My Kind of Place Travel Stories from a Woman Who's Been Everywhere

Susan Orlean has been called "a national treasure" byThe Washington Postand "a kind of latter-day Tocqueville" byThe New York Times Book Review. In addition to having written classic articles forThe New Yorker, she was played, with some creative liberties, by Meryl Streep in her Golden Globe Awardwinning performance in the filmAdaptation. Now, inMy Kind of Place, the real Susan Orlean takes readers on a series of remarkable journeys in this uniquely witty, sophisticated, and far-flung travel book. In this irresistible collection of adventures far and near, Orlean conducts a tour of the world via its subcultures, from the heart of the African music scene in Paris to the World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield, Illinoisand even into her own apartment, where she imagines a very famous houseguest taking advantage of her hospitality. With Orlean as guide, lucky readers partake in all manner of armchair activity. They will climb Mt. Fuji and experience a hike most intrepid Japanese have never attempted; play ball with Cuba's Little Leaguers, promising young athletes born in a country where baseball and politics are inextricably intertwined; trawl Icelandic waters with Keiko, everyone's favorite whale as he tries to make it on his own; stay awhile in Midland, Texas, hometown of George W. Bush, a place where oil time is the only time that matters; explore the halls of a New York City school so troubled it's known as "Horror High"; and stalk caged tigers in Jackson, New Jersey, a suburban town with one of the highest concentrations of tigers per square mile anywhere in the world. Vivid, humorous, unconventional, and incomparably entertaining, Susan Orlean's writings forThe New Yorkerhave delighted readers for over a decade.My Kind of Placeis an inimitable treat by one of America's premier literary journalists.

Susan Orlean has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 1992. Her articles have also appeared in Outside, Rolling Stone, Vogue, and Esquire. She lives in New York City with her husband, John Gillespie