Travel Writing Memoirs

If you enjoy a fast-paced, true story, Five Weeks in the Amazon is the book for you. It's an honest story filled with peaks of humor and valleys of despair. Author Sean Michael Hayes has written a book that many would put on their shelf next to Cheryl Strayed's blockbuster success, Wild. His adventure took him into the middle of the jungle alone, but Hayes' unique writing style makes the listener feel as though they are right there with him.

In 1773, literary giant Samuel Johnson set off with his friend James Boswell on a tour of Scotland’s remote Highlands and Western Isles. What followed was a vivid travelogue capturing the landscapes, people, and customs of a region on the brink of change. With wit, insight, and curiosity, Johnson reflects on everything from ancient clan traditions to the decline of the Gaelic language—offering a rare glimpse into 18th-century Scotland through the eyes of one of England’s greatest minds.

Gertrude Bell was leaning in 100 years before Sheryl Sandberg. One of the great woman adventurers of the 20th century, she turned her back on Victorian society to study at Oxford and travel the world and became the chief architect of British policy in the Middle East after World War I. Mountaineer, archaeologist, Arabist, writer, poet, linguist, and spy, she dedicated her life to championing the Arab cause and was instrumental in drawing the borders that define today's Middle East.

It'd been a long time since I claimed some solitude in this blessed landscape; since I've done without life's little props. Here I have no friend, no dog, no radio, no clock, no phone, no roof, no body pollutants.

Preparing for the first winter in his new home, ready to embrace the slower pace of early retirement, he soon discovers that it’s not working. From floods to explosions, from protection rackets to hospitalisations, from coping with the death of his hero to trying to find solace in a confusing and abstract relationship, this is a frank, funny and always heartfelt story of how not working doesn’t always work out, and it might just be Graham’s wildest ride yet.

In Great Buddha Gym for All Mens and Womens, author Sallie Tisdale so richly evokes her pilgrimage to the four vital sites related to Buddha Shakyamuni's life and enlightenment that the listener feels as if she's tripping alongside Tisdale every crowded, colorful, and sensuous step of the way. The challenges of travel in modern India are daunting. The ancient sites are overrun with tourists and seekers. Merchants hawking spiritual goods are everywhere.

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.

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 only place in the United States that Hemingway could really call home after he started writing was the tropical island of Key West. During his decade here in the 1930s, he acquired his famed macho persona as Papa, the biggest Big Daddy of them all. This vivid portrait of Ernest Hemingway's Key West reveals both Hemingway, the writer, and Hemingway, the macho, hard-drinking sportsman. His Key West years turned out to be his most productive: he finished A Farewell to Arms, started For Whom the Bell Tolls, and wrote several other books, including Green Hills of Africa.

"We are all travelers in the 'wilderness of the world' - travelers with a donkey." So Robert Louis Stevenson wrote to a friend on completing this enchanting account of a journey in rural France in 1878. Alone with his pack-donkey Modestine, and showing total disregard for discomfort, Stevenson relishes to the full his walking tour of the Cevennes.

When Laura Fraser's husband leaves her for his high school sweetheart, she takes off, on impulse, for Italy, hoping to leave some of her sadness behind. There, on the island of Ischia, she meets M., an aesthetics professor from Paris with an oversized love of life. What they both assume will be a casual vacation tryst turns into a passionate, transatlantic love affair, as they rendezvous in London, Marrakech, Milan, the Aeolian Islands, and San Francisco.

Dave Hill was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio. But his grandfather was from Canada. Inspired by a publisher's payment of several hundred dollars (Canadian) in cash, Dave has traveled all over Canada, reconnecting with his heritage in such places as Montreal, Moose Jaw, Regina, Winnipeg, and Merrickville, meeting a range of Canadians, touching things he probably shouldn't, and having adventures too numerous and rich in detail to be done justice in this blurb. The result, he promises, is "the greatest Canada-based literary thrill ride of your lifetime".

Different Natures takes you on three journeys. Each gives an honest and passionate insight into the evolution of a compulsive traveler. Looking for direction with the wrong eyes spawned Graham’s lust for wandering. The miles cleared his vision, and the hunger for longer distance grows with an insatiable appetite for new experiences.

Spanning 15 years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’ insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance.

Stuart Woods had never owned more than a dinghy before setting out on one of the world's most demanding sea voyages, navigating single-handedly across the Atlantic. How, at the age of 37, did this self-proclaimed novice go from small ponds to the big sea? Now with a new afterword that looks back at how one transatlantic race changed his life, Woods takes listeners on a spectacular journey not just of traveling across the world, but of being tried in fire, learning by accepting challenges, appreciating the beauty of the open water, and living to tell about it.

In May 2018, former Monty Python stalwart and intrepid globetrotter Michael Palin ventured into the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, camera crew in tow, to gain a glimpse of life in the most notoriously secretive and cut-off nation on earth. His resulting two-part documentary for Channel 5 fascinated millions and won universal plaudits.

Michael Palin journeys to a vast country of unimaginable contrasts - Brazil. An economic powerhouse, it is host to a staggering variety of peoples. He starts his journey in the north, in the remote mountains and forests on the border with Venezuela, and finishes in the south at the legendary Iguaçu Falls. He travels by river-boat, float-plane and foot to visit tribes deep in the jungle, samples life in the agricultural and mining heartland of Brazil, experiences the modernism of Brasília and the heady mix of Rio de Janeiro, and ventures into the favelas.

At 35, Leslie Buck made an impulsive decision to put her personal life on hold to pursue her passion. Leaving behind a full life of friends, love, and professional security, she became the first American woman to learn pruning from one of the most storied landscaping companies in Kyoto. Cutting Back recounts Buck's bold journey and the revelations she has along the way.

In 2016, Nuseir Yassin quit his job to travel for 1,000 consecutive days. But instead of the usual tourist traps, Nas set out to meet real people, see the places they call home, and discover what unites all of us living on this beautiful planet - from villages in Africa and slums in India, to the high-rises of Singapore and the deserts of Australia. While he journeyed from country to country, Nas uploaded a single 60-second video per day for his Nas Daily Facebook following to highlight the amazing, terrifying, inspiring and downright surprising sh*t happening all over the world.

The Traveling Vegan turns digital nomad, traveling for a year and working remotely from a laptop and smart phone, living in 12 cities in 12 months on four continents: Europe, Asia, North and South America. Experience living in a city not as a tourist but as a resident, along with 48 others in the traveling family, who become "tramily". Phil's worldview about what these cities are "really like" will make you laugh a lot, cringe a little, and think more deeply about humanity, politics, history, economics, nutrition, and daily life around the world.