Travel Writing & Commentary

When you walk in the woods, do you use all five senses to explore your surroundings? For most of us, the answer is no—but when we do, a walk in the woods can go from pleasant to immersive and restorative.

Two friends, zero preparation, one dream. From the author of the beloved bestseller The Emerald Mile comes a rollicking and poignant account of an epic 750-mile odyssey, on foot, through the heart of America’s most magnificent national park and the grandest wilderness on earth.

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

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....

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....

One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance tells the iconic story of a father and son's motorcycle trip across America in the 1960s....

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 the late 1970s Ondaatje returned to his native island of Sri Lanka. He records his journey through the drug-like heat and intoxicating fragrances of that "pendant off the ear of India"....

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....

When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he was about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history....

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...

Paul Rosolie’s extraordinary adventure in the uncharted tributaries of the Western Amazon - a tale of discovery that vividly captures the awe, beauty, and isolation of this endangered land....

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

Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life - from six weeks to four months to two years - to discover and experience the world on your own terms....

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

It's the ultimate road trip....

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....

In this follow-up to Clanlands Sam & Graham document their journey across New Zealand, a country Graham calls home and that Sam has longed to visit since learning it was a popular destination for Scottish immigrants to settle back in the 19th century....

Neil King Jr.’s desire to walk from Washington, D.C., to New York City began as a whim and soon became an obsession. By the spring of 2021, events had intervened that gave his desire greater urgency....

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....

The true story of a couple who lost everything and embarked on a transformative journey walking the South West Coast Path in England, The Salt Path is ultimately a portrayal of home - how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways....

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....

In this hilarious and often touching collection, the New York Times bestselling author, television writer, and producer takes us with him on travels across the globe.

When you’re a woman of a certain age, you are not promised anything at all other than that everything will get worse. But what if everything you’ve been told is a lie....

Peter Mayle personally recounts the pleasures and frustrations of Provençal life--sharing in a way no one else can, the unique and endearing culture that is Provence....

For years, Nigel Slater has kept notebooks of curiosities and wonderings, penned while at his kitchen table, soaked in a fisherman’s hut in Reykjavik, sitting calmly in a moss garden in Japan or sheltering from a blizzard in a Vienna Konditorei. These are the small moments, events and happenings that gave pleasure before they disappeared. Miso soup for breakfast, packing a suitcase for a trip and watching a butterfly settle on a carpet, hiding in plain sight.

When Richard Grant and his wife moved with their four-year-old daughter back to Tucson, Arizona, where the couple first met, he expected to easily rekindle his love of the region. Instead, he found a housing market gone haywire, rampant election conspiracies, and right-wing political violence alarmingly close to his home and family. In A Race to the Bottom of Crazy, Grant mixes memoir, research, and reporting in a quest to understand what makes Arizona such a confounding and irresistible place

Ian Fleming’s world travels and interests, as well as his journalism and wartime experiences, lent authority to everything he wrote. In 1959, the Sunday Times commissioned Fleming to write a series of dispatches from the world’s most beguiling locales. The result was Thrilling Cities, a masterpiece of well-observed travelogue that stands ably alongside the author’s Bond canon. From Hong Kong to Honolulu, New York to Naples, he left the bright main streets for the back alleys, abandoning tourist sites in favor of underground haunts, and mingling with celebrities, gangsters and geishas.

Now on the race’s centennial, award-winning author David K. Randall tells the story of this riveting, long-forgotten race. Through larger-than-life characters, treacherous landings, disease, and ultimately triumph, Into Unknown Skies demonstrates how one race returned America to aviation greatness. A story of underdog teammates, bold exploration, and American ingenuity, Into Unknown Skies is an untold adventure tale showing the power of flight to bring the world together.

Chasing chocolate down the supply chain and back through history, Jacobsen travels the rainforests of the Amazon and Central America to find the chocolate makers, activists, and indigenous leaders who are bucking the system that long ago abandoned wild and heirloom cacao in favor of high-yield, low-flavor varietals preferred by Big Chocolate.

Embarking from England as part of Commodore Anson’s expedition to the Pacific, HMS Wager was wrecked on a desert island to the southward of Chiloe. Following the wreck, the crew suffered dreadful privations from famine and descended into mutinous factionalism, theft, and murder. This account by young midshipman John Byron describes the events of the wreck and mutiny. It also narrates his journey home in company with Captain Cheap and a small group of loyal officers and seamen.

From a magical childhood in Kenya, through misery at an American high school, to rescue by an inspirational teacher in England, Victoria Whitworth weaves a sublimely rich narrative, which is both an ode to her beloved Greece and Corfu, and a highly original exploration of myth and legend. Her adventures in the often weird and unsettling world of a Corinth English language school, and the shattering experience of her rape by a Greek taxi driver, lead Victoria to question some deeply familiar stories.

One man’s challenge to compete in a yacht race around the world, as much against the natural elements as his fellow competitors... The 2018 Golden Globe Race marked the 50th anniversary of the Sunday-Times-sponsored solo circumnavigation and proved to be every bit of a boat and mind-breaking event as the first.

Auf der Suche nach Inspiration und dem in Einklang bringen seiner Gedanken mit der eigenen Kunst und der der griechischen Antike begibt sich Hofmannsthal zur Wiege aller demokratischen Gesellschaftsordnungen – nach Griechenland. Die Reise verläuft allerdings alles andere als, sagen wir, vorauszusehen war, denn der Besuch zweier traditionell-orthodoxer Glaubenseinrichtungen erzeugt eine nicht unbedingt gewünschte nachhaltige Wirkung in Form eines transzendentalen Traumzustands.

What does an overweight, 69 year old man do, when confronted with a challenge to his comfortable, retired, gentle ‘sailing into the setting-sun’ lifestyle? He picks up his bag and goes for a walk. A 800 kilometre walk across the north of Spain, from St. Jean Pied de Port in the French Pyrenees to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia. The Camino Frances. This isn’t a travelogue or a guide. It’s the story of a long forgotten youthful dream that refused to die. There’s no seeking of answers, no seeking of self or God.