Showing results by publisher "Recorded Books" in Travel & Tourism

Donna Leon’s wildly popular novels starring Venetian Commissario Guido Brunetti have often been praised for their insight into culture, politics, family life, and the history of Venice, one of the world’s most treasured cities and her home for over thirty years. My Venice and Other Essays collects over fifty of Leon’s funny, charming, and passionate essays on subjects that range from battles over garbage in the canals to troubles with rehabbing Venetian real estate.

In the late 1990s, Patrick O’Brian’s multimillion-copy-selling historical novel series—the Aubrey-Maturin series, which was set during the Napoleonic Wars—seemed destined for film. With Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey and Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin, the production only needed a ship that could stand in for Lucky Jack’s HMS Surprise, with historical accuracy paramount. The filmmakers found the Rose, a replica of an 18th-century ship that would work perfectly. Only there was one problem: the Rose was in Newport, Rhode Island, not in Southern California.

From the incomparable Peter Gethers comes true-life adventure featuring the author and his Scottish Fold feline, Norton - seasoned world-traveler and renowned ice-cream critic. Whether it is the trademark flattened ears of his breed or the personality quirks individual to Norton, this cat has an uncanny knack for attracting celebrity attention. Norton’s feline adventures in France are a must for the consummate cat-lover, but also great fun for those not enamored of anything feline.

Explorer, adventurer and linguistic genius, Sir Richard Francis Burton was the first Englishman to enter Mecca, the holy city of Muslims. Fluent in Arabic and the traditions of Islam, Burton joined the hajj - the pilgrimage to Mecca - incognito. The Royal Geographical Society hoped Burton's efforts would add detail to the "huge white blot" on their Arabian maps. His resulting Pilgrimage to Medina and Mecca was of great anthropological and literary merit, and brought him much notoriety.

The Oregon Trail chronicles the travels of Francis Parkman up the Oregon Trail as he records his observations of the Pawnee and Oglala Sioux. For 6 months he lived among the natives, and even accompanied them on buffalo hunts. Along the way he also recorded an authentic record of frontier life, including eyewitness accounts of the trappers, Mormons, outlaws, pioneers and various adventurers who tried to tame the Wild West.

Multiple award-winning author Adam Gopnik has written for the New Yorker since 1986. In this work, Gopnik charts America’s transformation from being simply aware of what they eat to being obsessive about it. This fascinating culinary journey will transport listeners from 18th-century France and the origin of America’s popular modern tastes to the kitchens of the White House and beyond.

What would it be like to cast aside the industrial bustle of the early 20th century to hop a freighter bound for the verdant jungles and untamed wildlife of the fabled Amazon? H.M. Tomlinson did just that, trading the streets of Swansea, Wales, for the open sea of the Atlantic. Thanks to Tomlinson's sharp eye for detail, his spellbinding account of this 1909 journey is much more than a standard travel narrative.

In February 2008 a casual afternoon of ice skating derailed the trip of a lifetime. Mary Morris was on the verge of a well-earned sabbatical, but instead she endured three months in a wheelchair, two surgeries, and extensive rehabilitation. On Easter Sunday, when she was supposed to be in Morocco, Morris was instead lying on the sofa reading Death in Venice, casting her eyes over these words again and again: "He would go on a journey. Not far. Not all the way to the tigers." Disaster shifted to possibility and Morris made a decision.

Told from Stewart's distinctly Western perspective, The Prince of the Marshes chronicles his time acting as the deputy governor of two southern Iraqi provinces.

Award-winning journalist Eugene Linden has written numerous critically acclaimed works on the environment. In The Ragged Edge of the World, Linden recounts his experiences in locales ranging from Vietnam to Antarctica, offering an intimate look at creatures and cultures struggling to adapt to globalization.

An award-winning journalist's eco-adventures across the globe with his three traveling companions: his fiancée, his OCD, and his chronic anxiety - a hilarious, wild jaunt that will inspire travelers, environmentalists, and anyone with mental illness.

John Marshall had read about the growth of voluntourism, and frankly, it was the only kind of extended trip he could afford. He'd heard that some peoples' lives were changed by a week of overseas service - what might half a year accomplish for his family? His wife, Traca, was all in favor of it; his kids, especially his 14-year-old daughter, were strongly opposed. Wide-Open World is the totally engaging, bluntly honest story of the Marshall family's life-changing adventure.

A memoir of homecoming—Heidi Across America is a gritty story of how opening our hearts to others enables us to open our hearts to ourselves and love what we find there.

In the early 1960s Donald McCaig left his job at a hot New York advertising agency and his Greenwich Village apartment for a rustic farm in a remote county in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. This is McCaig’s story of farming in contemporary America, a timely tribute to a dying way of life.

Written in 1983, The Africans is a remarkable and very personal commentary on the people of this vast continent. It offers colorful, close-up views of presidents, peasants, guerilla leaders, and merchants while tracing a vivid history of one of the most varied populations on earth. Everyone interested in world cultures will find The Africans a fascinating experience.

In Leading on the Edge, successful business speaker and consultant Rachael Robertson shares the lessons she learned as leader of a year-long expedition to the wilds of Antarctica.

James Smithson is best known as the founder of the Smithsonian Institution, but few people know his full and fascinating story. He was a widely respected chemist and mineralogist and a member of the Royal Society, but in 1865, his letters, collection of 10,000 minerals, and more than 200 unpublished papers were lost to a fire in the Smithsonian Castle. His scientific legacy was further written off as insignificant in an 1879 essay published through the Smithsonian 50 years after his death - a claim that author Steven Turner demonstrates is far from the truth.

The great author Robert Louis Stevenson received a fateful telegram from his friend Fanny Osbourne in 1879, urging him to leave Edinburgh and join her in San Francisco. The penniless young writer packed his bags and boarded a ship for a long, difficult voyage across the Atlantic, taking detailed notes of the appalling conditions and struggles of his fellow emigrants.

Jonathan Lewis-Adey was nine when his parents separated, and his mother, Sid, vanished entirely from his life. It is not until he is a grown man that Jonathan finally reconnects with his beloved lost parent, only to find, to his shock and dismay, that the woman he knew as "Sid" in Toronto has become an elegant man named Sydney living in his native Trinidad.

Imagine negotiating for a replacement carburetor in rural Mexico with words you're secretly pulling from a pocket dictionary. Imagine your two-year-old asking for more niunai at dinner - a Mandarin word for milk that even you don't know yet. Imagine finding out that you're unexpectedly pregnant while living in war-torn Beirut. With vivid and evocative language, Christine Gilbert takes us along with her into foreign lands, showing us what it's like to make a life in an unfamiliar world - and in an unfamiliar tongue.