Mona Lisa's Pajamas

High-class armchair travel at its very best! Mona Lisa’s 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 Copetas’s 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, Copetas’s vivid writing brings his subjects alive with richly-textured descriptions only a truly gifted observer can capture. From Sparta’s 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 clubs--made from an old Soviet missile once aimed at the US

-Da Vinci Code Fans Dig Up the Dead: Dan Brown’s devotees swarm a town central to the blockbuster’s story