I've read other "Best American Travel Writing" books in prior years, so I know they often contain very serious explorations of cultures, situations, the world around us and so on. But really, in a book that begins with a complete fixation on our world during the COVID-19 pandemic, I would have expected that the non-COVID pieces might have taken a lighter direction; perhaps an exploration of the good things still out there, to remind us of the joys we'll find as we get back to traveling more normally.
But no, that's not this book's direction. And while the pieces may have been written in 2021, not all of them were about things in 2021, so there was room to maneuver. After a very heavy dose of COVID-driven death, we got to learn about the deaths of some good people, deaths of animals, and a very troubling exploration of the very real problems of racism and white supremacy. All of it was good, intelligent writing, but damn, this book really depressed me. So I gave it three stars, because of the good writing, but I really didn't expect it to be quite so depressing and don't think it needed to be. There had to be better ways to balance things out.
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