Adventure Writing

Seven years ago, readers and listeners around the country fell in love with a singular American voice: Rinker Buck, whose infectious curiosity about history launched him across the West in a covered wagon pulled by mules and propelled his book about the trip, The Oregon Trail, to ten weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Now, Buck returns to chronicle his latest incredible adventure: building a wooden flatboat from the bygone era of the early 1800s and journeying down the Mississippi River to New Orleans.

An honest look at some of the questions and myths about living overseas, using entertaining and informative real-life examples to illustrate what is true and what is not so true. The goal is to provide the listener with the good and the bad - not to persuade you to become an expat or not - but to provide enough insight to decide what might be best for you.

From the authors of the number-one best-selling The Sea Hunters comes more unforgettable true adventures with famous shipwrecks.

Like so many others, David Lebovitz dreamed about living in Paris ever since he first visited the city in the 1980s. Finally, after a nearly two-decade career as a pastry chef and cookbook author, he moved to Paris to start a new life. Having crammed all his worldly belongings into three suitcases, he arrived, hopes high, at his new apartment in the lively Bastille neighborhood.

No Baggage is a memoir that will resonate with adventurers and homebodies alike - it's at once a romance, a travelogue, and a bright, modern take on the age-old questions: How do you find the courage to explore beyond your comfort zone? Can you love someone without the need for commitment or any expectations for the future?

Thoreau gives an account of three canoe and hiking journeys - by himself and with others - through the mostly uninhabited forests of Maine in the 1850s. Identifying birds, trees and plants by their botanical as well as their common names, he also records the Indian names of lakes, rivers and plants. He investigates the connections between waterways and trails, and provides detail on camping, fishing and hunting in the woods, using whatever is at hand. Extolling the beauty of the wilds that he encounters, Thorough’s narrative is also imbued with elements of his philosophy.

In 1935, Fred A. Birchmore left the small American town of Athens, Georgia, to continue his college studies in Europe. In his spare time, Birchmore toured the continent on a one-speed bike he called Bucephalus (after the name of Alexander the Great's horse). A born wanderer, Birchmore broadened his travels to include the British Isles and even the Mediterranean. After a lengthy, unplanned detour in Egypt, Birchmore put his studies on hold, pointed Bucephalus eastward, and just kept going.

An adventure to blow you away! That's what Jack and Annie get when the Magic Tree House whisks them back to the 1870s. They land on the prairie near a one-room schoolhouse, where they meet a teenaged schoolteacher, some cool kids, and one big, scary bully. But the biggest and scariest thing is yet to come.

A deeply personal travel memoir that combines alpine adventure, family connections, and spiritual encounters in two very different worlds: a Himalayan village and Vancouver, Canada. In 2012, Michael Schauch and his wife, Chantal, undertook an expedition deep in the Himalaya of northern Nepal, into a remote valley that had been closed off to outsiders for decades. They led a team of artists (a photographer, a musician, and a painter), with the objective of capturing a moment in time through their unique lenses.

For years, British journalist Cash Peters trekked around Europe and America visiting some of the tackiest attractions in the world for his hugely popular public-radio series, The Bad Taste Tours. But a guy can only take so much. Now, as Peters prepares to leave his travel-reporting days behind forever, he takes us along on some of the more ridiculous journeys and adventures of his career.

Join John Rogers as he ventures out into an uncharted London like a redbrick Indiana Jones in search of the lost meaning of our metropolitan existence. Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city's remote and forgotten reaches. When John Rogers packed away his rucksack to start a family in London he didn't stop travelling. But instead of canoeing up the Rejang River to find retired headhunters in Sarawak, he caught the ferry to Woolwich in search of the edge of the city at Crayford Marshes.

Acclaimed travel writer Jonathan Raban invites us aboard his boat, a floating cottage cluttered with books, curling manuscripts, and dead ballpoint pens. He's about to sail alone from Seattle to the Alaskan Panhandle, following an ancient sea route rich in history, riddles, and whirlpools. It's the perfect setting for Raban's prodigious intellect, eloquence, and eye for detail.

Raised in the extreme religious cult called the Children of God, Juliana Buhring was frequently punished for being a rebel and finally broke away. Her soul mate was an explorer seeking the source of unmapped rivers in Africa. When he was killed by a crocodile, her world went dark. To escape paralyzing grief, Buhring set herself a goal. Never having seriously ridden a bike, she set out to ride one around the world.

Jim Rogers and his fiancie, began their "Millennium Adventure" on January 1, 1999. They traveled through 116 countries, including many where most have rarely ventured, such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, and Angola. They saw the real world from the ground up - the only vantage point from which it can be truly understood - economically, politically, and socially and have saw the world and understood it as it really is.

The Animal Dialogues tells of Craig Childs' own chilling experiences among the grizzlies of the Arctic, sharks off the coast of British Columbia and in the turquoise waters of Central America, jaguars in the bush of northern Mexico, mountain lions, elk, Bighorn Sheep, and others. More than chilling, however, these stories are lyrical, enchanting, and reach beyond what one commonly assumes an "animal story" is or should be. The Animal Dialogues is a book about another world that exists alongside our own.

Canoeing the Congo narrates the journey of Phil Harwood, who undertook an epic five-month solo attempt to canoe the Congo River in war-torn Central Africa. It was a historic 'first descent' from the true source in the highlands of Zambia. Just short of 3,000 miles long, the Congo River is the eighth longest in the world and the deepest river in the world, with a flow rate second only to the Amazon. Along the way, Phil encountered numerous waterfalls, huge rapids, man-eating crocodiles, hippos, aggressive snakes...

What secrets do the Las Vegas storm drains keep? What discoveries wait in the dark? What's beneath the neon? Armed with a flashlight, tape recorder, and expandable baton, Las Vegas CityLife writer-editor Matthew O'Brien explored the Las Vegas flood-control system for more than four years. Beneath the Neon: Life and Death in the Tunnels of Las Vegas chronicles O'Brien's adventures in subterranean Vegas. He follows the footsteps of a psycho killer. He braces against a flood. He parties with naked crack-heads.

Would you risk being arrested by Iran’s secret police or subject yourself to a "torture massage" in North Korea just so you could say you’d survived to tell the tale? And would you even want to share a crude-oil bath with a retired croc hunter in Azerbaijan? Or pull a golden ring from a turd? Graham and his wife Lisa have done all of these things. Travel Agents - the warm and witty follow-up to the best-selling Travel Seekness - continues the unforgettable story of Lisa and Graham’s hilarious and often hair-raising escapades around the world.

We never know what will happen next in Florida. We know only that, any minute now, something will. Every few months, Dave Barry gets a call from some media person wanting to know, "What the hell is wrong with Florida?" Somehow, the state's acquired an image as a subtropical festival of stupid, and as a loyal Floridian, Dave begs to differ. Sure, there was the 2000 election. And people seem to take their pants off for no good reason. And it has flying insects the size of LeBron James. But it is a great state, and Dave is going to tell you why.

The North Pole, originally published in 1910, makes available Robert E. Peary's own account of his expedition in the Arctic. It provides hotly contested evidence that remains an indispensable key in deciding who deserved the coveted title "Discoverer of the North Pole". It is also a gripping adventure story that is impossible to put down.