Can International Travel Expand The American Mind? Unique Book of Tales Takes You to the Other Side of the World

It seems that more and more Americans are paying less and less attention to the rest of the world. College students are taking less foreign language courses, news coverage of foreign affairs has decreased, and the number of Americans applying for a passport has declined over the past several years. In fact, fewer U.S. citizens travel overseas than their counterparts from other developed nations. Could there be a correlation? Do Americans care less about other nations because they simply aren’t visiting them anymore?

(PRWEB) February 19, 2006 -- It seems that more and more Americans are paying less and less attention to the rest of the world. College students are taking less foreign language courses, news coverage of foreign affairs has decreased, and the number of Americans applying for a passport has declined over the past several years. In fact, fewer U.S. citizens travel overseas than their counterparts from other developed nations. Could there be a correlation? Do Americans care less about other nations because they simply aren’t visiting them anymore?

Some say that traveling to faraway places helps expand your mind to other ways of thinking. “There seems to be an American trend away from trying to understand the world at large,” says David Rozgonyi, author of Goat Trees: Tales from the Other Side of the World (Wolverine Farm Publishing, 2006). “We comprise 5% of the world, and although we venture out into it occasionally, we are often unable to open ourselves to the broader experience of being not American citizens, but citizens of the world.”

His many years of traveling have helped Rozgonyi gain perspectives that many Americans may not have considered. “Pretty much all the people in the world want to meet you,” says Rozgonyi. “Don’t let anyone scare you into believing otherwise. Get out there and say hello to as many of them as you can while you’re here---there is no better thing you can do.”

Born in 1976 in Libya to Hungarian political refugees, Rozgonyi has lived on four continents and backpacked across six, spending months at a time among diverse cultures and people all over the world. His adventures have taken him through such exotic locales as Cambodia, China, northern Africa, India, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Turkey and the South Pacific.

His experiences inspired him to put together his first diverse collection of stories. Written on the road and drawing upon a lifetime of wanderlust, Rozgonyi takes you into his world and shares the lands that helped to shape him as a person. The unforgettable journey details off-the-wall subject matter like: goats in trees, high-stakes abalone hunting, and the Hungarian peasant treatment for a lightning strike.

Through his lush and vivid storytelling, Rozgonyi hopes to change the way people think about the world. “We try to provide most of the cultural and military direction of the world, but we steadfastly refuse to consider the perspectives of those who would live beneath our shadow,” says Rozgonyi. “I want to illustrate the fact that we are all almost exactly the same, and so the only thing we can and should really fear is the mirror on ourselves.”

Rozgonyi so earnestly wants to share the world with his readers that he is even willing to take them along on one of his adventures. He talked his publisher into letting him offer a 10-day, all expenses-paid trip to anywhere in the world. The winner of the Goat Trees Travel Mate Contest will be personally chosen and guided through their destination of choice by Rozgonyi. If your short note to him captures his imagination, you’re in. “I feel excited and fortunate to be in a position to show someone a little about my way of seeing the world,” Rozgonyi says. “And, if it doesn’t sound too conceited, hopefully exposing them to new ways of seeing life.”

For an advance review copy of the book or to set up an interview with David Rozgonyi for a story, please contact Sarah Van Blaricum at 727-443-7115, ext. 207

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