Books in the Vintage Departures series

  To most Americans, Mississippi is not a state but a scar, the place where segregation took its ugliest form and struck most savagely at its challengers.  But to many Americans, Mississippi is also home.  And it is this paradox, with all its overtones of history and heartache, that Anthony Walton—whose parents escaped Mississippi for the relative civility of the Midwest—explores in this resonant and disquieting work of travel writing, history, and memoir. Traveling from the Natchez Trace to the yawning cotton fields of the Delta and from plantation houses to air-conditioned shopping malls, Walton challenged us to see Mississippi''s memories of comfort alongside its legacies of slavery and the Klan.  He weaves in the stories of his family, as well as those of patricians and sharecroppers, redneck demagogues and martyred civil rights workers, novelists and bluesmen, black and white. Mississippi is a national saga in brilliant microcosm, splendidly written and profoundly moving.

Ever since Herodotus reported that it was home to gold-digging ants, travelers have been intrigued by India in all its beguiling complexity. This superb anthology gives us some of the best fiction, nonfiction, and poetry that has been written about the world's second most populous nation over the past two centuries.From Mark Twain's puzzled fascination with Indian castes and customs, to Allen Ginsberg's awe at the country's spiritual and natural splendors, or from J. R. Ackerley's delightful recollections of his visits with an eccentric gay Maharajah, to Gore Vidal's unforgettable scene in his novel Creation, in which his character finally meets the Buddha and is bewildered-all twenty-five selections in India in Mind reveal a place that evokes, in the traveler, reactions ranging from fear and perplexity to astonishment and wonder. Edited and with an introduction and chapter notes by the award-winning novelist Pankaj Mishra, India in Mind is a marvel of sympathy, sensitivity, and perception, not to mention outstanding writing.

Along the Mekong, from northern Tibet to Lijiang, from Luang Prabang to Phnom Penh to Can Lo, I moved from one world to another, among cultural islands often ignorant of each other's presence. Yet each island, as if built on shifting sands and eroded and reshaped by a universal sea, was re-forming itself, or was being remolded, was expanding its horizons or sinking under the rising waters of a cultural global warming. It was a journey between worlds, worlds fragiley conjoined by a river both ominous and luminescent, muscular and bosomy, harsh and sensuous. From windswept plateaus to the South China Sea, the Mekong flows for three thousand miles, snaking its way through Southeast Asia. Long fascinated with this part of the world, former New York Times correspondent Edward Gargan embarked on an ambitious exploration of the Mekong and those living within its watershed. The River's Tale is a rare and profound book that delivers more than a correspondent's account of a place. It is a seminal examination of the Mekong and its people, a testament to the their struggles, their defeats and their victories.

Adrift in Buenos Aires, Layne Mosler was hungry-for an excellent (and cheap) meal, for a great story, for a new direction. A chance recommendation from a taxi driver helped her find all these things, and sparked a quest that would take her to three cities, meeting people from all walks of life, and finding an array of unexpected flavors. A story about following your passion, the pleasures of not always knowing your destination, and the beauty of chance encounters, Driving Hungry is a vivid, and inspiring, read from first to last.

   The world''s second-wealthiest country, Japan once seemed poised to overtake America as the leading global economic powerhouse. But the country failed to recover from the staggering economic collapse of the early 1990s. Today it confronts an array of disturbing social trends, notably a population of more than one million hikikomori: the young men who shut themselves in their rooms, withdrawing from society. There is also a growing numbers of “parasite singles”: single women who refuse to leave home, marry, or bear children.   In this trenchant investigation, Michael Zielenziger argues that Japan''s tradition-steeped society, its aversion to change, and its distrust of individuality are stifling economic revival, political reform, and social evolution. Shutting Out the Sun is a bold explanation of Japan''s stagnation and its implications for the rest of the world.

In its last days under British rule, the Crown Colony of Hong Kong is the world's most exciting city, at once fascinating and exasperating, a tangle of contradictions. It is a dazzling amalgam of conspicuous consumption and primitive poverty, the most architecturally incongruous yet undeniably beautiful urban panorama of all. World renowned travel writer Jan Morris offers the most insightful and comprehensive study of the enigma of Hong Kong thus far.

In 1996, Tom Bissell went to Uzbekistan as a na•ve Peace Corps volunteer. Though he lasted only a few months before illness and personal crisis forced him home, Bissell found himself entranced by this remote land. Five years later he returned to explore the shrinking Aral Sea, destroyed by Soviet irrigation policies. Joining up with an exuberant translator named Rustam, Bissell slips more than once through the clutches of the Uzbek police as he makes his often wild way to the devastated sea.In Chasing the Sea, Bissell combines the story of his travels with a beguiling chronicle of Uzbekistan's striking culture and long history of violent subjugation by despots from Jenghiz Khan to Joseph Stalin. Alternately amusing and sobering, this is a gripping portrait of a fascinating place, and the debut of a singularly gifted young writer.