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The Art of Travel
by Alain De Botton

ISBN 0375725342 (0-375-72534-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
Aside from love, few actvities seem to promise us as much happiness as going traveling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs, and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel, few people seem to talk about why we should go and how we can become more fulfilled by doing so. In The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton, author of How Proust Can Change Your Life, explores what the point of travel might be and modestly suggets how we can learn to be a little happier in our travels. [via]
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The Best American Travel Writing 2004
by Jason Wilson, Pico Iyer

ISBN 0618341250 (0-618-34125-0)
Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin Company

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In his thought-provoking and witty introduction to The Best American Travel Writing 2004, Pico Iyer explores American travel writing from the viewpoint of a non-American. He writes, "For many Americans, living in a country that borders few others and at a time when only one in three fellow citizens holds a passport, travel is the only way to get a living, human sense of the world around us . . . The best American travel writing is still lit up, I think, by that spirit of transcendence less visible abroad." Iyer has chosen twenty-six pieces that revel in rich discovery and brave experience both near and far away. Roger Angell remembers a sense of adventure during childhood car trips in New York (one taken with E. B. White, his future stepfather). Tim Cahill describes the joy of trekking in Patagonia, his "new favorite place on earth." Heather Eliot writes of a fevered love affair in the South Pacific, and Tad Friend hilariously tells of introducing Segways to Paris. George Packer recalls his time as a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and the swirl of political unrest there.
These varied and fascinating travel pieces show that the search for understanding is alive and well in this country, and that Americans are more eager than ever to search for, as Iyer writes, "something deeper and more lasting."
[via]
More editions of The Best American Travel Writing 2004:
- The Best American Travel Writing 2004: ISBN 0618341250 (0-618-34125-0)
  Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin Company
The Best American Travel Writing 2004
by Pico Iyer, Jason Wilson

ISBN 0618341269 (0-618-34126-9)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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More editions of The Best American Travel Writing 2004:
- The Best American Travel Writing 2004: ISBN 0618341269 (0-618-34126-9)
  Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates
by Patrick Leigh Fermor

ISBN 0670811491 (0-670-81149-1)
Hardcover, Viking

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'Between the Woods and the Water' continues Patrick Leigh Fermor's celebrated epic account of his journey at the age of eighteen, in 1933, from the Hook of Holand to Constantinople. Here he travels down the Danube from Budapest, across the Great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Rumanian border into Transylvania. [via]
More editions of Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates:
- Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates: ISBN 0719542642 (0-7195-4264-2)
  Hardcover, J. Murray
- Between the Woods and the Water: On Foot to Constantinople from the Hook of Holland The Middle Danube to the Iron Gates: ISBN 0670811491 (0-670-81149-1)
  Hardcover, Viking
Between the Woods And the Water: On Foot To Constantinople The Middle Danube To The Iron Gates
by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris

ISBN 1590171667 (1-59017-166-7)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
Continuing the epic foot journey across Europe begun in A Time of Gifts

The journey that Patrick Leigh Fermor set out on in 1933to cross Europe on foot with an emergency allowance of one pound a dayproved so rich in experiences that when much later he sat down to describe them, they overflowed into more than one volume. Undertaken as the storms of war gathered, and providing a background for the events that were beginning to unfold in Central Europe, Leigh Fermor's still-unfinished account of his journey has established itself as a modern classic. Between the Woods and the Water, the second volume of a projected three, has garnered as many prizes as its celebrated predecessor, A Time of Gifts.

The opening of the book finds Leigh Fermor crossing the Danubeat the very moment where his first volume left off. A detour to the luminous splendors of Prague is followed bya trip downriver to Budapest, passage on horseback acrossthe Great Hungarian Plain, and a crossing of the Romanian border into Transylvania. Remote castles, mountain villages,monasteries and towering ranges that are the haunt of bears, wolves, eagles, gypsies, and a variety of sects are all savoredin the approach to the Iron Gates, the division between the Carpathian mountains and the Balkans, where, for now, the story ends. [via]
More editions of Between the Woods And the Water: On Foot To Constantinople The Middle Danube To The Iron Gates:
- Between the Woods And the Water: On Foot To Constantinople The Middle Danube To The Iron Gates: ISBN 1590171667 (1-59017-166-7)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
Blue Highways
by William Least Heat Moon

ISBN 0316353299 (0-316-35329-9)
Softcover, Little Brown & Co

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Published in 1983 to phenomenal reviews, Blue Highways: A Journey into America became a cult classic on par with Jack Kerouac's On the Road and John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley. In this highly acclaimed, bestselling memoir, a 38-year-old laid-off college professor of Sioux and white blood drives around the U.S. on the "blue highways, " the rural back made that are colored blue on old maps. The places he discovers during his 13,000-mile journey are unexpected, sometimes mysterious, and often full of simply the wonder of the ordinary.-- Blue Highways received extraordinary reviews when it was first published. [via]
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Blue Highways: A Journey into America
by William Least Heat Moon

ISBN 0395585686 (0-395-58568-6)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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First published in 1982, William Least Heat-Moon's account of his journey along the back roads of the United States (marked with the color blue on old highway maps) has become something of a classic. When he loses his job and his wife on the same cold February day, he is struck by inspiration: "A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity."
Driving cross-country in a van named Ghost Dancing, Heat-Moon (the name the Sioux give to the moon of midsummer nights) meets up with all manner of folk, from a man in Grayville, Illinois, "whose cap told me what fertilizer he used" to Scott Chisholm, "a Canadian citizen ... [who] had lived in this country longer than in Canada and liked the United States but wouldn't admit it for fear of having to pay off bets he made years earlier when he first 'came over' that the U.S. is a place no Canadian could ever love." Accompanied by his photographs, Heat-Moon's literary portraits of ordinary Americans should not be merely read, but savored. [via]
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City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
by William Dalrymple, Olivia Fraser

ISBN 0142001007 (0-14-200100-7)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
'Could you show me a djinn?' I asked. 'Certainly,' replied the Sufi. 'But you would run away.' From the author of 'The Return of a King', this is William Dalrymple's captivating memoir of a year spent in Delhi, a city watched over and protected by the mischievous invisible djinns. Lodging with the beady-eyed Mrs Puri and encountering an extraordinary array of characters - from elusive eunuchs to the last remnants of the Raj - William Dalrymple comes to know the bewildering city intimately. He pursues Delhi's interlacing layers of history along narrow alleys and broad boulevards, brilliantly conveying its intoxicating mix of mysticism and mayhem. 'City of Djinns' is an astonishing and sensitive portrait of a city, and confirms William Dalrymple as one of the most compelling explorers of India's past and present. [via]
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Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal
by Anthony Bourdain

ISBN 1582341400 (1-58234-140-0)
Hardcover, Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA

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A Cook's Tour is the written record of Anthony Bourdain's travels around the world in his search for the perfect meal. All too conscious of the state of his 44-year-old knees after a working life standing at restaurant stoves, but with the unlooked-for jackpot of Kitchen Confidential as collateral, Mr. Bourdain evidently concluded he needed a bit more wind under his wings.
The idea of "perfect meal" in this context is to be taken to mean not necessarily the most upscale, chi-chi, three-star dining experience, but the ideal combination of food, atmosphere, and company. This would take in fishing villages in Vietnam, bars in Cambodia, and Tuareg camps in Morocco (roasted sheep's testicle, as it happens); it would stretch to smoked fish and sauna in the frozen Russian countryside and the French Laundry in California's Napa Valley. It would mean exquisitely refined kaiseki rituals in Japan after yakitori with drunken salarymen. Deep-fried Mars Bars in Glasgow and Gordon Ramsay in London. The still-beating heart of a cobra in Saigon. Drink. Danger. Guns. All with a TV crew in tow for the accompanying series--22 episodes of video gold, we are assured, featuring many don't-try-this-at-home shots of the author in gastric distress or crawling into yet another storm drain at four in the morning.
You are unlikely to lay your hands on a more hectically, strenuously entertaining book for some time. Our hero eats and swashbuckles round the globe with perfect-pitch attitude and liberal use of judiciously placed profanities. Bourdain can write. His timing is great. He is very funny and is under no illusions whatsoever about himself or anyone else. But most of all, he is a chef who got himself out of his kitchen and found, all over the world, people who understand that eating well is the foundation of harmonious living. --Robin Davidson, Amazon.co.uk [via]
More editions of Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal:
- Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal: ISBN 0756781604 (0-7567-8160-4)
  Hardcover, Diane Pub Co
- A Cook's Tour: In Search of the Perfect Meal: ISBN 1582341400 (1-58234-140-0)
  Hardcover, Bloomsbury Pub Plc USA
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Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
by Paul Theroux

ISBN 0618446877 (0-618-44687-7)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.
Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News). In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.
[via]
More editions of Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town:
- Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town: ISBN 0618134247 (0-618-13424-7)
  Hardcover, Houghton Mifflin
- Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town: ISBN 0618446877 (0-618-44687-7)
  Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
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Down Under
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 038540817X (0-385-40817-X)
Hardcover, Doubleday

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Book summary:
A copy that has been read. but remains in excellent condition. have no pen mark, all copy are intact. Picture is the description. Thank you for shopping with us. [via]
More editions of Down Under:
- Down Under: ISBN 038540817X (0-385-40817-X)
  Hardcover, Doubleday
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Driving over Lemons
by Chris Stewart

ISBN 0375709150 (0-375-70915-0)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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When English sheep shearer Chris Stewart (once a drummer for Genesis) bought an isolated farmhouse in the mountains outside of Granada, Spain, he was fully aware that it didn't have electricity, running water, or access to roads. But he had little idea of the headaches and hilarity that would follow (including scorpions, runaway sheep, and the former owner who won't budge). He also had no idea that his memoir about southern Spain would set a standard for literary travel writing.
This rip-roaringly funny book about seeking a place in an earthy community of peasants and shepherds gives a realistic sense of the hassles and rewards of foreign relocation. Part of its allure stems from the absence of rose-colored glasses, mainly Stewart's refusal to merely coo about the piece of heaven he's found or to portray all residents as angels. Stewart's hilarious and beautifully written passages are deep in their honest perceptions of the place and the sometimes xenophobic natives, whose reception of the newcomers ranges from warm to gruff.
After reading about struggles with dialects, animal husbandry, droughts, flooding, and such local rituals as pig slaughters and the rebuilding of bridges, you may not wish to live Chris Stewart's life. But you can't help but admire him and his wife, Ana, for digging out a niche in these far-flung mountains, for successfully befriending the denizens, and for so eloquently and comically telling the truth. The rich, vibrant, and unromanticized candor of Driving over Lemons makes it a laudable standout in a genre too often typified by laughable naiveté. --Melissa Rossi [via]
More editions of Driving over Lemons:
- Driving over Lemons: ISBN 0375709150 (0-375-70915-0)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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Driving over Lemons : An Optimist in Andalucia
by Chris Stewart

ISBN 0375410287 (0-375-41028-7)
Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group

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When English sheep shearer Chris Stewart (once a drummer for Genesis) bought an isolated farmhouse in the mountains outside of Granada, Spain, he was fully aware that it didn't have electricity, running water, or access to roads. But he had little idea of the headaches and hilarity that would follow (including scorpions, runaway sheep, and the former owner who won't budge). He also had no idea that his memoir about southern Spain would set a standard for literary travel writing.
This rip-roaringly funny book about seeking a place in an earthy community of peasants and shepherds gives a realistic sense of the hassles and rewards of foreign relocation. Part of its allure stems from the absence of rose-colored glasses, mainly Stewart's refusal to merely coo about the piece of heaven he's found or to portray all residents as angels. Stewart's hilarious and beautifully written passages are deep in their honest perceptions of the place and the sometimes xenophobic natives, whose reception of the newcomers ranges from warm to gruff.
After reading about struggles with dialects, animal husbandry, droughts, flooding, and such local rituals as pig slaughters and the rebuilding of bridges, you may not wish to live Chris Stewart's life. But you can't help but admire him and his wife, Ana, for digging out a niche in these far-flung mountains, for successfully befriending the denizens, and for so eloquently and comically telling the truth. The rich, vibrant, and unromanticized candor of Driving over Lemons makes it a laudable standout in a genre too often typified by laughable naiveté. --Melissa Rossi [via]
More editions of Driving over Lemons : An Optimist in Andalucia:
- Driving over Lemons : An Optimist in Andalucia: ISBN 0375410287 (0-375-41028-7)
  Hardcover, Knopf Publishing Group
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The Ends of the Earth : A Journey along the Fault Lines of the 20th Century
by Robert D. Kaplan

ISBN 0679431489 (0-679-43148-9)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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Robert D. Kaplan, author of the acclaimed Balkan Ghosts, travels from the countries of West Africa and the fundamentalist enclaves of Egypt and Iran to the culturally explosive lands of Central Asia, India, Pakistan, and Southeast Asia with hardly more than a notebook and a backpack. The result is an intimate portrait of the devastated parts of the world whose cultural disasters - like those in Rwanda, Bosnia, and Chechnya - will dominate our attention and remake the world of tomorrow. [via]
More editions of The Ends of the Earth : A Journey along the Fault Lines of the 20th Century:
- The Ends of the Earth : A Journey along the Fault Lines of the 20th Century: ISBN 0679431489 (0-679-43148-9)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
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The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy
by Robert Kaplan

ISBN 0679751238 (0-679-75123-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Book summary:
"The future here could be sadder than the present," writes Robert Kaplan in a chapter about the African nation of Sierra Leone. From Kaplan's perspective, the same could be said of virtually the entire Third World, which he spends the bulk of this book visiting and describing. Kaplan, an acclaimed foreign correspondent and author of Balkan Ghosts, is congenitally pessimistic about the developmental prospects of West Africa, the Nile Valley, and much of Asia. This traveler's tale offers dire warnings about overpopulation, environmental degradation, and social chaos. We should all hope that Kaplan's forecast is wrong, but we ignore him at our peril. [via]
More editions of The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy:
- The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy: ISBN 084467124X (0-8446-7124-X)
  Hardcover, Peter Smith Pub Inc
- The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy: ISBN 0679751238 (0-679-75123-8)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
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A Fragile Paradise: The Discovery of Fletcher Christian Bounty Mutineer
by Glynn Christian

ISBN 0316140635 (0-316-14063-5)
Hardcover, Little Brown & Co

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- A Fragile Paradise: The Discovery of Fletcher Christian Bounty Mutineer: ISBN 0316140635 (0-316-14063-5)
  Hardcover, Little Brown & Co
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From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East
by William Dalrymple

ISBN 0805061770 (0-8050-6177-0)
Softcover, Owl Books

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Book summary:
In 587 AD, two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in an arc across the entire Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. On the way, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist stayed in caves, monasteries, and remote hermitages, collecting the wisdom of the stylites and the desert fathers before their fragile world finally shattered under the great eruption of Islam. More than a thousand years later, using Moschos's writings as his guide, William Dalrymple sets off to retrace their footsteps.

Dalrymple's pilgrimage takes him through a bloody civil war in eastern Turkey, the ruins of Beirut, the vicious tensions of the West Bank, and a fundamentalist uprising in southern Egypt, and it becomes an elegy to the slowly dying civilization of Eastern Christianity and to the peoples that have kept its flame alive. From the Holy Mountain is a rich and gripping bl of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, threaded through with Dalrymple's unique sense of black comedy.
[via]
More editions of From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East:
- From the Holy Mountain: A Journey among the Christians of the Middle East: ISBN 0805058737 (0-8050-5873-7)
  Hardcover, Holt & Company, Henry
- From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East: ISBN 0805061770 (0-8050-6177-0)
  Softcover, Owl Books
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The Great Railway Bazaar
by Paul Theroux

ISBN 0618658947 (0-618-65894-7)
Softcover, Houghton Mifflin

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Bewitched by trains since childhood, this is Paul Theroux's account of an epic train-hopping journey in the 1970s from London to Japan and back again. His perceptions and anecdotes transport the listener beyond the unfolding landscape into a world of traveller's tales and mysterious events. [via]
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The Great Railway Bazaar : By Train Through Asia
by Paul Theroux

ISBN 014024980X (0-14-024980-X)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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In this unique and luminous work that spent two months on The New York Times bestseller list, award-winning author and railroad-lover Paul Theroux takes us aboard the world's greatest trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Golden Arrow, the Mandalay Express -- on an odyssey from London through Europe and Asia, across the frozen vastness of Siberia. And his eye misses no wonder of landscape or character: con men, holy men, beggars, spies, smugglers, soldiers, aristocrats, and artists. From mystical temples to sensual brothels, Theroux savors the delights of travel, as Asia becomes a bazaar of all cultures. [via]
More editions of The Great Railway Bazaar : By Train Through Asia:
- The Great Railway Bazaar : By Train Through Asia: ISBN 067172648X (0-671-72648-X)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
- The Great Railway Bazaar : By Train Through Asia: ISBN 014024980X (0-14-024980-X)
  Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
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I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 076790382X (0-7679-0382-X)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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Book summary:
In the world of contemporary travel writing, Bill Bryson, the bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods, often emerges as a major contender for King of Crankiness. Granted, he complains well and humorously, but between every line of his travel books you can almost hear the tinny echo: "I wanna go home, I miss my wife."
Happily, I'm a Stranger Here Myself unleashes a new Bryson, more contemplative and less likely to toss daggers. After two decades in England, he's relocated to Hanover, New Hampshire. In this collection (drawn from dispatches for London's Night & Day magazine), he's writing from home, in close proximity to wife and family. We find a happy marriage between humor and reflection as he assesses life both in New England and in the contemporary United States. With the telescopic perspective of one who's stepped out of the American mainstream and come back after 20 years, Bryson aptly holds the mirror up to U.S. culture, capturing its absurdities--such as hotlines for dental floss, the cult of the lawsuit, and strange American injuries such as those sustained from pillows and beds. "In the time it takes you to read this," he writes, "four of my fellow citizens will somehow manage to be wounded by their bedding."
The book also reflects the sweet side of small-town USA, with columns about post-office parties, dining at diners, and Thanksgiving--when the only goal is to "get your stomach into the approximate shape of a beach ball" and be grateful. And grateful we are that the previously peripatetic Bryson has returned to the U.S., turning his eye to this land--while living at home and near his wife. Under her benevolent influence, he entertains through thoughtful insights, not sarcastic stabs. --Melissa Rossi [via]
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I'm a Stranger Here Myself : Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0767903811 (0-7679-0381-1)
Hardcover, Broadway Books

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Book summary:
The master humorist and bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods now guides us on an affectionate, hysterically funny tour of America's most outrageous absurdities.

After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly three million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new-and-improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. From motels ("one of those things--airline food is another--that I get excited about and should know better") to careless barbers ("in the mirror I am confronted with an image that brings to mind a lemon meringue pie with ears"), I'm a Stranger Here Myself chronicles the quirkiest aspects of life in America, right down to our hardware-store lingo, tax-return instructions, and vulnerability to home injury ("statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants than by a stranger").

Along the way Bill Bryson also reveals his rules for life (#1: It is not permitted to be both slow and stupid. You must choose one or the other); delivers the commencement address to a local high school ("I've learned that if you touch a surface to see if it's hot, it will be"); and manages to make friends with a skunk. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended, if at times bemused, love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away. [via]
More editions of I'm a Stranger Here Myself : Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away:
- I'm a Stranger Here Myself : Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away: ISBN 0767903811 (0-7679-0381-1)
  Hardcover, Broadway Books
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In a Sunburned Country
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0767903862 (0-7679-0386-2)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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Book summary:
Bill Bryson follows his Appalachian amble, A Walk in the Woods, with the story of his exploits in Australia, where A-bombs go off unnoticed, prime ministers disappear into the surf, and cheery citizens coexist with the world's deadliest creatures: toxic caterpillars, aggressive seashells, crocodiles, sharks, snakes, and the deadliest of them all, the dreaded box jellyfish. And that's just the beginning, as Bryson treks through sunbaked deserts and up endless coastlines, crisscrossing the "under-discovered" Down Under in search of all things interesting.
Bryson, who could make a pile of dirt compelling--and yes, Australia is mostly dirt--finds no shortage of curiosities. When he isn't dodging Portuguese man-of-wars or considering the virtues of the remarkable platypus, he visits southwest Gippsland, home of the world's largest earthworms (up to 12 feet in length). He discovers that Australia, which began nationhood as a prison, contains the longest straight stretch of railroad track in the world (297 miles), as well as the world's largest monolith (the majestic Uluru) and largest living thing (the Great Barrier Reef). He finds ridiculous place names: "Mullumbimby Ewylamartup, Jiggalong, and the supremely satisfying Tittybong," and manages to catch a cricket game on the radio, which is like
listening to two men sitting in a rowboat on a large, placid lake on a day when the fish aren't biting; it's like having a nap without losing consciousness. It actually helps not to know quite what's going on. In such a rarefied world of contentment and inactivity, comprehension would become a distraction.
"You see," Bryson observes, "Australia is an interesting place. It truly is. And that really is all I'm saying." Of course, Bryson--who is as much a travel writer here as a humorist, naturalist, and historian--says much more, and does so with generous amounts of wit and hilarity. Australia may be "mostly empty and a long way away," but it's a little closer now. --Rob McDonald [via]
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In Patagonia
by Bruce Chatwin, Nicholas Shakespeare

ISBN 0142437190 (0-14-243719-0)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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VERY GOOD [via]
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In Siberia
by Colin Thubron

ISBN 006095373X (0-06-095373-X)
Softcover, Perennial

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Book summary:
In Siberia explores a region of astonishments, where "white cranes dance on the permafrost, where a great city floats lost among the ice floes, where mammoths sleep under glaciers." Colin Thubron's latest chronicle also delivers its subject from rumor into reality. An expanse larger than the entire United States, Siberia is undoubtedly a country of contrasts, which elicits from the author both awe and melancholy. Here on one hand is a northern wilderness "shattered into a jigsaw of ponds and streams," and on the other a "black detritus of factories and ruins." No less memorable than the landscape are the people that Thubron encounters. He gathers their stories like rough jewels, showing us a self-proclaimed descendant of Rasputin, an isolated Jewish community, and a parade of "indestructible babushkas."
Woven among the often bitter and eroding memories of a Siberian past is a sense of new freedom. After all, this is the first time in Russia's history when foreigners can travel freely throughout the region--and its inhabitants can comment openly about their government without fear of reprisal. Thubron coaxes an institute official at the Akademgorodok Praesidium to speak his mind:
His face was heavy with anger. "We have one overriding problem here. Money. We receive no money for new equipment, hardly enough for our salaries. There are people who haven't been paid for six months." Then his anger overflowed. He was barking like a drill sergeant. "This year we requested funds for six or seven different programmes! And not one has been accepted by the government! Not one!"
Thubron's portrait is as elegant as it is evocative. But just as notably, his journey to the east manages to break the long and destructive Siberian silence. --Byron Ricks [via]
More editions of In Siberia:
- In Siberia: ISBN 0060195436 (0-06-019543-6)
  Hardcover, HarperCollins Publishers
- In Siberia: ISBN 006095373X (0-06-095373-X)
  Softcover, Perennial
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In Xanadu
by William Dalrymple

ISBN 1864501731 (1-86450-173-1)
Softcover, Lonely Planet

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Book summary:
While waiting for the results of his college exams, William Dalrymple decides to fill in his summer break with a trip. But the vacation he plans is no light-hearted student jaunt - he decides to retrace the epic journey of Marco Polo from Jerusalem to Xanadu, the ruined palace of Kubla Kahn, north of Peking. For the first half of the trip he is accompanied by Laura, whom he met at a dinner party two weeks before he left; for the second half he is accompanied by Louisa, his very recently ex-girlfriend. Intelligent and funny, In Xanadu is travel writing at its best.
[via]
More editions of In Xanadu:
- In Xanadu: ISBN 0679728538 (0-679-72853-8)
  Softcover, Knopf Publishing Group
- In Xanadu: A Quest: ISBN 1864501731 (1-86450-173-1)
  Softcover, Lonely Planet
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The Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around Great Britain
by Paul Theroux

ISBN 0395346452 (0-395-34645-2)
Hardcover, Bookthrift Co

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Book summary:
6 1/4"x9 1/4" 353 page illustrated hardcover book on Great Britain and her people. Publisher-Houghton Mifflin Company in 1983 [via]
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Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around The Coast Of Great Britain
by Paul Theroux

ISBN 0140071814 (0-14-007181-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated

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Book summary:
After eleven years as an American living in London, the renowned travel writer Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise around the coast of Great Britain to find out what the British were really like. The result is this perceptive, hilarious record of the journey. Whether in Cornwall or Wales, Ulster or Scotland, the people he encountered along the way revealed far more of themselves than they perhaps intended to display to a stranger. Theroux captured their rich and varied conversational commentary with caustic wit and penetrating insight.
[via]
More editions of Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around The Coast Of Great Britain:
- Kingdom by the Sea: A Journey Around The Coast Of Great Britain: ISBN 0618658955 (0-618-65895-5)
  Softcover, Houghton Mifflin
- The Kingdom by the Sea : A Journey Around the Coast of Great Britain: ISBN 0140071814 (0-14-007181-4)
  Softcover, Penguin Group (USA) Incorporated
The Kingdom by the Sea: His Candid and Compulsive Account of a Journey Round the Coast of Great Britian
by Paul Theroux

ISBN 0671709232 (0-671-70923-2)
Softcover, Simon & Schuster

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More editions of The Kingdom by the Sea: His Candid and Compulsive Account of a Journey Round the Coast of Great Britian:
- The Kingdom by the Sea: His Candid and Compulsive Account of a Journey Round the Coast of Great Britian: ISBN 0671709232 (0-671-70923-2)
  Softcover, Simon & Schuster
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The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0060920084 (0-06-092008-4)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Book summary:
A travelogue by Bill Bryson is as close to a sure thing as funny books get. The Lost Continent is no exception. Following an urge to rediscover his youth (he should know better), the author leaves his native Des Moines, Iowa, in a journey that takes him across 38 states. Lucky for us, he brought a notebook.
With a razor wit and a kind heart, Bryson serves up a colorful tale of boredom, kitsch, and beauty when you least expect it. Gentler elements aside, The Lost Continent is an amusing book. Here's Bryson on the women of his native state: "I will say this, however--and it's a strange, strange thing--the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable ... I don't know what it is that happens to them, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowing that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the pin has been yanked."
Yes, Bill, but be honest: what do you really think? [via]
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Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0380713810 (0-380-71381-0)
Softcover, Avon Books

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Book summary:
Readers from Toad Suck, Arkansas, to Idiotsville, Oregon--and everywhere in between--will love Made in America, Bill Bryson's Informal History of the English Language in the United States. It is, in a word, fascinating. After reading this tour de force, it's clear that a nation's language speaks volumes about its true character: you are what you speak. Bryson traces America's history through the language of the time, then goes on to discuss words culled from everyday activities: immigration, eating, shopping, advertising, going to the movies, and others.
Made in America will supply you with interesting facts and cocktail chatter for a year or more. Did you know, for example, that Teddy Roosevelt's "speak softly and carry a big stick" credo has its roots in a West African proverb? Or that actor Walter Matthau's given name is Walter Mattaschanskayasky? Or that the supposedly frigid Puritans--who called themselves "Saints," by the way--had something called a pre-contract, which was a license for premarital sex? Made in America is an excellent discussion of American English, but what makes the book such a treasure is that it offers much, much more. [via]
More editions of Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States:
- Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States: ISBN 068810312X (0-688-10312-X)
  Hardcover, Harpercollins
- Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States: ISBN 0380713810 (0-380-71381-0)
  Softcover, Avon Books
Neither Here nor There
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 1568958315 (1-56895-831-5)
Hardcover, Wheeler Pub Inc

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Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies -- in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales. Like many of his generation, Bill Bryson backpacked across Europe in the early seventies--in search of enlightenment, beer, and women. Twenty years later he decided to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth. The result is Neither Here Nor There, an affectionate and riotously funny pilgrimage from the frozen wastes of Scandinavia to the chaotic tumult of Istanbul, with stops along the way in Europe's most diverting and historic locales.
[via]
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Notes from a Small Island
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0380727501 (0-380-72750-1)
Softcover, Harpercollins

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Bill Bryson is an unabashed Anglophile who, through a mistake of history, happened to be born and bred in Iowa. Righting that error, he spent 20 years in England before deciding to repatriate: "I had recently read that 3.7 million Americans according to a Gallup poll, believed that they had been abducted by aliens at one time or another, so it was clear that my people needed me." That comic tone enlivens this account of Bryson's farewell walking tour of the countryside of "the green and kindly island that had for two decades been my home." [via]
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Paris to the Moon
by Adam Gopnik

ISBN 0679444920 (0-679-44492-0)
Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group

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In 1995 Gopnik was offered the plush assignment of writing the "Paris Journals" for the New Yorker. He spent five years in Paris with his wife, Martha, and son, Luke, writing dispatches now collected here along with previously unpublished journal entries. A self-described "comic-sentimental essayist," Gopnik chose the romance of Paris in its particulars as his subject. Gopnik falls in unabashed love with what he calls Paris's commonplace civilization--the cafés, the little shops, the ancient carousel in the park, and the small, intricate experiences that happen in such settings. But Paris can also be a difficult city to love, particularly its pompous and abstract official culture with its parallel paper universe. The tension between these two sides of Paris and the country's general brooding over the decline of French dominance in the face of globalization (haute couture, cooking, and sex, as well as the economy, are running deficits) form the subtexts for these finely wrought and witty essays. With his emphasis on the micro in the macro, Gopnik describes trying to get a Thanksgiving turkey delivered during a general strike and his struggle to find an apartment during a government scandal over favoritism in housing allocations. The essays alternate between reports of national and local events and accounts of expatriate family life, with an emphasis on "the trinity of late-century bourgeois obsessions: children and cooking and spectator sports, including the spectator sport of shopping." Gopnik describes some truly delicious moments, from the rites of Parisian haute couture, to the "occupation" of a local brasserie in protest of its purchase by a restaurant tycoon, to the birth of his daughter with the aid of a doctor in black jeans and a black silk shirt, open at the front. Gopnik makes terrific use of his status as an observer on the fringes of fashionable society to draw some deft comparisons between Paris and New York ("It is as if all American appliances dreamed of being cars while all French appliances dreamed of being telephones") and do some incisive philosophizing on the nature of both. This is masterful reportage with a winning infusion of intelligence, intimacy, and charm. --Lesley Reed [via]
More editions of Paris to the Moon:
- Paris to the Moon: ISBN 0783893981 (0-7838-9398-1)
  Hardcover, Thorndike Pr
- Paris to the Moon: ISBN 0679444920 (0-679-44492-0)
  Hardcover, Random House Publishing Group
Round Ireland With a Fridge
by Tony Hawks

ISBN 0091863279 (0-09-186327-9)
Softcover, Trafalgar Square

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On his only prior visit to Ireland, English songwriter-comic Tony Hawks had seen a man hitchhiking with a refrigerator. For years, he was wont to tell the tale during late-night drinking matches, and after one particularly heavy-duty night of partying, he awoke to find a bet scrawled pillowside: a friend wagered 100 pounds that Hawks wouldn't travel Ireland for a month with a refrigerator at his side.
Out of this stupid premise, a ridiculously amusing book was born. Quickly discovered by the Irish media, the thumbing Englishman finds that he and his box fridge are elevated to celebrity status, and there's no dearth of rides, places to stay, or goofy people to meet, from kings to spoons players to locals who take his fridge surfing. As insightful about the strange inner workings of Hawk's mind as it is about charming peculiarities of Irishmen--it's doubtful that Hawks would have been similarly embraced by Germans, Italians, or the French--Round Ireland with a Fridge is an entirely silly, heartwarming tale told in a rollicking funny and refreshing style. --Melissa Rossi [via]
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A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
by Eric Newby

ISBN 0864426046 (0-86442-604-6)
Softcover, Lonely Planet

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For more than a decade following the end of World War II, Eric Newby toiled away in the British fashion industry, peddling some of the ugliest clothes on the planet. (Regarding one wafer-thin model in her runway best, he was reminded of "those flagpoles they put up in the Mall when the Queen comes home.") Fortunately, Newby reached the end his haute-couture tether in 1956. At that point, with the sort of sublime impulsiveness that's forbidden to fictional characters but endemic to real ones, he decided to visit a remote corner of Afghanistan, where no Englishman had planted his brogans for at least 50 years. What's more, he recorded his adventure in a classic narrative, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. The title, of course, is a fine example of Newby's habitual self-effacement, since his journey--which included a near-ascent of the 19,800-foot Mir Samir--was anything but short. And his book seems to furnish a missing link between the great Britannic wanderers of the Victorian era and such contemporary jungle nuts as Redmond O'Hanlon.
At times it also brings to mind Evelyn Waugh, who contributed the preface. Newby is a less acidulous writer, to be sure, and he has little interest in launching the sort of heat-seeking satiric missiles that were Waugh's specialty. Still, A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush is a hilarious read. The author excels at the dispiriting snapshot, capturing, say, the Afghan backwater of Fariman in two crisp sentences: "A whole gale of wind was blowing, tearing up the surface of the main street. Except for two policemen holding hands and a dog whose hind legs were paralysed it was deserted." His capsule history of Nuristan also gets in some sly digs at Britain's special relationship with the violence-prone Abdur Rahman:
Officially his subsidy had just been increased from 12,000 to 16,000 lakhs of rupees. To the British he had fully justified their selection of him as Amir of Afghanistan and, apart from the few foibles remarked by Lord Curzon, like flaying people alive who displeased him, blowing them from the mouths of cannon, or standing them up to the neck in pools of water on the summits of high mountains and letting them freeze solid, he had done nothing to which exception could be taken.
Newby also surpasses Waugh--and indeed, most other travel writers--in another important respect: he's miraculously free of solipsism. Even the keenest literary voyagers tend to be, in the purest sense of the term, self-centered. But A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush includes wonderfully oblique portraits of the author's travel companion, Hugh Carless, and his wife, Wanda (who plays a starring role in such subsequent chronicles as Slowly down the Ganges). There are also dozens of brilliant cameo parts, and an indelible record of a stunning landscape. The roof of the world is, in Newby's rendering, both an absolute heaven and a low-oxygen hell. Yet the author never pretends to pit himself against a malicious Nature--his mountains are, in Frost's memorable phrase, too lofty and original to rage. Which is yet another reason to call this little masterpiece a peak performance. --James Marcus [via]
More editions of A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush:
- A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush: ISBN 0864426046 (0-86442-604-6)
  Softcover, Lonely Planet
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The Songlines
by Bruce Chatwin

ISBN 0140094296 (0-14-009429-6)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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The late Bruce Chatwin carved out a literary career as unique as any writer's in this century: his books included In Patagonia, a fabulist travel narrative, The Viceroy of Ouidah, a mock-historical tale of a Brazilian slave-trader in 19th century Africa, and The Songlines, his beautiful, elegiac, comic account of following the invisible pathways traced by the Australian aborigines. Chatwin was nothing if not erudite, and the vast, eclectic body of literature that underlies this tale of trekking across the outback gives it a resonance found in few other recent travel books. A poignancy, as well, since Chatwin's untimely death made The Songlines one of his last books. [via]
More editions of The Songlines:
- The Songlines: ISBN 0670806056 (0-670-80605-6)
  Hardcover, Penguin Group USA
- The Songlines: ISBN 0140094296 (0-14-009429-6)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Songlines
by Chatin

ISBN 0224024523 (0-224-02452-3)
Hardcover, Random House of Canada Ltd

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- Songlines: ISBN 0224024523 (0-224-02452-3)
  Hardcover, Random House of Canada Ltd
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A Time of Gifts
by Patrick Leigh Fermor, Jan Morris

ISBN 1590171659 (1-59017-165-9)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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A renowned British travel writer's chronicle of his 1200-mile walking trip from Holland to Hungary in 1934 at the age of eighteen provides insight into a Europe hovering on the brink of World War II. [via]
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Travels With Charley
by John Steinbeck

ISBN 0140053204 (0-14-005320-4)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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In September 1960, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. A picaresque tale, this chronicle of their trip meanders through scenic backroads and speeds along anonymous superhighways, moving from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Travels with Charley in Search of America is animated by Steinbeck's attention to the specific details of the natural world and his sense of how the lives of people are intimately connected to the rhythms of nature-to weather, geography, the cycle of the seasons. His keen ear for the transactions among people is evident, too, as he records the interests and obsessions that preoccupy the Americans he encounters along the way. Travels with Charley in Search of America, originally published in 1962, provides an intimate and personal look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life-a self-portrait of a man who never wrote an explicit autobiography. It was written during a time of upheaval and racial tension in the South-which Steinbeck witnessed firsthand-and is a stunning evocation of America on the eve of a tumultuous decade. [via]
More editions of Travels With Charley:
- Travels With Charley: ISBN 0142000701 (0-14-200070-1)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
- Travels With Charley: ISBN 0140053204 (0-14-005320-4)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Travels with Charley in Search of America
by John Steinbeck, Jay Parini

ISBN 0140187413 (0-14-018741-3)
Softcover, Penguin Group USA

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Book summary:
Today, nearly forty years after his death, Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck remains one of America?s greatest writers and cultural figures. Over the next year, his many works published as black-spine Penguin Classics for the first time and will feature eye-catching, newly commissioned art.
Penguin Classics is proud to present these seminal works to a new generation of readers?and to the many who revisit them again and again."

[via]
More editions of Travels with Charley in Search of America:
- Travels with Charley in Search of America: ISBN 0140187413 (0-14-018741-3)
  Softcover, Penguin Group USA
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Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy
by Frances Mayes

ISBN 0767900383 (0-7679-0038-3)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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In this memoir of her buying, renovating, and living in an abandoned villa in Tuscany, Frances Mayes reveals the sensual pleasure she found living in rural Italy, and the generous spirit she brought with her. She revels in the sunlight and the color, the long view of her valley, the warm homey architecture, the languor of the slow paced days, the vigor of working her garden, and the intimacy of her dealings with the locals. Cooking, gardening, tiling and painting are never chores, but skills to be learned, arts to be practiced, and above all to be enjoyed. At the same time Mayes brings a literary and intellectual mind to bear on the experience, adding depth to this account of her enticing rural idyll. [via]
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A Walk in the Woods
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0767902521 (0-7679-0252-1)
Softcover, Bantam Dell Pub Group

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Your initial reaction to Bill Bryson's reading of A Walk in the Woods may well be "Egads! What a bore!" But by sentence three or four, his clearly articulated, slightly adenoidal, British/American-accented speech pattern begins to grow on you and becomes quite engaging. You immediately get a hint of the humor that lies ahead, such as one of the innumerable reasons he longed to walk as many of the 2,100 miles of the Appalachian Trail as he could. "It would get me fit after years of waddlesome sloth" is delivered with glorious deadpan flair. By the time our storyteller recounts his trip to the Dartmouth Co-op, suffering serious sticker shock over equipment prices, you'll be hooked.
When Bryson speaks for the many Americans he encounters along the way--in various shops, restaurants, airports, and along the trail--he launches into his American accent, which is whiny and full of hard r's. And his southern intonations are a hoot. He's even got a special voice used exclusively when speaking for his somewhat surprising trail partner, Katz. In the 25 years since their school days together, Katz has put on quite a bit of weight. In fact, "he brought to mind Orson Welles after a very bad night. He was limping a little and breathing harder than one ought to after a walk of 20 yards." Katz often speaks in monosyllables, and Bryson brings his limited vocabulary humorously to life. One of Katz's more memorable utterings is "flung," as in flung most of his provisions over the cliff because they were too heavy to carry any farther.
The author has thoroughly researched the history and the making of the Appalachian Trail. Bryson describes the destruction of many parts of the forest and warns of the continuing perils (both natural and man-made) the Trail faces. He speaks of the natural beauty and splendor as he and Katz pass through, and he recalls clearly the serious dangers the two face during their time together on the trail. So, A Walk in the Woods is not simply an out-of-shape, middle-aged man's desire to prove that he can still accomplish a major physical task; it's also a plea for the conservation of America's last wilderness. Bryson's telling is a knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud funny trek through the woods, with a touch of science and history thrown in for good measure. (Running time: 360 minutes, four cassettes) --Colleen Preston [via]
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A Walk in the Woods : Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
by Bill Bryson

ISBN 0307279464 (0-307-27946-4)
Softcover, Bantam Books

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Book summary:
Your initial reaction to Bill Bryson's reading of A Walk in the Woods may well be "Egads! What a bore!" But by sentence three or four, his clearly articulated, slightly adenoidal, British/American-accented speech pattern begins to grow on you and becomes quite engaging. You immediately get a hint of the humor that lies ahead, such as one of the innumerable reasons he longed to walk as many of the 2,100 miles of the Appalachian Trail as he could. "It would get me fit after years of waddlesome sloth" is delivered with glorious deadpan flair. By the time our storyteller recounts his trip to the Dartmouth Co-op, suffering serious sticker shock over equipment prices, you'll be hooked.
When Bryson speaks for the many Americans he encounters along the way--in various shops, restaurants, airports, and along the trail--he launches into his American accent, which is whiny and full of hard r's. And his southern intonations are a hoot. He's even got a special voice used exclusively when speaking for his somewhat surprising trail partner, Katz. In the 25 years since their school days together, Katz has put on quite a bit of weight. In fact, "he brought to mind Orson Welles after a very bad night. He was limping a little and breathing harder than one ought to after a walk of 20 yards." Katz often speaks in monosyllables, and Bryson brings his limited vocabulary humorously to life. One of Katz's more memorable utterings is "flung," as in flung most of his provisions over the cliff because they were too heavy to carry any farther.
The author has thoroughly researched the history and the making of the Appalachian Trail. Bryson describes the destruction of many parts of the forest and warns of the continuing perils (both natural and man-made) the Trail faces. He speaks of the natural beauty and splendor as he and Katz pass through, and he recalls clearly the serious dangers the two face during their time together on the trail. So, A Walk in the Woods is not simply an out-of-shape, middle-aged man's desire to prove that he can still accomplish a major physical task; it's also a plea for the conservation of America's last wilderness. Bryson's telling is a knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud funny trek through the woods, with a touch of science and history thrown in for good measure. (Running time: 360 minutes, four cassettes) --Colleen Preston [via]
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A Year in Provence
by Peter Mayle, Judith Clancy

ISBN 0679731148 (0-679-73114-8)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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Who hasn't dreamed, on a mundane Monday or frowzy Friday, of chucking it all in and packing off to the south of France? Provençal cookbooks and guidebooks entice with provocatively fresh salads and azure skies, but is it really all Côtes-du-Rhône and fleur-de-lis? Author Peter Mayle answers that question with wit, warmth, and wicked candor in A Year in Provence, the chronicle of his own foray into Provençal domesticity.
Beginning, appropriately enough, on New Year's Day with a divine luncheon in a quaint restaurant, Mayle sets the scene and pits his British sensibilities against it. "We had talked about it during the long gray winters and the damp green summers," he writes, "looked with an addict's longing at photographs of village markets and vineyards, dreamed of being woken up by the sun slanting through the bedroom window." He describes in loving detail the charming, 200-year-old farmhouse at the base of the Lubéron Mountains, its thick stone walls and well-tended vines, its wine cave and wells, its shade trees and swimming pool--its lack of central heating. Indeed, not 10 pages into the book, reality comes crashing into conflict with the idyll when the Mistral, that frigid wind that ravages the Rhône valley in winter, cracks the pipes, rips tiles from the roof, and tears a window from its hinges. And that's just January.
In prose that skips along lightly, Mayle records the highlights of each month, from the aberration of snow in February and the algae-filled swimming pool of March through the tourist invasions and unpredictable renovations of the summer months to a quiet Christmas alone. Throughout the book, he paints colorful portraits of his neighbors, the Provençaux grocers and butchers and farmers who amuse, confuse, and befuddle him at every turn. A Year in Provence is part memoir, part homeowner's manual, part travelogue, and all charming fun. --L.A. Smith [via]
More editions of A Year in Provence:
- A Year in Provence: ISBN 0394572300 (0-394-57230-0)
  Hardcover, Random House Inc
- A Year in Provence: ISBN 0679731148 (0-679-73114-8)
  Softcover, Random House Inc
Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It
by Geoff Dyer

ISBN 1400031672 (1-4000-3167-2)
Softcover, Random House Inc

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More editions of Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It:
- Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It: ISBN 1400031672 (1-4000-3167-2)
  Softcover, Random House Inc