Travel Memoir

On 30 January, 1981 Joe Tasker and Ade Burgess stood at 24,000 feet on the west ridge of Mount Everest. Below them were their companions, some exhausted, some crippled by illness, all virtually incapacitated. Further progress seemed impossible. Everest the Cruel Way is Joe Tasker's story of an attempt to climb the highest mountain on earth - an attempt which pushed a group of Britain's finest mountaineers to their limits. The goal had been to climb Mount Everest at its hardest: via the infamous west ridge, without supplementary oxygen and in winter.

For 18 years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's 14 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the Top is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the flat, safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and deadly places where only he can go.

Bougainville profite d'une mission royale aux Malouines pour réaliser son projet de tour du monde dont le but est surtout de découvrir de nouvelles terres dans le Pacifique.

The stories in this book are all true. Most began with a dream and conscientious study of maps and logistics. Others are true adventures. Most accounts are anecdotes taken from Cliff Jacobson's experiences as a professional canoeist guide in Minnesota and Canada.

Part recovery journal, part travel log, Recovery Road Trip follows one woman's solo road trip through America after her alcoholic father’s death. Through chance encounters, she creates inspiration for those seeking to overcome addiction and find their path. Meg thought giving up alcohol would lead her to a life of comfort, wisdom, and happiness. Years later, she still hasn’t gotten there. What is it that she’s missing? When her father—a raging alcoholic himself—dies, Meg, an only child, has to fly to California from her home in New Zealand to clean up the mess that was his life.

Explorer is the story of what first led Benedict Allen to head for the farthest reaches of our planet - at a time when there were still valleys and ranges known only to the remote communities who inhabited them. It is also the story of why, 30 years later, he is still exploring. It's the story of a journey back to a clouded mountain in New Guinea to find a man called Korsai who had once been a friend, and to fulfil a promise made as young men. It is also a story of what it is to be 'lost' and 'found'.

Copyright 2008, Marilynn Hughes. Out-of-Body Travel Magazine: Comte St. Germain - Forgotten Immortal Mystic of the Mystery Schools (For more info - www.outofbodytravel.org)

Having grown up on their great-grandfather’s stories, Royd Tolkien and his brother, Mike, have always enjoyed adventures. So when Mike is diagnosed with motor neurone disease, also known as ALS, the brothers decide to use the time they have left to tick off as much as possible from Mike’s bucket list, from remote camping in Norway to travelling through Royd’s beloved New Zealand. Yet, when Royd loses Mike, he discovers his brother had been writing another kind of bucket list: 50 things he wanted Royd to do after his death.

"If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber ranch, it must be the sort of life which I have not read of in books or experienced in person," wrote Mark Twain, and now you can share in that experience. The beloved American humorist spent seven years on a "pleasure trip" through the untamed wilderness of Nevada. Twain intended to spend three months touring silver mines, but the lure of rough terrain and comfortable clothes proved irresistible - as will this vibrant travelogue.

During the 1920s, T. E. Lawrence gained global attention, both for his involvement in the Middle Eastern anti-imperialist movement, and for his vivid and sensational writings about his experiences. Despite the passage of many years and the emergence of a whole new set of problems in the Middle East, and fuelled by the success of the hit movie Lawrence of Arabia, the T. E. Lawrence mystique continues to fascinate. Controversial and provocative, this revised and updated edition of Lawrence James's acclaimed biography penetrates and overturns the mythology that surrounds T. E. Lawrence. James traces the sometimes spurious Lawrence legend back to its truthful roots, yet remains dispassionate and generous in spirit throughout. The Golden Warrior presents readers with a fascinating study of one of the twentieth century's most remarkable figures.

Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?

It'd been a long time since I claimed some solitude in this blessed landscape; since I've done without life's little props. Here I have no friend, no dog, no radio, no clock, no phone, no roof, no body pollutants.

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.

Mary fought for a place as a professional artist without having to live as a tragic heroine. She married George Reid, Canadian muralist, and while their relationship was more equal than most, this was still the Edwardian age. How do you find time to paint when you need to get to the market to buy a chicken for dinner?

As much about the life of the city as it is about a life lived, sometimes, in the city, John Banville's "quasi-memoir" is as layered, emotionally rich, witty, and unexpected as any of his novels. Born and bred in a small town a train ride away from Dublin, Banville saw the city as a place of enchantment when he was a child, a birthday treat, the place where his beloved, eccentric aunt lived.

From her childhood in Norway to the seasons she spent working as a guide on Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago in the Arctic Ocean, Arnesen courted the cold, and her memoir reflects the knowledge and passion for Arctic and Antarctic exploration that grew with her adventures in the wintry reaches of Norway and beyond. Tracing her path from the heroic stories of explorers like Fridtjof Nansen and Ernest Shackleton to her own crossing of the Greenland Ice Cap in 1992, Arnesen credits the inspiring feats of those who preceded her.

Born in the late 1880s to a gritty mining magnate who made his millions in the California gold rush and a well-bred mother descended from one of New York’s distinguished families, society beauty Louise Arner Boyd was raised during a glittering era. After inheriting a staggering family fortune, she began leading a double life. She fell under the spell of the north in the late 1920s after a sailing excursion to the Arctic Ocean. Over the next three decades, she achieved international notoriety as a rugged and audacious polar explorer while maintaining her lifestyle as a society woman.

South Solo is a story of indomitable courage, of passion to save an endangered species like the albatross, and the unique adventure of solo kayaking in the frigid waters off Antarctica.

From dim sum in Hong Kong to giant platters of Peking duck in Beijing, fresh-baked croissants in Paris and pierogi on the snowy streets of Moscow, Platt takes us around the world, re-tracing the steps of a unique, and lifelong, culinary education. Providing a glimpse into a life that has intertwined food and travel in exciting and unexpected ways, The Book of Eating is a delightful and sumptuous trip that is also the culinary coming-of-age of a voracious eater and his eventual ascension to become, as he puts it, “a professional glutton.”

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.