" In 1908 John C. Campbell was commissioned by the Russell Sage Foundation to conduct a survey of conditions in Appalachia and the aid work being done in these areas to create "the central repository of data concerning conditions in the mountains to which workers in the field might turn." Originally published in 1921, The Southern Highlander and His Homeland details Campbell's experiences and findings during his travels in the region, observing unique aspects of mountain communities such as their religion, family life, and forms of entertainment. Campbell's landmark work paved the way for folk schools, agricultural cooperatives, handicraft guilds, the frontier nursing service, better roads, and a sense of pride in mountain life -- the very roots of Appalachian preservation.

Journal of a Tour of Discovery Across the Blue Mountains in New South Wales in the Year 1813 was first published in 1823. It is a romantic and descriptive narrative of the journey to find a path across the Blue Mountains and received a great reception both in England and in Australia.

Of the 300 Spanish explorers who set out to discover and conquer the wilderness of North America, only four returned--after covering about 6,000 miles in the course of eight harrowing years. Cabeza de Vaca's incredible account of his 1528-1536 expedition of what is now the southern and southwestern United States and northern Mexico is unparalleled in the history of exploration. The first European to see and report sightings of the buffalo and the Mississippi River, he presents a narrative that crackles with excitement and suspense, from interactions with friendly and hostile Indians and observations on their culture, to passionate descriptions of the pristine beauty of the American wilderness. Unabridged republication of"

Seafaring merchant Amasa Delano kept adventure-filled journals through three commercial voyages that now offer a keen view of customs, culture, and trade two hundred years ago. Lively and readable, Delano's work gives a fascinating account of the world before industrialization, and is as accessible to today's reader as it was in 1817.

Liveright is proud to make available in paperback its reissue of the classic 1926 edition of The Travels of Marco Polo. Working from the traditional lyrical Marsden translation, editor Manuel Komroff corrected it against Henry Yule's magisterial two-volume work, including a chapter missing from the Marsden, to create a wonderfully readable and authoritative version. The artist Witold Gordon created thirty-two two-color woodcut illustrations for the original edition, published again here for the first time in over fifty years. Chronicling the thirteenth-century world from Venice, his birthplace, to the far reaches of Asia, Marco Polo tells of the foreign peoples he meets as he travels by foot, horse, and boat through places including Persia, Tibet, India, and, finally, China. There he serves in the court of Kublai Khan, then the leader of the most advanced and powerful country in the world. Polo also ventures to Shangtu, made immortal in Coleridge's poem "Xanadu."

This important archive of a five year window in Arthur Evans's diaries of his work in Crete celebrates the 1000th publication in the Archaeopress BAR series. Meticulously researched and transcribed by Ann Brown, research assistant at the Ashmolean Museum, Evans's notebooks include observations, drawings, descriptions and ideas. The introduction provides the background to the arrogant, single-minded, .. yet] extremely hardworking, quick-minded' man and his fascination with the archaeology of Crete. Also includes a gazetter of sites and short biographies of people mentioned in the text and as well as a catalogue of objects referred to.

From 1773 to 1777, naturalist William Bartram journeyed through the American South from the Carolinas to Florida to the Mississippi River. Bartram's classic account, "Travels," documents what he saw: a world of flora, fauna, cultures, and terrains unknown to most readers of his time--and, we too often assume, lost to us today.

"An Outdoor Guide to Bartram's Travels" reconstructs as closely as possible the original routes Bartram took. Featuring some fifty thoroughly tested and researched tours, the guide takes today's outdoor enthusiasts and history buffs along Bartram's path through what were once colonial towns and outposts, native kingdoms, and unspoiled wilderness. Some tours can be taken by car or bicycle; others can be taken only as Bartram himself would have traveled--on foot, by canoe, or on horseback. The tours are supplemented with more than 140 maps and photographs as well as informative sidebars and listings of nearby points of interest.

As the guide points out details of both the natural and manmade environments to be seen along each tour, it imparts an understanding of the forces at work on the landscape. Visitors to Paynes Prairie in north central Florida, for instance, are urged to notice not only networks of manmade dikes built in the last century but also evidence of current efforts to dismantle them and let the wetlands again manage itself.

At one level, the guide is an invitation into the past, to travel along with Bartram as he visits the lands of the American colonists, the Creek, the Seminole, and the Cherokee--all on the eve of the American Revolution. At another level, it is an invitation to the present: to see how the some parts of the American Southeast have changed in the last two centuries while others have survived in all their wild splendor. From the mountain grandeur of the Blue Ridge to the coastal beauty of Cumberland Island, from the formal gardens of Charleston to the False River plantations near the Mississippi River, the present answers the past in "An Outdoor Guide to Bartram's Travels."

Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the trans-Mississippi West.

In April 1805 Lewis and Clark and their party set out from Fort Mandan following the Missouri River westward. This volume recounts their travels through country never before explored by white people. With new personnel, including the Shoshone Indian woman Sacagawea, her husband Toussaint Charbonneau, and their baby, nicknamed Pomp, the party spent the rest of the spring and early summer toiling up the Missouri. Along the way they portaged the difficult Great Falls, encountered grizzly bears, cataloged new species of plants and animals, and mapped rivers and streams.

In the early spring of 1358 Francis Petrarch was invited by his friend Giovanni Mandelli, a leading military and political figure of Visconti Milan, to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pleased at the invitation, Petrarch nevertheless declined to undertake the journey. Fear of the sea, of shipwreck, and of "slow death and nausea worse than death" held him back. While Petrarch would not make the literal journey he offered Mandelli a pilgrimage guide instead of his companionship: "nevertheless, I shall be with you in spirit, and since you have requested it, I will accompany you with this writing, which will be for you like a brief itinerary."

Composed over three days between March and April of 1358, the Itinerarium ad sepulchrum domini nostri Yesu Christi takes the characteristic Petrarchan form of an epistle to a friend. Delivered to his correspondent in the form of an elegant booklet, the work presents a literary self-portrait that was meant to stand as "the more stable effigy of my soul and intellect" as well as "a description of places." Although the Holy Land is the ostensible destination of the pilgrimage, more than half of this charming guidebook is devoted to Petrarch's leisurely and loving descriptions of Italy's physical and cultural landscape. Upon reaching the Holy Land, Petrarch transforms himself into one of the greatest ten-cities-in-four-days Baedekers of all time, as Mandelli and the reader race through sacred landmarks and sites and end up, not at the sepulchrum domini nostri, but at the tomb of Alexander.

Theodore Cachey has prepared the first English-language translation of the Itinerarium. Based on an authoritative 14th-century manuscript in the BibliotecaStatale of Cremona, which is, according to the explicit declaration of the scribe, a copy of Petrarch's 1358 autograph, the translation is accompanied by the manuscript reproduced in facsimile and by a transcription of the Latin text. Cachey's extensive introduction and notes discuss Petrarch's text within the multiple contexts of travel in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and contemporary political and cultural issues, including Petrarch's relation to emergent forms of "cartographic writing" and Renaissance "self-fashioning." Petrarch's little book reveals him to be a man of his time, but one whose voice speaks clearly to us across centuries. The Itinerarium is a jewel rediscovered for the modern reader.

H.V. Morton's evocative account of his days in 1950s Rome--the fabled era of La Dolce Vita--remains an indispensable guide to what makes the Eternal City eternal. In his characteristic anecdotal style, Morton leads the reader on a well-informed and delightful journey around the city, from the Fontana di Trevi and the Colosseum to the Vatican Gardens loud with exquisite birdsong. He also takes time to consider such eternal topics as the idiosyncrasies of Italian drivers as well as the ominous possibilities behind an unusual absence of pigeons in the Piazza di San Pietro. As "TourismWorld.com" commented recently: "H.V. Morton.. . .wrote of Rome with style, involvement, and passion. His book "In Search of Rome" is perhaps the definitive guide book on the Eternal City."

Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the trans-Mississippi West.

This volume consists of journals, primarily by Clark, that cover the expedition's route up the Missouri River to Fort Mandan in present-day North Dakota and its frigid winter encampment there. It describes the party's encounters with and observations of area Indian tribes. Lewis and Clark collected critical information about traveling westward from Native Americans during this winter. This volume also includes miscellaneous material from the Corps of Discovery's first year.

Since the time of Columbus, explorers dreamed of a water passage across the North American continent. President Thomas Jefferson shared this dream. He conceived the Corps of Discovery to travel up the Missouri River to the Rocky Mountains and westward along possible river routes to the Pacific Ocean. Meriwether Lewis and William Clark led this expedition of 1804-6. Along the way they filled hundreds of notebook pages with observations of the geography, Indian tribes, and natural history of the trans-Mississippi West.

This last volume recounts the expedition's experiences as they continued their journey homeward from present-day Idaho and the party divided for separate exploration. Lewis probed the northern extent of the Louisiana Purchase on the Marias River, while Clark traveled southeast toward the Yellowstone to explore the river and make contact with local Indians. Lewis's party suffered from bad luck: they encountered grizzlies, horse thieves, and the expedition's only violent encounter with Native inhabitants, the Piegan Blackfeet. Lewis was also wounded in a hunting accident. The two parties eventually reunited below the mouth of the Yellowstone and arrived back in St. Louis to a triumphal welcome in September 1806.

In the 1930s, the discourse of travel furthered widely divergent and conflicting ideologies--socialist, conservative, male chauvinist, and feminist--and the major travel writers of the time revealed as much in their texts. Evelyn Waugh was a declared conservative and fascist sympathizer; George Orwell was a dedicated socialist; Graham Greene wavered between his bourgeois instincts and his liberal left-wing sympathies; and Rebecca West maintained strong feminist and liberationist convictions.

Bernard Schweizer explores both the intentional political rhetoric and the more oblique, almost unconscious subtexts of Waugh, Orwell, Greene, and West in his groundbreaking study of travel writing's political dimension. Radicals on the Road demonstrates how historically and culturally conditioned forms of anxiety were compounded by the psychological dynamics of the uncanny, and how, in order to dispel such anxieties and to demarcate their ideological terrains, 1930s travelers resorted to dualistic discourses.

Yet any seemingly fixed dualism, particularly the opposition between the political left and the right, the dichotomy between home and abroad, or the rift between utopia and dystopia, was undermined by the rise of totalitarianism and by an increasing sense of global crisis--which was soon followed by political disillusionment. Therefore, argues Schweizer, traveling during the 1930s was more than just a means to engage the burning political questions of the day: traveling, and in turn travel writing, also registered the travelers' growing sense of futility and powerlessness in an especially turbulent world.

In the 1930s, the discourse of travel furthered widely divergent and conflicting ideologies--socialist, conservative, male chauvinist, and feminist--and the major travel writers of the time revealed as much in their texts. Evelyn Waugh was a declared conservative and fascist sympathizer; George Orwell was a dedicated socialist; Graham Greene wavered between his bourgeois instincts and his liberal left-wing sympathies; and Rebecca West maintained strong feminist and liberationist convictions.

Bernard Schweizer explores both the intentional political rhetoric and the more oblique, almost unconscious subtexts of Waugh, Orwell, Greene, and West in his groundbreaking study of travel writing's political dimension. Radicals on the Road demonstrates how historically and culturally conditioned forms of anxiety were compounded by the psychological dynamics of the uncanny, and how, in order to dispel such anxieties and to demarcate their ideological terrains, 1930s travelers resorted to dualistic discourses.

Yet any seemingly fixed dualism, particularly the opposition between the political left and the right, the dichotomy between home and abroad, or the rift between utopia and dystopia, was undermined by the rise of totalitarianism and by an increasing sense of global crisis--which was soon followed by political disillusionment. Therefore, argues Schweizer, traveling during the 1930s was more than just a means to engage the burning political questions of the day: traveling, and in turn travel writing, also registered the travelers' growing sense of futility and powerlessness in an especially turbulent world.

In 1966, Edward Hoagland made a three-month excursion into the wild country of British Columbia and encountered a way of life that was disappearing even as he chronicled it. Showcasing Hoagland’s extraordinary gifts for portraiture—his cast runs from salty prospector to trader, explorer, missionary, and indigenous guide—Notes from the Century Before is a breathtaking mix of anecdote, derring-do, and unparalleled elegy from one of the finest writers of our time.

Provence through the eyes of its writers - those who wrote of it in Provencal or French and also those visitors who were moved by its beauty - that is the inspiration behind A Literary Guide to Provence. In this compact travel guide, Marseilles native Daniel Vitaglione presents a literary panorama of the region of southern France from the Avignon of Mistral to Colette's St. Tropez. Including such sites as the birthplace of Nostradamus and the ruins of the Marquis de Sade's castle, A Literary Guide to Provence presents a thousand years of history entwined with maps and photos that provide readers on tour with a sense of the historical import of this most beautiful of regions even as they experience it firsthand. Both authors of Provencal ancestry and those who came to love and live in Provence are featured in this comprehensive and enchanting picture of the garden place of France. The Riviera enticed Virginia Woolf. Toulon inspired two novels by Georges Sand. Robert Louis Stevenson resided in Hyeres, as did Edith Wharton. Le Lavandou was Willa Cather's favorite place. F. Scott Fitzgerald lived in St. Raphael and Juan-les-Pins, where he wrote Tender is the Night. This illustrated guide follows in these writers' footsteps, and the practical information on hotels and restaurants (phones, web sites, email, etc.) make it the ideal traveling companion for armchair tourists and those who cannot resist seeing Provence for themselves.

"One has to applaud the stylish confidence of the Blue Guide to Albania by Balkans expert James Pettifer. The guide provides a comprehensive account of the country's splendid archaeological sites and Ottoman heritage as well as less obvious points of interest" The Independent. NOTE that this is a print-on-demand edition, delivery may take approx. 3 weeks depending on the shipping address.

In 1907 J. M. Synge achieved both notoriety and lasting fame with The Playboy of the Western World. The Aran Islands, published in the same year, records his visits to the islands in 1898-1901, when he was gathering the folklore and anecdotes out of which he forged The Playboy and his other major dramas. Yet this book is much more than a stage in the evolution of Synge the dramatist. As Tim Robinson explains in his introduction, 'If Ireland is intriguing as being an island off the west of Europe, then Aran, as an island off the west of Ireland, is still more so; it is Ireland raised to the power of two.' Towards the end of the last century Irish nationalists came to identify the area as the country's uncorrupted heart, the repository of its ancient language, culture and spiritual values. It was for these reasons that Yeats suggested Synge visit the islands to record their way of life. The result is a passionate exploration of a triangle of contradictory relationships - between an island community still embedded in its ancestral ways but solicited by modernism, a physical environment of ascetic loveliness and savagely unpredictable moods, and Synge himself, formed by modern European thought but in love with the primitive.

Mungo Park's "Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa" has long been regarded as a classic of African travel literature. In fulfilling his mission to find the Niger River and in documenting its potential as an inland waterway for trade, Park was significant in opening Africa to European economic interests. His modest, low-key heroism made it possible for the British public to imagine themselves as a welcomed force in Africa. As a tale of adventure and survival, it has inspired the imaginations of readers since its first publication in 1799 and writers from Wordsworth and Melville to Conrad, Hemingway, and T. Coreghessan Boyle have acknowledged the influence of Park's narrative on their work.
Unlike the large expeditions that followed him, Park traveled only with native guides or alone. Without much of an idea of where he was going, he relied entirely on local people for food, shelter, and directions throughout his eventful eighteen month journey. While his warm reaction to the people he met made him famous as a sentimental traveler, his chronicle also provides a rare written record of the lives of ordinary people in West Africa before European intervention. His accounts of war, politics, and the spread of Islam, as well as his constant confrontations with slavery as practiced in eighteenth-century West Africa, are as valuable today as they were in 1799. In preparing this new edition, editor Kate Ferguson Marsters presents the complete text and includes reproductions of all the original maps and illustrations.
Park's narrative serves as a crucial text in relation to scholarship on the history of slavery, colonial enterprise, and nineteenth-century imperialism. The availability of this full edition will give a new generation of readers access to a travel narrative that has inspired other readers and writers over two centuries and will enliven scholarly discussion in many fields.

There is nothing quite like parrot pie for breakfast. First one must catch one's parrot, of course, and build the hearth to bake it, but that is all in a days work for the women you will meet in this riveting anthology, whose experiences in settling the wildernesses of the world challenged to the limits their spirit, resourcefulness, and even survival.

Three men and three women: a plant collector, a merchant and his novelist wife, a military officer, and two famous women travelers went to China between the Opium War and the formal end of the opium trade, 1842-1907. Their range of perspectives, their acquaintance with one another and their similar scope of travel to Hong Kong, the treaty ports, and Sichuan lend intensity to their picture of China and the Western presence there.
What the travelers record reveals is a continuity in the response of the West and China to each other. Susan Schoenbauer Thurin's study of these writings presents a rich tapestry of impressions, biases, and cultural perspectives that inform our own understanding of the Victorians and their views of the world outside their own.
The strange mix of opium and missionaries, the aura of fabled "Cathay" and its valuable trade items, the attraction and repulsion of the exotic otherness the travelers experience, reflect the political, religious, and racial views of their era, and explain the allure of the Orient that, in part, characterized their age. "Victorian Travelers and the Opening of China, 1842-1907," is a remarkable look into the cultural past.

Martin and Osa Johnson thrilled American audiences of the 1920s and 30s with their remarkable movies of far-away places, exotic peoples, and the dramatic spectacle of African wildlife. Their own lives were as exciting as the movies they made--sailing through the South Sea Islands, dodging big game at African waterholes, flying small planes over the veldt, taking millionaires on safari. Osa Johnson's ghostwritten autobiography, I Married Adventure, became a national bestseller. The 1939 film version was billed as "the story of World Exploration's First Lady, whose indomitable daring would be stayed by neither snarling lion nor crouching leopard, tropic tempest nor savage tribesman " Heroes to millions, Osa and Martin seemed to embody glamor, daring, and the all-American ideal of self-reliance. Probing beneath the glamor of the Johnsons' public image, Pascal and Eleanor Imperato explore the more human side of the couple's lives--and ways the Johnsons shaped, for better and for worse, America's vision of Africa. Drawing on many years of research, access to a wealth of letters and archives, interviews with many who worked closely with the Johnsons, and their own deep knowledge of Africa, the authors present a fascinating and intimate portrait of this intrepid couple.

Playwright John Millington Synge visited an isolated group of rocky islands west of Ireland each year between 1898 and 1901, where he found inspiration for his dramas among the folklore and anecdotes told to him by local fisherfolk. This memorable record of Synge's days amid the islanders and their tales of fairies and Celtic heroes offers an enchanting portrait of the wellspring of the Irish cultural renaissance.

For years, serious naturalists have treasured their copies of Francis Harper's naturalist's edition of The Travels of William Bartram as the definitive version of Bartram's pioneering survey. Complete with notes and commentary, an annotated index, maps, a bibliography, and a general index, this classic is now back in print for the first time in decades. Harper's knowledge of natural history transforms Bartram's accounts of the southern states from a curious record of personal observation from the past into a guidebook useful to modern biologists, historians, ornithologists, and ethnologists. In 1773 the naturalist and writer William Bartram set out from Philadelphia on a four-year journey ranging from the Carolinas to Florida and Mississippi. For Bartram it was the perfect opportunity to pursue his interest in observing and drawing plants and birds. Combining precise and detailed scientific observations with a profound appreciation of nature, he produced a written account of his journey that would later influence both scientists and poets, including Wordsworth and Coleridge. Bartram was among the first to integrate scientific observations and personal commentary. Unlike most of his contemporaries, he condemned the idea that nature was simply a resource to be consumed. Instead, he championed the aesthetic and scientific values of an "infinite variety of animated scenes, inexpressibly beautiful and pleasing." From his field journals he prepared a report for his benefactor and a larger report for the public. The former was rediscovered much later and published in 1943; the latter was published in 1791 and became the basis for the modern Bartram's Travels.