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For more than 55 years, the Veselka Diner has been a neighborhood institution in New York's East Village, serving up its famous borscht and pierogi 24 hours a day to teenage hipsters, artists, college students, and celebrities like Chloë Sevingy, Jon Stewart, Julianne Moore and Sarah Jessica Parker. This week, the diner's owner, Tom Birchard, released The Velselka Cookbook. Birchard worked with cookbook writer Natalie Danford to adapt the huge restaurant-style portions of 120 of their famous recipes for a more moderately-sized kitchen. (What? You don't have a room for a vat full of borscht on your stovetop?) The book not only offers a glimpse into the kitchen, but provides lovely vignettes about the history of the restaurant and its role within the Little Ukraine neighborhood in New York City.

I spoke with Tom Birchard about pierogi, kitchen politics, and becoming an honorary Ukrainian.

Though you've been running the diner for 40 years, you're actually not Ukrainian. How did you integrate yourself within the community?

When my father-in-law started the diner, he was a very patriotic and it became a gathering place for fellow Ukrainians. He sold periodicals and a limited menu of Old World foods that he loved. It became a Ukrainian hub.

Back when I took over, the community was still very isolated, tight-knit and somewhat distrustful of strangers. Their culture and language was under attack back in the homeland, so I wasn't really accepted with open arms. It was an institution in the community, and this WASPy college kid was a bit of a threat to them. I didn't really understand the language and the elder ladies kind of snubbed me. But in time, the younger generation got to know me and I've been adopted as honorary Ukrainian.

Reading Louisa May Alcott's novel Little Women was one of Harriet Reisen's seminal experiences growing up, as it is for many girls the world over (the book has been translated into over 50 languages and has never been out of print). But Reisen, a documentary screenwriter, took her enthusiasm a step (or two) further by doggedly pursuing her goal of bringing Alcott's rags-to-riches life story to the screen. The resulting biopic, Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women, debuts on American Masters on PBS on December 28, but a companion biography written by Reisen is due out in bookstores today.

I chatted with Harriet Reisen about Louisa May Alcott sites to visit, Louisa's own travel experiences, and how travel and literature intersect.

Readers have flocked to visit Orchard House, the Alcott home for 20 years in Concord, Massachusetts, ever since Little Women became nearly an overnight bestseller in 1868. Any tips on what to look out for on a visit there?

When Louisa describes the March home in Little Women, she is describing Orchard House. Visiting it brings the March and the Alcott family alive. The Alcotts feel very present, as if they've just stepped out for a moment. Everything's there: the elder sister's wedding gown, Louisa's mood pillow. Louisa was very moody and she had a pillow that she put up to signal you could approach her, but when she put it sideways, beware.

Don't miss the costumes that the Alcott children wore in their homemade theatricals, including the russet boots Louisa loved. She said she only wrote parts for herself in plays where she could wear the russet boots.

In between the windows of her very small room is a little wooden desk, a semi-circular surface probably 14 inches in diameter, if that. It has just enough room for an inkwell and a piece of paper. And on this desk, she wrote Little Women in just ten weeks.

Last month, our Trip Lit book critic Don George sat down with Amy Tan for the launch of our new "Journeys" series of live conversations with great writers at National Geographic headquarters in D.C. Tomorrow, Don will be chatting with Simon Winchester, author of The Man Who Loved China and The Professor and the Madman, and editor of the 2009 edition of Best American Travel Writing. The evening--which will be preceded by a reception featuring beers from around the world--is also Twitter-friendly. If you've got a question for Simon, add #nglive to your tweet and your question could be answered live at the event. For upcoming events and more news from the Society, be sure to follow @NatGeoScoop.

Click here for more information and to buy tickets. For more inspiring travel reads, check in each month for Don George's Trip Lit column, or browse our Ultimate Travel Library.

Our beloved book critic Don George is back this month reviewing the latest tome from Peter Mayle, a writer who first inspired us to pack our bags two decades ago with his best-selling A Year in Provence. His latest, The Vintage Caper, revisits Provence through a story of a multi-million-dollar heist of French wines from a Hollywood collector. "As our protagonists track the precious bottles, the trail leads--naturellement! --through a succession of excellent repasts and leisurely ambles, which Mayle depicts with painterly ease and signature savoir vivre," George writes.

Check out the full review here. 

Last night, Amy Tan helped launch our new "Journeys" series of live conversations with great writers at National Geographic headquarters here in D.C. The bestselling author of such books as The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen's God's Wife, and most recently, Saving Fish From Drowning, was gracious, funny, and inspiring. (And a fabulous dresser!) The sold-out crowd enjoyed the wide-ranging, often intimate discussion she had with Traveler contributing editor and book reviewer Don George. Some highlights:

• She wrote The Joy Luck Club in four months.

• She's working on her next novel, which was inspired by the remote Chinese village she visited and wrote about for National Geographic Magazine's May 2008 issue.

• Her mother's voice is a constant in her writings--The Kitchen God's Wife was inspired by her mother's story and the dead tour-guide narrator of Saving Fish From Drowning stemmed from a dream she had of her mother after her death: "All the things that I used to find annoying [about my mother], I now find charming."

• Her inspiration for books usually stems from a vivid image of a specific place: for The Joy Luck Club it was Guilin.

• How has her writing helped her grow and change? "I write to discover that; with each book I learn something new about myself."

This was also the first Twitter-friendly event the Society has sponsored, so to learn more about what people thought of the talk, and to get a glimpse of some of what was discussed you can search for #amytannglive. For upcoming events and more news from the Society, be sure to follow @NatGeoScoop.

The next speaker in the series is Simon Winchester, author of The Man Who Loved China and The Professor and the Madman, and editor of the 2009 edition of Best American Travel Writing. He'll be coming to National Geographic on October 15, 2009. Click here for more information and to buy tickets. For more inspiring travel reads, check in each month for Don George's Trip Lit column, or browse our Ultimate Travel Library.

Photo: Amy Tan and Don George in conversation, by Andrew Evans.

We love our Trip Lit book critic, Don George, so we were excited to hear that we'll be seeing more of him around the office. Starting this fall, Don will be hosting a series of conversations with all-star authors whose works evoke a strong sense of place. His first event will be with best-selling author Amy Tan this September 23, at 7:30 p.m. at our headquarters in D.C. Here's a bit about her and the event itself:

Born in the U.S. to immigrant parents from China, Amy Tan rejected her mother's expectations that she become a doctor and concert pianist and chose to write fiction instead. Her acclaimed novels include The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God's Wife, and The Bonesetter's Daughter; and she has adapted her work for film, television, and opera. In a wide-ranging conversation, Tan will discuss, with Traveler editor Don George, the life-changing challenges of living in two cultures, the importance of fate and family in her life and work, and the places that have most moved and inspired her.

The evening will be preceded by a reception featuring beers from around the world, presented with generous support from the Michelob Brewing Company (must be 21 or older).

Click here for more information and to order tickets. The next event, which will feature travel writer Simon Winchester, will be held October 15. We hope to see you there!

Photo: John Foley
 

Über-author Dan Brown is about to strike Washington, and everyone is getting ready. Brown, whose first two blockbuster novels, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, have taken up permanent residence on the Times best-seller list and have been Hanksified for Hollywood, has written his next book, The Lost Symbol, about the hidden secrets of Masonic Washington. And the actual Masonic Washington -- the people who work at Masonic sites throughout the city -- are preparing for the onslaught of tourists, according to a story last week in the Washington Post.

"I'm expecting [tourism] to skyrocket," says Heather Calloway, director of special programs for the Masonic House of the Temple on 16th Street NW, which receives about 10,000 visitors a year. She will double the staff of part-time tour guides, if necessary, to handle the crush.

"We might have to spend the next 25 years responding to Dan Brown's fiction," says Mark Tabbert, director of collections at the George Washington Masonic National Memorial in Alexandria. "That's what I dread." (Think he's overstating? Wait until you hear from his European counterparts, who are still drowning in their own Brown invasions.)

Brigid Pasulka lived in Krakow from 1994-1995 and returns to Poland almost every year. Her debut novel, also set in Krakow, is called A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True. Our book reviewer, Don George, chose it as Book of the Month for August. Here Brigid gives us her insider's picks of top experiences in Poland, in no particular order:

• Eat at a milk bar (bar mleczny). Government-subsidized cafeterias in Communist Poland, milk bars still serve a (mostly) student and pensioner clientele. If you need help with the menu, just ask a student in line--almost all young people in cities speak some English--and don't forget to bus your own table and tell your table-mates "Dziękuję" (jen-KOO-yeh) when you stand up to leave. In Krakow, Bar Żak on Królewska and the bar mleczny on Grodzka (called simply "Bar Mleczny") are the most accessible but still authentic examples.

• Stay in a room in someone's apartment. Sure, there are hotels, hostels and stand-alone apartments, but none of these will show you how people actually live better than...well, actually living with them. Thanks to the Internet, you won't have to take your chances on whichever babcia accosts you straight off the train. These are, of course, not recommended for drunken revelers--most of the proprietors seem to be single mothers or pensioners who need their beauty sleep.