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Summary: A Great a Guide for those who like to Go!
Review: If you are a traveler, or a lover of travel writing, When the Going Was Good will be a great reference for you! In this book Grove Kroger reviews 99 of the best works of travel literature of all time. He whisks the reader from Siberia to Patagonia, and from Mecca to Xinjiang, from atop mountains to deserts and into the sea. Travel experiences range from hiking, hunting and sailing to collecting plants and animals. Whether Kroger is an armchair voyager, or has himself trekked to the four corners one cannot tell. His writing is engaging and his vast reading in this genre is obvious. His suggestions for works on similar topics or places show an amazing breadth and depth of knowledge. Please know Kroger has not selected flowery sweet vacation accounts, but he defines "best" as the firsts, the real first reports on places before unknown and those accounts that have literary merit. Norman Douglas said the reader "is entitled not only to an exterior voyage, . . . but to an interior" as well. If you enjoy Dinesen, Saint-Exupery, Mayle, Mayes or Shackleton please look to this book for excellent recommendations to read further works by them or to learn about works written about similar settings. Best editions are suggested, as are works similar in scope, and suggestions for further information. We shove off on these journeys, leaving the sofa or the continent, out of a desire to experience the otherworldly. We want to know a "heightened" living, not our day to day toil at home, wherever home may be. Kroger quotes D.H. Lawrence in his introduction who says it most simply, "Comes over one an absolute necessity to move."
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