Souvenir

Rolf Potts is the author of Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel (2003), which has sold more than 150,000 copies and has been translated into five languages. His other publications include Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations From One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer (2008), which won the Chatwin Prize for international travel writing in 2009, and The Geto Boys (33 1/3 series, Bloomsbury, 2016). Potts has reported from more than 60 countries worldwide, for the likes of The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Believer, the New York Times Magazine, Slate.com, Salon.com, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Guardian.

• Preface1: Introduction: An Embarrassment of Eiffel Towers2: Souvenirs in the Age of Pilgrimage3: Souvenirs in the Age of EnlightenmentInterlude: Museums of the Personal4: Souvenirs in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction5: Souvenirs and Human Suffering6: Souvenirs and (the Complicated Notion of) Authenticity7: Souvenirs, Memory, and the Shortness of LifeNotesIndex

Souvenir, a sweet new book by Rolf Potts, is a little gem (easily tucked into a jacket pocket) filled with big insights … Souvenir explores our passions for such possessions and why we are compelled to transport items from one spot to another … Souvenir's introduction, titled "An Embarrassment of Eiffel Towers," is a delight to ponder.