Thrilling Cities. by Fleming, Ian - 1963

London: Jonathan Cape, 1963. First edition of Fleming's volume of travel journalism. Octavo, original half cloth, illustrated. Small name to the title page, near fine in a near fine dust jacket with some rubbing to the crown of the spine. Jacket design by Paul Davis. Ian Fleming's world travels, interests, as well as his journalism and wartime experiences, lent authority to everything he wrote. In 1959, the Sunday Times commissioned Fleming to write a series of dispatches from the world's most beguiling locales. The result was Thrilling Cities, a masterpiece of well-observed travelogue that stands ably alongside the author's Bond canon. Here are Fleming's highly personal observations of fourteen cities across Europe, Asia, and North America--from Vienna to Hong Kong to Chicago. At each stop, Fleming casts the guidebook aside, taking readers on an insider's tour of everything from a Tokyo geisha house led by the world's most beautiful women to a packed Las Vegas casino where fortunes ride on a roll of the dice, and beyond.