Best books: Rory Stewart

Rory Stewart, author of the best-selling Afghanistan memoir The Places in Between, is director of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

He named his favorite travel books for The Week. One title on the list:

Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss (Penguin, $20).

“Je hais les voyages et les explorateurs”—“I hate journeys and travelers”—is the first line. The structural anthropologist’s ironic, paradoxical insights into “primitive culture” and the illusions of foreigners are combined with an adventure up the Amazon.

Read about another title on Stewart's list.

Tristes Tropiques also appears on Jonathan Rosen's list of the five best books about the search for Eden.

--Marshal Zeringue