Author Charles Leerhsen is a stylish and light writer… The book lays out a slow collapse: As Bourdain’s success intensified, so did his removal from well-regulated emotions and from people who might have helped. At a certain point, as Leerhsen explains, the traveler with a gift for finding life-affirming joys of the road began to see an abyss in them instead. He couldn’t leave his obsessions at home. Turning the final page (and reading the excellent explanatory endnotes that explain how the best scoops were attained), I finally felt like I got the answers I needed from Down and Out in Paradise.”