The non-fiction master’s book by Alexander Genis is a selected travel prose with subtle bursts of lyricism. This volume offers a special—authorial—mix of genres: more like stories than essays, little scenes rather than advice, and dialogues everywhere it’s possible. Going against the borrowed erudition of Wikipedia, Genis’s travelogues describe those fragments of world landscapes that are kept in a memoir safe— not what the author saw, but what he carried with him: a view, a remark, a dish, an exhibit, or a quote that finally found its place and a home.