Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote “Kubla Kahn,” his most rapturous poem, in an opium – induced stupor: “In Xanadu did Kubla Kahn/A stately pleasure dome decree.” Coleridge was responding to the fantastic descriptions of the Kahn's court recorded in the 13th – century Travels of Marco Polo, a narrative which has inspired countless artists over the past 700 years because of its literally incredible accounts of the intrepid Marco's travels from Venice to China and back.

In Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell's new travelogue/photographic essay, In the Footsteps of Marco Polo, we are given stunning proof of Marco Polo's essential veracity, for the geographic realities and enduring ethnographic facts overwhelm any doubt. The illustrated chronicle of the authors' two – year, 25,000 – mile, 20 – country expedition in Marco's footsteps surpasses in sheer strangeness anything that Coleridge could have imagined, whether tripped out or sober. On almost every page, we discover that Marco's anxious assurances (shown here in scriptural red) that what he implausibly reports is real and actual, pale in comparison to the authors' own death – defying exploits, all of them corroborated by beautiful and disturbing photographs.

Belliveau and O'Donnell took the trip 15 years ago (it has taken that long to get a book and PBS film deal), so they have had ample time to digest and interpret their adventures with wisdom and renewed wonder. They reflect poignantly on the timeless nature of the many Asian cultures they encountered, so many of them threatened by endless conflict. In order to follow Polo's route, the authors had to travel through eight war zones and were very nearly killed on several occasions. When what you experience exceeds what you can imagine, the physical and spiritual costs can be very high. Is it worth it? Get this book, go along for the wild ride, and see for yourself.

As the author of four previous works of travel – writing – most notably Blue Highways and River – Horse – William Least Heat – Moon believes that when it comes to trip – taking, "to go out not quite knowing why is the very reason for going out at all." The wonder of discovery runs throughout his latest book, Roads to Quoz: An American Mosey.

As Heat – Moon explains, quoz is "a noun, both singular and plural, referring to anything strange, incongruous, or peculiar; at its heart is the unknown, the mysterious. It rhymes with Oz." With his wife, Q, Heat – Moon travels the U.S. in search of it. They trace the bends of the Ouachita River – all 600 miles of it – from its source in Arkansas to its windings in Mississippi and its eventual end in Louisiana; venture to the Gulf Coast and Steinhatchee, Florida; visit Joplin, Missouri, and Quapaw, Oklahoma; take to the road in Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Idaho, North Carolina and many more places.

They uncover stories – lots of them. There’s elderly Mrs. Weatherford and her tale of Northern Light rapture, Indigo Rocket and a 50 – foot femme fatale, the mysterious Goat Woman of Smackover Creek. Jack Kerouac and his 120 – foot scroll of a manuscript make an appearance, as do the Gullah people of Daufuskie Island, South Carolina. There’s even a recipe for pickle pie. "These wanderings," Heat – Moon writes, "took three years and four seasons to accomplish their sixteen thousand miles of journeys to places a goodly portion of the American populace would call ‘nowhere.’

Ireland’s 20-year transformation from Europe’s poor stepchild to economic powerhouse has been well documented by both business and travel writers. David Yeadon is the later, well known for seeking out and reporting on some of the world’s less-traveled places. When Yeadon wondered if such a “hidden” place still exists in the new Ireland, acquaintances pointed him to the Beara Peninsula, a 30-mile-long finger of land, just south of the tourist-overrun Ring of Kerry and Dingle, yet a world apart.

Yeadon and his wife, Anne, made a number of lengthy excursions to Beara, staying for months at a time in a rural cottage and attaining local status as something more than “blow-ins.” Yeadon’s delightful chronicle, At the Edge of Ireland captures the rhythms of this idyllic spot, largely unspoiled due to the state of its roads, which are primitive and unwelcoming even by Irish standards.

The breathtaking Irish landscape often defies verbal description, though that has not stopped writers from trying to get it right for centuries. Yeadon is as successful as anyone in this pursuit (he also supplies his own line drawings throughout), but even with its visits to standing stones and quaint villages, At the Edge of Ireland is less about Beara’s natural beauty, which is a given, and more about its people. Our intrepid guide is apt to strike up a conversation with anyone he encounters, and in so doing he learns how life on Beara has changed—most notably as the result EU fishing agreements (or some might say disagreements)—and how it has not. Given its serenity and widely-attested mystical aura (rumor has it there is a vein of powerful quartz crystal running beneath its rugged surface), the peninsula attracts countless artists, writers and spiritual seekers, many of whom are not native born. Curiously, the area’s most notable draw may be Dzogchen Beara, a world renowned Buddhist retreat.

With many non-Irish residents featured in the book, one might argue that Yeadon fails in his quest for the “real” Ireland, but even with its influx of eastern European workers, its harbor filled with Spanish fishing trawlers, and its parade of new age pilgrims, Beara retains an Irish authenticity. This is because the newcomers who call it home have a great respect for the old ways and wish to preserve them. Ireland for them is not merely Celtic music, Guinness, or myth-steeped literature—although these all have a place in their hearts. It is something deeper, a feeling that to be Irish is more of a sensibility than a genetic trait.

Whether the Beara Peninsula is “genuine” Ireland—or can remain so for long—may be unanswerable. But with observations such as this—“Sitting together on the grass by our cottage, long after the sun has drifted down behind the Skelligs, watching the moon-blanched mountains slip into the ocean beyond our beautiful white sand beach. And listening to the silence. And the silence listening to us.”—Yeadon certainly makes you want to pack a bag and head there to find out for yourself.

Robert Weibezahl was a student in Dublin a few years before the Celtic Tiger roared. While a return visit to Ireland last summer was enlightening, he, alas, has never visited the Beara Peninsula.

What are the military aspirations and capabilities of the world’s real and would-be nuclear powers? These are the basic questions husband-and-wife reporters Nathan Hodge and Sharon Weinberger set out to answer. That they fail in their quest should surprise no one. Not only are governments secretive about such matters, governmental approaches to forming a unified nuclear policy also tend to be piecemeal and politically driven. In their two-year odyssey, which began in 2005, Hodge, a writer for Jane’s Defense Weekly, and Weinberger, a contributor to Wired‘s national security blog, Danger Room, visited nuclear sites in the U.S., the Marshall Islands, Kazakhstan, Russia and Iran. They discover a milieu in which the terrible clarity of the Cold War doctrine of mutually assured destruction no longer applies but where the political momentum to do something nuclear is too strong to stop.

Most of A Nuclear Family Vacation covers American installations – from the design labs at Los Alamos and Livermore to archaic missile silos sprinkled across the Great Plains. At each stop, the authors encounter turfs to be protected and missions to be rationalized. They do not find, however, anything approaching a national strategy for the development and use of nuclear weapons and defenses. Little wonder, then, that their narrative is shot through with flashes of dark humor and incredulity.

"During our journey across the U. S. nuclear complex," they report, "it occasionally felt like we were visiting an Oldsmobile factory: outmoded facilities with a cynical workforce and little in the way of a vision for the future. . . . In Russia, the United States and its allies threw money at nonproliferation programs without any clear way to gauge their success. Iran’s nuclear program – whether peaceful or not – was doing little beside guaranteeing the country’s continued political and economic isolation." One can only imagine what Hodge and Weinberger might have discovered had they extended their forays into such other hot zones as North Korea, China, Pakistan, India and Israel.

Edward Morris reviews from Nashville.

The second-worst thing that gonzo chef, writer and intrepid traveler Anthony Bourdain has ever eaten, he claims, was the notoriously stinky fermented shark served to him in Iceland. This chef-turned-author and TV host (Kitchen Confidential, A Cook’s Tour ) braves the rigors of the road and many an eclectic cuisine in No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach, a companion photo scrapbook to his latest Travel Channel television show.

With just a five-person crew, a couple of cameras and a soupcon of offbeat sensibility, Bourdain and his cohorts reveal the world and its variant cultures through the lens of our universal human need to eat. From Asia to Africa, Paris to Beirut and on to our own great continent, they poke into unusual corners, alleys and the occasional jungle to capture on film an honest and direct recording of the way life is lived in the rest of the world. No Reservations features the crew’s own photos, behind-the-scenes glimpses of how the TV show comes together (or not), and Bourdain’s bad-boy wit and acerbic commentary via small essays and photo captions. And, as he and his cohorts are travel pros, there’s a down-and-dirty critique of the best and worst lavatories worldwide, and a commentary on indigenous beverages (most of which, he says, you must imbibe in order not to offend your host). Zany antics aside, No Reservations amply reflects Bourdain’s search for the heart and soul of humanity and, of course, the ultimate roast pig.

Eric Nuzum drank his own blood as part of his research for The Dead Travel Fast: Stalking Vampires from Nosferatu to Count Chocula that’s all you need to know. Nuzum feeds our vampire obsession pointing out, for example, that there are 605 vampire movies in existence with his first-hand impressions of Romanian tours, Vegas reviews and the truth of Dracula’s origins.

<b>A journalist’s tribute to a mentor from the ancient world</b> In the 1950s, when Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski was just beginning his career, an editor asked him about his plans for the future. He answered that he would like to travel abroad someday, perhaps to Czechoslovakia. A year later the same editor told him he was being sent to India and handed him a book, a present for the road, she said. It was a copy of <i>The Histories</i>, by Herodotus (c. 485 BCE-c. 425 BCE), a book that would have a profound influence on Kapuscinski, serving as both an inspiration and a guide for how he should approach his work during his distinguished career. In his beautifully crafted final work, <b>Travels with Herodotus</b>, Kapuscinski, who died in January, shares his early experiences in such places as Africa, India, China and Iran, as well as his intense engagement with the writings of Herodotus.

The reader is helped tremendously in understanding Herodotus through extensive quotations from his writing and Kapuscinski’s detailed comments. In addition, there is considerable fascinating speculation about Herodotus’ life, about which very little is known. A father of history, Herodotus traveled widely in the world he was the first globalist but the world he knew was considerably smaller than what we know today. The center of it was the mountainous and forested area around the Aegean Sea. Nevertheless, Kapuscinski says, Herodotus is the first to discover the world’s multicultural nature . . . the first to argue that each culture requires acceptance and understanding, and that to understand it, one must first come to know it. Both Herodotus and Kapuscinski are concerned with evil. He does not blame the human being, but blames the system, Kapuscinski writes. It is not the individual who is by nature evil, depraved, villainous it is the social arrangement in which he happens to live that is evil. For Kapuscinski, Herodotus was a valuable teacher of reportage. Accuracy and credibility were important to him; he tries to check everything, to get to the sources, to establish the facts. But Herodotus is also keenly aware that memory is fragile; the subjective factor is always present. Kapuscinski says that observation may be Herodotus’ greatest discovery.

Many years ago, Kapuscinski told an interviewer for <i>Granta</i> that newspapers present the story of events, while his books tried to convey what’s around the story. The climate, the atmosphere of the street, the feeling of the people, the gossip of the town, the smell; the thousands and thousands of elements that are part of the events you read about in 600 words of your morning paper. <b>Travels with Herodotus</b> contains many of Kapuscinski’s memorable experiences: traveling in the midst of war in the Congo en route to a hospital run by an Austrian doctor; witnessing the last days of the shah’s rule in Iran; reporting from China, where his permanent translator always kept an eye on what he was doing.

Kapuscinski says he sometimes calls the writing that appears in his books literature by foot. That was certainly true of Herodotus as well, and this book brings the ancient and the modern worlds together for a memorable literary journey. <i>Roger Bishop is a retired Nashville bookseller.</i>