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| Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism | 
 enlarge | Author: Thomas Kohnstamm
Publisher: Potter Style
Category: Book
List Price: £12.20
Buy New: £3.54
You Save: £8.66 (71%)
New (20) from £3.54
Avg. Customer Rating:  3 reviews
Sales Rank: 118085
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 288
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.3 x 0.8
ISBN: 0307394654
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4092
EAN: 9780307394651
ASIN: 0307394654
Publication Date: April 22, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: New book. WE USE PRIORITY AIRMAIL ONLY for books from the USA. UK & European delivery is 7-10 days. Over 2,000,000 books sold to Amazon customers
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| Customer Reviews:
 An awesome ride... Essential reading for anyone who uses travel guidebooks August 20, 2008
A young American, tired of life on Wall Street, takes a job as a travel writer for Lonely Planet. He arrives in Brazil and, amidst the temptations of beautiful women and the all-night partying of Copacabana beach, soon realises that he has been given a task of unimaginable proportions and an equally small stipend with which to fund it.
Eight hundred miles of Brazilian coastline. Sixty towns. Countless villages. Our hero is sent to review and collect the names, locations, phone numbers and email addresses of all relevant hotels, restaurants, bus routes, laundrettes, bars and nightclubs across the whole region. And write something meaningful about them. All in sixty days with virtually no money. And he can't accept freebies (rooms, meals, etc.)
As his financial situation grows increasingly bleak, he struggles with whether to accept such perks of the Lonely Planet name. He also struggles with the fact that what he writes is likely to help rob some of the places he visits of their innocence and independence by contributing to American-style commercial tourism there. His wry analysis of how foreigners behave abroad is both enlightening and hilarious. And his insight into the greater meaning of what he is doing shows us yet another ugly side to (American) commercialism, this time in the tourism industry, and more specifically the guidebook industry.
Does he tell a great story along the way? Definitely. There are healthy measures of sex, drugs, drinking and general debauchery. On the other hand, our hero also encounters police brutality, sustains multiple injuries, fends off insolvency (in the most desperate and creative of ways), and meets a host of colourful characters along the way. (My favourite is Otto, the Israeli ex-commando.)
Overall this is an awesome ride. Great for holiday reading and particularly if you use guidebooks, in which case it's a definite 'must read'. Buy it now!
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics and Professional Hedonism
 First Class Rubbish July 6, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
If you enjoy reading about a drug addled American "I'm not a tourist, I'm a traveller man" then this is the book for you.
Page after page of boring backpacker tripe as Kohnstamm drifts from one hangover to the next with some drug binging and squalid sexual encounters to break the monotony.
On a positive note, the book goes a long way to explaining the multitude of errors and misleading information found in all Lonely Planet editions.
 A tale on being young in the 3rd millennium July 3, 2008
...much more than simply throwing stones on his own former glass house, Lonely Planet -- Kohnstamm has committed a grabbing road memoir on travelling through Northwestern Brazil.
One thing is the underload of cash and time and overload of rules and inflexibility his employer set for the (ad)venture into these up and coming tourist destinations, another is the lack of discipline and resistence to the many temptations the same destinations throw in his face. Beautiful and usually not unwilling women, sometimes girls. Cheap alcohol and easy drugs, a less easy drug dealing business, and not at all easy Brazilian policemen. Here a free meal without a deal, there a free night. Kohnstamm's basically just a young man being exposed to choices and often giving in to them. And being honest, and courageous, enough to share them.
True, 'Do Travel Writers Go To Hell?' will certainly make a wannabe travel writer, as well as any potential guidebook buyer -- not only of Lonely Planet but in general! -- think twice. But its first and foremost justification is the journey. A journey which is entertaining but much more so, it is a journey causing the author as well as the reader to reflect on morality, society and even humanity. On a down to earth level, in an almost frighteningly real life universe.
Kohnstamm writes in a slightly philosophical but in no way pretentious language. Behind his inviting style lures a hint of a post-20s male's indignation and self-scepticism. But Kohnstamm also suggests which roads might lead in a more acceptable direction. An absorbing book by a skilled writer with much more to say than simply bashing the standard-setting travel book publisher to earn an easy buck.
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