"The Best American Travel Writing has been the gold standard for short-form travel writing from newspapers, magazines, and the Internet since its inception." —New York Times Book Review Everyone travels for different reasons, but whatever those reasons are, one thing is certain—they come back with stories. Each year, the best of those stories are collected in The Best American Travel Writing, curated by one of the top writers in the field, and each year they "open a window onto the strange, seedy and beautiful world, offering readers glimpses into places that many will never see or experience except through the eyes and words of these writers" (Kirkus Reviews). This far-ranging collection of top notch travel writing is, quite simply, the genre's gold standard.

In her late 20s, Lauren Collins moved to London, and fell in love with, and married, Olivier, a handsome French mathematician. When he has to relocate to Geneva for his work, she decides to go with him. In Geneva, however, Lauren is lost for words, literally: not only can she not communicate to the local chimney-sweep when he visits, but, watching Olivier converse fluently in French every day, she is also made painfully aware that she has never really spoken to her husband in his own language. She can say, 'au revoir' and 'bonjour' but that's about it. 'Hello and goodbye were a pair of bookends,' she writes, 'propping up a vast library of blank volumes, void almanacs, novels full of sentiment I couldn't apprehend.' What will happen when she has children? she wonders. If they grow up speaking French, will they be stuck with a 'Borat of a mother' who can't properly understand them? So she embarks on a quest to learn French, and, in doing so, must tangle with the intricacies of...