Rick Steves, popular PBS travel show host, has written a delightful, thoughtful, stimulating and insightful book about visiting other nations that is political not in the sense of partisanship, but in the sense that coming to know and understand other cultures is a step toward peace.

I was skeptical when BuzzFlash received the review copy of "Travel as a Political Act," thinking it was just another summer tourism guide, and put in the "unlikely" pile of books to offer as premiums (a very high pile indeed).

But, ironically, at the end of the summer I decided to take it with me on the train and couldn't put it down.

Steves clearly loves meeting people and understanding historical conflict, but his heart is with using travel to bridge the divide between nations, religions and ethnic groups. In addition, he creates wonderful little portraits of the people and places he highlights in this book and one gets a vicarious thrill in joining with him on his journey.

His visit to Iran is fair and balanced, but emphasizes how people on the street beamed when they found out he was American. Steves is not one to get into lengthy political diatribes, but you know that he deplores the futility of war because he is a witness to the vitality of life in so many nations and the commonality of being human.

The goal of Steves, who identifies himself as a progressive in the foreward to the book, is to get people to travel more "purposefully." That is to say, that the traveler should not just journey to places, but should travel to learn about our fellow residents of Planet Earth.

And Steves provides great details about places we may never see through his eyes and the eyes of the people whom he meets.

The book is both a great delight and thought provoking without being a polemic.

It's accessible and enriching, a pleasure to read (with many, many photographs).

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