WORLD TRAVEL

Posthumous selection of Bourdain’s thoughts on places exotic and well known, blended into a kind of Baedeker for the hipster set.

There’s Frankensteining at work here, with Woolever, who worked with Bourdain for nearly 10 years, surrounding his pithy excerpts with the kind of dryly useful information of a standard guidebook—e.g., “Buenos Aires is well served by bus routes, along with a seven-line underground metro system known as Subte, which links the downtown to the outer reaches of the city.” When Bourdain kicks in, it’s of a different order: “Argentina has the distinction of being home to more head-shrinkers per capita than anywhere else in the world….It’s an extraordinary thing, because in many cultures, to confess that you need to even confide in someone is seen as a sign of weakness. Here, everybody does it, and in no way frowns upon it.” That’s an interesting datum, the kind of thing you tuck away for future reference. Bourdain went to see one of those psychiatrists, confessing, “I feel like Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame—if he stayed in nice hotel suites with high-thread-count sheets.” Considering his sad end, the words are revealing. Where Bourdain traveled, drink and excessive eating were sure to follow. In Finland—a place full of people “tough enough to fight off Nazis and Russians”—he ate mystery meat that put “the self-loathing back into drinking” while in Hanoi, Vietnam, for which he had “a deep, abiding love,” he taught Barack Obama how to slurp noodles, with a belly-stuffing meal and beer running about $6: “I’m guessing the president doesn’t get a lot of state dinners like this.” Bourdain went nearly everywhere on the planet, eating and drinking prodigiously along the way. It makes for an exhilarating whirlwind tour, complete with charmingly impressionistic sketches by Allsbrook.

It doesn’t substitute for a true travel guide, but anyone who loved and misses Bourdain will want this book.