Travel Biography

Entertainment Weekly calls acclaimed author and essayist J. Maarten Troost a "funny, candid, and down-to-earth travel companion". Both witty and poignant, Headhunters on My Doorstep follows Troost as he retraces Robert Louis Stevenson’s path through the South Pacific. Somewhere between AA meetings in Tahiti and discovering how the Island of Merrymaking got its name, Troost reconnects with himself, his family, and the beauty of life.

After Paul Stutzman finished hiking the Appalachian Trail, he found himself longing for another challenge, another adventure. Trading his hiking boots for a bicycle, Paul set off to discover more of America. Starting at Neah Bay, Washington, and ending at Key West, Florida, Paul traversed the 5,000 mile distance between the two farthest points in the contiguous United States.

Early in 1815, Louisa Catherine Adams and her young son left St. Petersburg in a heavy Russian carriage and set out on a difficult journey to meet her husband, John Quincy Adams, in Paris. She traveled through the snows of eastern Europe, down the Baltic coast to Prussia, across the battlefields of Germany, and into a France that was then experiencing the tumultuous events of Napoleon's return from Elba.

At twenty-six years old, life looked a certain way for Nikki Vargas. She’d settled in New York City ready to join the ranks of the Carrie Bradshaws of the world, had landed in a promising advertising career, and was newly engaged to her college sweetheart. But between corporate happy hours and wedding dress fittings, she couldn’t shake a deep underlying sense of imposter syndrome, a voice telling her that she was rocketing towards a future that didn’t look like her. And so, she bought a plane ticket: first to Cartagena. Then to Panama. Then to Iguazú.

Within six months Barbara Schoichet lost everything: her job, her girlfriend of six years, and her mother to pancreatic cancer. Her life stripped bare, and armed with nothing but a death wish and a ton of attitude, Barbara pursues an unlikely method of coping. At the age of 50, she earns her motorcycle license, buys a Harley on eBay from two guys named Dave, and drives it alone from New York to Los Angeles on a circuitous trek loosely guided by her H.O.G. tour book and a whole lot of road whimsy.

For decades, Dick Conant paddled the rivers of America, covering the Mississippi, Yellowstone, Ohio, Hudson, as well as innumerable smaller tributaries. These solo excursions were epic feats of planning, perseverance, and physical courage. At the same time, Conant collected people wherever he went, creating a vast network of friends and acquaintances who would forever remember this brilliant and charming man even after a single meeting.

Leslie White knew she wanted more out of life - She found it in an unlikely place. Devastated from the loss of both parents to cancer nine months apart, Leslie vowed to change her life. She bought the neighbor’s old motorhome, found a job as a traveling histologist, and hit the road. But she found she could not trust the one person she was still holding onto.

On an 18-year-old Harley, just off the lift from a major engine repair, the author sets off on a motorcycle ride along the nation’s busiest highways on the east coast of America, from the northeast to the Florida Keys. He details what he went through in preparation for the ride and shares the history of what he encounters along the way. During the ride, he encounters an abundance of Road construction, unruly drivers, motor homes and 18-wheelers. Odd sights, sounds and smells will accompany him along the way with a colorful cast of characters to keep him entertained on this 3000-mile journey.

Ed Stafford - adventurer extraordinaire and Guinness World Record holder for walking the length of the Amazon River - likes a challenge. Casting about for an adventure that would top the extraordinary feat he recounts in Walking the Amazon, Stafford decides to maroon himself on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. His mission: to survive for 60 days equipped with nothing - no food, water, or even clothing - except the video cameras he would use to document his time.

In 1986, fresh out of college, Gilman and her friend Claire yearned to do something daring and original that did not involve getting a job. Inspired by a place mat at the International House of Pancakes, they decided to embark on an ambitious trip around the globe, starting in the People's Republic of China. At that point, China had been open to independent travelers for roughly ten minutes. Armed only with the collected works of Nietzsche, an astrological love guide, and an arsenal of bravado, the two friends plunged into the dusty streets of Shanghai.

When Susan quit her job in London and set sail off the south coast of England on her beloved sailboat, Isean, she was unaware this spontaneous departure would lead to a three-year journey spanning several countries across the continent. With only the very basics on board, resourcefulness becomes an unexpected source of joy and contentment. But for all the physical and navigational challenges of her journey, the other side of her story reveals a more important change - an inner journey - that took place along the way.

Early on in his life, Matt craved a return to nature. When he became an adult, he set aside his comfortable urban life and lived entirely off the land. In this riveting narrative that brings together epic adventure and spiritual quest, he shows us what extraordinary things the human body is capable of when pushed to its limits. He learns the secrets of the Tarahumara Indians, which help him run the 1,600-mile Pacific Crest Trail in just 58 days and endure temperature swings of 100 degrees.

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.

When Forrest Fenn was given a fatal cancer diagnosis, he came up with a bold plan: He would hide a chest full of jewels and gold in the wilderness, and publish a poem that would serve as a map leading to the treasure's secret location. But he didn't die, and after hiding the treasure in 2010, Fenn instead presided over a decade-long gold rush that saw many thousands of treasure hunters scrambling across the Rocky Mountains in pursuit of his fortune.

On June 21, 1992, two best friends summited Mount Rainier. Within hours, their exquisite accomplishment would be overshadowed by tragedy. On their descent, Jim Davidson fell through an ice bridge on Rainier's northeast flank, plunging eighty feet into a narrow crevasse inside the Emmons Glacier and dragging Mike Price in after him. Mike fell to his death; Jim, badly injured and armed with minimal gear, faced an almost impossible climb back out of the crevasse, up a nearly vertical ice wall.

Told with sincerity, humor, and wit, Trespassing Across America is both a fascinating account of one man's remarkable journey along the Keystone XL pipeline and a meditation on climate change, the beauty of the natural world, and the extremes to which we can push ourselves - both physically and mentally.

Into the North Wind chronicles Jill Homer’s record-breaking bicycle ride across Alaska on the Iditarod Trail. Jill is one of those “accidental athletes” who stumbled into endurance racing shortly after she moved to Alaska in 2005. Ever since, she dreamed about the chiming of ice crystals at 30 below zero, black spruce shadows in the moonlight, the ethereal dance of the Northern Lights, and a journey that could take her deeper into this transcendental world - the 1,000-mile race to Nome.

Wilderness guide and lifelong Alaskan Bjorn Dihle weaves personal experience with historical and contemporary accounts to explore the world of brown bears - from encounters with the Lewis and Clark Expedition to frightening attacks including the famed death of Timothy Treadwell, the controversies related to bear hunting, the animal's place in native cultures, and the impacts on the species from habitat degradation and climate change.

In July 1776 a pair of Franciscan friars, Francisco Atanasio Dominguez and Silvestre Velez de Escalante, were charged by the governor of New Mexico with discovering a route across the unknown Southwest to the new Spanish colony in California. They had other goals as well, some of them secret: converting the indigenous natives along the way to the true faith, discovering a semi-mythical paradise known as Teguayo, hunting for sources of gold and silver, and paving the way for Spanish settlements from Santa Fe to Monterey. In strict terms, the expedition failed.

Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.