Travel Writing Memoirs

From the author of the enduring classic The Solace of Open Spaces, here is a wondrous meditation on how water, light, wind, mountain, bird, and horse have shaped her life and her understanding of a world besieged by a climate crisis. Amid species extinctions and disintegrating ice sheets, this stunning collection of memories, observations, and narratives is acute and lyrical, Whitmanesque in breadth, and as elegant as a Japanese teahouse.

In June 1944, the Nazis locked 18-year-old Dave Hersch into a railroad boxcar and shipped him from his hometown of Dej, Hungary, to Mauthausen Concentration Camp, the harshest, cruellest camp in the Reich. After 10 months in the granite mines of Mauthausen's nearby sub-camp, Gusen, he weighed less than 80 lbs., nothing but skin and bones. As Allied forces drew near Dave was forced to join a death march to Gunskirchen Concentration Camp, over 30 miles away. Soon after the start of the march, and more dead than alive, Dave summoned a burst of energy he did not know he had and escaped.

From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina.

Following his hilarious introduction to Paris in French Like Moi, Midwesterner Scott Dominic Carpenter returns to the scene of the crime with more tales of intrigue. This time, though, the story starts with sorrow as Carpenter's wife struggles with dementia. Humor may be the best medicine, but even the antics of a vandal in their building can’t cement the tiles of her memory for long. Before he expects it, the author finds himself alone in a capital that is also blighted by the pandemic.

On June 19, 1953, Harry Truman got up early, packed the trunk of his Chrysler New Yorker, and did something no other former president has done before or since: he hit the road. No Secret Service protection. No traveling press. Just Harry and his childhood sweetheart Bess off to visit old friends, take in a Broadway play, celebrate their wedding anniversary in the Big Apple, and blow a bit of the money he’d just received to write his memoirs. Hopefully incognito. In this lively history, author Matthew Algeo meticulously details how Truman’s plan to blend in went wonderfully awry.

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike - it's at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright, modern take on the age-old questions: How do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? Can you love someone without the need for commitment or any expectations for the future?

American Oz is a rollicking, gritty, adventurous story of life in the secretive subculture of traveling carnivals. You'll never see your state fair or street festival the same way again. Comerford writes a bold, inspiring true story of a year working behind the scenes with the colorful characters and legends of carnivals. He shares stories of freaks, a carnival pimp, a tramp gold miner, and the last king of the sideshows.

For more than half a century, a shared love of canals and narrowboats has been inseparable from the marriage of Timothy West and Prunella Scales. The two iconic actors have spent many of the happiest days of their life together enjoying the calming pleasures of watching land and nature unfold before them at four miles an hour.

Cathy has captured the drama of her Everest climbs, her passion for the challenge of climbing mountains, and her love for wild places in this story of her four attempts on the mountain. Cathy tries to answer the question of why, if climbing Everest can be so dangerous, people still want to do it.

Two Years Before the Mast, written by Richard Henry Dana, provides a vivid account of "the life of a common sailor at sea". Dana sails from Boston, around Cape Horn, stopping in several ports along the California coast including San Diego, San Pedro, Santa Barbara, and San Francisco. On the return trip around Cape Horn in the middle of the Antarctic winter Dana describes terrifying storms and incredible beauty, giving vivid descriptions of icebergs and the scurvy that afflicts members of the crew.

This Autistic Girl Went to Japan is the inspiring story of a young woman who moved halfway around the world in pursuit of happiness. With humor and remarkable candor, Bianca describes the challenges of applying for a visa during a time of terrifying uncertainty, slogging through endless red tape, and the loneliness that comes with being a stranger in a strange land. Oh, and how she wound up evicting a bat from her new apartment, attending a Pokémon GO event with a bunch of middle-aged women, and discovering the best thrift store in all of Tokyo.

The Interior Circuit is Goldman's story of his emergence from grief five years after his wife's death, symbolized by his attempt to overcome his fear of driving in the city. Embracing the DF (Mexico City) as his home, Goldman explores and celebrates the city, which stands defiantly apart from so many of the social ills and violence wracking Mexico. This is the chronicle of an awakening, both personal and political, "interior" and "exterior", to the meaning and responsibilities of home.

Losing her TV news career and her home in the same year wasn’t on Casey Roman’s 2018 Bingo card. Neither was sleeping in Walmart parking lots and nearly deciding to end her own life. But the world is full of blind curves, and salvation comes in unusual forms, like a cargo van. What began as a three-week road trip to erase her “news lady” image became a 12,000-mile solo journey that saved Casey’s life.

A tale of adventures, as Lin and Larry Pardey continue their voyaging on board their self-built 24'4" cutter. They cross the exotic sea that spawned Homer's tales of Ulysses' Odyssey, then sail through the strife torn Red Sea and across the typhoon tossed waters of the Bay of Bengal.

The wandering poet has always been a feature of our cultural imagination. Odysseus journeys home, his famous flair for storytelling seducing friend and foe. The Romantic poets tramped all over the Lake District searching for inspiration. Now Simon Armitage, with equal parts enthusiasm and trepidation, as well as a wry humor all his own, has taken on Britain’s version of our Appalachian Trail: the Pennine Way.

A firsthand account of hiking the entire Appalachian Trail in 2009. Starting in Georgia and continuing on foot nearly 2,200 miles to Maine, this is a collection of stories, adventures, and experiences from the Appalachian Trail. Anyone who has hiked or wishes to hike the AT will benefit from this easy and enjoyable listen.

In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere—of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspooled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled in the places where Mark hoped he could someday be anyone—perhaps even himself.

Ted Kooser describes with exquisite detail and humor the place he calls home in the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska, an area known as the Bohemian Alps. Nothing is too big or too small for his attention, including memories of his grandmother's cooking. And Kooser reminds us that the closing of local schools, thoughtless county weed control, and irresponsible housing development destroy more than just the view.

This is the tale of two people who quit their jobs, packed up and stored all of their belongings, and rode 10-speed bicycles across the North American continent, pedaling though North America and British Columbia. Filled with heartfelt anecdotes and colorful characters, this story delivers a unique look at how two amateurs accomplished this feat.

Felicity Cloake sets off on an epic bike ride round Britain to celebrate and investigate the legendary Great British Breakfast. She rates fry-ups on criteria from the crispness of the bacon to how long they keep her pedalling and stops for fact-based tea-breaks in place of last time’s pause café. And a woman cannot live by All Day Breakfast alone, so as well as recipes for things like Omelette Arnold Bennett or proper porridge, she will report back on the delights of regional specialities she encounters along the way.