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"Newly recovered from a quarter-life meltdown, Clara Bensen decided to test her comeback by signing up for an online dating account. She never expected to meet Jeff, a wildly energetic university professor with a reputation for bucking convention. They barely know each other's last names when they agree to set out on a risky travel experiment spanning eight countries and three weeks. The catch? No hotel reservations, no plans, and best of all, no...
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"The Emmy-winning CBS Sunday Morning correspondent chronicles his year traveling to every one of our National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people that America has to offer. When Conor Knighton decided to spend a year wandering through America's "best idea," he was worried the whole thing might end up being his worst idea. But after a broken engagement and a broken heart, Conor desperately needed a change of scenery....
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The award-winning novelist takes us on some of his most memorable journeys in this revelatory collection of travel essays. Now in his mid-seventies, Russell Banks has indulged his wanderlust for more than half a century. In this compelling anthology, he writes that since childhood he has "longed for escape, for rejuvenation, for wealth untold, for erotic and narcotic and sybaritic fresh starts, for high romance, mystery and intrigue." The longing...
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"Moving through the world in a body that looks different than most, Jones learned on to factor "pain calculations" into every plan, every situation. She was born with a rare congenital condition called sacral agenesis, which affects both the stature and gait, and so her pain is physical. But there is also the pain of being judged and pitied for her appearance, of being dismissed as "less than." the ways she has been seen--or not seen--has informed...
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"Starting in the Yucatán, Wood sets out on an epic walking voyage, moving through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama, travelling in the opposite direction along vital migrant routes. Journeying from sleepy barrios to glamourous cities to Mayan ruins lying unexcavated in the wilderness, Wood forges new relationships along the way that stand at the heart of this book--and the personal histories, cultures, and popular legends...
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"Plagued by anxiety and a persistent feeling that there was more to life than paychecks and mortgages, Kim and her husband decide to uproot their lives and travel around the world. Just before their departure, they're given an unexpected gift that will shape their adventures: a yellow envelope containing a check and instructions to give the money away to those they encounter on their journey. Through Ecuador, India, Nepal, and beyond, the pair encounter...
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"What makes puzzles--jigsaws, mazes, riddles, sudokus--so satisfying? Be it the formation of new cerebral pathways, their close link to insight and humor, or their community-building properties, they're among the fundamental elements that make us human. Convinced that puzzles have made him a better person, A.J. Jacobs-four-time New York Times bestselling author, master of immersion journalism, and nightly crossworder--set out to determine their myriad...
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"There are few remaining frontiers on our planet. But perhaps the wildest, and least understood, are the world's oceans: too big to police, and with no clear international authority, the oceans have become the setting for rampant criminality--from human trafficking and slavery to environmental crimes and piracy. Now, in The Outlaw Ocean, Ian Urbina--prize-winning reporter for The New York Times--gives us a galvanizing account of the several years...
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"From bestselling author Dave Eggers, the incredible true story of a young Yemeni American man, raised in San Francisco, who dreams of resurrecting the ancient art of Yemeni coffee but finds himself trapped in Sana'a by civil war. Mokhtar Alkhanshali is twenty-four and working as a doorman when he discovers the astonishing history of coffee and Yemen's central place in it. He leaves San Francisco and travels deep into his ancestral homeland to tour...
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Buck's epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way-- in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn't been attempted in a century-- tells the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.
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"Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, a true classic and one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed--and what hasn't. Following a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the...
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The role of the flatboat in our countrys evolution is far more significant than most Americans realize. Buck chronicles his adventure building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. He cast off down the river on the flatboat Patience accompanied by an eccentric crew of daring shipmates. Over the course of his voyage, steering a fragile wooden craft through narrow channels...
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In an effort to discover the value of daydreaming and leisure, the author sets out on a journey that will take her to the homes of people who famously wasted time daydreaming, but were better for it, including Gregor Mendel.
"The Art of the Wasted Day is a picaresque travelogue of leisure written from a lifelong enchantment with solitude. Patricia Hampl visits the homes of historic exemplars of ease who made repose a goal, even an art form. She begins...
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"In war zones witnessing widespread conflict, what makes life at all worth living? When chaos becomes a way of life in places where religion and violence intersect, what do people hold on to? If religious belief is, as Christopher Hitchens argues, the cause of wars and genocide, then is faith the cure? Dennis Covington pursued answers to these questions for years, traveling deep into places like Syria, Mexico, and the American South. Looking not for...
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"As a boy, Robert Kaplan listened to his truck-driver father tell evocative stories about traveling across America in his youth, travels in which he learned to understand the country literally from the ground up. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation of American geography often lost in the jet age. Along the way, he witnesses both prosperity and decline--increasingly cosmopolitan cities...
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"Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique-comedian Jamie Loftus's debut, Raw Dog, will take you on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2021, and reveal what the creation, culture, and class influence of hot dogs says about America now. Hot dogs. Poor people created them. Rich people found a way to charge fifteen dollars for them. They're high culture, they're low culture, they're sports food, they're kids' food, they're...
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"Outdoor educator and field researcher Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle alongside monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration--a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets. In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the dramatic...