Travel Nonfiction

At 22, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to hike the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State - and to do it alone. She had no experience as a long-distance hiker, and the trail was little more than “an idea, vague and outlandish and full of promise.” But it was a promise of piecing back together a life that had come undone.

Elaine Sciolino, the former Paris bureau chief of The New York Times, invites us on a tour of her favorite Parisian street, offering an homage to street life and the pleasures of Parisian living. While many cities suffer from the leveling effects of globalization, the rue des Martyrs maintains its distinct allure. On this street, the patron saint of France was beheaded and the Jesuits took their first vows.

At sea, captains need to know their ships’ location at all times or risk crashing into unseen dangers. Since people first took to the seas, the stars have been useful for measuring latitude - or position relative to north and south. But up until the 18th century, there was no accurate way to measure longitude - or position relative to east and west. Countless seamen were lost because they didn’t know they had sailed into dangerous waters. To encourage the invention of an accurate method for measuring longitude, the British monarchy offered the Longitude Prize in 1714.