Travel Biography

Alice Randall, award-winning professor, songwriter, and author presents “a celebration of all things country music” (Ken Burns) as she reflects on her search for the first family of Black country music.

In 1849 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died, but he carried on alone, eventually reaching the fabled city of gold, Timbuktu. His five-and-a-half-year, 10,000-mile adventure ranks among the greatest journeys in the annals of exploration, and his discoveries are considered indispensable by modern scholars of Africa.

Journeys to Impossible Places continues the story Simon started in his phenomenal Sunday Times best seller Step by Step, which traced the first decades of his life from depressed and unemployed teenager through to his early TV programmes. Now Simon takes us on the epic and thrilling adventures that followed, in beautiful, tricky and downright dangerous corners of the world, as he travelled through the Tropics, to remote paradise islands, jungles dripping with heat and life and on nerve-wracking secret missions.

Keena Roberts split her adolescence between the wilds of an island camp in Botswana and the even more treacherous halls of an elite Philadelphia private school. In Keena's funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.

This audiobook includes unabridged recordings of Mark Twain's Chapters From My Autobiography; 5 pieces of short non-fiction; and 6 pieces of his groundbreaking, wide-ranging travel writing.

Stephanie White, from Charlotte NC, made up her mind to tackle the three individual 200-mile distance races known as the Triple Crown of 200’s. This includes the Bigfoot 205 mile race, Tahoe 200 mile race, and the Moab 240 mile race. While trying to figure out how to train for these races, she decided to do a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and learned so much about herself and life, in general, along the way.

Holly FitzGerald and her husband, Fitz - married less than two years - set out on a yearlong honeymoon adventure of a lifetime, backpacking around the world. Five months into the trip their plane crash lands in Peru at a penal colony walled in by jungle, and their blissfully romantic journey turns into a terrifying nonstop labyrinth of escape and survival.

Did Peary reach the North Pole? Was Admiral Byrd the first to fly over it? Did Frederick Cook actually make the first ascent of Mt. McKinley? Spanning 450 years of history, Great Exploration Hoaxes tells the spellbinding stories of ten men who pursued glory at any cost even the truth.

In November 2015 Sarah Outen completed her five-year, 25,000 mile journey looping the planet by cycling across Europe, Asia and North America and canoeing and kayaking across the North Pacific and most of the North Atlantic.

A language barrier is no match for love. Lauren Collins discovered this firsthand when, in her early 30s, she moved to London and fell for a Frenchman named Olivier - a surprising turn of events for someone who didn't have a passport until she was in college. But what does it mean to love someone in a second language? Collins wonders, as her relationship with Olivier continues to grow entirely in English. Are there things she doesn't understand about Olivier, having never spoken to him in his native tongue?

Three years ago, award-winning actress Angelina Jolie took on a radically different role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Here are her memoirs from her journeys to Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia, and Ecuador, where she lived and worked and gave her heart to those who suffer the world's most shattering violence and victimization. Here are her revelations of joy and warmth amid utter destitution...compelling snapshots of courageous and inspiring people for whom survival is their daily work.

Peter Pond, a fur trader, explorer, and amateur mapmaker, spent his life ranging much farther than Milford, Connecticut, where he was born and died (1740-1807). He traded around the Great Lakes, on the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers, in the Canadian Northwest, and was a partner in Montreal’s North West Company. Knowing 18th-century North America on a scale that few others did, Pond drew some of the earliest maps of western Canada. David Chapin presents Pond’s life as part of a generation of traders who came of age between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution.

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, Orwell, like many other European socialists, was quick to join the fight against fascism. And so, in December that year, he found himself in Catalonia with a 40-year-old rifle, no helmet, uniform, maps or tools, and a platoon of near children under his command.

A free spirit by nature, Marnie has always been too adventurous for a suburban life or middle-class marriage. After her divorce, a brief, unsuitable relationship produces her miracle child, Toby. When Toby is two, Marnie decides to take charge of his upbringing, rather than letting society, strangers, and daycares raise him. She believes travel is the best teacher - so the single mom swaps her car for an RV, and she and Toby set off to explore what is possible within their limited means.

In the spring of 2021, as the UK's latest pandemic lockdowns were lifted, Nick Butter set out from the Eden Project to become the fastest person to cover every mile of Britain's mainland coastline on foot. Battling the most extreme winds Britain had seen in 100 years, days of torrential rain and the unrelenting hills of Western Scotland and Cornwall, Nick suffered two broken bones and countless injuries, whilst taking on two marathons a day, every day, for 100 days.

When best-selling mystery writer David Rosenfelt and his family moved from Southern California to Maine, he thought he had prepared for everything. They had mapped the route, brought three GPSs for backup, as well as refrigerators full of food, and stoves and microwaves on which to cook them. But traveling with 25 dogs turned out to be a bigger ordeal than he anticipated, despite RVs, the extra kibble, volunteers (including a few readers), and camping equipment.

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.

As a young, single mother, Sara Schulting Kranz discovered her path to forgiveness and healing from the scars of sexual abuse and the trauma of an unexpected divorce started with a daily practice of actively embracing the power and beauty of nature. Along the way, Sara learned a key lesson that to heal from anything you must walk through it on your own terms.

The Roman Forum, the Leaning Tower, the Piazza San Marco: these are the sights synonymous with Italy. But such landmarks only scratch the surface of this magical country's offerings. In See You in the Piazza, Frances Mayes introduces us to the Italy only the locals know, as she and her husband, Ed, eat and drink their way through all 20 regions - from Friuli to Sicily. Along the way, she seeks out the cultural and historic gems not found in traditional guidebooks.

Laura was in her early twenties and directionless when she quit her job to backpack in Bolivia. Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.