Travel: People and places

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Butch Cassidy and UtahFederico Fellini and RomeGeorge Sand and France; George Eliot and EnglandMary Stuart and ScotlandMary Colter and Grand CanyonMao Tse-tung and ChinaDjango Reinhardt and ParisWolfgang Amadeus Mozart and ParisThomas Jefferson and John Adams and EnglandAlan Furst and EuropeTintinMartha GellhornGeorgie White Clark and the Grand CanyonHoly Roman Emperor Frederick II and ItalyVanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf and Bloomsbury, LondonBarbara CooneyJulia Child and FranceGeorgia O'Keeffe and New MexicoFather Eusebio Kino and the Sonoran desertFrank Lloyd Wright and ArizonaThe Brothers Grimm and GermanySoong Ching-ling and ChinaAbigail Adams and Louisa Catherine and Adams National Historical ParkFanny StevensonColette and Paris

<img height="125" style="padding: 5px 10px 5px 0px;" width="100" align="left" src="http://www.latimes.com/media/alternatethumbnails/photo/2010-05/53726168-12152308.jpg" />I was sick with the flu recently, so I spent four days on the couch, sleeping and reading through a stack of Alan Furst spy novels: "Night Soldiers," "The Polish Officer," "Red Gold" and others, all set in Europe from 1933 to 1945. Furst, who writes about men caught in deadly games of espionage as Hitler rolls across Europe, was inspired to try fiction after writing several travel articles on the Danube River and Spain. His interest even then was "political travel," he told me in an interview.<br>
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-- Susan Spano<br>
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<b>Read more: </b> <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2002/nov/03/travel/tr-spano3"> World War II novels are a tour guide of the imagination</a><br>
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<i>Upper photo: The Eiffel Tower </i><br>
<i>Lower photo credit: Matthew Peyton / Getty Images</i>

Alan Furst and Europe

( Richard Derk )

I was sick with the flu recently, so I spent four days on the couch, sleeping and reading through a stack of Alan Furst spy novels: "Night Soldiers," "The Polish Officer," "Red Gold" and others, all set in Europe from 1933 to 1945. Furst, who writes about men caught in deadly games of espionage as Hitler rolls across Europe, was inspired to try fiction after writing several travel articles on the Danube River and Spain. His interest even then was "political travel," he told me in an interview.

-- Susan Spano

Read more: World War II novels are a tour guide of the imagination

Upper photo: The Eiffel Tower
Lower photo credit: Matthew Peyton / Getty Images