The 2021 Travel Guide from Anthony Bourdain

Shortly before his death, Anthony Bourdain was working on a travel guide with his assistant of nine years, Laurie Woolever — a synthesis of advice from his years of experience crossing the globe, both on his own time and for Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, his critically acclaimed CNN show. The book, World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, was released in April 2021.

Woolever, who also co-wrote Appetites, Bourdain's final cookbook, talked about the project with Food & Wine's Kat Kinsman when she appeared on our Communal Table podcast. She and Bourdain had sat down one day to discuss what he wanted out of the project, and she used a transcription of that conversation to help bring the book to life. It was meant to be a fun project — "I hope that people will still have fun with it when it comes out, but it has been a very different kind of project," she told Kinsman.

"It's hard and heavy to be co-authoring a book with a ghost, and to be interviewing the people that he was closest to about a man that's no longer with us," she said later in the podcast episode. "I think just being able to feel that I deserve whatever it is the space to see, 'This is hard, emotional work,' has been really great in a way."

Per the description, the book is an "entertaining, practical, fun and frank travel guide" that gives advice on some of Bourdain's favorite destinations around the world, from where to stay to what to eat. The cover features an illustration from cartoonist Tony Millionaire, showing Bourdain sipping on a mug outside of a Parisian café; each chapter is also marked by an illustration. As they flip through, readers can expect essays from people close to him, too — his brother, Chris, provides "sardonic accounts" of traveling with Bourdain, while music producer Steve Albini gives a guide to cheap eats in Chicago.

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide, is available on Amazon. In addition to this travel guide, an Anthony Bourdain documentary was produced, with CNN Films, HBO Max, and Focus Features behind the project; a memorial book, Anthony Bourdain Remembered, was also released in May 2019.