Travel / United States Books

John Steinbeck chronicles his attempts, as he travels from Long Island to California and back, to define what it is to be American. In the end, he concedes failure: it is impossible to generalize about his complicated homeland. However, his experiences add up to a delightful account of an eager and curious human being on the road--and of Charley the aging French poodle, an excellent and civilized companion and a memorable character in his own right.

Quirky essayist Sarah Vowell, known both for her pieces on NPR's "This American Life" and her star turn voicing teen superhero Violet in the animated Pixar blockbuster THE INCREDIBLES, waxes both witty and rhapsodic in this monumentally obsessive travelogue chronicling her so-called pilgrimage to various places related to the first three assassinations of American presidents (Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley). From the museum housing Lincoln's skull fragments to James Garfield's favorite office armchair to the apartment building of anarchist Emma Goldman (falsely implicated in McKinley's assassination), no site, major or minor, is left unvisited. Along the way, Vowell shares various tidbits of history related to the three presidencies and their abrupt endings, including the career of Lincoln's eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, whom she refers to variously as the "jinxed Zelig of doom," and "Jinxy McDeath," due to his misfortune of being in close proximity to all three of those assassinations.

Patricia Shultz follows up her best-selling 1000 PLACES TO SEE BEFORE YOU DIE with a new travel book tailored for those travelers who want to stay in the United States and Canada. These are some of the marvels of the world--both on and off the beaten track--and you can get to all of them by car. Subterranean grottos, cowboy poetry readings, an ice hotel in Quebec--these and hundreds of other irresistible locations are listed, accompanied by all the information a reader needs to get there.

The great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin travels to the Tennessee home of the 1925 Monkey Trial, intending to graph the changes in attitude toward creation and evolution since. In the process, he winds up dealing with his own spiritual crisis. The result is an eclectic and probing memoir.