiosity, openness, and connection. Now, when our world is in flux, travel matters more than ever. How we travel has changed, but why we travel has not. With barriers and restrictions coming and going at a dizzying rate, now is the time to learn how to make the most out of whatever travel opportunities we are able to seize. With the right techniques and attitude, travel can open our eyes to new cultures and dispel stereotypes. It can force us out of our comfort zone. However, the benefits travel can unlock – increased understanding of the world, greater courage, better connection between cultures – don’t come automatically. Truly experiencing foreign cultures is something we need to work at. From advice on how to accurately understand new places to practical tips on meeting with locals, overcoming the language barrier, and asking the right questions, Travel Your Way shows you how to discover the world on your own terms. The result is a more rewarding journey and a greater sense of connection to everywhere you go, whether you’re on a business trip, or backpacking across the globe. Learn how to make the most of every place you go by seeing the world with open, curious eyes, plan with excitement for future journeys, and reflect with greater appreciation on the travels you have experienced so far.

Youth Travel Matters: Understanding the Global Phenomenon of Youth Travel offers a global overview of the youth and student travel industry, by revealing the latest trends in youth travel destinations, products and innovations.The report, developed by the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) and the World Youth Student & Educational Travel Confederation (WYSE Travel Confederation), a UNWTO Affiliate member, shows that the unique motivations of young travellers make this market extremely important to the key objectives of the global tourism agenda and that the personal social and economic value of youth, student and educational travel is increasingly being recognised by educational institutions, employers, official tourism organisations and governments worldwide.This report explains the uniqueness of this segment, its wish to explore and engage with cultures. It focuses on the special mix of their travel ambitions with study, work, volunteer placements and adventure. It also explains why they tend to stay much longer and therefore spend more than the average tourist, interacting more closely with the communities that they visit and making a direct contribution to local businesses.

Contemporary American society, with its emphasis on mobility and economic progress, all too often loses sight of the importance of a sense of “place” and community. Appreciating place is essential for building the strong local communities that cultivate civic engagement, public leadership, and many of the other goods that contribute to a flourishing human life. Do we, in losing our places, lose the crucial basis for healthy and resilient individual identity, and for the cultivation of public virtues? For one can’t be a citizen without being a citizen of some place in particular; one isn’t a citizen of a motel. And if these dangers are real and present ones, are there ways that intelligent public policy can begin to address them constructively, by means of reasonable and democratic innovations that are likely to attract wide public support? Why Place Matters takes these concerns seriously, and its contributors seek to discover how, given the American people as they are, and American economic and social life as it now exists—and not as those things can be imagined to be in some utopian scheme—we can find means of fostering a richer and more sustaining way of life. The book is an anthology of essays exploring the contemporary problems of place and placelessness in American society. The book includes contributions from distinguished scholars and writers such as poet Dana Gioia (former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts), geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, urbanist Witold Rybczynski, architect Philip Bess, essayists Christine Rosen and Ari Schulman, philosopher Roger Scruton, transportation planner Gary Toth, and historians Russell Jacoby and Joseph Amato.

More than a decluttering guide, this book “speaks to the heart and soul of the minimalist lifestyle . . . a must-have manual for serenity in the modern world!” (Anne Sage, author of Sage Living). For anyone looking to declutter, organize, and simplify, author Erin Boyle shares practical guidance and personal insights on small-space living and conscious consumption. At once pragmatic and philosophical, Simple Matters is an essential manual for anyone who wants to bring more purpose and sustainability to their daily lives. Boyle demonstrates how the benefits of “living small” are accessible to us all—whether we’re renting a tiny apartment or purchasing a three-story house. Filled with personal essays, projects, and helpful advice on how to be inventive and resourceful in a tight space, Simple Matters shows that living simply is about making do with less and ending up with more: more free time, more time with loved ones, more savings, and more things of beauty.

Now a new series on Peacock with Rainn Wilson, THE GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS is part travel memoir, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide that takes the viewer across the globe to investigate not what happiness is, but WHERE it is. Are people in Switzerland happier because it is the most democratic country in the world? Do citizens of Qatar, awash in petrodollars, find joy in all that cash? Is the King of Bhutan a visionary for his initiative to calculate Gross National Happiness? Why is Asheville, North Carolina so damn happy? In a unique mix of travel, psychology, science and humor, Eric Weiner answers those questions and many others, offering travelers of all moods some interesting new ideas for sunnier destinations and dispositions.

Travel writing about Muslim Europe. A journey around Eastern Europe and the Western Balkans, home to the largest indigenous Muslim population in Europe, following the footsteps of Evliya Celebi through Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, North Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro. A book that begins to decolonise European history.

An enthralling novel about love, loss, secrets, friendship, and the healing power of literature, by the bestselling author of The Knitting Circle. Ava’s twenty-five-year marriage has fallen apart, and her two grown children are pursuing their own lives outside of the country. Ava joins a book group, not only for her love of reading but also out of sheer desperation for companionship. The group’s goal throughout the year is for each member to present the book that matters most to them. Ava rediscovers a mysterious book from her childhood—one that helped her through the traumas of the untimely deaths of her sister and mother. Alternating with Ava’s story is that of her troubled daughter Maggie, who, living in Paris, descends into a destructive relationship with an older man. Ava’s mission to find that book and its enigmatic author takes her on a quest that unravels the secrets of her past and offers her and Maggie the chance to remake their lives.

Why do we make things? Why do we choose the emotionally and physically demanding work of bringing new objects into the world with creativity and skill? Why does it matter that we make things well? What is the nature of work? And what is the nature of a good life? This January, whether you're honing your craft or turning your hand to a new skill, discover the true value in what it means to be a craftsman in a mass-produced world. Part memoir, part polemic, part philosophical reflection, this is a book about the process of creation. For woodworker Peter Korn, the challenging work of bringing something new and meaningful into the world through one's own efforts is exactly what generates authenticity, meaning, and fulfilment, for which many of us yearn. This is not a 'how-to' book in any sense, Korn wants to get at the 'why' of craft in particular, and the satisfaction of creative work in general, to understand its essential nature. How does the making of objects shape our identities? How do the products of creative work inform society? In short, what does the process of making things reveal to us about ourselves? Korn draws on four decades of hands-on experience to answer these questions eloquently in this heartfelt, personal and revealing book. 'If you are in the building trade or just love creating things as a hobby, you will find this book fascinating' The Sun