Our choice of the 15 Best Travel Books of 2008, including two uncommonly good memoirs and a natural history guide to Chile.

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	Come on Shore and We Will Kill and Eat You All, A New Zealand Story  •  Christina Thompson BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 268 PAGES In this story of cultural collision, and ultimate harmony, Harvard Review editor Thompson interweaves memoir and history as she tells two stories: the western encounter with New Zealand's Maori tribe, and a personal lovestory about how she met her Maori husband. With an elegant touch, she examines racial stereotypes and cultural misconceptions. (NZL96, $24.99)
	Apples are from Kazakhstan, The Land That Disappeared  •  Christopher Robbins TRAVEL NARRATIVE •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 304 PAGES In this richly observed portrait, the British journalist Christopher Robbins mixes tales of the Scythians and Sarmatians, of Eurasian steppe wolves and long-faced Saiga, his quest for apples and tulips, with travel, anecdote, impressions and a very evident appreciation for the diversity, beauty and future of Kazakhstan. And, yes, apples do come from Kazakhstan. Tulips too. It's a country the size of Western Europe, closed by the Tsars to foreigners in the 19th century and sealed off by the Soviets for 70 years. (CAS160, $24.00)
	Twenty Chickens for a Saddle  •  Robyn Scott BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 464 PAGES A memoir of wildly unconventional childhood in Botswana and South Africa. Scott's parents, two eccentric, idealistic New Zealanders, chose eco-friendly mosquito nets over more effective chemical treatments, downplay the threat of snakebites, and make jokes about tuberculosis. Despite memorable brushes with the devestation of AIDS and post-apartheid rascism, Scott observes the continent and her free-spirited upbringing with enthusiasm and affection. (SAF203, $24.95)
	A Wildlife Guide to Chile  •  Sharon Chester FIELD GUIDE •  2008 •  PAPER  • 392 PAGES Sharon Chester, a talented lecturer and guide, hauled out expedition logs and field notes, consulted dozens of colleagues and spent many, many hours on hundreds of illustrations in this comprehensive guide to Chilean wildlife. From bats to butterflies, lizards to llamas, and ferns to flamingos this full-color, compact guide covers it all in detail. (CHI77, $19.95)
	Antarctica, Secrets of the Southern Continent  •  David McGonigal NATURAL HISTORY •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 400 PAGES Both a gorgeous photographic portrait and a comprehensive, up-to-date primer, this oversize, illustrated survey of Antarctic history, exploration, wildlife, science and conservation features 600 spectacular color photographs and terrific maps, many by the well-traveled colleague and Antarctic expedition leader David McGonigal, who also rounded up dozens of experts to contribute. It's got it all: geology, geography and climate, wildlife, exploration, science and Antarctic today. We especially like the detailed maps of Antarctic regions, including the Gerlache Strait, which highlight popular visitor sites. (ANT167, $59.95)
	The Fruit Hunters, A Story of Nature, Obsession, Commerce and Adventure  •  Adam Leith Gollner SCIENCE •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 288 PAGES The coco-de-mer, found only in the Seychelles, Asia's repugnant and coveted durian and all many exotic and wonderful fruits that you've never heard of take the starring role in this surprisingly juicy account of the history, pleasure and business of fruit. Admittedly addled, Gollner chronicles his travels all over the planet in search of Galangal, chempedak, salak, jambu, sapote, voavanga, farkleberry, ballion and other such marvels. (NAT138, $25.00)
	India, In Word and Image  •  Eric Meola CULTURAL PORTRAIT •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 272 PAGES Hopelessly attracted to the impossibly vivid colors and pageantry of India, Meola shows the diversity of people, culture and traditions in this gorgeous collection of photographs, deftly paired with quotations from Salmon Rushdie, R. K. Narayan, Jhumpa Lahiri, Anita Desai and other celebrated authors. (IDA540, $60.00)
	Sea of Poppies  •  Amitav Ghosh LITERATURE •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 512 PAGES Ghosh conjures the tumult of the 19th-century Opium Wars and colonial India in this gripping saga, featuring an unforgettable cast of characters, Indian, Chinese and British. First in a planned trilogy, this is the tale of the Ibis and its crew, en route to Mauritius. (IDA529, $26.00)
	Venice Is a Fish  •  Tiziano Scarpa CULTURAL PORTRAIT •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 154 PAGES In these marvelously digressive essays on the many moods and pleasures of La Serenissima, loosely organized around (get this) parts of the body (let your feet wander), the hugely popular Venetian writer makes his English-language debut. He calls it a guide, which it is not, though it is great fun. He appends a 40-page tribute to Venetian writers. (ITL964, $17.50)
	China, Portrait of a Country by 76 Chinese Photographers  •  Heung Shing Liu HISTORY •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 360 PAGES This stunning photographic history of the People's Republic shows the nation's triumphs and hardships from 1949-2008. Liu, a pulitzer-prize-winning photojournalist who grew up in China, has brought together a range of photographers not well-known in the West. (CHN525, $59.99)
	Europe Between the Oceans: 9000 BC-AD 1000  •  Barry Cunliffe HISTORY •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 520 PAGES In this magnificent book, distinguished archaeologist Barry Cunliffe views Europe not in terms of states and shifting political land boundaries but as a geographical niche particularly favored in facing many seas. These seas, and Europe's great transpeninsular rivers, ensured a rich diversity of natural resources while also encouraging the dynamic interaction of peoples across networks of communication and exchange. (EUR310, $39.95)
	The Open Road  •  Pico Iyer CULTURAL PORTRAIT •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 288 PAGES A beautifully written, wide-ranging portrait of the Tibetan people and the aspirations of their leader, Iyer's remarrkable book includes chapters on daily life in Dharamsala, travels with the Dalai Lama, snippets of the history of modern Tibet. Iyer, who has known the Dalai Lama since his graduate student days, draws on his long association with the man and his ideas. (TBT118, $24.00)
	Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien, A Yanqui's Missteps in Argentina  •  Brian Winter LITERATURE •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 336 PAGES Weaving politics and history with his own travails in seedy tango halls, Winters became, as he bemoans in the epilogue of this rollikcing portrait of Buenos Aires, "the most grotesque creature imaginable -- a Texan with an Argentine accent." He includes a memorable three-page riff on the famous La Biela Café, where he once saw Robert Duvall -- "one yangui son of a bitch who knew how to tango." (ARG80, $24.95)
	Beyond the Great Wall  •  Jeffrey Alford  •  Naomi Duguid FOOD •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 376 PAGES The globe-trotting duo weaves their own tales of travel with contemporary politics, commentary, carefully documented recipes and stunning photographs for this sumptuous overview of the food and culture of Inner Mongolia, Tibet, Yunnan and other far-off regions of ethnically diverse China. (CHN475, $40.00)
	Wolf Totem  •  Jiang Rong LITERATURE •  2008 •  HARD COVER  • 496 PAGES Defiant, unyielding, feared, hunted and revered, the great Mongolian wolf is the heart and center of Jiang Rong's epic tale of a young man from Beijing and his encounters in this strange, ancient world on the Mongolian steppe. Winner of the first Man Asia Prize and hugely popular in China, it's a stirring epic, allegory and elegy for a vanished way of life with the emotional punch of Arseniev's Dersu the Trapper (SIB24, $16.00). Sent to Olonbulag in the 1969 during the cultural revolution, Rong spent ten year's living among the nomads of north-central Inner Mongolia. (CHN471, $26.95)

	Made in France, A Shopper's Guide  •  Laura Morelli   • GUIDEBOOK  •  Morelli's illustrated, personal guide to locally crafted, hand-made textiles, porcelain, crystal, digestifs and much more. (FRN706, $24.95)
	Bhutan, Hidden Lands of Happiness  •  John Wehrheim   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT  •  Wehrheim pairs black-and-white photographs of the people, monasteries, villages and festivals with stories, journal entries, teachings and lore in this striking, personal portrait of the Buddhist kingdom. (BHU30, $65.00)
	Horse Song, The Naadam of Mongolia  •  Ted Lewin  •  Betsy Lewin   • CULTURAL PORTRAIT • FAMILY  •  Caldecott winners Ted and Betsy Lewin depict the splendor of the Naadam festival and the intricacies of Mongolian culture in this terrific, gorgeously illustrated account of their travels. Geared for children, enjoyable for the whole family. (MGL61, $19.95)
	Thousand-Mile Song, Whale Music in a Sea of Sound  •  David Rothenberg   • MUSIC  •  Rothenberg and friends jam with cetaceans (an audio CD is included) in this inventive, exuberant chronicle of worldwide travels in pursuit of the rich acoustic world of whales. (NAT144, $27.50)
	A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World  •  Tony Horwitz   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  An irresistible blend of history, myth, and misadventure, the bestselling author of Blue Latitudes takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening voyage to pre-Mayflower America. (NAM51, $27.50)
	Blood River, Retracing Stanley's Journey to Africa's Broken Heart  •  Tim Butcher   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Correspondent for the Telegraph, Butcher retraces Stanley's 3,000-mile journey down the Congo in this harrowing, utterly absorbing and compassionate tale of hard travel through "the most daunting, backward country on earth." (AFR228, $25.00)
	China's First Emperor and His Terracotta Warriors  •  Frances Wood   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Wood's astute biography -- enlivened with woodcuts, engravings, poetry and recipes from the period -- is a rich introduction to Emperor Qin Shihuangdi (258-210 BC) and his times. (CHN492, $24.95)
	State by State  •  Matt Weiland  •  Sean Wilsey   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Modeled after the WPA-era American Guides, this delightful road trip pairs writers with each of these 50 states. With chapters by Rick Moody (Connecticut), Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island) and Jonathan Franzen (New York). (USA325, $29.95)
	The Ancient Shore, Dispatches from Naples  •  Shirley Hazzard  •  Francis Steegmuller   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Hazzard's lovely, lyrical collection of essays, written over several decades, captures the history, beauty, complexities and contradictions of Naples. The book includes a celebrated New Yorker essay by her late husband, Francis Steegmuller. (ITL967, $18.00)
	The Eaves of Heaven, A Life in Three Wars  •  Andrew X. Pham   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Pham recounts the story of his father's life during the French occupation, Japanese invasion and the American War, weaving such momentous events with anecdotes from his childhood and details of family, friends, food and daily life. (VNM120, $24.95)
	The Geography of Bliss, One Grump's Search For the Happiest Places in the World  •  Eric Weiner   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  NPR corespondent Weiner's hilarious, well-informed and surprisingly profound tale of a quest in search of what makes us happy. (GEN430, $25.99)
	The Great Wall, The Extraordinary Story of China's Wonder of the World  •  John Man   • TRAVEL NARRATIVE  •  Off he went, across China and Mongolia, in search of the wall of history and legend, not continuous, built over millennia, in many places a faint hill or rammed earth, not necessarily a wall at all. (CHN533, $26.00)
	The Last Days of Old Beijing, Tales from the New City  •  Michael Meyer   • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR  •  Meyer's lovely memoir of the hutong (ancient lane), where he taught school, captures the rhythms, traditions and spirit of the alleyways, gardens and courtyard houses of Beijing's traditional neighborhoods south of Tiananmen. (CHN493, $25.99)
	China, A Traveler's Literary Companion  •  Kirk Denton   • ANTHOLOGY  •  An introduction both to China's finest modern writers and its diverse cultures, concerns and landscapes, this collection takes the reader from Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong to the mountains and streams of West Hunan, the silk-worm raising country of Zhejiang and the high plateau of western Sichuan. (CHN520, $14.95)
	Beethoven Was One-Sixteenth Black  •  Nadine Gordimer   • LITERATURE  •  The Nobel Prize winner daringly explores racial identity, sexuality and loss in this latest, marvelous collection of South African tales. (SAF221, $14.00)
	Breath  •  Tim Winton   • LITERATURE  •  Winton evokes the sea and the thrill of surfing in this emotionally complex tale of coming-of-age in western Australia in the 1970s. (AUS218, $23.00)
	City of Thieves  •  David Benioff   • LITERATURE  •  Benioff turns his grandfather's stories of surviving the infamous Siege of Leningrad into a wise and touching novel of coming of age. (RUS380, $24.95)
	Everything but the Squeal, Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain  •  John Barlow   • LITERATURE  •  Barlow, his wife (from Galicia but a vegetarian) and young son gallavant from roadhouse to fine dining establishments, villages and cities in this endearingly offhand, loving account of travels in honor of pork. A delightful, witty guide to the traditions, culinary and otherwise, of the region. (SPN368, $25.00)
	Fine Just the Way It Is, Wyoming Stories 3  •  Annie Proulx   • LITERATURE  •  A collection of visceral, often heartbreaking stories about life in the arid West by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Annie Proulx, aurhor of Close Range, Bad Dirt and The Shipping News. (USW569, $25.00)
	How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone  •  Sasa Stanisic   • LITERATURE  •  Stanisic's powerful, vivid novel shows the calamity of war in the Balkans through the eye's of young Bosnian refugee from Visegrad. (BOS32, $24.00)
	Lush Life  •  Richard Price   • LITERATURE  •  With his flair for dialogue and feel for the grit of urban life, Price explores life on the Lower East Side (NYC203, $26.00)
	People of the Book  •  Geraldine Brooks   • LITERATURE  •  Inspired by the stories she heard in Sarajevo during the war, March turns the tale of a real book, the Sarajevo Haggadah, hidden from the Nazi's and safely ensconced in a bank vault as the national library burned in 1992, into a exhilarating modern novel, with an Australian conservator -- and mystery -- at its center. (EUR284, $15.00)
	Shadow Country  •  Peter Matthiessen   • LITERATURE  •  Matthiessen returns to his tale of Florida sugarcane farmer and murderer Edgar J. Watson in this National Book Award winner, a reprise of his classic trilogy: Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River and Bone by Bone. (FLA72, $16.00)
	Telex from Cuba  •  Rachel Kushner   • LITERATURE  •  Kushner re-imagines the world of her mother, who grew up in the American enclave in Cuba's Oriente Province, in this astonishingly wise, ambitious and riveting first novel set in Cuba during the years leading to Castro's revolution. Nominated for the National Book Award. (CBA111, $25.00)
	The Adventures of Amir Hamza  •  Musharraf Ali Farooqi   • LITERATURE  •  A deft new translation of the rip-roaring tales of the storied life and fabulous exploits of the Prophet Mohammed's uncle Hamza and his heroic encounters with emperors, merchants, viziers, courtesans, warriors and magical beings. (IDA391, $25.00)
	The Lazarus Project  •  Aleksandar Hemon   • LITERATURE  •  A tale historical sweep, contemporary insight and dazzling originality, cuting between events in Chicago in 1908 and the Balkans of today. (BLK128, $24.95)
	The Reserve  •  Russell Banks   • LITERATURE  •  Bank's absorbing tale of class, politics, family and lunacy set in the Adirondacks in the 1930s. (NYS69, $24.95)
	The Secret Scripture  •  Sebastian Barry   • LITERATURE  •  Barry, a noted playwright, evokes the sweep of 20th-Century Irish history in this gorgeously written tale of Roseanne McNulty, a very old woman shuttered in a Roscommon asylum. (IRE246, $24.95)
	The Size of the World  •  Joan Silber   • LITERATURE  •  Set in wartime Vietnam, Thailand and Florida in the 1920s, Mexico, WWII Sicily and present-day Indiana, Joan Silber's loosely linked stories illuminate the difficulty of finding one's place in the world in just 300 heartfelt pages. Drawing on her travels in Asia (her characters often circle back to Thailand), Silber brings a depth of experience in the region to her richly imagined tales. (WLD143, $23.95)
	The Wasted Vigil  •  Nadeem Aslam   • LITERATURE  •  Calm, richly told written, this beautiful novel shows the reality of war-torn Afghanistan through the interlocking lives of five people in the wake of 9/11. (CAS167, $25.00)
	The White Mary  •  Kira Salak   • LITERATURE  •  Set in New Guinea, Salak's first novel -- the tale of a young reporter searching for a colleague -- captures the thrill and uncertainly of adventure. (PNG25, $25.00)
	The White Tiger, A Novel  •  Aravind Adiga   • LITERATURE  •  Mordant, side-spilltingly funny, angry, horrifying, this Booker Prize-winning tale of a village pauper turned success (and murderer) skewers the ambition, inequity and corruption of 21st-century India. Adiga's India is a place where religion doesn't create morality and money doesn't solve every problem, though craven ambition can get you far indeed. (IDA542, $14.00)
	Unaccustomed Earth  •  Jhumpa Lahiri   • LITERATURE  •  The least three stories in this luminous collection by the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Interpreter of Maladies, many set in Southeast Asia, form an intricate love story -- a couple who met as children are separated and then reunited by destiny. (WLD139, $25.00)
	Albatross: Their World, Their Ways  •  Tui De Roy  •  Mark Jones  •  Julian Fitter   • NATURAL HISTORY  •  The culmination of a storied career at sea as roving naturalist-photographers, this remarkable collection of 300 photographs of the ocean wanderers, both at sea and on the nest, is not just beautiful. It's also an authoritative survey of the natural history, status and conservation of the world's Diomedeidae. Anyone who has tried to photograph these magnificent birds in flight will appreciate the art, experience and perseverance of De Roy, Jones and Fitter. (BRD64, $49.95)
	Nature of the Rainforest, Costa Rica and Beyond  •  Adrian Forsyth  •  E.O. Wilson  •  Michael Fogden   • NATURAL HISTORY  •  Our favorite biologist-writer returns to the Neotropics in this beautifully illustrated, oversized overview of the rain forest. With chapters on Monteverde and Guanacaste, plants, frogs and snakes, birds, monkeys and jaguars, the sloth, peculiar insects and biodioversity, the book is a marvelous, anecdotal introduction to ecology, evolution and conservation. (CRC67, $29.95)
	The Antarctic From the Circle to the Pole  •  Stuart Klipper   • NATURAL HISTORY  •  Make room in your library for this exceptional book of Antarctic photography by National Science Foundation five-time grantee Stuart Klipper. The 110 large color photographs, beautifully bound in sturdy white covers, display Klipper's talent in translating scenery into art. With an introduction by Guy Guthridge, a marvelous essay on the transformation of ice into art by Stephen J. Pyne and a biographical essay on Klipper and his work by William L. Fox. Fond of panoramas, Klipper works with a 110-degree Technorama camera. (ANT282, $45.00)
	The Rainforest, Light and Spirit  •  Harry Holcroft  •  Ghillean Prance   • NATURAL HISTORY  •  One in a series of beautifully illustrated journals featuring exquisite watercolor paintings. (NAT160, $65.00)
	Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America  •  Roger Tory Peterson   • FIELD GUIDE  •  This revised combo edition of Peterson's classic field guides, published in celebration of the centennial of his birth, includes all new maps and digital enhancements to the master's original paintings. (NAM42, $26.00)

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