Travel Trends

An indy bookseller friend of mine, who departed the recently shuttered A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, crossed the Golden Gate Monday to start his new gig at Corte Madera's Book Passage. One of his duties? Buying for the Travel section. "Travel books are selling like crazy," he tells me.

Travel reading, travelling, or both could be on the rise. Travel writing sure is.

After WWII my father, who was 10 at the time, and his middle class family hired a driver to take them through Mexico. They were itching to get out, stretch their legs, and see the world, he said.

Direct correlation between the end of military conflict and a rise in tourism? Implications of longer, guerilla-type conflicts?