"Innocents Abroad Too is not only a compelling narrative of traveling around the world. It is an enlightening and delightful look into great literature, mostly by writers who, like Pearson, embraced the adventure of the voyage, on the road and on the high seas, in vivid and highly informative prose."—Lee Gutkind, editor of In Fact: The Best of Creative Nonfiction
"A book of cultural collisions and self-exposures. Readers will find Pearson to be a uniquely qualified and most companionable guide to take them worlds away."—Arthur Saltzman, author of Solve for X: Essays
Description
Most people don’t get the opportunity to circumnavigate the globe. Michael Pearson has had the good fortune to do it twice. As a two-term professor in the Semester at Sea Program, Pearson journeyed by ship in 2002 and 2006 to such countries as Japan, China, Vietnam, India, Myanmar, Egypt, Turkey, South Africa, and Cuba. In Innocents Abroad Too he shares his experiences and candid impressions, transporting the reader from bustling streets outside Shanghai’s City God’s Temple to the Masai Mara plain.
Along the way Pearson provides a literary journey, enriching his encounters with descriptions of the great books and great writers who have also brought the world closer to their readers. These touchstones are combined with journalistic sketches of the people and places he visits and Pearson’s thoughtful meditations on the significance of travel and the importance of encountering the new. In the rich tradition of travel literature, Innocents Abroad Too offers a blend of experience and imagination, worlds familiar and strange.
About the Author
Michael Pearson teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Old Dominion University. His books include Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx and the novel Shohola Falls, both published by Syracuse University Press.
