#doug mack

[themorningnews]

The recent ho-hum reaction to the purchase and ensuing buyback of Frommer’s obscures one key fact: Guidebooks are creators of social change. A defense of their place in the canon.

[jvnla]

Thirty-one thousand miles works out to nearly three times around the perimeter of the Contiguous 48 states. It’s the sort of distance that makes you expect that, in all that time, you’d wind up somewhere with giraffes or castles or, you know, not a United States post office. But there was USPS, every single time. And I never had to change currency or get a visa. I know how this works, and I now know why and how the USA came to be involved with each of these places, yet it still amuses and confuses me to be so far from home yet able to send a postcard for 34 cents.

Doug Mack | Blog: End of the Road: Notes on Wrapping Up a Tour of the Territories

[timoni]

Most notoriously, the Nazis claimed to have used Baedeker’s guides in a 1942 series of air attacks on English cities, which would become known as the Baedeker Blitz. There’s some disagreement among historians as to whether the Nazis really did use the books, but this was Nazi propagandist Baron Gustav Braun von Sturm’s claim: that Baedeker had unwittingly identified the targets by highlighting Britain’s most beloved landmarks and towns, the places whose destruction would deal the biggest blows to the national spirit, including the cities of Bath and Norwich. More recently, shortly after American troops entered Iraq 10 years ago, Lonely Planet Iraq was pressed into duty for precisely the opposite goal, assisting officials who were prioritizing sites for protection.

Go you own way, an article by Doug Mack. Published in the Mornig News, Mack argues that the best travel guides deserve to be added to the literary canon.

[jvnla]

This is what I love about both airports and sporting events: that coming-together of disparate people, momentary kindred spirits with a common cause (get through security or cheer a soccer team), forging unlikely connections and loyalties. Each fleeting moment is packed with stories and meaning; we're all in this together. Briefly. And then we disperse, back to real life.

In honor of the World Cup, we wanted to share this quote from Doug Mack's blog about his experience of watching the 2011 World Cup in an international airport.  Check out his most recent posts here! 

[danielngoodman]

The Management Secrets That Got One Kings Lane To $200 Million In Revenue In Three Years

See more at: businessinsider.com/one-kings-lane-ceo-doug-mack-leadership-style-2013-6

[thatwasanothercountry-blog]

New books for armchair travelers to India and Europe (including Paris and that hotbed of crime, Venice)

Europe - What a cool concept: take an old Frommer's guidebook (a 1963 edition) of 'Europe on $5 a day' and see what happens when you rely on it for a journey across Europe today. I was born too late to travel around Europe on anything less than $50 a day, and that was pushing it. But author Doug Mack gave it a try, and the result is what promises to be an amusing read, Europe on 5 wrong turns a day: one man, eight countries, one vintage travel guide. Check out this interview with the author, and this short essay on what $5 currently buys you in a few top European cities, both featured on World Hum.

Paris, France - Sticking with Europe, how many people travel there only to return wishing they could someday call it home? There are loads of memoirs by people who either had that dream and made it a reality, or else ended up there by chance, love, or a job transfer. Rosecrans Baldwin, author of the new memoir Paris, I love you but you're bringing me down, is a lover of Paris who ended up living there by way of a job opportunity. Based on this excerpt in GQ magazine, Baldwin has written a humorous, honest account of his time in Paris, which will certainly shatter the illusions of some readers, while passages like the following will entice others to book a plane ticket tout de suite:

Venice, Italy - I've just started reading Donna Leon's latest Commissario Guido Brunetti mystery, Beastly things. Besides the murder of a yet-as-unidentified man, the most shocking thing so far has been that Brunetti has a computer. No more sitting at his desk mulling over paperwork or gazing out the window at the cupola of one of Venice's gorgeous churches; nope, he'll soon be checking the news or e-mail every five seconds like the rest of us.

India - Katherine Boo, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, spent 3 years visiting Annawadi, which can politely be called a "makeshift settlement" or less politely, a slum, near the international airport in Mumbai, India. Seeing past what would appear to be a sad, even pathetic, existence to many of us, Boo delved into the lives of the people of Annawadi, gaining their trust and detailing their stories, which she presents in Behind the beautiful forevers: life, death, and hope in Mumbai. This excerpt from Shashi Tharoor's review in the Washington Post has me intrigued:

"Boo, who has an Indian husband, has not just lived with its people and gotten to know them; she has penetrated the dynamics of their relationships, acquired insights into their psyches, breathed the polluted air that suffuses their fears. Her empathy for the slum-dwellers, striving against impossible odds to earn enough for “the full enjoy” they can only dream about, is total."

Author Anish Kapur tackles the subject of India as well in his new book, India becoming. The Daily Beast has a great article describing how Kapur, who was raised in Chennai by an Indian mother and a father originally from the U.S., is "an excellent ambassador" for representing the complexities of a rapidly changing country. Like Boo, Kapur seems determined to tell the fascinating stories of the people he meets, and to reveal the beauty as well as the ugliness in a society whose recent economic growth overshadows the darker, even violent, effects of such rapid change.