Synopses & Reviews
High-class armchair travel at its very best! Mona Lisas Pajamas gives readers a round-trip ticket for a journey around the world, carrying them to distant destinations most of us will never visit. Originally written for The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News, A. Craig Copetass delightfully surprising columns are now collected in book form for the first time. Covering exotic locales, improbable business ventures, artisan winemakers, and memorably oddball characters, Copetass vivid writing brings his subjects alive with richly-textured descriptions only a truly gifted observer can capture. From Spartas souvenir sword-makers swamped with demand thanks to the hit movie 300, to a Russian golf pro whose favorite clubs were built from the scrapped metal of a Soviet nuclear missile, Copetas writes of unorthodox business pursuits and faraway locations with an infectious joie de vivre and an unerring eye for what makes enjoyable reading.
Unforgettable visits for the armchair traveler:
-Israel's Sacred Golf Course: where bomb craters have become bunkers
-How to Succeed in Business and Avoid Serious Head Trauma: near Stockholm, a former British Special Air Services commando teaches executives how to survive a kidnapping
-An Honorable and Ancient Solution to Boardroom Disputes: the 21st-century duel
-Propulsion Is a Real Plus with Clubs Made in a Missile Factory: A Russian treasures his set of golf clubsmade from an old Soviet missile once aimed at the US
-Da Vinci Code Fans Dig Up the Dead: Dan Browns devotees swarm a town central to the blockbusters story
Review
In Mona Lisa's Pajamas, A. Craig Copetas takes you on a rollicking journey around the globe. Thanks to Copetass wonderful eye and graceful writing, the reader gets to be his faithful sidekick, seeing what he sees, hearing what he hears, smelling what he smells. Even if you are well traveled, he will take you places you've never been before--and would love to visit.”Lawrence Ingrassia, business editor, The New York Times
Mona Lisa's Pajamas is an astute and perceptive book that is a joy to read. As journalist A. Craig Copetas roams our planet, he illuminates our times from rare perspectives that no historian could match. With a keen eye, deft insights and sly humor, Copetas assembles a rich mosaic of our world that will enlighten, amaze and entertain anyone with the good sense to snap up his book and savor it."-- Nicholas Gage, author of Eleni and Greek Fire"These reports are as much true travel stories as they are character portraits done with the wit, insight, and extraordinary professional experience that brings them to life in the way journalists like A.J. Liebling, Johnny Apple, and Ernest Hemingway once did." -- John Mariani, Virtual Gourmet Newsletter
Humanity at its quirkiest pursuits.
[D]ispatches are delivered in a deadpan hybrid of Robin Leach and Monty Python; Ira Glass with a little more chortle.”--The Los Angeles Times
[A] travel book of sorts
so far above the usual old Pierres Bistro is where the locals dine sort of writing that it simply must not be considered in the same light.
[Y]ou can treat the book as a learning experience, but you should probably read it just for fun.”Providence Journal