{"product_id":"the-lunatic-express-isbn-9780767929813","title":"The Lunatic Express","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eIndonesian Ferry Sinks.  Peruvian Bus Plunges Off Cliff. African Train Attacked by Mobs.  \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhenever he picked up the newspaper, Carl Hoffman noticed those short news bulletins, which seemed about as far from the idea of tourism, travel as the pursuit of pleasure, as it was possible to get. So off he went, spending six months circumnavigating the globe on the world's worst conveyances: the statistically most dangerous airlines, the most crowded and dangerous ferries, the slowest buses, and the most rickety trains. \u003ci\u003eThe Lunatic Express \u003c\/i\u003etakes us into the heart of the world, to some its most teeming cities and remotest places: from Havana to Bogotá on the perilous Cuban Airways. Lima to the Amazon on crowded night buses where the road is a washed-out track. Across Indonesia and Bangladesh by overcrowded ferries that kill 1,000 passengers a year. On commuter trains in Mumbai so crowded that dozens perish daily, across Afghanistan as the Taliban closes in, and, scariest of all, Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., by Greyhound.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Lunatic Express\u003c\/i\u003e is the story of traveling with seatmates and deckmates who have left home without American Express cards on conveyances that don't take Visa, and seldom take you anywhere you'd want to go. But it's also the story of traveling as it used to be\u003cb\u003e—\u003c\/b\u003ea sometimes harrowing trial, of finding adventure in a modern, rapidly urbanizing world and the generosity of poor strangers, from ear cleaners to urban bus drivers to itinerant roughnecks, who make up most of the world's population. More than just an adventure story\u003ci\u003e, The Lunatic Express \u003c\/i\u003eis a funny, harrowing and insightful look at the world as it is, a planet full of hundreds of millions of people, mostly poor, on the move and seeking their fortunes.\u003c\/p\u003e“This book is fabulous. The lean description, the weave of old and new perspective, the personalities, the real-people wisdom, and that the danger is as real as we don't want to think it is.  \u003ci\u003eThe Lunatic Express\u003c\/i\u003e is refreshing, liberating, and a paean to true Travel.  Hoffman opened my eyes to the off-the-grid traveler, clearly most of the world, and made me cry. The last pages struck home; the duality of escape and harbor are the blessing and curse of life.” -- Keith Bellows, Editor-in-Chief of \u003ci\u003eNational Geographic Traveler\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Reinvented the travel log as the supreme theater of paradox…a search for an unholy grail—something freakish; something dangerous; something authentic… Take this ride.” -Richard Bangs, Producer\/Host of the Public Television series, \u003ci\u003eAdventures with Purpose\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"There are two possibilities: we move through the world, or the world moves through us. Carl Hoffman's clever, funny, fearsome book does both. It takes us into the frantic fear and pitiless extinctions that punctuate the simple struggle to get from home to anywhere, for so many of the world's people. But it also takes us into the heart of the writer: and that journey, with its beauty and compassion, its conscience and courage, is so thrilling that we hope the ride never ends.\" -- Gregory David Roberts, author of SHANTARAM\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Carl Hoffman, a courageous and interestingly untroubled man from Washington, D.C., has done a great service by reminding us, in \u003ci\u003eThe Lunatic Express\u003c\/i\u003e, of this abiding truism: that the world’s ordinary traveler is compelled to endure all too much while undertaking the grim necessities of modern movement…Mr. Hoffman spent a fascinating year going around the world precisely as most of the world's plainest people do—not on JetBlue or United or American or Trailways, modes of transport that look positively heavenly by comparison, but in the threadbare conveyances of the planet's billions….He learns along the way a great deal about the habits of the world's peripatetic poor, and he writes about both the process and the people with verve and charity, making this book both extraordinary and extraordinarily valuable….It is a wise and clever book too, funny, warm and filled with astonishing characters. But it also represents an important exercise, casting an Argus-eye on a largely invisible but un-ignorable world. It is thus a book that deserves to be read widely. Perhaps in some airport in a blinding rainstorm in the Midwest, while waiting for yet another infernally delayed American plane.” – Simon Winchester, \u003ci\u003eWall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003eCarl Hoffman has driven the Baja 1000, ridden reindeer in Siberia, sailed an open dinghy 250 miles, and traveled to 65 countries.  When he's able to stay put for more than a few months at a time, he lives in Washington, D.C., where his three children make fun of him on a pretty constant basis. He is a contributing editor at National Geographic Traveler and Wired magazines, and his stories about travel and technology also appear in Outside, National Geographic Adventure, Men's Journal and Popular Mechanics.Mumbai: The city’s cattle class train commute has put a big question\u003cbr\u003emark over the future of a brilliant sixteen-year-old girl. Raushan\u003cbr\u003eJawwad, who scored over 92 percent in her class X examination a\u003cbr\u003efew months ago, lost both legs after being pushed out of a crowded\u003cbr\u003elocal train near Andheri on Tuesday.\u003cbr\u003e—Times of India, October 17, 2008\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eSeven\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eThe 290th Victim\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“Everything in that book is true,” said Nasirbhai. It was almost\u003cbr\u003e100 degrees, the humidity of the Bay of Bengal pressing\u003cbr\u003edown, and he was wearing a white dress shirt over a sleeveless\u003cbr\u003eundershirt, pleated black slacks, and black oxford shoes. Small\u003cbr\u003escars were etched around brown eyes that studied me from a\u003cbr\u003ewide, inscrutable face; a big stone of lapis studded one finger,\u003cbr\u003eand a silver bracelet dangled from his wrist. He had a barrel\u003cbr\u003echest and his hands hung at his sides, ready, waiting— never in\u003cbr\u003ehis pockets. He looked immovable, like a pitbull, like a character\u003cbr\u003efrom another time and place, and in a way he was. “That\u003cbr\u003ebook” was Shantaram, the international best-selling novel written\u003cbr\u003eby Australian Gregory David Roberts, who’d escaped from\u003cbr\u003eprison in Oz and found his way to Bombay two decades ago,\u003cbr\u003ewhere he’d become deeply involved with its criminal gangs and\u003cbr\u003eNasir— who always carried the honorific bhai, “uncle.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e“We met in the 1980s,” Nasirbhai said, standing on a corner\u003cbr\u003ein Colaba, one of Mumbai’s oldest neighborhoods and its tourist\u003cbr\u003eepicenter, the streets lined with vendors selling tobacco and sandals\u003cbr\u003eand newspapers and bangles, pedestrians as thick on the\u003cbr\u003esidewalks as attendees at a rock concert. Roberts was famous\u003cbr\u003enow, a Mumbai legend, and through a friend of a friend had\u003cbr\u003econnected me to Nasirbhai, who agreed to take me deep onto\u003cbr\u003ethe commuter trains of the most crowded city on earth, where\u003cbr\u003ethe day’s simple commute was a matter of life and death. “Traveling\u003cbr\u003eon these trains is very risky because they are so full,” Nasirbhai\u003cbr\u003esaid. “But people must be at work, they must not be late\u003cbr\u003eor their boss will fire them. They must get to their destination, so\u003cbr\u003ethey lean out of the doors, hang on to the windows, climb on top\u003cbr\u003eof the train. They risk their life to get to work every day.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eBy population, the city— just nineteen miles across, with 19\u003cbr\u003emillion souls— was bigger than 173 countries. The population\u003cbr\u003edensity of America was thirty-one people per square kilometer;\u003cbr\u003eSingapore 2,535 and Bombay island 17,550; some neighborhoods\u003cbr\u003ehad nearly one million people per square kilometer. A\u003cbr\u003enever-ending stream of Indians was migrating to Mumbai,\u003cbr\u003ewhich was swelling, groaning, barely able to keep pace. In 1990\u003cbr\u003ean average of 3,408 people were packing a nine-car train; ten\u003cbr\u003eyears later that number had grown to more than 4,500. Seven\u003cbr\u003emillion people a day rode the trains, fourteen times the whole\u003cbr\u003epopulation of Washington, D.C. But it was the death rate that\u003cbr\u003eshocked the most; Nasirbhai was no exaggerating alarmist. In\u003cbr\u003eApril 2008 Mumbai’s Central and Western railway released the\u003cbr\u003eofficial numbers: 20,706 Mumbaikers killed on the trains in the\u003cbr\u003elast five years. They were the most dangerous conveyances on\u003cbr\u003eearth.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eCopyright (c) 2010 by Carl Hoffman.  \u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304040714469,"sku":"NP9780767929813","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780767929813.jpg?v=1767740350","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-lunatic-express-isbn-9780767929813","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}