Paul Theroux is a travel writer and novelist whose best known work, The Great Railway Bazaar, is a travelogue about a train trip from Britain through Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, and then back across Russia to his point of origin. In Ghost Train to the Eastern Star, he retraced that trip. He is also the author of A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta, The Lower River, The Tao of Travel: Enlightenments from Lives on the Road, and many other books, including The Last Train to Zona Verde: My Ultimate African Safari, out this month.

After the Bombing

When the travel writer returned to his hometown after the Marathon bombing, he found the mood of the city transformed, unified by a trauma, which he has seen elsewhere in the world.

Is asking drivers for ID in Arizona so different from cops in Italy asking train passengers for passports? Travel writer Paul Theroux on how the new law compares to other countries'.