Friday, January 14, 2011

Tony Hiss' six favorite transporting reads

In Motion marks Tony Hiss’s thirteenth book and follows the award-winning The Experience of Place. His books have explored subjects as varied as train travel, Hunanese cooking, giant pandas, the story of his family, and the future of New York City. He was a staff writer at The New Yorker for more than thirty years.

For The Week magazine, Hiss named "his top 'travel' tales — books that have taken him everywhere from Greece to a dystopian future." One title on the list:
Ceremonial Time by John Hanson Mitchell

A sober and beautifully written essay about a completely available kind of time travel. Tutored by Native Americans, Mitchell cultivates an ability to keep alive in his mind the entire post-glacial history of his Massachusetts town as a single, 15,000-year-long present moment.
Read about another book on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue