Micronesia

*The Edge of Paradise: America in Micronesia, by P. F. Kluge (1991). How far away from the United States can you get without falling off the map? Kluge asks this question as he returns to the isolated atolls of Micronesia two decades after serving there as a Peace Corps volunteer. He discovers that—for better or worse—pop music and cold beer have a way of uniting even the most disparate worlds.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals, by J. Maarten Troost (2004). Jobless and (almost) homeless out of graduate school, Troost and girlfriend Sylvia head to the end of the world, to Tarawa in the Republic of Kiribati. While Sylvia takes on non-profit work, Troost learns that the tropical paradise he hoped for isn't as romantic as he thought. In the first of two travelogues of his life in the South Pacific, Troost introduces a comic cast of characters and learns of their unique culture and customs (like the importance of kava) on the sandy beaches of Kiribati.