and draws many exciting, poignant dances that tell stories in ancient spaces -- such as a modem dance through some buildings in the Italian countryside, audience in tow, near the setting for a story by Dante of the Lady Pia, unjustly banished by her husband to die in a tower. This is a source book on making history come alive, and about better living through touching the past. The book itself engages history in a sophisticated, inspiring and highly original manner. Palazzo Piccolomini, a Quattrocento attempt to move the public loggia inside, into the courtyard, amidst a burden of militaristicfeudal architectural trends. Tihls Season IJrom Honcly CPlanet In a collective exercise, thousands of travelers using Lonely Planet travel guides send corrections and updates to the publisher for subsequent editions. In the complimentary copy they get they’ll find themselves credited for helping. We mention Lonely Planet in part because the company aggressively funds a number of progressive causes around the world, such as Greenpeace’s Pacific campaign against French nuclear testing. Lonely Planet helped pioneer off-the-beaten-track, shoestring and third world travel back in the early 1970’s. In part through their influence, many mainstream travel publishers went the same route, so today LP doesn’t seem to offer particularly radical advice on what to see and do. The guides help vegetarians and naturists find their way around, which is much appreciated, but they don’t particularly help ecological or social activists. In the current season’s batch of books, the writer who stands out is Joe Cummings, who has done some serious economic, political and social homework. He wrote the new edition of China: A Travel Survival Kit (every edition of a LP guide is an improvement over the previous one). He also wrote the Laos section of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, but unfortunately did not write the rest of the book, which is not as well informed. Cummings is not himself a radical, but he has enough experience in the third world to understand why one might become one. Another new book, Yemen: A Travel Survival Kit is the first Western guide published for this new nation, a “scoop” like many other LP guides. Since Yemen is only now modernizing, it is one of the few countries left where one can get a true taste of medieval Islam. The little book is interesting mainly for historical reasons: it was written white the two Yemens, one with a Marxist and the other with a right-wing military government, unified to take advantage of oil found on their border and to become independent of Saudi bullying. During the Persian Gulf war Yemen then took an independent stance, sensibly asking for both withdrawal of Iraqi troops from Kuwait and of US troops from Saudi Arabia. Yemenis in Saudi were tortured as a result. Lonely Planet guides emphasize how to travel: the signs, the system and how the buses work. Besides the three above, out of this season the guides to the Philippines, Japan, and East Africa are sensitive and can be recommended, as can their excellent and unusual little phrase books for Mandarin and Thai Hill Tribe Languages. LP also prints a free travel newsletter: write Lonely Planet Publications, P.O.Box 2001A, Berkeley, CA 94702. Rain Winter/Spring 1992 Volume XIV, Number 2 Page 49
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