Sunday, the New York Times Book Review asked a bunch of writers to recommend books for the presidential candidates to read.

Predictably, no travel writers were invited, and even more predictably, no travel books were recommended.

So I offer my own modest suggestions. Let's start with something by Freya Stark, perhaps Beyond Euphrates or Baghdad Sketches. The candidates could learn a lot about this now pivotal part of the world by reading a woman who got to know it intimately and loved it passionately. A woman whose faith in the development of democracy in the region, at least when brought by a foreign power, also proved to be unfounded.

Since everyone agrees on the importance of China, I recommend learning about it from Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present. A former Peace Corps teacher, Hessler has become one of the most insightful interpreters of China for the West.

And since candidates endlessly praise their fellow citizens (their potential supporters), I recommend Henry Miller's The Air-conditioned Nightmare. This account of the novelist's journey through his homeland in the early '40s, after a long stint in Paris, is a harsh and sobering look at some of our national faults, and would be a helpful corrective for two men who, over the next five months, will criticize administrations and systems but never, never, the American people.