Traces the personal crisis the author endured after the death of her mother and a painful divorce, which prompted her ambition to undertake a dangerous thousand-mile solo hike that both drove her to rock bottom and helped her to heal

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...

In September 1960, at age fifty-eight, the author and his poodle, Charley, riding in a three-quarter ton pickup truck named Rocinante, embarked on a journey across America. This chronicle of their trip through almost 40 states, meanders from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Providing an intimate look at one of America's most beloved writers in the later years of his life, this is a self-portrait of a man who never wrote...

The author takes readers on a tour of the land Down Under that goes far beyond packaged-tour routes.

"In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is ... [often considered] one of the most acute and affectionate portrayals of England in all its glorious eccentricity ever written. Two decades later, he set out again to rediscover that country, and the result is [this book]"--Amazon.com. Bryson...

Originally serialized in Knickerbocker's Magazine between 1847 and 1849, The Oregon Trail is a fascinating chronicle of Francis Parkman's travels on the Oregon Trail during the summer of 1846 through the western states of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, and Colorado. Living and hunting with a tribe of Native Americans for a period of time, Francis Parkman captures the spirit of the old west in this gripping 19th century narrative. Fans of the old west...

"An essential, surprising journey through the history, rituals, and landscapes of the American South--and a revelatory argument for why you must understand the South in order to understand America"-- The idiosyncrasies, dispositions, and habits of the South are stranger and more complex than much of the country tends to acknowledge. Perry shows that an understanding of its history and culture is the key to understanding the nation as a whole. Sharing...

"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...

"From the author of 1491--the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas--a deeply engaging new history that explores the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed totally different suites of plants and animals. Columbus's voyages brought them back together--and marked the beginning...

Buck's epic account of traveling the length of the Oregon Trail the old-fashioned way-- in a covered wagon with a team of mules, an audacious journey that hasn't been attempted in a century-- tells the rich history of the trail, the people who made the migration, and its significance to the country.