Taras Grescoe

"A love song to 1930s Shanghai. Taras Grescoe has fallen hard for the 'the wicked old Paris of the Orient,' its barrooms thick with gangsters and newsmen, its alleys 'scented with sweet almond broth, opium smoke and the chemical bite of Flit insecticide'....Shanghai Grand is a headlong swoon for old Shanghai. The feeling is easy to catch.'" ―New York Times Book Review

"Filled with excellent short character sketches and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what will happen… Show more

"A love song to 1930s Shanghai. Taras Grescoe has fallen hard for the 'the wicked old Paris of the Orient,' its barrooms thick with gangsters and newsmen, its alleys 'scented with sweet almond broth, opium smoke and the chemical bite of Flit insecticide'....Shanghai Grand is a headlong swoon for old Shanghai. The feeling is easy to catch.'" ―New York Times Book Review

"Filled with excellent short character sketches and keeps the reader turning the pages to find out what will happen next....Brings to life a special time and a special place." ―The Wall Street Journal

“A keenly observant, sometimes soulful portrait of Emily ‘Mickey’ Hahn, an American writer who lived in Shanghai from 1935 to 1943, and of China’s political and social realities during that tumultuous period in its history. . . . A wonderful book.” ―Publishers Weekly

"The author deftly follows Hahn's adventures through this 'city of legend.' Grescoe exuberantly captures the glamour and intrigue of a lost world." ―Kirkus Reviews

“Long before the city seemed custom-built to impress and intimidate, Shanghai was most notable for its people―a remarkable mix of refugees and adventurers, poets and fabulists, natives and outsiders. In Shanghai Grand, Taras Grescoe captures this lost world in all its richness.” ―Peter Hessler, New York Times bestselling author of Oracle Bones

“A doomed world of glamour and decadence, a clash of cultures, a cast of larger-than-life characters – Shanghai Grand has it all. Taras Grescoe tells a riveting tale of lost innocence and lost love, set against the backdrop of China on the brink of war and revolution. Prepare to be transported to another place and time.” ―Dean Jobb, author of Empire of DeceptionPraise for Taras Grescoe Show less

“All the cities we admire most in the world--the places young people want to live--boast great public transit systems or are in the process of building them. Taras Grescoe explains why: there's nothing more civilized than a great subway, or a bus rapid transit system, or a squad of ferries, or any of the other ways we've learned to move ourselves around urban space. As this splendid account makes clear, a car isn't liberation: not needing a car is liberation!”--Bill McKibben, author Eaarth:… Show more

“All the cities we admire most in the world--the places young people want to live--boast great public transit systems or are in the process of building them. Taras Grescoe explains why: there's nothing more civilized than a great subway, or a bus rapid transit system, or a squad of ferries, or any of the other ways we've learned to move ourselves around urban space. As this splendid account makes clear, a car isn't liberation: not needing a car is liberation!”--Bill McKibben, author Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet

"Grescoe presents a strong and timely argument for moving metropolitan motorists away from their cars."--Publishers Weekly


[Straphanger] is rife with bits of interesting trivia, and it almost reads like a travelogue as the author revels in the wonders of his diverse destinations. With a smooth, accessible narrative style…each chapter is packed with important information… A captivating, convincing case for car-free—or at least car-reduced—cities.”--Kirkus

"Entertaining and illuminating...Grescoe's adventurous, first-person inspection of the world's latest high-tech transit systems keeps readers engaged while underscoring the importance of developing greener forms of transportation."--Library Journal Show less

An eye-opening look at aquaculture that does for seafood what Fast Food Nation did for beef.

Dividing his sensibilities between Epicureanism and ethics, Taras Grescoe set out on a nine-month, worldwide search for a delicious―and humane―plate of seafood. What he discovered shocked him. From North American Red Lobsters to fish farms and research centers in China, Bottomfeeder takes readers on an illuminating tour through the $55-billion-dollar-a-year seafood industry. Grescoe examines how… Show more

An eye-opening look at aquaculture that does for seafood what Fast Food Nation did for beef.

Dividing his sensibilities between Epicureanism and ethics, Taras Grescoe set out on a nine-month, worldwide search for a delicious―and humane―plate of seafood. What he discovered shocked him. From North American Red Lobsters to fish farms and research centers in China, Bottomfeeder takes readers on an illuminating tour through the $55-billion-dollar-a-year seafood industry. Grescoe examines how out-of-control pollution, unregulated fishing practices, and climate change affect what ends up on our plate. More than a screed against a multibillion-dollar industry, however, this is also a balanced and practical guide to eating, as Grescoe explains to readers which fish are best for our environment, our seas, and our bodies.

At once entertaining and illuminating, Bottomfeeder is a thoroughly enjoyable look at the world's cuisines and an examination of the fishing and farming practices we too easily take for granted. Show less

"Travel writers tend to seek out the world's ever-diminishing pockets of authenticity," Grescoe writes, announcing his perverse decision to "make a point of going exactly where the tourist ruts have been plowed the deepest," by following itineraries that have become generic—the pilgrimage to Santiago (he walks away from Santiago, in order to meet more tourists), sex tourism in Thailand (as a non-participant), the Michelin-guided motor tour of provincial France. En route, he taxonomizes such… Show more

"Travel writers tend to seek out the world's ever-diminishing pockets of authenticity," Grescoe writes, announcing his perverse decision to "make a point of going exactly where the tourist ruts have been plowed the deepest," by following itineraries that have become generic—the pilgrimage to Santiago (he walks away from Santiago, in order to meet more tourists), sex tourism in Thailand (as a non-participant), the Michelin-guided motor tour of provincial France. En route, he taxonomizes such tourist types as the "budget travel snob," and provides a gloriously trivia-strewn history of tourism. A bus tour of Europe leads to a discussion of the life of Thomas Cook, whose temperance outings grew into the world's first travel agency, while modern European rail-pass tours recall the Grand Tours of the eighteenth century, this ostensible goal of cultural enrichment providing a front for "unsupervised sex and boisterous partying." —The New Yorker

"The End of Elsewhere is the only kind of travel book possible today: at once enchanting and disenchanting. With rich and pungent prose, and a bite behind his smile, Taras Grescoe lays bare the highs and lows of wanderlust on our shrinking theme-park planet with an empathic scalpel." —Erik Davis, author of Techgnosis

"Grescoe weaves humour, anthropology and travelogue into an eclectic mix that makes The End of Elsewhere one of the most original travel books to come out in years. His perspective is fresh; his prose never dull or obvious." —The Globe and Mail
“The End of Elsewhere is a kind of post-millennium Heart of Darkness, with Grescoe’s Marlowe on the trail of a hypothetical camera-toting, Hawaiian-shirted Kurtz . . . A powerful indictment of contemporary tourism and, more fundamentally, it’s a cry against the West’s exploitation of the Third world in the era of globalization”—Quill & Quire

Witty and provocative, The End of Elsewhere is a riotous on-the-road odyssey and a brilliant history of tourism. Show less