Rory Stewart: best books

Rory Stewart, author of the best-selling Afghanistan memoir The Places in Between, is director of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy.

He named his favorite travel books for The Week. One title on the list:

River Town by Peter Hessler (HarperCollins, $15).

A Peace Corps volunteer describes two years teaching in a Chinese city on the Yangtze. Hessler’s 2006 book is open to the comedy of the everyday; it’s self-deprecating, respectful, and funny. It captures the provincialism, the modernity, the xenophobia, and the energy of modern China.

Read about the other books on Stewart's list.

River Town also made Oliver August's five best list of "guides to China and its history."

--Marshal Zeringue