"The travel book of the season."—Craig Seligman, New York Times Book Review The first book to distill Jan Morris's entire body of work into one volume, The World is a magnum opus by the most-celebrated travel writer in the world. To read it is to take an epic armchair journey through the last half of twentieth-century history. A breathtakingly vivid guide to our greatest cosmopolitan cities and cultures from Manhattan to Venice and from Baghdad to Barbados, this book assembles fifty years of Morris's finest travel writing. With eyewitness accounts of such seminal moments as the first successful ascent of Everest, the Eichmann trial, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong, The World promises to create an entirely new generation of Jan Morris readers. A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of 2003.

简·莫里斯 Jan Morris 集诗人、小说家、旅游文学作家为一身，1926年出生于英国克利夫登。曾担任《泰晤士报》、《卫报》记者，后专事写作。著作超过三十部，除了有关英国的名作《大不列颠治下的和平》三部曲外，还有关于牛津、曼哈顿、悉尼、威尼斯、香港、西班牙和威尔士的记述；小说《哈弗的最后来信》（Last Letters from Hav）曾入围英国布克文学奖。2008年1月，莫里斯被《泰晤士报》评选为二站后英国最伟大的十五名作家之一。