Travel Writing & Commentary

Greater than a Tourist - Bernese Oberland/Switzerland by Natacha Müller offers the inside scoop on Switzerland’s picturesque Bernese Oberland. Most travel books tell you how to travel like a tourist. Although there is nothing wrong with that, as part of the Greater than a Tourist series, this book will give you travel tips from someone who has lived at your next travel destination. This book will not tell you exact addresses or store hours but instead will give you excitement and knowledge from a local that you may not find in other smaller print travel books.

Is the Grand Canyon big enough to handle all of your worries? I wanted to know that answer, so I walked to the bottom to find out. For years, nature has taught us so many important lessons. The most important may be that we're a part of nature itself. Hiking has a way of bringing us closer to nature. Healing us. Reminding us of what's important and where our priorities are and should be. It makes us feel small, yet a bigger part of the universe around us.  

The two-and-a-half-year journey spanned the mountains and deserts of former Soviet Republics, Afghanistan on the fearful brink of foreign withdrawal, and remote corners of the Congolese jungle. From hiking through sandstorms in the Gobi desert to barreling down rapids in a dugout canoe, this perilous adventure, and Charlie’s many encounters along the way, gives insight into the past, present, and future of often-overlooked places during periods of great change. 

As a second-generation Italian American, Margie grew up knowing her Sicilian grandparents and always felt a closeness to the Sicilian cultural traditions which were maintained by her family. Not until Margie had grandchildren of her own, did she travel to Sicily for the first time. Here, she felt at home. She fell in love with the people and the culture of Sicily and sensed a real emotional connection.

In the summer of 2007, Kenny Flannery left New York with only a backpack. Over a decade later, he’s still on the move. Early on, he discovered hitchhiking had not only granted him freedom of travel, but often was the heart of his experience. Along the way, he embraced the explosion of craft beer culture. From brewing to drinking the extremes - in both quality and quantity - beautiful beer has weaved its way through his never-ending nomadic adventures.

As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. "You are braver than you think," her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries - visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, could not visit herself - encountering some of the world's most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother.

A travel audiobook that captures the allure of Italy’s Amalfi Coast, as Margie Miklas takes us on a journey of personal experiences through storytelling. An award-winning author and travel blogger, she has traveled to the Amalfi Coast more than any other area of Italy and has fallen in love with the beauty of its rugged landscape and rocky coastline. Through real-life stories, humor, travel advice, and practical information, she’ll entice you to plan your next trip and maybe even experience your own love affair.

What would you do if you're given a €20 note in Greece with an email address scribbled on it: Spend it, slip the suspect counterfeit bill into an enemy’s birthday card, or send an email, hoping it will lead to you finding everlasting love? Brad, a hopeless romantic, chose the latter. Two years later, his love life remains a disaster and his career is misfiring. As he’s about to walk Spain’s fabled Camino de Santiago to ponder some profound life changes, Brad receives a reply.

In his latest entertaining and thought provoking narrative travelogue, Michael Booth sets out to discover how deep, really, is the enmity between these three 'tiger' nations and what prevents them from making peace. Currently China's economic power continues to grow, Japan is becoming more militaristic and Korea struggles to reconcile its westernized south with the dictatorial Communist north. Booth, long fascinated with the region, travels by car, ferry, train and foot, experiencing the people and culture of these nations up close. 

Bill Buford turns his inimitable attention from Italian cuisine to the food of France. Baffled by the language, but convinced that he can master the art of French cooking - or at least get to the bottom of why it is so revered - he begins what becomes a five-year odyssey by shadowing the esteemed French Chef Michel Richard, in Washington, DC. But when Buford (quickly) realizes that a stage in France is necessary, he goes - this time with his wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow - to Lyon, the gastronomic capital of France.

Whether your idea of camping is in a tiny tent, a luxury RV, or somewhere in between, nothing beats having fun with family and friends in the fresh air. Relive favorite memories of childhood vacations and get excited for future outdoor adventures with these humorous and heartwarming recollections from best-selling author and camping enthusiast Melody Carlson. Pack your gear and hit the road with Melody.

From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons - a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human. 

Edited by Krishna Ramanujan and Guillermo Rodríguez, Journeys offers access to Ramanujan's personal diaries and journals, providing a window into his creative process. It will include literary entries from his travels, his thoughts on writing, poetry drafts, and dreams. His diaries and journals served as fertile ground where he planted the seeds for much of his published work....

In Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, the award-winning author David Farrier explores the traces we will leave for the very distant future. Modern civilization has created objects and landscapes with the potential to endure through deep time, whether it is plastic polluting the oceans and nuclear waste sealed within the earth or the 30 million miles of roads spanning the planet. 

Joyful and informative, Places I Remember: Tales, Truths, Delights from 100 Countries presents a memoir covering over 50 years of travel throughout the world. You'll find a range of unforgettable people and places through vivid personal experiences - good, bad, and often, laugh-out-loud funny. 

A hilariously self-deprecating, highly obsessive account of the author's adventures, in the world of French haute cuisine, for anyone whose ever found joy in cooking and eating food with their family - from the author of the best-selling, widely acclaimed Heat....

She got rid of her belongings, quit her job, and undertook a yearlong journey around the world, all alone....

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe - and built her back up again....

The Appalachian Trail trail stretches from Georgia to Maine and covers some of the most breathtaking terrain in America - majestic mountains, silent forests, sparking lakes....

Into Thin Air is the definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest...

The River of Doubt brings alive extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived....

In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America, from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases....

From CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton, a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America's National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people our country has to offer....

Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion up, down, and over the Appalachian Trail...

This audiobook will change the way we understand ourselves and the great outdoors....

At age 26, Maarten Troost decided to pack up his flip-flops and move to a remote South Pacific island....

In less than a year, Neil Peart lost both his 19-year-old daughter, Selena, and his wife, Jackie.....

Step inside this captivating account of Paulo Coehlo's pilgrimage along the road to Santiago. This fascinating parable explores the need to find one's own path....

Emma Gatewood told her family she was going on a walk and left her small Ohio hometown with a change of clothes and less than $200....

The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon....

In this intimate dual memoir, she and her daughter, Ann, offer distinct perspectives as a 50-something and a 20-something, each on a quest to redefine herself and to rediscover each other....

The ultimate guide to what the land, sun, moon, stars, trees, plants, animals, sky and clouds can reveal - when you know what to look for.... 

To live in a pristine land unchanged by man... to roam a wilderness through which few other humans have passed....

Full Tilt is the inspiring true story of Dervla Murphy's 1963 journey from Ireland to India on an Armstrong Cadet bicycle, and the trials, landscapes, and cultures she encountered along the way....

In January 2003, Nick Sparks and his brother Micah set off on a three-week trip around the world....

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads....

New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides returns with a white-knuckle tale of polar exploration and survival in the Gilded Age....

Funny, touching, endearing - Peter Mayle's Provence proves the adage that while you may not be able to escape from it all, you sure can have fun trying....

From the acclaimed author of The Wild Places comes an engrossing exploration of walking and thinking....

After graduating from college, Jennifer isn't sure what she wants to do with her life. She is drawn to the Appalachian Trail, a 2,175-mile footpath that stretches from Georgia to Maine....

After running an ultramarathon through the Copper Canyons of Mexico, Christopher McDougall finds his next great adventure on the razor-sharp mountains of Crete....

Challenged by an expert who said it couldn’t be done, Joshua Slocum, a fearless New England sea captain, set out in April 1895 to prove that a man could sail alone around the world....

From pole to pole and across decades of lived experience, National Book Award-winning author Barry Lopez delivers his most far-ranging, yet personal, work to date. Horizon moves indelibly, immersively, through the author’s travels to six regions of the world....

In Made in America, Bryson de-mythologizes his native land....

Edgar Cayce (1877-1945) is known to millions today as the grandfather of the new age....