New York Times bestseller - "Thrilling, tender, utterly absorbing . . . Every chapter shimmered with truth." --Cheryl Strayed

From travel writer Jedidiah Jenkins comes a long-awaited memoir of adventure, struggle, and lessons learned while bicycling the 14,000 miles from Oregon to Patagonia.

On the eve of turning thirty, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn't choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent the next sixteen months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and profound reflections on life soon attracted hundreds of thousands of followers and got him featured by National Geographic and The Paris Review.

In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates the adventure that started it all: the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world, and the internal journey that prompted it. As he traverses cities, mountains, and inner boundaries, Jenkins grapples with the questions of what it means to be an adult, his struggle to reconcile his sexual identity with his conservative Christian upbringing, and his belief in travel as a way to "wake us up" to life back home.

A soul-stirring read for the wanderer in each of us, To Shake the Sleeping Self is an unforgettable reflection on adventure, identity, and a life lived without regret.

With his trademark charm and sharp wit, Newby leaves no stone unturned in his quest for wonderfully detailed and quirky knowledge to share with his reader. Insightful, hilarious and sheer fun, this is an adventure not to be missed, by Britain's best-loved travel guide, and father of the genre. 'Why don't you start in Naples and go clockwise round the Mediterranean instead of dashing off in all directions like a lunatic?' Fortunately, Eric Newby followed his wife Wanda's advice, and so begins the wonderfully madcap adventure, 'On the Shores of the Mediterranean'. Beginning during the Newbys' wine harvest in Tuscany, the adventurous but disaster-prone pair follow a path using every form of transportation conceivable (public bus, taxi, foot, bike, boat), from Naples to Venice, along the Adriatic to Greece, Turkey, Jerusalem and North Africa, from sipping wildly extravagant cocktails in San Marco to being cordially invited to Libya by Colonel Gaddafi.

The Durrell family are immortalised in Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals and its ITV adaptation, The Durrells. But what of the real life Durrells? Why did they go to Corfu in the first place - and what happened to them after they left? The real story of the Durrells is as surprising and fascinating as anything in Gerry's books, and Michael Haag, with his first hand knowledge of the family, is the ideal narrator, drawing on diaries, letters and unpublished autobiographical fragments. The Durrells of Corfu describes the family's upbringing in India and the crisis that brought them to England and then Greece. It recalls the genuine characters they encountered on Corfu - Theodore the biologist, the taxi driver Spiro Halikiopoulos and the prisoner Kosti - as well as the visit of American writer Henry Miller. And Haag has unearthed the story of how the Durrells left Corfu, including Margo's and Larry's last-minute escapes before the War. An extended epilogue looks at the emergence of Larry as a world famous novelist, and Gerry as a naturalist and champion of endangered species, as well as the lives of the rest of the family, their friends and other animals. The book is illustrated with family photos from the Gerald Durrell Archive, many of them reproduced here for the first time.

WINNER OF THE FORTNUM & MASON FOOD AND DRINK AWARDS DEBUT DRINK BOOK OF THE YEAR 2019

WINNER OF THE LOUIS ROEDERER INTERNATIONAL WINE BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2018

'Wine is alive, ageing and changing, but it's also a triumph over death. These grapes should rot. Instead they ferment. What better magic potion could there be, to convey us to the past?'

Impelled by a dual thirst, for wine and for knowledge, Nina Caplan follows the vine into the past, wandering from Champagne's ancient chalk to the mountains of Campania, via the crumbling Roman ruins that flank the river Rhône and the remote slopes of Priorat in Catalonia. She meets people whose character, stubbornness and sometimes, borderline craziness makes their wine great: an intrepid Englishman planting on rabbit-infested Downs, a glamorous eagle-chasing Spaniard and an Italian lawyer obsessed with reviving Falernian, legendary wine of the Romans. In the course of her travels, she drinks a lot and learns a lot: about dead conquerors and living wines, forgotten zealots and – in vino veritas, as Pliny said – about herself.

In this lyrical and charming book, Nina Caplan drinks in order to remember and travels in order to understand the meaning of home. This is narrative travel writing at its best.

'Beautiful . . . Justifies its place alongside nature writing classics such as H is for Hawk' NEW STATESMAN 'Wonderful ... both frank and fearless' TELEGRAPH BEST TRAVEL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Fascinating' GUARDIAN TOP TEN NATURE MEMOIRS From Mexico to the Arctic ice, grey whale mothers swim with their calves. Following them, by bus, train and ferry, are Doreen and her toddler Max, in pursuit of a wild hope. Doreen first visited Alaska as a young journalist reporting on climate change among indigenous whaling communities. There, drawn deeply into an Iñupiaq family, she joined the bowhead whale hunt, watching for polar bears under the never-ending light. Years later, now a single mother living in a hostel, Doreen embarks on this extraordinary journey: following the grey whale migration back to the Arctic, where greys and bowheads meet at the melting apex of our planet. 'Soundings got under my skin. I finished it in tears' AMY LIPTROT 'What a voice! What a book!' CHARLES FOSTER 'Soulful, honest, insightful, humane and propulsive' JINI REDDY 'Thrilling, passionate and tender-hearted' HELEN JUKES WINNER OF THE RSL GILES ST AUBYN AWARD ONE OF SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S TEN BEST BOOKS ABOUT TRAVEL OF 2022

When Jose Saramago decided to write a book about Portugal, his only desire was that it be unlike all other books on the subject, and in this he has certainly succeeded. Recording the events and observations of a journey across the length and breadth of the country he loves dearly, Saramago brings Portugal to life as only a writer of his brilliance can. Forfeiting the usual sources such as tourist guides and road maps, he scours the country with the eyes and ears of an observer fascinated by the ancient myths and history of his people. Whether it be an inaccessible medieval fortress set on a cliff, a wayside chapel thick with cobwebs, or a grand mansion in the city, the extraordinary places of this land come alive.
Always meticulously attentive to those elements of ancient Portugal that persist today, he examines the country in its current period of rapid transition and growth. "Journey to Portugal" is an ode to a country and its rich traditions.

Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of when Dick Proenneke first broke ground and made his mark in the Alaskan wilds in 1968, this bestselling memoir features an all-new foreword by Nick Offerman plus color photographs not seen in print for over 20 years. To live in a pristine land unchanged by man...to roam a wilderness through which few other humans have passed...to choose an idyllic site, cut trees, and build a log cabin...to be a self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available...to be not at odds with the world, but content with one's own thoughts and company... Thousands have had such dreams, but Dick Proenneke lived them. He found a place, built a cabin, and stayed to become part of the country. One Man's Wilderness is a simple account of the day-to-day explorations and activities he carried out alone, and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company. From Dick's journals, and with firsthand knowledge of his subject and the setting, Sam Keith has woven a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond.

Oliver Sacks, the bestselling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is most famous for his studies of the human mind: insightful and beautifully characterized portraits of those experiencing complex neurological conditions. However, he has another scientific passion: the fern . . . Since childhood Oliver has been fascinated by the ability of these primitive plants to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is the enthralling account of his trip, alongside a group of fellow fern enthusiasts, to the beautiful province of Oaxaca, Mexico. Bringing together Oliver's endless curiosity about natural history and the richness of human culture with his sharp eye for detail, this book is a captivating evocation of a place, its plants, its people, and its myriad wonders. 'Light and fast-moving, unburdened by library research but filled with erudition' - New Yorker

"An uncensored road trip through gay American life in the early sixties "Jack Nichols is now known as a founding father of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, editor of GAY (the first gay weekly newspaper), co-founder of the Mattachine Societies of Washington, DC, and Florida, and a warrior who broke ground for gay equality. In his early twenties, however, he was dedicated to romance, ardor, and wanderlust-living the life of a gypsy and making love with abandon. "MORE EXCITING THAN THE WILDEST FICTION. . . . Jack takes his reader on the road with him (Jack often hitchhiking in only T-shirt and jeans) where he encounters, beds down (and sometimes hustles) dozens of attractive 'numbers' who come his way.""- Donn Teal, Author of The Gay Militants: 1971 & 1994""This might be called Jack Nichols' version of Kerouac's beat classic "On the Road." With a variety of companions, and with little money in his pocket, in the early 60s, he drove, hitchhiked, rode buses, and even walked for a couple of long stretches from Washington, DC, to New York and then through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. He recalls in considerable detail a variety of individuals with whom he had erotic encounters. The title The Tomcat Chronicles is fully descriptive.""- Vern L. Bullough, PhD, RN, Editor of Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context""Jack Nichols, the gay liberation pioneer, has been a lifelong friend who helped to illuminate my concept of homophobia. Oscar Wilde believed one's life should be a work of art. Jack's life, which has always combined courage, social awareness and sexual passion, is certainly such a work.""- George Weinberg, PhD, Author of Society and the Healthy Homosexual and 13 other books (the psychotherapist credited with coining the term homophobia)""THE VIVID DETAIL AND GRACEFUL PROSE THAT CHARACTERIZE THE WRITING OF JACK NICHOLS open a window into a time long before gay men appeared weekly on tv or before anti-sodomy laws had been banned.""- Rodger Streitmatter, PhD, Author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America""The Tomcat Chronicles is a gay pioneer's version of "City of Night."- James T. Sears, PhD, Author of Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South; Editor of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education (from the Foreword)"

The English Channel is the busiest waterway in the world. Ferries steam back and forth, trains thunder through the tunnel. The narrow sea has been crucial to our development and prosperity. It helps define our notion of Englishness, as an island people, a nation of seafarers. It is also our nearest, dearest playground where people have sought sun, sin and bracing breezes. Tom Fort takes us on a fascinating, discursive journey from east to west, to find out what this stretch of water means to us and what is so special about the English seaside, that edge between land and seawater. He dips his toe into Sandgate's waters, takes the air in Hastings and Bexhill, chews whelks in Brighton, builds a sandcastle in Sandbanks, sunbathes in sunny Sidmouth, catches prawns off the slipway at Salcombe and hunts a shark off Looe. Stories of smugglers and shipwreck robbers, of beachcombers and samphire gatherers, gold diggers and fossil hunters abound.

There are only a handful of destinations left in the world that have retained their ability to shock the traveller with their unique perspective. These places still awaken a sense of deep wonder as they offer the rare opportunity to observe the world from a different angle. Ethiopia is one of those rare countries. This book is the perfect companion to any exploration of Ethiopia, be it in the precarious saddle of an Abyssinian pony, or from the folds of an armchair. A compendium of all things Ethiopian, the book throws wide open precious windows of understanding, allowing you to gaze deeper into the landscape and people with additional wonder. As well as peopling the land with its own caste of priest kings descended from Solomon and Sheba, Ethiopia has long attracted the attentions of eccentric adventurers, Jesuit explorers, foolish would-be conquerors, as well as saints and sinners in equal measure ...and the keen interest of writers of all stripes. What you have here is quite literally the best bits from whole libraries of past travel accounts, hand-picked by Yves-Marie Stranger, a long time Ethiopia resident, trilingual interpreter and writer.

This collection will bring together a selection of works by travellers studying natural philosophy as well as natural history. The set will cover a wide geographical spread, including accounts from Australia, Asia, Africa and South America. The style of writing and subject matter are also diverse. Some offer more reflective writing, mingling scientific observation with romantic musing and high style, others have a more specific focus - such as Bates description of Mimicry in butterflies in Bali. The first volume includes a general introduction to the collection and each succeeding volume also includes a new introduction by the editor, which places each work in its historical and intellectual context.

Three years ago, award-winning actress Angelina Jolie took on a radically different role as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Here are her memoirs from her journeys to Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Pakistan, Cambodia and Ecuador, where she lived and worked and gave her heart to those who suffer the world's most shattering violence and victimization. Here are her revelations of joy and warmth amid utter destitution, compelling snapshots of courageous and inspiring people for whom survival is their daily work and candid notes from a unique pilgrimage that completely changed the actress's worldview - and the world within herself.

Die ikoniese en geliefde skrywer Dana Snyman deel sy 100 gunstelingstories in ’n buksie van ’n bundel, net betyds vir Kersfees. Die stories strek van ou familiestories, reisverhale uit Dana se Weg!- dae en ware lewensdrama uit sy Huisgenoot­dae, tot intieme verhale uit sy meer onlangse werk, waar hy self­ondersoekend en met ’n skerp waarnemingsin ons land en sy mense betrag. Daar is ook 20 nuwe stories, oor die pandemie en oor rugby. Wat al die stories in gemeen het, is die meelewendheid en waardering vir gewone mense wat Dana se werk kenmerk, saam met sy soms skokkende eerlike insigte in sy eie psige, as kind van Suid­Afrika. Soos Sarie se resensent opgemerk het: “Hy laat jou met nuwe oë na alledaagse gebeure en mense om jou kyk.”

Translating Italy in the Eighteenth Century offers a historical analysis of the role played by translation in that complex redefinition of women's writing that was taking place in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. It investigates the ways in which women writers managed to appropriate images of Italy and adapt them to their own purposes in a period which covers the 'moral turn' in women's writing in the 1740s and foreshadows the Romantic interest in Italy at the end of the century. A brief survey of translations produced by women in the period 1730-1799 provides an overview of the genres favoured by women translators, such as the moral novel, sentimental play and a type of conduct literature of a distinctively 'proto-feminist' character. Elizabeth Carter's translation of Francesco Algarotti's II Newtonianesimo per le Dame (1739) is one of the best examples of the latter kind of texts. A close reading of the English translation indicates a 'proto-feminist' exploitation of the myth of Italian women's cultural prestige. Another genre increasingly accessible to women, namely travel writing, confirms this female interest in Italy. Female travellers who visited Italy in the second half of the century, such as Hester Piozzi, observed the state of women's education through the lenses provided by Carter. Piozzi's image of Italy, a paradoxical mixture of imagination and realistic observation, became a powerful symbolic source, which enabled the fictional image of a modern, relatively egalitarian British society to take shape.

The companion guide to the hysterical television show of the same name, in which Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant force their arrestingly simple pal Karl Pilkington on a global journey ""He'd have been happier in medieval times in a village where you didn't travel beyond the local community." --Stephen Merchant" A cult celebrity due to his role in "The Ricky Gervais Show," the most-downloaded podcast ever, Karl Pilkington has been accused of being a comic creation, so unburdened is he by complex thought--but that is truly just him. The trio's newest project mines Karl massive provinciality: put simply, Karl is not big on traveling. Given the choice, he'll go on vacation to Devon or Wales or, if pushed, eat English food on a package tour of the Mediterranean. So what happened when he was convinced by Gervais and Merchant to go on an epic adventure to see the Seven Wonders of the World? Does travel truly broaden the mind? Find out in Karl Pilkington's hilarious travel diaries.

Adventure, memoir, storytelling and celebration of all things maritime meet in Waypoints, a beautifully written account of sea journeys from Scotland's west coast. In the book Ian Stephen reveals a lifetime's love affair with sailing; each voyage honours a seagoing vessel, and each adventure is accompanied by a spell-binding retelling of a traditional tale about the sea. His writing is enchanting and lyrical, gentle but searching, and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations of each vessel, drawn by his wife, artist Christine Morrison. Ian Stephen is a Scottish writer, artist and storyteller from the remote and bewitching Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He fell in love with boats and sailing as a boy, pairing this love affair with a passion for the beautiful but merciless Scottish coastline, an inspiration and motivating force behind his poems, stories, plays, radio broadcasts and visual arts projects for many years. This book will be a delightful and absorbing read for anyone with a passion for sailing and the seas, Scotland's landscape and coastlines, stories and the origins of language and literature.

Translating Travel examines the relationship between travel writing and translation, asking what happens when books travel beyond the narrow confines of one genre, one literary system and one culture. The volume takes as its starting point the marginal position of contemporary Italian travel writing in the Italian literary system, and proposes a comparative reading of originals and translations designed to highlight the varying reception of texts in different cultures. Two main themes in the book are the affinity between the representations produced by travel and the practices of translation, and the complex links between travel writing and genres such as ethnography, journalism, autobiography and fiction. Individual chapters are devoted to Italian travellers' accounts of Tibet and their English translations; the hybridization of journalism and travel writing in the works of Oriana Fallaci; Italo Calvino's sublimation of travel writing in the stylized fiction of Le cittA invisibili; and the complex network of literary references which marked the reception of Claudio Magris's Danubio in different cultures.

'All mountaineers develop differently. Some go higher, some try ever-steeper faces and others specialise in a particular range or region. I am increasingly drawn to remoteness - to places where few others have trod.' The Wild Within is the third book from Simon Yates, one of Britain's most accomplished and daring mountaineers. With his insatiable appetite for adventure and exploratory mountaineering, Yates leads unique expeditions to unclimbed peaks in the Cordillera Darwin in Tierra del Fuego, the Wrangell St-Elias ranges on the Alaska-Yukon border, and Eastern Greenland. Laced with dry humour, he relates his own experience of the rapid commercialisation of mountain wilderness, while grappling with his new-found commitments as a family man. At the same time he must endure his role in the film adaptation of Joe Simpson's Touching The Void, having to relive the events of that trip to Peru for a Hollywood director. Yates' subsequent escape to the some of the world's most remote mountains isn't quite the experience it once was, as he witnesses first hand the advance of modern communications into the wilderness, signalled by the ubiquitous mobile phone masts appearing in once-deserted mountain valleys. He is left to dwell on the remaining significance of mountain wilderness and must rediscover what the notion of 'wild' means for him now.

Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.