Travel Books

Emotionally wrung-out from her divorce, the painful ending of a subsequent love affair, and a general, long-standing feeling of malaise, novelist and journalist Elizabeth Gilbert decides to recharge herself through a year's worth of travel, believing that her return to happiness could be found through exploring both physical gratification and spiritual peace and then determining an appropriate balance between the two. She pursues the first part of her program (eating, drinking, and talking) in Italy, the second in India (joining an ashram), and the third in Bali (studying with a medicine man).

Theodore Roosevelt is remembered for having been one of the more active and robust of the presidents; the former Rough Rider boxed, hiked, and went on safari. He was also interested in nature, science, and exploration. Following his ignominious defeat in the 1912 election, Roosevelt went on safari in Brazil with the famous explorer Candido Rondon. In THE RIVER OF DOUBT, National Geographic writer Candice Millard recounts their journey, which was filled with adventure as well as danger, as she tells how Roosevelt, Rondon, and their party discovered and charted The River of Doubt, a hitherto unexplored branch of the Amazon River. Roosevelt wrote about this trip in his THROUGH THE BRAZILIAN WILDERNESS, and Millard places the events in historical context. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 2005.

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.

In the winter of 2002, Scottish writer Rory Stewart made a seemingly suicidal trek across Afghanistan to learn more about the inhospitable country that had leapt so terrifyingly into the global consciousness. Braving icy storms, arid deserts, wolves, warlords, and the still dangerous Taliban, Stewart came to understand the spirit of the Afghan people better than perhaps any other Westerner. His episodic yet brilliant descriptions of his travels are neither romanticized, sentimentalized, or prejudiced: with a clear eye and delicious prose Stewart brings to life a world that few will ever know--the harsh yet marvelous land of Afghanistan.

This account of a trip to Cuba was jointly written by James A. Michener and his longtime assistant, John Kings, who also took the photographs for the book.

From all over the planet, here is a tantalizing list of places to go for travelers at a loss. The intriguing destinations include everything from the fish market in Tokyo to the town of San Gimignano in Tuscany.

Before returning to the United States after 20 years in England, Bryson embarks on a farewell circuit of the country. He integrates history and reflections of his own debut tour of England in this valediction.

Michener returns to his old haunts in the South Pacific in this collection of travel pieces and short stories.

Paul Theroux revolutionized travel writing with his 1975 book THE GREAT RAILWAY BAZAAR, a stirring and very personal account of his travels by railway from London to Tokyo and back. Choosing to go by train, alone, and with minimal gear, afforded the intrepid Theroux the opportunity of encountering a fascinating galaxy of fellow travelers (who range from merely colorful to downright eccentric) as he makes his way across the continents of Europe and Asia, and of seeing the ever-changing landscape close-up. Theroux himself is, of course, the main character--sometimes arrogant, often impatient, always bluntly realistic, and ever-curious, eloquent, and very, very funny.

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.

This story of survival in the Antarctic relates a 1912 expedition that went wrong when dogs, supplies, and a team member fell into a deep crevasse.

A humorous and dramatic account of the author's 100-day, 7,000-mile trek across Russia in search of fly-fishing. The former head of the Moscow bureau of the "Philadelphia Inquirer", he sought out the common people, and his sometimes-startling conversations with them bring Russia alive.