The author of Journey by the Book, Daniel E. Van Tassel, is more like a porter than a travel guide in that he sorts through our baggage and invites us to take a cozy seat. The author then preps us for the discoveries of travel by providing sketches of twenty great literary journeys. The variety of journeys is stunning and we are guided to those that call for more exploration. Carl Hoffman’s The Lunatic Express invites just such an experience. Van Tassel shares how Hoffman lived on the “edge of disaster” by exploring the world via the worst, most dangerous conveyances. The author’s account of Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods might prompt you to set out on your own Appalachian Trail. The Odyssey and Gulliver’s Travels are classics, of course, and many cover mythic and psychological journeys. Much ground (and many a sea) is covered. Thankfully, the reader travels at no risk.
Van Tassel’s thesis is correct: “In an epistemological sense, all reading is synonymous with travel, for, in the activity of reading, our minds leave our present situation and depart for another." Being introduced to numerous journeys through the world and its literary time span in a series of studious yet accessible chapters got me traveling anew. This book is total fun for the variety of its travels and the many insights the author offers to the reader.

Ralph Yernberg, Pastor Emeritus, reader, and determined literary traveler lives in Minnesota.

Thanks to author Van Tassel, I've had the pleasure of trips down memory lane and around the world. In Back to Barron, where he recounts and relives childhood adventures growing up in a small Wisconsin town in the 1940’s and 50’s, the reader goes back in time. Because I grew up in a small Midwestern town myself, in the words of Yogi Berra, it was de ja vu all over again. In Journey by the Book, I was enabled to navigate the wider world and the inner self. Journey "explore[s] unchartered territories” both around the globe and in our hearts and minds. It covers a wide range of travel literature, from imaginary journeys to documented trips of all sorts. Vicariously, but seemingly for real, you accompany authors such as Marco Polo, Coleridge, Twain, Steinbeck, Kerouac, Conrad, and Heyerdahl as they trek, tramp, and sail on their respective journeys. I read Travels with Charley many years ago but didn’t “connect” with the book. Because of Van Tassel’s inspiring insights on it and Heart of Darkness, I plan to reread both those books. I also have a new list of books I want to enjoy, including The Lunatic Express by Carl Hoffman, The Kon-Tiki Expedition by Thor Heyerdahl, Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, and A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain. And owing to Van Tassel’s analyses of them, I have a new and better understanding of books I have read.
Richard Waters, among other vocations and pursuits, a writer of poetry, short stories, and plays and a former bookstore owner in Northfield, MN.

This book is a sweeping overview of the long history of travel narratives, with each chapter
devoted to a particular text. The works surveyed include classics such as Pilgrim’s Progress and
Gulliver’s Travels and modern works by Bill Bryson, Paul Theroux, William Heat-Moon, Jack
Kerouac, and others. Van Tassel is contagiously enthusiastic as he describes each journey,
reflects on the way the author structured the work and found meaning, and invites the reader
to travel geographically and on further reading adventures. The book is very accessible to the
general reader: based on a lot of reading and research, but direct, breezy, and invigorating, like
a seasoned traveler sharing a good tale.
John D. Barbour, author of Journeys of Transformation and other books and Professor of
Religion Emeritus, St. Olaf College