Off the Rails

From a frequent New York Times contributor, a chronicle of the author''s worldwide train travels that explores what really defines cultural identity.

Beppe Severgnini has spent his life traveling the world, a result of both his passion for train travel and his career as a journalist. In Off the Rails he recounts his travels across Europe, Australia, Asia, and, of course, the U.S. Each journey brings readers not only to a different place but to a different time, including his honeymoon on the Trans-Siberian Express, a trip from Russia to Turkey during the last summer of communism, and a recent coast-to-coast trip, from Washington, D.C., to Washington State, with his twenty-year-old son.

Does it even make sense to talk about train travel when the world is in chaos and we all live in fast-forward? Yes, now more than ever, Severgnini says. When we travel, we think, we exercise our brain, and we view our ideas from the eyes of a stranger. We need to get out and see the world if we want to understand it!