This anthology's title is off by one letter: it should be called Sad Trips, not Bad Trips. The phrase 'bad trips' (and especially the book's front cover description: "A sometimes terrifying, sometimes hilarious collection of writing on the perils of the road") suggests to me the journeys that are hell to live through but fun to look back on, like, say, the time I spent three days trapped in the Boise, Idaho airport with what seemed to be the entire population of the state of Idaho. Those are the kinds of stories I expected from this anthology.
But in Bad Trips, the editor gives us a few funny stories along with tales alternately grim, gruesome, and depressing beyond all description. Just a few examples of the topics covered: a walk through a refugee village full of starving children, the torture, death, and dismemberment of civilians in El Salvador, the city of Hue shortly after it was destroyed by the Vietcong and American armies. These are important tales, and they need to be told, but they seem somewhat inappropriate for a book purporting to be a light-hearted, funny, travel anthology.
The editor made a few other strange decisions in assembling this collection, and while one works, most don't. I laud his attempt to include the work of some great writers, and this pays off: the selections by David Mamet, Anita Desai, Martin Amis, and John Updike are wonderful, and there's a poem by Al Purdy that every off-the-beaten-track traveler should read. But the book also includes a number of extracts from works of fiction, which jars - part of the joy of travel stories is that they're *true*.
Overall, the strength of some of the individual selections doesn't make up for the strange choices the editor has made. Look for it used, or check it out of the library.