Bryson share his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail with a childhood friend. The two encounter eccentric characters, a blizzard, getting lost, and rude yuppies along the way.

Like many others, around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. Although she had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want, including a husband, a home, and a successful career as a magazine writer, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. This is an account of her yearlong worldwide pursuit of pleasure, spiritual devotion, guidance, and what she really wanted...

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, a true classic and one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed—and what hasn’t. Following (but not too closely) a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south...

Mark Twain's semi-autobiographical travel memoir, "Roughing It" was written between 1870-1871 and subsequently published in 1872. Billed as a prequel to "Innocents Abroad", in which Twain details his travels aboard a pleasure cruise through Europe and the Holy Land in 1867, "Roughing It" conversely documents Twain's early days in the old wild west between the years 1861-1867. Employing his characteristically humoristic wit and flare for regional dialect,...

Robert Pinsky is Professor of English at Boston University and an editor of the weekly online magazine Slate. He is the author of many books of poetry and literary criticism. He served two terms as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress, 1997-2000. This new paperback edition of Henry D. Thoreau's compelling account of Cape Cod contains the complete, definitive text of the original. Introduced by American poet...

"The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists...

The Maine Woods is a characteristically Thoreauvian book. A personal account of exploration, of exterior and interior discovery in a natural setting, conveyed in taut, workmanlike prose. Thoreau's evocative renderings of the life of the primitive forest--its mountains, waterways, fauna, flora, and inhabitants--are valuable in themselves. But his impassioned protest against despoilment in the name of commerce and sport, which even by the 1850s threatened...

Henry David Thoreau had a very close relationship with his older brother, John. Sadly, after cutting himself while shaving, John developed lockjaw, and died tragically in 1842. Thoreau, who was only 25 at the time, was deeply affected by the loss of his brother. During his two year stay in his cabin on the shore of Walden Pond, he wrote an account of a two week boat trip he took with John in August of 1839. The brothers built a boat and began their...

"The beloved author Peter Mayle, champion of all things Provence, here in a final volume of all new writing, offers vivid recollections from his twenty-five years in the South of France--lessons learned, culinary delights enjoyed, and changes observed. Twenty-five years ago, Peter Mayle and his wife, Jennie, were rained out of a planned two weeks on the Cô̂te d'Azur. In search of sunlight, they set off for Aix-en-Provence; enchanted by the world...

In this sequel to her" New York Times" bestsellers" Under the Tuscan Sun" and" Bella Tuscany," the celebrated "bard of Tuscany" ("New York Times") Frances Mayes lyrically chronicles her continuing, two decades-long love affair with Tuscany's people, art, cuisine, and lifestyle.