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The Art of Crossing Cultures

3rd Edition (2021)

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With over 60,000 copies in print, this book has become a standard guide to the experience of living and working in another country. Whether you’re in business or government, a foreign student or a foreign aid worker, The Art of Crossing Cultures describes what it’s like to encounter another culture, to be thrown by it, and to make the adjustments necessary to succeed and feel at home in an overseas environment. In the book Craig Storti takes readers through the stages of cultural adjustment—from culture shock to successful adaptation—with numerous anecdotes from the world of business, diplomacy, and foreign aid. The book also features observations on being a foreigner from some of the world’s greatest writers, including Mark Twain, E. M. Forster, D. H Lawrence, and Graham Greene.

This new edition features a new chapter, The Art of Crossing Cultures—At Home, to help those who work with foreigners in their own country work more effectively across the cultural divide.

“Readers will be delighted with the form, content, wit, and understanding with which the author approaches his task. The Art of Crossing Cultures is worth tucking inside the hand luggage for reading on that first flight overseas.”

— International Journal of Intercultural Relations

“Beneath his sound, pragmatic advice and counsel, Craig Storti presents a compelling argument for the importance of genuine cultural immersion. He is also effective in depicting what each phase of adaptation feels like and uses truly entertaining illustrations from literature, biography, and personal experience to demonstrate his major points.”

— Transitions Abroad

“...a well-written and very readable book whose assortment of marvelous quotations will keep the reader informed and entertained.”

—Cynthia Ferguson,
International Education Review

“The interesting thing about The Art of Crossing Cultures is that it will be as enlightening to the university student in a formal intercultural communication course as it will be to the practical-minded businessperson bound for a first overseas assignment and as it will be for the seasoned intercultural specialist who is forever looking for theoretical material to explain the process we have all experienced but have such difficulty putting into words.”

—L. Robert Kohls, professor,
University of San Francisco
(author of the best-selling Survival Kit for Overseas Living)