Travel Biography

The “astonishing and deeply poignant” (The Washington Post) memoir of one man’s search for a beloved family friend explores the depth of Iranian culture and the sweep of its history, and transcends today’s news headlines to remind us of the humanity that connects us all. Growing up in...

A typical book about an American founding father doesn’t start at a gay piano bar and end in a sewage ditch. But then, Tom Paine isn’t your typical founding father. A firebrand rebel and a radical on the run, Paine alone claims a key role in the development of three modern democracies. In death, his story turns truly bizarre. Shunned as an infidel by every church, he had to be interred in an open field on a New York farm. Ten years later, a former enemy converting to Paine’s cause dug up the bones and carried them back to Britain.

Faced with buying a car and getting a real job - or taking the money and blowing it on a six-month adventure around Asia...well, there really is no contest! Who wouldn't want to visit exotic places, like Borneo, Cambodia, and China? Who wouldn't want to tackle the world's most dangerous hiking path, tangle with the Vietnamese Mafia, and suffer days in the dreaded Mongolian saddle? And who wouldn't want to try five-organ soup? All he has to do is survive long enough to realize his dreams.

Standing above the dramatic arches underpinning the Basilica of Assisi and carried away by the beauty of the moment, Joan and Roger were determined to move to Italy. It took time, effort, grit, money, heavy doses of humor, and even stronger servings of Italian pazienza; but in the end, move they did. Launching a new career hosting vacationers, they persevered, renovating Le Vigne; an old farmhouse. This is their story of good fortune, at times matched in equal measure with frustration.

Inseguendo i propri sogni di bambino, Walter Bonatti è diventato un personaggio leggendario, il simbolo stesso dell'avventura. Perché nelle sue sfide si è spinto sempre un po' più in là, ed è andato tanto avanti da riuscire ancora oggi a dirci qualcosa di nuovo. Erano i sogni a guidarlo, e lui ha passato la vita a realizzarli.

Durante siglos, los europeos situaron la legendaria ciudad de El Dorado en la selva más grande y densa del mundo: la del Amazonas. La obsesión por encontrar ese paraíso dejó la jungla impenetrable sembrada de cadáveres, lo que no fue impedimento para el explorador británico Percy Fawcett. Después de emprender una expedición tras otra sin éxito, en 1925 desapareció sin dejar rastro. En 2005, David Grann se adentró en el «infierno verde» para averiguar qué había ocurrido allí. El resultado es una reconstrucción magistral dela aventura de Percy Fawcett.

During the 1920s, T. E. Lawrence gained global attention, both for his involvement in the Middle Eastern anti-imperialist movement, and for his vivid and sensational writings about his experiences. Despite the passage of many years and the emergence of a whole new set of problems in the Middle East, and fuelled by the success of the hit movie Lawrence of Arabia, the T. E. Lawrence mystique continues to fascinate. Controversial and provocative, this revised and updated edition of Lawrence James's acclaimed biography penetrates and overturns the mythology that surrounds T. E. Lawrence. James traces the sometimes spurious Lawrence legend back to its truthful roots, yet remains dispassionate and generous in spirit throughout. The Golden Warrior presents readers with a fascinating study of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable figures.

In March 2019, the Viking Sky cruise ship was struck by a bomb cyclone in the North Atlantic. Rocked by 50-foot swells and 40-knot gales, the ship lost power and began to drift straight toward the notoriously dangerous Hustadvika coast in Norway. This is the suspenseful, harrowing, funny, touching story by one passenger who contemplated death aboard that ship.

Triggered by his increasing wanderlust after finishing his A-levels, Dominik Trottier set off to walk the Way of Saint James in April 2012. In his literary debut, Ultreya on the Camino, the author documents his experiences and numerous encounters that he had along the 800-kilometer pilgrimage track through the north of Spain. Due to a shattered dream of his, he also found himself dealing with many unsettled questions that he hoped to seek out the right answers for.

Eine faszinierendes Hörbuch voller Reisegeschichten und abenteuerlicher Begegnungen von einem der bekanntesten Journalisten Deutschlands. Als der Reporter Juan Moreno von einer seiner Auslandsreisen zurückkommt, sieht er nervös die Drogenspürhunde am Zoll - er ist sich sicher, nach Kokain geradezu zu stinken. Er hat bei kolumbianischen Rebellen im Dschungel auf Kokainplatten geschlafen, anders ging es nicht - aber wie erklärt man das einem deutschen Zollbeamten? Juan Morenos Geschichten von unterwegs sind eine großartige Lektüre, überraschend, dramatisch, packend.

Years ago, Steve Hannah’s chance detour through the Midwest cut short a planned cross-country trip. He found himself in Wisconsin, a distinctly different place from the East Coast, where he was born and raised. Charmingly beautiful and full of welcoming people, America’s dairyland would soon become his home. Dairylandia recounts Steve Hannah’s burgeoning love for his adopted state through the writings of his long-lived column, “State of Mind”.

This is the true story of a young, native Irish woman who embarked on a path of "most resistance" and danced/survived her way around seven different countries. Her very descriptive, dramatic, and often humorous Celtic Road Home takes you on a journey of constant life adventures. Despite her many up and down struggles along the way, she never gives up hope on the very next outcome becoming more successful than the one before.

In 1975, seven-year-old Doina Cornell left England with her father Jimmy Cornell, mother and brother to spend the next six years sailing around the world on a small yacht. The author has drawn on her memories, diaries and stories, to re-create the perfect life led by a sailing child: swimming, diving and playing the days away in deserted anchorages; visiting some of the most beautiful islands in the world; falling in love with the sea in all its ever-changing moods, from balmy trade wind ocean passages to the treacherous breakers that crash onto tropical reefs.

Travel across the US with David Reynolds as he explores Route 50, one of the few remaining two-lane highways running from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Driving as slowly as safety permits, stopping frequently and often going backwards to have a second look at something glimpsed in passing, Reynolds talks to people on the streets, in bars and cafes, motels and gas stations. They talk about everything from slavery and the traditional Indian sundance, to cannabis in Colorado and tornadoes in Kansas, and about everyone from George Washington and Aaron Burr to Marilyn Monroe and the Eagles.

In 1888, Nellie Bly, a feisty, investigative reporter for Joseph Pulitzer's New York World newspaper, pitched a story idea of traveling around the world in 75 days to beat the record achieved by Phileas Fogg, the character in Verne's book. While the editor thought it a great idea, he naturally thought the trip should be made by a man. The idea was shelved for over a year.

Michael Simkins is the ultimate Sunday cricketer - passionate, obsessive, technically inept and hopelessly deluded. When an injury rules him out, he decides to set off on an odyssey across the counties of England. It's a journey that begins at the birthplace of cricket, takes in the burial site of his favourite ground and even stops along the way to flirt with the love child of WG Grace and Kerry Katona that is Twenty20. It ends with the ultimate cricketing zenith - returning to the field of play to bowl an over to Freddie Flintoff in fading light in front of a capacity crowd.

Naturalist Joe Hutto’s latest adventures in wildlife observation take him to Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. Hutto is living in a tent at 12,000 feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant—and human needs can become a matter of life and death—to study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

An old-fashioned quest by a modern-day adventurer. When A. J. Mackinnon quits his job in Australia, he knows only that he longs to travel to the well at the world’s end, a mysterious pool on a remote Scottish island whose waters, legend has it, hold the secret to eternal youth.

Born in Darwin in 1929, Jacqueline's childhood was spent in a succession of bush towns before she was sent to school in Darwin. Returning to her beloved territory, Jacqueline met and married stockman Ken Hammar, and they moved to a vast property in one of the most inaccessible areas of Australia. With only a kerosene stove, scant possessions and a bed, Jacqueline’s determination and courage helped her survive many hardships as they created a prosperous 1,000,000 acre cattle station.

In the summer of 1980, a maverick young doctor gave it all up, to hitchhike around the world. The first part of his odyssey took him through South America and up through Africa, accompanied by his mythical hunter companion, Orion. His vision quest continued around the second cartwheel of the European Grand Tour.