This Month

This month we celebrate the art of absconding, with a selection of books that draw readers down paths less traveled. An anti-tourist scours lesser-visited, former Soviet states for non-adventures, while another writer is on a mission to visit the holiday hot spots of the Roman empire. Even more astonishing is Rory Stewart's memoir of walking across Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. Escapism can have its tragic side, however, as with the wealthy but imperiled Finzi-Continis. Photographers Robbins and Becher capture the déjà vu of geographic and cultural displacements. The going gets weird as New Yorker fiction editor Bill Buford signs his life away to Mario Batali as a kitchen slave, and, in a new novel, an aging professor becomes addicted to a drug that allows him to relive his fondest memories. Finally, a feature on new editions of the work of Little Nemo cartoonist Winsor McCay provides flights of fantasy that are totally armchair-accessible.
- Toby Warner