Saturday, June 11, 2005

Mark Jacobson's 12,000 Miles in the Nick of Time

      Ever despaired that your teens and preteens were stuck in a cultural wasteland of TiVO, Xbox, McDonalds, Coke and MTV? Well, you're not alone. Author and columnist Mark Jacobson felt the same way about his three kids and decided to offer them an antidote in the form of a trip around the world---not to theme parks and other sites that most tourists would go oooh and aaahhh over, but to sites that would normally make one wince, like the burning ghats in Varnasi, India, the genocide museum in Cambodia and so on. Although I missed the general travel chatter and cultural observations that one usually finds in a travel memoir, I found myself enjoying his philosophical meanderings about family and its place in the world. All in all, I found it a good read and laugh-out-loud funny in places.