Travel Writing & Commentary

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....

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...

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

A guide to some of the world’s most fascinating places, as seen and experienced by writer, television host, and relentlessly curious traveler Anthony Bourdain....

In this inspiring travelogue, celebrated traveler and photographer Jessica Nabongo—the first Black woman on record to visit all 195 countries in the world—shares her journey around the globe with fascinating stories of adventure, culture, travel musts, and human connections....

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...

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....

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....

From the unique perspective of David Sedaris comes a new collection of essays taking his listeners on a bizarre and stimulating world tour....

Writer for the New York Times and GQ, Mark Adams is also the acclaimed author of Mr. America.....

In the first of three essays included in this audiobook, Bill Bryson decides to move back to the United States, after nearly two decades in Britain. But not before taking one last trip....

More than 20 years ago, Frances Mayes introduced readers to a wondrous new world when she bought and restored an abandoned Tuscan villa called Bramasole. Under the Tuscan Sun inspired generations to embark on their own journeys....

An enthralling account of a modern voyage of discovery as we meet the clever, social birds of prey called caracaras, which puzzled Darwin, fascinate modern-day falconers, and carry secrets of our planet's deep past in their family history....

For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage....

In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere—of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination....

Before climbers Joe Simpson and Simon Yates were able to reach the unclimbed West Face of the remote Siula Grande, disaster struck....

"Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire, I happened upon a path....

David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the best-selling Infinite Jest....

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....

Gail Muller was told she’d be in a wheelchair by the age of 40. At 41, she set out to hike one of the world’s toughest treks: the Appalachian Trail - a 2,200-mile journey that would help her reclaim her life and heal her mind and body....

The history of Iceland began 1,200 years ago, when a frustrated Viking captain and his useless navigator ran aground in the middle of the North Atlantic. Suddenly, the island was no longer just a layover for the Arctic tern....

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts....

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

His second major venture into nonfiction (after Death in the Afternoon, 1932), Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal....

The Timberline Trail is an iconic hiking trail circumnavigating Mount Hood in Northern Oregon. Packed with incredible scenery, the journey cuts through gorgeous forests, across volcanic terrain, through glacier-carved canyons, along alpine meadows, and under thundering waterfalls while providing unprecedented views of Mount Hood and the surrounding Cascade Range volcanic peaks. This is the story of a four-day backpacking trip on the Timberline—the day-to-day experience, the highs and the lows, and the awe-inspiring beauty. 

On a transformational one-year journey around the world, author Kristina Liu found more than just spectacular scenery and exquisite food: She found herself. Travel with Kristina as she traverses three continents and 12 cities—from her wine tasting in South Africa to romance and adventures in South America to her life-changing plant medicine retreat in the Amazon jungle. It’s a journey that opened her eyes to a world of possibilities and revealed profound personal truths. It will also inspire you to venture outside your comfort zone and claim what is fully possible for you.

After Comic Con International and New York Comic Con, where does a wandering nerd go next for adventure and fun? Why the wilds of Gen Con, of course! Third in the “Nerdly Travels” series takes Colby to the largest tabletop gaming convention in North America, Gen Con, to fulfill his 10-year-old self's destiny of roleplaying at the convention started by Gary Gygax. He'll meet industry luminaries, some of his childhood heroes and maybe even get surprised at the ENnie Awards!

In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a 10-month voyage around the British Empire with her husband as part of a trade mission to promote the forthcoming British Empire Exhibition. Leaving her two-year-old daughter behind with her sister, Agatha set sail at the end of January and did not return until December, but she kept up a detailed weekly correspondence with her mother, describing in detail the exotic places and people she encountered as the mission travelled through South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Canada.

 50 Things to Know About Birds in Maine by author Anastasia George offers an elegant approach to finding the most beautiful and varied species of birds on the continent. Most books on birding tell you to travel to specific locations and hotspots for one or two prize species on your life list.  

Set in a bygone era of the early ‘90s with no mobile phones, email, or sat nav, three single young women decide to leave England and embark on a continental road trip. They save up some cash, buy an old Renault 5, and get on the ferry to France two days before Christmas, much to the amusement and disdain of family and friends. Over the course of the next six months, the car becomes their home while they travel to France, Andorra, Spain, Gibraltar, Morocco, and Portugal, meeting colorful characters and experiencing good old-fashioned sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll.

My sand life, my pebble life. My life measured out in tides, coming in and going out. My life measured out in games of trying to spot the sea first. My life measured out in the delicious and indulgent sadness that comes from leaving a holiday cottage for the last time and for the first time in several days it isn’t raining, but at least the kids have had a great time and, let’s face it, so have you.

Felicity Cloake sets off on an epic bike ride round Britain to celebrate and investigate the legendary Great British Breakfast. She rates fry-ups on criteria from the crispness of the bacon to how long they keep her pedalling and stops for fact-based tea-breaks in place of last time’s pause café. And a woman cannot live by All Day Breakfast alone, so as well as recipes for things like Omelette Arnold Bennett or proper porridge, she will report back on the delights of regional specialities she encounters along the way.

The Road to Villa Page: A He Said/She Said Memoir of Buying Our Dream Home in France is the first in a series of books that captures the experience of living in the Dordogne region of France, as filtered through the eyes of an American family from a “he said, she said” perspective. Our story begins with falling in love with France, specifically the enchanting Dordogne. We weren’t the first and we won’t be the last.

In 1911, Captain Robert Falcon Scott went back to the huge frozen wasteland of the Antarctic with the intention of reaching the South Pole, by a long and terribly arduous trek across the ice. On finally reaching the pole, Scott and his comrades were devastated to find that they had been beaten by the Norwegian explorer Amundsen. With temperatures of minus 30, they began their slow journey back to their base.

A typical book about an American founding father doesn’t start at a gay piano bar and end in a sewage ditch. But then, Tom Paine isn’t your typical founding father. A firebrand rebel and a radical on the run, Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. In death, his story turns truly bizarre. Shunned as an infidel by every church, he had to be interred in an open field on a New York farm. Ten years later, a former enemy converting to Paine’s cause dug up the bones and carried them back to Britain.

Steven Spurrier is one of the wine trade’s most important figures. Over the years, he took the role of wine merchant, buyer, wine educator, and lecturer; he wrote books, wine courses, and over 300 columns for Decanter magazine. He set up the breakthrough "Judgement of Paris" in 1976—a tasting in which outsider wines from California were pitched blind against Bordeaux’ finest, and won—which still sends reverberations through the wine trade today. 

Uncle Jack's Outer Banks: The Ultimate Collection, by award-winning OBX humorist Jack Sandberg, features more than 50 of the long-time humor columnist’s laugh-filled essays and letters. Author Ray McAllister has added an introduction on the importance of Sandberg’s more than three decades of writing.

This book is targeted not only at Europeans and other Africans who may be visiting Nigeria for the first time but also to expatriate Nigerians, who may or may not have touched our soil in decades, and who definitely need a refresher course, judging by my own experiences having returned to Lagos to live in 2010. Even though Nigeria is an English-speaking country, previously a British colony, the unofficial accepted language is Pidgin English and as such, the use and translation of simple English words in Pidgin English differ widely and have meanings that would baffle you!

Growing up near the Sabine, journalist Wes Ferguson, like most East Texans, steered clear of its murky, debris-filled waters, where alligators lived in the backwater sloughs and an occasional body was pulled from some out-of-the-way crossing. The Sabine held a reputation as a haunt for a handful of hunters and loggers, more than a few water moccasins, swarms of mosquitoes, and the occasional black bear lumbering through swamp oak and cypress knees.