Tourism History

An account of his journey through England – from Southampton to the Black Country, to the North East and Newcastle, to Norwich and home – English Journey is funny and tender. But it is also a forensic reading of a changing England and a call to arms as passionate as anything in Orwell’s bleak masterpiece. Moreover, it both captured and catalysed the public mood of its time. In capturing and describing an English landscape and people hitherto unseen, Priestley influenced the thinking and attitudes of an entire generation.

Ten years after the walk across Central Asia and Afghanistan that he memorialized in The Places in Between, Rory Stewart set out on a new journey, traversing a thousand miles between England and Scotland. Stewart was raised along the border of the two countries, the frontier taking on poignant significance in his understanding of what it means to be both Scottish and English, of his relationship with his father, who's lived on this land his whole life, and of his ties to the rich history and culture of the region.

This extraordinary book is the result of Saul Bellow’s sojourn in Israel in 1975. A personal record of his stay—his experiences and impressions—as well as a meditation, it crackles with wit and controversy on America’s relationship with this embattled country.

In a personal but objective narrative based on the Bounty's log, Bligh himself tells of the stormy voyage to Tahiti, his crew's insatiable attachment to the island paradise, and the incredible 3,600-mile journey to safety after the mutineers cast him, and 18 loyal crew members, adrift in a small, open boat with few supplies. Bligh's detractors say this narrative has many distortions and omissions; others judge it a remarkably dispassionate record.

American-born Paul Theroux had lived in England for 11 years when he realized he'd explored dozens of exotic locations without discovering anything about his adopted home. So, with a knapsack on his back, he set out to explore by walking and by short train trips. The result is a witty, observant and often acerbic look at an ever eccentric assortments of Brits in all shapes and sizes.

The magnificent Danube both cuts across and connects Central Europe, flowing through and alongside 10 countries: Romania, Ukraine, Moldova, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria, and Germany. Travelling its full length from east to west, against the river's flow, Nick Thorpe embarks on an inspiring yearlong journey that leads to a new perspective on Europe today. Thorpe's account is personal, conversational, funny, immediate, and uniquely observant - everything one expects in the best travel writing.

Acclaimed travel writer Rick Antonson sets his adventurous compass on Mount Ararat, exploring the region's long history, religious mysteries, and complex politics. Mount Ararat is the most fabled mountain in the world. For millennia, this massif in eastern Turkey has been rumored as the resting place of Noah's Ark following the Great Flood. But it also plays a significant role in the longstanding conflict between Turkey and Armenia.

For more than sixty years, Clyde Wainio has waded the streams and rivers of Michigan's Copper Country, chasing Brook Trout, Rainbows/Steelhead, and Northern Pike through every season. In If It Snows, Go Fishing!, he shares a lifetime of fishing adventures—record catches, near-misses, family traditions, and unforgettable encounters with the wild. Rich with humor, local history, and the rhythms of nature, these stories honor the joys of patience, persistence, and respect for the outdoors. This memoir is a heartfelt tribute to both fishing and the timeless spirit of Michigan's Northwoods.

Xenophon, after being exiled from Athens, spent the last years of his life hunting, writing, and recalling in his books the great days of the Persian expedition. This record of one of the most famous marches in history contains an account of the day-to-day life of ordinary men and soldiers. Translated by Rex Warner.

The universal appeal of Laura Ingalls Wilder springs from a life lived in partnership with the land, on farms she and her family settled across the Northeast and Midwest. In this revealing exploration of Wilder's deep connection with the natural world, Marta McDowell follows the wagon trail of the beloved Little House series. You'll learn details about Wilder's life and inspirations, pinpoint the Ingalls and Wilder homestead claims on authentic archival maps, and learn to grow the plants and vegetables featured in the series. Excerpts from Wilder's books, letters, and diaries bring to light her profound appreciation for the landscapes at the heart of her world.

In the space of 400 years, Western man methodically set out to explore and map the entire earth. During some of the most dangerous expeditions ever mounted, an extraordinary group of determined men forced passages through vast oceans, dark jungles, and withering deserts. Never has their like been seen since. What drove these soldiers, sailors, and civilians to leave the comforts of civilized life and face the horrors of shipwreck, starvation, cannibals, and disease?

Combining accounts of legendary mountain ascents with vivid descriptions of his own forays into wild, high landscapes, Robert Macfarlane reveals how the mystery of the world's highest places has come to grip the Western imagination - and perennially draws legions of adventurers up the most perilous slopes. His story begins three centuries ago, when mountains were feared as the forbidding abodes of dragons and other mysterious beasts.

A haunting dream that will not relent pulls author Kent Nerburn back into the hidden world of Native America, where dreams have meaning, animals are teachers, and the "old ones" still have powers beyond our understanding. In this moving narrative, we travel through the lands of the Lakota and the Ojibwe, where we encounter a strange little girl with an unnerving connection to the past, a forgotten asylum that history has tried to hide, and complex, unforgettable characters.

Lawrence Durrell's evocative memoir of living in Cyprus, just before the Greek/Turkish partition. This is a touching and atmospheric account of a place, now changed, where the two races lived side by side.

A masterpiece of compelling narrative history, The White Ladder describes the epic rise of mountaineering's world altitude record, a story of ever higher climbs by figures great and small of mountaineering. Daniel Light describes how climbers used revolutionary techniques to launch themselves into the most forbidding conditions. The expeditions illustrate evolutionary changes in climbing style, the advancement of high-altitude science, and the development of mountain climbing as an industry.

Here is the story of the infamous 1910 race to the South Pole, as told by its fearless yet desperate leader, Robert Falcon Scott. The New York Times called Scott's Last Expedition "A splendid record of heroism not soon to be forgotten."

In this book Tiya Miles explores the popular yet troubling phenomenon of "ghost tours," frequently promoted and experienced at plantations, urban manor homes, and cemeteries throughout the South. As a staple of the tours, guides entertain paying customers by routinely relying on stories of enslaved black specters. But who are these ghosts? Examining popular sites and stories from these tours, Miles shows that haunted tales routinely appropriate and skew African American history to produce representations of slavery for commercial gain.

Mawson's Will is the dramatic story of what Sir Edmund Hillary calls "the most outstanding solo journey ever recorded in Antarctic history." For weeks in Antarctica, Douglas Mawson faced some of the most daunting conditions ever known to man: blistering wind, snow, and cold; loss of his companion, his dogs and supplies, the skin on his hands and the soles of his feet; thirst, starvation, disease, snowblindness - and he survived.

Every year upon arriving in Plobien, the small Breton town where he spends his summers, American writer Mark Greenside picks back up where he left off with his faux-pas-filled Francophile life. Mellowed and humbled, but not daunted (OK, slightly daunted), he faces imminent concerns: What does he cook for a French person? Who has the right-of-way when entering or exiting a roundabout? Where does he pay for a parking ticket? And most dauntingly of all, when can he touch the tomatoes?

Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across Northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron undertakes a journey along the greatest land route on earth: the Silk Road. Travelling 7,000 miles in eight months, he traces the passage not only of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions.