"Place Envy is an engrossing and provocative book. Lowenthal is a vivid narrator of his journeys as a young gay man, sharing his travels by car, bus, plane, Amish buggy, and cruise ship from Brookline to Buchau and Scotland to Salvador, Brazil. Throughout, he never hesitates to approach the third rail--and then grasp it. Beautifully written and crafted, the story reaches back generations as it explores the tortuous interplay between where you are and who you are." --Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club

"Enlightening and heartfelt, Place Envy is laugh-out-loud funny and find-the-tissues moving. In each essay, Lowenthal explores love, family, sex, and faith, all the while asking what world, what place, can hold us all and all that we contain. His prose can elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant and yet feel as familiar as a dear friend. This book is a beautiful testament to both his skill as a writer and his heart as a seeker." --Lyz Lenz, author of This American Ex-Wife

"The question 'Where am I?' sometimes asks for a kind of orientation that no GPS can provide. So it is for Michael Lowenthal--a gay Jew from a family of Holocaust refugees--in this brilliantly written and, in the end, deeply moving account of a years-long passage from inner homelessness to home at last." --Jack Miles, coauthor of A Friendship in Twilight: Lockdown Conversations on Death and Life

"The question 'Where am I?' sometimes asks for a kind of orientation that no GPS can provide. So it is for Michael Lowenthal--a gay Jew from a family of Holocaust refugees--in this brilliantly written and, in the end, deeply moving account of a years-long passage from inner homelessness to home at last." --Jack Miles, coauthor of A Friendship in Twilight: Lockdown Conversations on Death and Life