Travel Writing Memoirs

Inside the Rainbow is a rendition of true events under the skies and in the skies of old Alaska long before it became the 49th state. It features the lives of Marie, a courageous country girl and her lifelong mate, Sandy, who become teachers in the one-room rural school of the North. They had just been married and graduated from college as they headed for their first job on a remote Aleutian island.

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.”

A hard-charging CEO of a large enterprise, Ben Feder discovers that he is losing the very things that sustained him over his years of business success. Unsettled by his insight and determined to rebuild family relationships and rejuvenate his sense of purpose, he risks his career on a life-altering physical and emotional journey. Together with his wife and children, Feder sets off for an exotic island on a self-prescribed sabbatical year. That experience transforms them all.

Mountaineering in the Sierra Nevada is an engrossing blend of scientific exploration and personal adventure. Clarence King describes the ascent of Mounts Tyndall, Shasta, and Whitney with a scientific poet’s eye, and makes the grandeur of the cliffs, the peaks, the glaciers, and the meadows of Yosemite Valley come alive through his remarkable gifts of portrayal. King describes nature like a master painter while his portrait of the people of California 20 years after the Gold Rush finds engaging expression in a subtle shift of style.

A torrent of books about the Vietnam War has flooded the market, most of them documenting battles, strategy, and personal journals of life during the war. There are far fewer books about soldiers who have returned to that country of conflict four decades later. Most men and women who served during the Vietnam War were only too glad to leave and never look back. I was one of those people until last year when an unexpected phone call had me considering something I never thought I would do...return to Vietnam.

Encounters with sharks, buffalo, wild boar, and even a "sea serpent" are just a few of the strange and unique experiences author Charles Douglas "Doug" Oudin had while living on Catalina Island. Now, in this memoir, he shares his story. For those who know and love Catalina - and those who have always wanted to visit - Between Two Harbors reveals a glimpse of what life on the island is really like.

From his bid to become Eudora Welty's lawn boy to the time George Plimpton offered to punch him in the nose, lineage has always been important to Rick Bass. Now at a turning point - in his midfifties, with his long marriage dissolved and his grown daughters out of the house - Bass strikes out on a journey of thanksgiving. His aim: to make a memorable meal for each of his mentors, to express his gratitude for the way they have shaped not only his writing but his life.

A brutal tractor crash forces small-town Kev into a new world, both physically and spiritually. Angry and resistant to change, the bitter bushman finds himself on a journey of inner growth that takes him from Australia's searing outback to the icy mountains of Norway's fjordland. Facing his demons of doubt in a strangely familiar land, Kev learns to "listen with all his senses" as he strives to fulfill his heart's desire: to find his soulmate.

The American West was a notion, not a nation. It was a process, not a place. The native animal and human life of the West was displaced, replaced, and exterminated - 60 million bison to make way for European bog animals, billions of passenger pigeons for nothing, and 90 percent of aboriginal native Americans, out of an original population of possibly a hundred million, by accident and design. Late in the summer of 2013, I set out to find the Old West, what it had been, and what had replaced it.

After a lifetime in broadcasting, Greg Dobbs, a two-time National Emmy Award-winning journalist and former foreign correspondent for ABC News, shares the funny, funky, scary, stupid, dangerous, distasteful, unwise, and unbelievable behind-the-scenes stories (including those of his Emmy Award-winning broadcasts) that a journalist can encounter in his lifetime - adventures that are possibly even more interesting than the news being covered. Dobbs tells his stories with the humor, empathy, and enthusiasm that only someone who has covered news in more than 80 countries could muster.

An audiobook about our travels in a motor home across America and life. An inspirational audiobook about this great country, its people, our faith, selling everything we own, and following His plan, picking up the pieces after a death of a child, even going to heaven and living to tell about it...a story for everyone! At the end, a segment to answer questions as to the costs of RVing full-time, a how-to-do-it, and other important information before hitting the road.

Magdalena Wasiura's journal of living for a year in the Berber community in Morocco.

In 1995, at the age of 23, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversations, and, per a Communist dean's orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, and Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China's changes as he was.

Recruited to work on a documentary, Julian goes to New York convinced he has hit big time at last. Finding the project cancelled, he wanders the city streets and, with nowhere else to go, decides to set out hitchhiking for San Francisco. Revisiting this timeless American journey finds an unseen nation in rough shape. Along the road are homeless people and anarchists who have dropped out of society altogether, and blue-collar Americans who seem to have lost all meaning in forgotten towns and food deserts.

Teresa O'Kane had always longed to see the world. She owned scads of travel books and maps and was about to buy yet another bookcase to hold the many Lonely Planet guides and travel essays that she had accumulated over the years when she turned to her husband and said, "I'm tired of storing our dreams. Let's live them!" Within a month, they bought one-way tickets to Morocco, leased out their home, and set out on a journey of the African continent top to bottom from Casablanca to Cape Town.

Simon Majumdar is probably not your typical idea of an immigrant. As he says, "I'm well rested, not particularly poor, and the only time I ever encounter 'huddled masses' is in line at Costco." But immigrate he did, and thanks to a Homeland Security agent who asked if he planned to make it official, the journey chronicled in Fed, White, and Blue was born. In it, Simon sets off on a trek across the United States to find out what it really means to become an American, using what he knows best: food.

Lynn Schooler had recently lost a dear friend and was feeling his marriage slipping away from him when he set out on a daring journey - first by boat, then on foot - into the Alaskan wilderness to clear his head. His solo expedition, recounted in Walking Home, is filled with the awe and danger of being on one's own in the wild, being battered by the elements and even, for two harrowing days, becoming the terrified quarry of a grizzly bear. But the formidable, lonely landscape is also rich with human stories....

In 2008, Lynn Barber's passion for birding led her to drive, fly, sail, walk, stalk, and sit in search of birds in 25 states and three provinces. Traveling more than 175,000 miles, she set a 21st century record at the time, second to only one other person in history. Over 272 days, Barber observed 723 species of birds in North America north of Mexico.

Everyone wants to escape their boring, stagnant lives full of inertia and regret. But so few people actually have the bravery to run - run away from everything and selflessly seek out personal fulfillment on the other side of the world where they don’t understand anything and won’t be expected to. The world is full of cowards. Tim Anderson was pushing 30 and working a string of dead-end jobs when he made the spontaneous decision to pack his bags and move to Japan.

Heartfelt and awe inspiring, Leigh Ann Henion's Phenomenal is a moving tale of physical grandeur and emotional transformation, a journey around the world that ultimately explores the depths of the human heart. A journalist and young mother, Henion combines her own conflicted but joyful experiences as a parent with a panoramic tour of the world's most extraordinary natural wonders.