I’m a big advocate of reading on airplanes, and I’m a big advocate of travel guides. However, doing a listicle about travel guides feels really boring. After all, what’s the difference between a good travel guide and a bad one? That’s lame so let’s do something else.
Instead, I’m going to talk about 5 books that I believe will make you a better traveller. The twist? They have nothing to do with travel, like at all.
1 The New Urban Crisis by Richard Florida.
What It’s About: The New Urban Crisis is about the growing pain of cities in the 21st century. As an urban expert, Florida does a comprehensive rundown of everything that makes an urban economy function. From the spread of ideas to the growth of intellectual industry, the geography of cities is way more important than you think. Why do you think the movie industry only exists in Los Angeles? Why is country music the domain of Nashville? Anybody who has a humanities degree must read this book. Not only is it about the growth of cities, The New Urban Crisis is about the problems cities are causing people. As the world will be mostly urban in about 50 years, these problems matter a great deal. They include transport, zoning laws, gentrification and house prices. Why can’t you get that family flat in Brooklyn? Well, here’s the answer.
Why It Makes You A Better Traveler: The New Urban Crisis will awake you to the reality of why major metropolitan airports with all the cool amenities are in thriving urban spaces. Heathrow, Hartsfield-Jackson, LAX, JFK, Schipol, these airports are the major hubs of the world and they’re all located in big urban cities. But why is that? Answer: industries that require people to be in the same space need easy ways to put people in those spaces. So the natural market for airports are people going from city-to-city rather than country-farm to country-farm. If you’re planning any sort of air travel, you will need to at least pass through these cities if you don’t already live in one. Therefore, you might want to keep an eye on your urban planning knowledge. Otherwise, you’ll be baffled as to why you need to change planes in Atlanta.
2 Ego Is The Enemy, Ryan Holiday
What It’s About: Ryan Holiday’s major skill is turning the classical school of Roman Stoicism into a personal development tool for sports stars, executives, and techies in Silicon Valley. He’s written a dozen books on the subject while never exhausting himself of material. In theory, any of Holiday’s Stoicism-themed books will do for this entry but I’m giving the winner to Ego Is The Enemy. Holiday’s thesis is straight-forward: too often the biggest obstacle is you. ‘Ego’ in this context is defined as the colloquial version: a mixture of self-righteousness, arrogance, conceitedness, and narcissism. Page-after-page is just Holiday finding examples of historical figures, business leaders, and sports stars who thought too much of themselves and caused untold problems for their livelihoods and other people. This book is a practical advice guide just as much as a list of cautionary tales: Have some humility, be grateful for small things, love your enemies, and so on. If you have no ambition to be a sports star or a great leader, the advice works in everyday life.
Why It Makes You A Better Traveller: We all see, know, and hate with our living guts that guy at the airport who screams at the desk agent about the plane being late. “Who do they think they are?” we practically hear this person bellow, “don’t they know who I am? I’m special!” You don’t want to be that person, nor do you want to be near that person. Air travel is particularly susceptible to people’s egos coming out in force because of the lack of autonomy inherent to flying. Here’s an incomplete list of things you do not control while flying: the queue to check-in, security, the plane leaving on time, turbulence, bag space, legroom, the weather, maintenance on the plane, the weather at your destination, the conditions of the runway, another passenger becoming ill, your seat mate, the inflight entertainment system’s selection of movies and the food. Some people cope with these stressors well, others do not and devolve into children by demanding the universe treat them differently because they’re them and everyone else is not. Get your ego in check, sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.
3 Civilisation: How The West Came To Dominate The Rest, Niall Ferguson
What It’s About: Civilisation has an ambitious goal because it tries to explain a huge fact about human history: how is it that Westerners (basically Europeans and Americans) came to take over the world. Why not the Chinese? Or Indians? Or anyone else? Instead, Western Europeans became healthier, wealthier, and so advanced that they wound up dominating most of the world’s locales and populations for 500 years. Why is this? Unlike other books seeking environmental explanations, Ferguson posits that Western cultures had six ideas, ‘killer apps’ he calls them, that gave them an enormous edge over other peoples. They are: Competition, Science, Medicine, Property Rights, Consumerism, and Work Ethic. Together, these ideas made Western cultures economic and military powerhouses in ways that affect the balance of power to this day.
How It Will Make You A Better Traveller: This book gives you an idea of the bedrock principles moving history in the direction it did. People wouldn’t be flying in a metal tube without a serious understanding of physics, metallurgy, and a host of other scientific applications I can’t even pronounce let alone explain. You’ll understand why several airlines are sending you promotional emails hoping to entice you into flying with them to Dallas-Fort Worth. You’ll understand why you won’t die of several diseases that killed your great-grandparents whilst travelling abroad. You’ll understand why your role as a consumer generates wealth in unusual ways and why you might just want to get that co-branded airline credit card. And of course you’ll understand why European countries are richer, but more expensive, places to visit. European countries didn’t become twenty times richer than the average Asian civilisation because they had the mandate of heaven and someone else did not. It was more complicated than that, and this book will help explain why your travel destinations are the way they are.
4 The Inner Game of Tennis by W. Timothy Gallwey.
What It’s About: A short text on how to become a better tennis player, Tim Gallwey makes the case that it’s not just your form that matters in the world of tennis: it’s also your mindset. Many tennis players Gallwey coached would often have difficulty playing, not because they lacked the fundamentals but because there was a nagging voice in their head judging them for their performance, which would cause further performance problems. Coach Gallwey offers an unusual solution with this book: master the “inner game” of tennis. The “inner game” involves making non-judgemental observations and relaxed concentration to improve one’s tennis-playing skills while removing that judging voice from one’s head. Don’t overthink, just focus on the tennis ball in front of you.
Why It Makes You A Better Traveller: The genius of this book is how Gallwey rarely if ever gets bogged down in the specifics of tennis, which has the simultaneous effect of widening his readership and making the lessons applicable to almost any situation one finds themselves in. Indeed, Gallwey’s subsequent books would take the concepts first articulated in this book and apply them to other domains like golf and music. Unfortunately, there’s no Inner Game Of Travel, but fear not because you can do that yourself. It’s easy for you to judge yourself when flying for doing all sorts of things. “Crap, I should have gotten an aisle seat, I’m too cramped, what an idiot I am!” Gallwey’s book will help you reorient your mindset during travel by teaching what he calls relaxed concentration and non-critical observation. “Hmm, there seems to be a long line at security, I need to use my TSA Pre-check.” Your attention will narrow to what’s right in front of you. “The gate agent needs my boarding pass and my passport”. You’ll be less fazed when a flight cancellation occurs and more confident in your trip planning. Freeing your mind of thoughts and judgements while traversing the airport and flying on a plane will make the experience more enjoyable and less stressful.
5 Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress by Steven Pinker
What It’s About: The worst times ever! Wars, pandemics, poverty, inequality, and recession of liberalism. Surely we’re screwed, right? Not so fast, says Steven Pinker in this upbeat book on the progress made throughout history. For five hundred pages, Pinker crunches vast datasets and long-acting statistical trends to reveal a surprising picture about today’s world: we’ve never had it better. We’re wealthier, healthier, and living higher quality lives than at any point ever in human history. Before I go any further, here’s the common strawman that people make (and then torch) when talking about Steven Pinker’s books: "Pinker says everything’s gotten better, therefore everything’s amazing and there are no problems anywhere on earth and there never will be again.” That’s nonsense because nowhere in the book does Pinker ever say “job well done, chaps, we can all sit back and relax”. If anything, Pinker makes the case for reason, science, humanism, and progress to ensure these positive trends continue.
Why It Makes You A Better Traveller: Once Pinker shows you how drastically our lot on this earth has improved in the last half-century or so, you’ll look at air travel quite differently. If you’re of a certain age, you’ll be able to recall when planes didn’t have fancy inflight entertainment systems or automatic check-in processes or digital boarding passes or any of the other little conveniences that make flying less annoying than it once was. Planes are more advanced and quieter than ever before. In the old days, long-haul planes like the 747 needed four engines to truck across the ocean. Now, the 787 can do it with just two engines that are more powerful and are more sustainable than the old ones. Some planes like the Airbus A380 still require four engines, but that’s only because they’re full-length double-decker airplanes that can seat more people than a 747. Flying itself is safer, as Pinker points out. Spectacular planes crashes like the Tenerife runway collision are more than forty years in the past. Now, we’ve reached the point where some years go by with exactly 0 deaths due to plane crashes. The systems are smoother, the rewards are cooler, and you can travel for leisure more than your parents did. That trip to Disney World used to be a once in a lifetime trip but now you probably take your kids several times a year. Enlightenment Now shows you why you can travel so much so frequently.
Conclusion
Reading these books will make you a better person and a better traveller simultaneously. Just be sure to read them before you get to the airport.