by Brook Wilkinson

I blogged a few months ago about Lonely Planet's new Buy by Chapter program, which lets you purchase just the sections of a guidebook that are relevant to your trip. Back then, the service was available only for the Latin America series, but it's now been expanded to include the books for North America, Africa, the Caribbean, and the South Pacific -- almost 100 guides in all.

Let me take this opportunity to say it again: This is a great deal, both financially and environmentally. Many's the time that I've lugged a multi-country guidebook on a single-destination trip, simply because it was the most up-to-date source of information I could find. Now, if I want to take a weekend trip to San Diego, I can buy just that city's chapter for $3, instead of the entire California guide for $23. When you purchase a chapter, you'll receive it in PDF form, so you can save it on your computer and print out only what you'll need on your trip. If you buy three or four chapters, you'll save an additional 20 percent; buy five or more and you'll save 35 percent. A good deal for you, and for the earth.

by Brook Wilkinson

How many times have you carried around a 1,000-page guidebook and referred to only a few pages, or ruined the entire book by tearing out the pages applicable to your upcoming trip? I've been guilty of both, but no longer. Now, Lonely Planet lets you buy individual chapters of its tomes for a couple of bucks each, a service it calls Pick & Mix. The chapters arrive in your in-box as pdf's, which you can store electronically and print out.

So far, Lonely Planet's Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, and South America guides are available for chapter-by-chapter purchase. Say you're planning a jaunt around South America, as our Dream Trip Contest winner Gene Pembroke is. Instead of bringing the bulky South America guide, you can purchase just the chapters you need (such as Rio de Janeiro, the Galapagos Islands, and Southern Patagonia). Why carry around a list of the best restaurants in Caracas when you have no intention of even visiting Venezuela?

Conde Nast Traveler editor Klara Glowczewska can't read cuneiform, but she does translate Polish works into English.
Photo: Rob Howard, Conde Nast Traveler

by Brook Wilkinson

Whenever I stop by the Conde Nast Traveler offices in New York City, I feel like I've made a wrong turn and landed at the U.N. Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, German, and Chinese emanate from nearby cubicles. Sometimes, I'm sure, these skills are used to avoid prying ears, but in at least one case they have been put to good use: Traveler's editor-in-chief Klara Glowczewska was the longtime English translator for acclaimed Polish writer Ryszard Kapuscinski. (Klara is a formidable writer in her own right; her essay about visiting Nefertari's Tomb is one of my all-time favorites.)

At night and on her vacations, Klara would painstakingly convert Kapuscinski's Polish prose into English, opening the writer up to a much wider audience. Traveler recently published an excerpt of her last translations, Travels with Herodotus, soon after the writer's death. The wonderful travel blog World Hum has also just posted an interview with Klara about her second career.