Marco Polo Didn't Go There

USA Today has called Rolf Potts "Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age." For the past ten years he has taken his keen postmodern travel sensibility into the far-flung reaches of five continents as a writer for publications such as Slate.com, National Geographic Traveler, the New York Times Magazine, Outside, Conde Nast Traveler, and National Public Radio. He writes the column “Traveling Light” for Yahoo! and has a large and faithful online following. He’s also the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. When he’s not traveling he lives in Kansas, where he was born and raised.

"Potts is one of the best travel writers to emerge in the last decade. Intrepid and thoughtful, he's a Paul Theroux for the backpacker generation, and Marco Polo reflects this." --San Francisco Chronicle "This hilarious collection of stories provokes because Potts asks the serious question of how to travel in a discovered world. ...If you aspire to be a travel writer, read this book." --The Guardian (U.K.) "Potts isn't so much a travel reporter as a story teller. ...He's more about getting under the skin of a place -- detailing a cast of characters that would either enthrall or scare the hell out of most travelers, depending on where they come down on the trust-paranoia continuum." --Orange County Register "An equal mix of humor and enlightenment...Potts shows travelers and would-be travelers the joy of immersing oneself in a foreign culture." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch "Best Books of 2008" "Potts, Internet raconteur and travel-advice sage, is the kind of guy you wish the pubs had more of: well traveled, generous with funny stories, eager to listen to yours. You feel envious that you weren't with him in Cairo to share the convivial squalor of a backpacker hotel, or at an Indian ashram to study Tantric sex, or even in the Libyan Desert, in the dark, out of water and lost. And he's able to draw insights from all that without draining the fun out of the conversation -- difficult to carry off in a pub or a book." --The Washington Post "Armchair travelers will get an enormous kick out of this thoroughly entertaining book." --Booklist