Voyages of Discovery

Our Summer Journey double issue tracing Marco Polo's epic trail followed an intellectual path, exploring the ways in which East and West now meet each other. In response, readers shared tales of travel, thoughts on ideas that changed the world and meditations about noodles

Paul Smethurst's essay "A revolutionary from Venice" [Aug. 7] pointed out that, before Marco Polo shed some light on the subject, the Western (Christian) world's geographic and political center had been Jerusalem. That reminded me of Copernicus' famous assertion that the sun, not Earth, is at the center of the heavens. Both discoveries...