Travel Biography

Recruited to work on a documentary, Julian goes to New York convinced he has hit big time at last. Finding the project cancelled, he wanders the city streets and, with nowhere else to go, decides to set out hitchhiking for San Francisco. Revisiting this timeless American journey finds an unseen nation in rough shape. Along the road are homeless people and anarchists who have dropped out of society altogether, and blue-collar Americans who seem to have lost all meaning in forgotten towns and food deserts.

Ray Walker had a secure career in finance until a wine-tasting vacation ignited a passion that he couldn't stifle. Ray neglected his work, spending hours poring over ancient French winemaking texts, learning the techniques and the language, and daydreaming about vineyards. After Ray experienced his first taste of wine from Burgundy, he could wait no longer. He quit his job and went to France to start a winery - with little money, a limited command of French, and virtually no winemaking experience.

Simon Majumdar is probably not your typical idea of an immigrant. As he says, "I'm well rested, not particularly poor, and the only time I ever encounter 'huddled masses' is in line at Costco." But immigrate he did, and thanks to a Homeland Security agent who asked if he planned to make it official, the journey chronicled in Fed, White, and Blue was born. In it, Simon sets off on a trek across the United States to find out what it really means to become an American, using what he knows best: food.

Part documentary, part reality-television, the story of the Deadliest Catch’s Alaskan crab fishermen risking their lives in the Bering Sea to make a buck and feed their families has captivated the world. Giving the Finger follows the life of the spirited young captain who has emerged as one of the most talked-about figures on the show: Scott Campbell, Jr., who leads the crew of the Seabrooke. As this book - a prequel to Junior’s ascent to fame - shows, the trials of crabbing are not limited to living at sea and working the most dangerous job on the planet, but carry over to family and friends.

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.

In the powerful travel-writing tradition of Ryszard Kapuscinski and V. S. Naipaul, a haunting memoir of a dangerous and disorienting year of self-discovery in one of the world's unhappiest countries.

Everyone wants to escape their boring, stagnant lives full of inertia and regret. But so few people actually have the bravery to run - run away from everything and selflessly seek out personal fulfillment on the other side of the world where they don’t understand anything and won’t be expected to. The world is full of cowards. Tim Anderson was pushing 30 and working a string of dead-end jobs when he made the spontaneous decision to pack his bags and move to Japan.

A true story of courage and survival, South to Alaska carries listeners from the heartland of America to the last frontier... the hard way. Born in the dusty heart of Oklahoma in 1916, 10-year-old Melvin sees a photograph of a cabin in the Alaska wilderness in his fourth-grade geography book and dreams of living there. Nearly 50 years later he builds a 47-foot boat in his Arkansas backyard, launches it on the Arkansas River, and cruises 10,000 miles to Alaska by way of the Panama Canal. Melvin has never been south of the United States/Mexico border.

Danger lurks on every voyage - what the cruise lines don't want you to know - how to be safe on your cruise. Crew with criminal backgrounds, drug dealers and mules carrying drugs on the ship, crime at the ports of the Caribbean and the biggest danger of all - fire on cruise ships. Learn about the one small item you should bring that fits in your pocket. Read this book before booking a cruise.

Erik Weihenmayer was born with retinoscheses, a degenerative eye disorder that would leave him blind by the age of 13. But Erik was determined to rise above this devastating disability and lead a fulfilling and exciting life. In this poignant and inspiring memoir, he shares his struggle to push past the limits imposed on him by his visual impairment - and by a seeing world.

Would you leave your job, sell your house, abandon your family and friends, and move to France to live on a boat? With no income, and no idea what the next day would bring? Probably not. But that's what Mike and Liz did, choosing to cast off from corporate life to live on and travel the waterways of France.

Somewhere beyond the Salish Sea lived the Stout Men who did the Megin River, and Tibet, and the Amazon. There was Tictac and Poldy, Cliffy and Madame, Captain and Gung, and Papa Smurf, who would die someday, but not yet. These are the stories of where they rushed headlong, towards adventure and suffering, and how it all took place.

Sullivan's classic account of his 65 day, 1,361-mile solo backpacking trek across Oregon has been chosen by the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission as one of Oregon's "100 Books", the most significant literary works in state history. Sullivan recounts adventures with blizzards, bears, and poisonous mushrooms, but he also spices his journal with notes on history, geology, and the people he meets along the way.

Rich with humor and natural history, this memoir describes 25 summers of back-to-the-earth adventure as author William L. Sullivan and his wife Janell build a log cabin by hand along a roadless river deep in the wilds of Oregon's Coast Range. Along the way they confront beaver in the refrigerator, raise a family, and puzzle out a murder mystery that had haunted their homestead site. Cabin Fever takes listeners to a warm world of kerosene lamplight, wood stoves, and ghost stories that may be true.

The Fulani are the largest surviving group of nomads on the planet. In Walking with Abel, Anna Badkhen embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboys - nomadic herders in Mali's Sahel grasslands - as they embark on their annual migration across the savanna.

Nel 1930 Aghata Christie, già celebre scrittrice, sposava in seconde nozze il giovane archeologo Max Mallowan, decisa a seguire il marito nelle sue spedizioni in Paesi come la Siria o l'Iraq. Nacque così questo libro di memorie, un resoconto di viaggi ironico e autoironico, candido e malizioso, discreto e sincero in cui l'autrice rievoca avventure e disavventure di una tranquilla signora della buona borghesia inglese.

Vier Jahre, 45 Länder, 100.000 Kilometer - und ein Überraschungserfolg! Christopher Schacht ist erst 19 Jahre alt und hat gerade sein Abi in der Tasche, als er eine verrückte Idee in die Tat umsetzt: Mit nur 50 Euro "Urlaubsgeld" reist er allein um die Welt. Nur mit Freundlichkeit, Flexibilität, Charme und Arbeitswillen ausgestattet, ohne Flugzeug, ohne Hotel, ohne Kreditkarte. Humorvoll und mitreißend erzählt Christopher Schacht von seinen unglaublichen Erlebnissen und verrät, was er unterwegs über das Leben, die Liebe und Gott gelernt hat.

1968 reist der Autor Franz Fühmann von Ost-Berlin nach Budapest. Hinter ihm liegen die Überwindung seiner Alkoholsucht und die Desillusionierung durch den Einmarsch der Truppen des Warschauer Paktes in Prag. Schreibend beginnt er, sein Handeln innerhalb der sozialistischen Gesellschaft, in der er lebt, zu reflektieren, und er schafft es, die Krise als Ausgangspunkt für einen Neuanfang zu nutzen.

Did Peary reach the North Pole? Was Admiral Byrd the first to fly over it? Did Frederick Cook actually make the first ascent of Mt. McKinley? Spanning 450 years of history, Great Exploration Hoaxes tells the spellbinding stories of ten men who pursued glory at any cost even the truth.

What was Takako Konishi really doing in North Dakota, and why did she end up dead? Did she get lost and freeze to death, as the police concluded, while searching for the fictional treasure buried in a snowbank at the end of the Coen Brothers’ film Fargo? Or was it something else that brought her there? Unrequited love, ritual suicide, a meteor shower, a far-flung search for purpose? The seed of an obsession took root in struggling film student Jana Larson when she chanced upon a news bulletin about the case.