Among the glossy photo brochures, florid exoticism, and hardbound advertisements for tourist traps and luxury accommodations that litter the travel section of the average bookstore, Paul Theroux's idiosyncratic and often brutally frank volumes stand out, a condition he's come to embrace and resent. Dubbed "the grouchy traveler" by The New York Times, Theroux has been chastised for his harsh words on Iran ("backward, unreliable, dusty, and fundamentalist") and China, which he famously lambasted for its systemic oppression in 1988's Riding The Iron Rooster. In "Travel Writing: The Point Of It," a brief statement of principles from the opening section of Fresh Air Fiend, his stellar collection of essays from 1985 to the present, Theroux contends that history is his strongest defender. While American tourists and TV cameras were reveling in the splendor of The Great Wall and The Forbidden City, the China he witnessed from the railways was rife with division and discontentment. When Tiananmen Square erupted a year after Rooster was published, the criticism fell away and his mantra was crystallized: "The truth is prophetic… no matter what the mood of your prose." In more ways than one, Theroux has earned a reputation as the solitary traveler, a role he rightfully embraces throughout Fresh Air Fiend, an ideal sampler of his globetrotting assignments, personal philosophies, and flesh-eating parasites. From the obscure African republic of Malawi, where his greatest hardship was Kennedy-era Peace Corps bureaucracy, to his home in Oahu, where he paddles his beloved kayak away from the throngs of tourists, Theroux captures the flavor of a locale without getting swept up by it. In an age of "connection," he strives to be disconnected, driven to illuminate obscure corners with droll wit, a keen eye for beauty, and a rich appreciation for trivial detail. Divided into eight sections, with a special focus on his journeys in China and the Pacific, Fresh Air Fiend devotes a surprising amount of space to Theroux's thoughts on travel writing in general and where it stands in literature as a whole. Aligning himself with figures as diverse as Nabokov, Conrad, and the other "Thoreau," he implies that a highly personalized sense of place is the mark of good travel writing. Like him or not as a tour companion, Theroux the restless journeyman could never be described as impersonal.