Craig Storti Wins Peace Corps Writers Award for the Best Travel Book 2019 (Morocco)

Why Travel Matters: A Guide to the Life-Changing Effects of Travel
By Craig Storti (Morocco 1970-72)

Craig Storti (Morocco 1970-72) is an expert on cultural communication with over thirty-years experience helping business people, diplomats, civil servants, and foreign aid workers engage effectively with people from other cultures and diverse backgrounds. He leads cross-cultural workshops for international agencies and organizations on four continents, and assists numerous corporations and government agencies to better manage global teams and culturally diverse workforces. He has lived nearly a quarter of his life abroad-with extended stays in Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist cultures-he speaks French, Arabic, and Nepali.

When you travel, you have a choice: You can be a tourist and have a nice time, or you can be a traveler and change your life. Why Travel Matters is for those who want to change their lives.

Why Travel Matters explores the profound life lessons that await anyone who wishes to learn what travel has to teach. With engaging prose, delightful wit and a distinctive style, Craig Storti infuses his own experiences traveling the world for 30-plus years with quotations, insights, reflections and commentary from famous travelers, great travel writers, historians and literary masters.

Storti’s vast knowledge of the literature makes him an expert curator of astute gems from the likes of St. Augustine, Mark Twain, Somerset Maugham, D. H. Lawrence, Bruce Chatwin, Aldous Huxley and more.

“Why Travel Matters is not a travel book, but a book about travel; an engaging, intelligent and entertaining exploration of why we do it, how we do it, and what it does to us. I’ve not read anything like it before. Like the act of travelling itself, it shifted my perspective on the world and helped me see familiar terrain in unfamiliar ways.”―Nick Hunt, author Where the Wild Winds Are, a 2017 Spectator Book of the Year

“A highly intelligent and deeply engaging book that examines not only the beauty, but also the importance of travel.”―Thomas Swick, author The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illuminate Them

“You may have visited the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China, but if you haven’t read this book, you may not have traveled. From deep experience and insight, Craig Storti, with clarity, humor, and a grand sense of history, shows how travel does matter. In practical steps, he demonstrates ways we can go beyond mere tourism to become enlightened participants in new places everywhere. For all travelers-not to mention interculturalists-this book is a must.”―Fanchon Silberstein, Former Director The Overseas Briefing Center, US Dept. of State

“In this invaluable book Craig Storti compellingly answers the question: “Why does travel matter?” He differentiates between travel and tourism then makes the case that travel guarantees that the person who set out on a journey is not the same one who returns. His treasury of quotes vividly illuminates his points, adding rich context to this captivating work. The farther I got into this book, the more I wished I had read it 50 years ago. Craig captures concepts that took me a long time to learn on my own—both about how the world works and about myself. His point: travel is both an inner and outer journey.”―Sandra M. Fowler President-Elect SIETAR USA

“Storti’s book is a graduate school seminar, an education on how to travel, even if you never go anywhere ever again. My suggestion for your next trip is that its best if you forget the guidebooks, forget DK, Frommer or Lonely Planet, and slip instead into your backpack Why Travel Matters and read it on the flight. Then when you land, follow Craig Storti’s advice.”―-John Coyne, co-founder and editor, Peace Corps Worldwide