|  'The Condé Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys'
The book gathers some of the most memorable stories from the magazine's 20-year history.
Sometimes the pleasures and pains of travel are indistinguishable.
On one hand, you meet gracious strangers; on the other, you discover that none is immune to the universal plague of road rage. In The Condé Nast Traveler Book of Unforgettable Journeys: Great Writers on Great Places, writers report from several countries where normally lovely people who will invite you into their homes become raving, snaggletoothed werewolves as soon as they grip a steering wheel.
James Truman writes that a formal greeting in Iran is masochistically generous—"May you step on my eyes"—yet drivers in Tehran emulate the "Ben Hur" chariot races and gleefully run each other off the road. When Truman tumbles out of a cab and pronounces the ride the worst of his life, the cabbie offers this response: "I hear the Turks in Istanbul are much worse."
Moments like these are worth the trouble. In this collection of remarkably well-crafted stories culled from 20 years of Condé Nast Traveler magazine, the focus is the humor and wisdom that only travel delivers.
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