Armchair Adventurer

If you loved reading the adventures of intrepid explorers in the dusty pages of your grandparents' National Geographics, now you can enjoy these stories again without getting your hands dirty. Worlds to Explore: Classic Tales of Travel and Adventure from National Geographic skims the cream off the 210 volumes of the National Geographic magazine and brings you such gems as plant collector Joseph Rock caravanning through China (with his collapsible Abercrombie & Fitch bathtub) in 1925; Anne Morrow Lindbergh manning the radio for her husband as they circumnavigate the North Atlantic in 1933; Tolstoy's grandson, on a mission from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, meeting His Holiness the 7-year-old Dalai Lama in Tibet;  Maynard Owen Williams waiting out the media frenzy at the opening of the tomb of Tutankhamen in 1923; sharp-eyed Eliza Scidmore reporting from earthquake-ravaged Japan in 1896 (she was the first woman to serve on the National Geographic Society board);  22-year-old Thor Heyerdahl searching for paradise in the South Pacific in 1937, and lots more goodies.  Crisp black-and-white photos accompany the articles."

IT's only complaint? The book doesn't give off that well-loved National Geographic smell.