Sunday’s New York Times contained the Book Review’s Summer Reading issue and among the dozen roundups – of everything from thrillers to sports books – there was none for travel books, a perennial in the annual holiday and summer reading issues. You can see them being dropped perhaps from the first one, at the start of winter, but to ignore books of travel at the beginning of summer – especially the summer after a pandemic – defies logic. I know publishers have been down on travel books, so perhaps the editors didn’t think there were enough good new ones to warrant a roundup. Whatever the reason, it’s a development that doesn’t bode well for travel writers, or our increasingly self-involved country.