From the beet fields of North Dakota to the campgrounds of California to Amazon’s CamperForce program in Texas, employers have discovered a new, low-cost labor pool, made up largely of transient older adults. These invisible casualties of the Great Recession have taken to the road by the tens of thousands in RVs and modified vans,…
Paul Theroux spent a lifetime crossing the globe, exploring exotic and rich history and folklore of foreign places. For his tenth travel book, Theroux explores a piece of America — the Deep South. He finds there a paradoxical place, full of incomparable music, unparalleled cuisine, and yet also some of the nation’s worst schools, housing,…
Hills and the Sea, first published in 1906 to critical acclaim, collects thirty-eight of Hilaire Belloc’s essays, spanning several periods of time and travel. Author Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc was an Anglo-French writer and historian who became a naturalised British subject in 1902. He was one of the most prolific writers in England during…
Considered a masterpiece of travel literature for nearly a century, The Sea and the Jungle is a wise and witty book of firsts: ostensibly a lighthearted story of a Londoner’s first ocean voyage, it is also a carefully crafted journalistic account of the first successful ascent of the Amazon River and its tributary, the Madeira,…
When Matthiessen went to Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and, possibly, to glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard, he undertook his five-week trek as winter snows were sweeping into the high passes. This is a radiant and deeply moving account of a “true pilgrimage, a journey of the heart.” Author Peter Matthiessen…
If you’re going to take a hike, the Appalachian Trail is probably the place to go. And Bill Bryson is surely the most entertaining guide you’ll find. He introduces us to the history and ecology of the trail and to some of the other hardy (or just foolhardy) folks he meets along the way. Author…
Young heroes J., George and Harris take a boating holiday along the Thames to escape the weary workaday world and improve their health, but they are ill prepared for the various escapades, difficulties and vicissitudes that they encounter along the watery way. Author Jerome Klapka Jerome (2 May 1859 – 14 June 1927) was an…
The classic travel narrative of a Don Quixote-of-the-seas the first man to circumnavigate the world single handedly. Author Joshua Slocum was the first man to sail single-handedly around the world. He was a Nova Scotian born, naturalised American seaman and adventurer, and a noted writer. In 1900 he wrote a book about his journey ‘Sailing…
When artist, illustrator, writer, and adventurer Rockwell Kent first published N by E in a limited edition in 1930, his account of a voyage on a 33-foot cutter from New York Harbor to the rugged shores of Greenland quickly became a collectors’ item. Author Rockwell Kent (June 21, 1882 March 13, 1971) was an American…
Alexis de Tocqueville is more quoted than read; commentators across the political spectrum invoke him as an oracle who defined America and its democracy for all times. But in fact his masterpiece, Democracy in America, was the product of a young man’s open-minded experience of America at a time of rapid change. In Tocqueville’s Discovery…
