The best American travel writing 2006 / edited and with an introduction by Tim Cahill ; Jason Wilson, Series Editor

A shared plate / Chitrita Banerji -- The selling of the last savage / Michael Behar -- How to sail across the Atlantic / Paul Bennett -- After the fall / Tom Bissell and Morgan Meis -- The discreet charm of the Zurich Bourgeoisie -- Ain't it just grand? / Kevin Fedarko -- The price of paradise / Caitlin Flanagan -- Where they love Americans ... for a living / Sean Flynn -- Out of Ohio / Ian Frazier -- The parachute artist / Tad friend -- Our lady of Lawson / Pico Iyer -- A short walk in the Wakhan Corridor / Mark Jenkins -- Naked Ambition / Heidi Julavits -- Passing through / Yiyun Li -- The mother load / P.J. O'Rourke -- XXXXL / Michael Paterniti -- The joy of steam / Tony Perrottet -- Tantric sex for dilettantes / Rolf Potts -- Rediscovering Libya / Kira Salak -- The new mecca / George Saunders -- Turbulence / David Sedaris -- Airborne / Sally Shivnan -- A St. Petersburg Christmas / Gary Shteyngart -- Let's ski Korea / Christopher Solomon -- A peaceful angle / Patrick Symmes -- Speaking of soup / Calvin Trillin.

Cahill has selected very well. Adopting the philosophy that travel writers are "writers first, travelers second," Cahill has created a diverse collection, full of insights, humor, the exotic and distant, and the ordinary and near. The narratives cover travel in Vietnam, where the air is an "oxygen chowder"; visits to the "last savages" of West Papua, Indonesia; the surreally transformed city of Dubai; and a wayward cough drop in David Sedaris's flight to Raleigh, as well as a remembered Ohio childhood, reminding the reader that one traveler's exotic is often another's ordinary. The stories were chosen from a range of publications, including The New Yorker, the Georgia Review, Travel + Leisure, Outside, and FarFlungMagazine.com.