Books: July 2007 Archives

It's been awhile since I've posted a recommended subway read, what with a new commute that now entails (gasp) the A train. Fortunately, my friend Adam has persuaded me to jump back on the wagon with what might just be the perfect book for the commuter's mid-summer slump.

The Labor Day holiday now lies just tantalizingly out of reach and it's time for a travel book. In Bad Lands: A Tourist on the Axis of Evil, Tony Wheeler--the co-founder of Lonely Planet--revisits the countries on George W. Bush's so-called axis of evil, with some assorted stops at countries of ill-repute along the way.

One of my favorites? Albania. A small country with the misfortune of one crazy dictator. His eccentricities of architecture included a pyramid (dedicated to himself, of course) that children today now use as a giant slide. Perhaps not exactly what he imagined when thinking of immortality. There are pictures, of course, of this infamous piece of playground equipment, as well as snapshots from his travels to the other eight countries profiled.

The profile succinctly encapsulate the culture, politics, and history, as well as what it's like to experience it all as a traveler--finding a hotel, being "kidnapped" by taxi drivers, and reflecting on how things have changed in the 30-odd years since Wheeler had last visited. If only history books in high school had been this fun to read.

Ultimately, Wheeler asks, "What does it mean to be bad?" Is it imprisoning Nobel prize winners and silencing dissenting opinions? Is it divorcing a people from the freedom to choose their own destiny? Is it stealing candy from babies and kicking sand in prepubescent faces? His EvilMeter (TM) rates them according to "badness" and you may be surprised who comes out on top (and who doesn't). 

But, these are not the questions these countries pose for themselves. Rather, they reflect the musings of the other side, the "good" side, of that axis. And as he aptly notes, there are two sides to every story, after all.

(Go here for a little Q&A with Tony Wheeler, courtesy of the Lonely Planet PR dept., and here for a nice review from Bangkok's The Nation. )