Messages about the importance of travel have been cropping up all week.

Photo by Rain Rannu

5 Writers Who Affirm the Importance of Travel by Olivia Hambrett explores the literary works of five influential writers – Mark Twain, Maya Angelou, Margaret Mead, Samuel Johnson, Rosalia de Castro – and parses out their views on travel.

In What Tyler Durden’s Philosophy Teaches Us About Travel, Juliane Huang examines the musings of famed Fight Club character, Tyler Durden, and how they apply to travel in general.

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Photo by Ryan Libre

From hard hitting photojournalism and comical dog portraits to bizarre fish faces and beautiful naked Japanese women, they show mastery in various niches of photography.

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Today’s travel book recommendation comes from Matador community member Chad Barnes.

Chuck Klosterman doesn’t travel to the ends of the world or try to solve world hunger.

In fact, he doesn’t even leave his own country. Instead, he gets put on assignment by Spin Magazine to road-trip throughout the United States, visiting the death sites of famous musicians.

The intersection of Duane Allman’s motorcycle crash and the spot where Kurt Cobain ensured his everlasting fame are two of the more notable stops in this hilariously written book.

The main characters are the author himself, his rented Ford Taurus (nicknamed “Tauntaun“), 600 CDs riding shotgun, and the barrage of ‘normal’, everyday people he meets along the way.

Klosterman’s new-age style and ridiculously extensive knowledge of pop culture shine through as he reminisces on past relationships (like most of us would) and creates severely complex explanations for the music guiding his way.

Price: $11.90 | BUY

Has your little webcam taken quite the beating while constantly dispatching about your travels to family and friends?

Are you looking to upgrade?

The Logitech QuickVam Pro 9000 is a lightweight webcam that clips to any flat-panel surface – laptops or notebooks – and connects via a USB 2.0 cable to either your PC or MAC.

Its 2-megapixel sensor paired with Carl Zeiss optics (mostly found in digital SLR camera lenses) makes for crisp, sharp images, especially at a very close range. Automatic autofocus technology helps reduce vibration and refocuses the webcam as you move around.

More importantly, it is Skype-certified with full-screen video call support, and works well with AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo! Messenger, SightSpeed and iChat videoconferencing.

Additional tools out of the box include the QuickCam software that works only on Windows machines. It also comes with a slew of video effects and filters like the ’50’s Movie Reel effect or a standard fisheye effect to enhance your video experience.

Price: $72.95 | BUY

Do you own the Logitech QuickCam? Tell us what you think about it below

I don’t know; maybe I’m getting old, but when I cracked the spine of Broke-Ass Stuart’s Guide to Living Cheaply in New York City and read :

“New York will never be yours; you will always be hers. She’s got you p***y-whipped and you f**king know it.”

Photo by Paraflyer

I realized Stuart and I weren’t likely to get along.

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Today’s travel book recommendation comes from Matador community member Samuel.

London to Sydney the Hard Way…This was one of the first travel books I read and after a library’s worth of reading, it still remains one of my favorites.

With pitiful funds but plenty of determination, Peter sets off on an 8 month trip overland from London to Sydney.

This journey takes him through 25 countries, meeting incredible people, partaking in (usually) risky activities and generally having a good time. He visits the front line in war-torn Bosnia, the opium fields of Laos and even manages to make his way into the heavily guarded Tibet.

By traveling as cheaply as possible, he meets locals within their element and experiences it all as a true independent traveler.

This is traveling as it should be…no sheltering in posh hotels and viewing the country through a haze of “tourist sites”. He gets into the soul of each country he passes through and allows us a glimpse in a humorous and insightful manner.

Price: $11.27 | BUY

What do you really know about the Middle East?

Photo by liber

That’s the question we’ve posed to Matador readers this week. In What Every American Should Know About the Middle East, Matador Video Editor Joshua Johnson interviews Melissa Rossi, a special correspondent for Newsweek and author of the recently published What Every American Should Know About the Middle East.

Matador Pulse Editor Eva Holland recently introduced us to the Middle Eastern geography quiz designed to test your knowledge of the region.

Dreaming in Arabic, Learning in Yemen by Baxter Jackson spotlights Yemen as a viable location to study Arabic, while Benjamin Orbach takes us on a journey through 6 Under-the-Radar Destinations In The Middle East.

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Today’s travel book recommendation comes from Matador community member Sarah Menkedick

My favorite travel book of all time would have to be Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia. I love Chatwin’s understated, quiet writing style…he’s the type of writer that makes you hear the silences, feel the solitude of being alone on the road.

And yet, at the same time, he draws out the particularities of a place and its people.

In Patagonia is one of the few travel books I’ve read while actually traveling through the place being described…and the descriptions were so spot on, and so poignant, that it felt like I couldn’t decide which was more real, the landscape or the book.

Chatwin manages to make his writing very real and very simple; no exaggerated descriptions or depictions of local characters.

That’s not to say that he doesn’t capture some of the oddities one finds traveling – Welsh roses and tea in Patagonia, for example – but he explores them with such respect that it leaves you with this sense of very quiet awe.

Price: $9.75 | BUY

For as much as I appreciate Lonely Planet, let’s face it: wherever you go, Lonely Planet in hand, you have a 90% chance of running into a group of slightly confused American backpackers glancing up from the same coffee-stained page you’re glancing up from.

Guidebooks, after awhile, come to feel like the same hackneyed advice about cultural differences, accompanied by maps of the familiar international geography of hostels and bars offering cheap cuba libres.

Photo by The Marmot

So I wonder, what alternative systems of navigation exist out there? Why not navigate by flavor, by dish, by ingredient: enduring, edible traditions?

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What every American (and Traveler!) should know about the Middle East from Matador Network on Vimeo.

As the bloody conflict between Israel and Hamas appears to be ending, it leaves many people scratching their heads. How did it come to this? Who’s to blame? What must we do?

I recently sat down with author, journalist and world traveler, Melissa Rossi to try to understand the history of the Gaza conflict and its deeper implications.

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