Describes the author's visit to South America's lesser-known Guianese coast, where he toured the coastal towns, torrential rivers, and dense forests of Guyana, Suriname, and French Guiana, in an account that also describes the region's remarkable wildlife and violent history.

Sri Lanka, the seemingly paradisiacal island at the tip of the Indian subcontinent, has a troubling, obscured past that?s slowly revealed in this vivid travelogue. Gimlette takes in the colorful polyglot metropolis of Colombo, lunching with slum-dwellers and chatting with a former president. He visits ancient ruins and reservoirs as well as modern ruins from the 2004 tsunami; meets farmers who live in trees to evade marauding elephants; chats with...