Travel

About a quarter century ago, a previously unknown writer named William Least Heat-Moon wrote a book called Blue Highways. Acclaimed as a classic, it was a travel book like no other. Quirky, discursive, endlessly curious, Heat-Moon had embarked on an American journey off the beaten path. Sticking to the small places via the small roads--those colored blue on maps--he uncovered a nation deep in character, story, and charm. Now, for the first time since Blue Highways, Heat-Moon is back on the backroads. ROADS TO QUOZ is his lyrical, funny, and touching account of a series of American journeys into small-town America. more...

Price: $20.99

The laugh-out-loud true story of a harrowing and hilarious two-year odyssey in the distant South Pacific island nation of Kiribati—possibly The Worst Place on Earth. At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost—who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs—decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. more...

Price: $9.95

Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings. more...

Price: $10.95

In 1795, at the age of twenty-four, Mungo Park began a journey from the Gambia into the uncharted interior of the African continent. Travelling with only native guides, and later entirely alone, his goal was to become the first European to reach the River Niger and the fabled city of Timbuctoo. The journey took him through warring African kingdoms and the fringes of the Sahara Desert, leading him into great physical hardship and danger. He endured imprisonment by a Moorish chief for several months, was repeatedly robbed, and came close to death from thirst and starvation. He eventually reached the Niger and mapped part of its course, before being forced to turn back. He had long been given up for dead by the time he returned to the Gambia in 1797. Throughout the journey he kept meticulous notes, which he transcribed into Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa on his return to Britain. His simple and modest account of his journey and the conditions he encountered along the way has been an inspiration to travellers and writers ever since it was first published in 1799. More than a travel journal, it is a story of adventure and survival that offers a unique insight into conditions in West Africa before widespread European settlement. more...

Price: $6.99

Bill Bryson decided in 1996 to walk the 2,100-mile Appalachian trail. Bryson risked snake bite and hantavirus to trudge up unforgiving mountains, plod through swollen rivers, and yearn for cream sodas and hot showers. This amusingly ill-conceived adventure brings Bryson to the height of his comic powers, but his acute eye also observes an astonishing .. more...

Price: $8.99