A Sense of Place: Stories about Travel

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A Sense of PlaceStories about Travel

• In the BEHS Library

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UNITED STATES
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A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson

• Brysons hilarious account of attempting to hike
  the Appalachian Trail. Paired with an out of
  shape hiking partner, he soon learns the dangers
  and difficulties of avoiding trailside traumas
  such as obnoxious hikers, overweight backpacks,
  and irritating, pesky creatures.

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The Lost Continentby Bill Bryson

• A travelogue by Bill Bryson is as close to a
  sure thing as funny books get. The Lost Continent
  is no exception. Following an urge to rediscover
  his youth (he should know better), the author
  leaves his native Des Moines, Iowa, in a journey
  that takes him across 38 states. Lucky for us, he
  brought a notebook. With a razor wit and a kind
  heart, Bryson serves up a colorful tale of
  boredom, kitsch, and beauty when you least expect
  it.

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Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz

• Horowitz travels the American South and East
  Coast, visiting Civil War battlefields and
  reporting on the unusual people he meets.

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Road Swing by Steve Rushin

• Rushin, a reporter for Sports Illustrated,
  describes the year he took off from his job to
  visit famous and obscure sports sites throughout
  the U.S.

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Blue Highways A Journey into Americaby William
Least Heat Moon

William Least Heat Moon tells of the time he
spent traveling the "blue highways"--backroads--of
American from the East to West Coasts, and the
unusual people met along the way.
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Travels With Charley In Search of Americaby
John Steinbeck

Steinbeck traveled from coast to coast at sixty
years of age with his French poodle, Charley, and
made observations about nature and culture across
America.
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Bad Land An American Romanceby Jonathan Raban

• Examines the westward migration of homesteaders
  into the Montana and Dakota plains looking at the
  people who settled the area and the hardships
  they endured.

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Travels With Lizbethby Lars Eighner

• The author recounts his experiences with
  homelessness and the struggles that he and his
  dog faced in their life on the street.

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Dharma Girl by Chelsea Cain

• Cain, a lifelong Bellingham resident and the
  daughter of two former hippies, travels across
  the U.S. with her mother to discover her roots
  and revisit the commune where she spent her early
  years.

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Refuge An Unnatural History of Time and
Placeby Terry Tempest Williams

When her mother is diagnosed with cancer,
Williams looks to the wilderness for answers
about how to cope and find peace. She found
solace in Utah, where the natural landscape,
beautiful and peaceful, was being threatened by
global warming.
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Im a Stranger Here Myselfby Bill Bryson

• The author, a U.S. born citizen who lived in
  England for twenty years, describes the
  experiences he had when he returned to America to
  live with his family. In a series of very funny
  essays, he comments on a variety of aspects of
  life in America and the differences between the
  U.S. and Britain.

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Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evilby John
Berendt

• Shots rang out in Savannah's grandest mansion in
  the misty, early morning hours of May 2, 1981.
  Was it murder or self-defense? For nearly a
  decade, the shooting and its aftermath
  reverberated throughout this city. John
  Berendt's sharply observed, suspenseful, and
  witty narrative reads like a thoroughly
  engrossing novel, and yet it is a work of
  non-fiction. Berendt skillfully interweaves a
  hugely entertaining first-person account of life
  in this isolated remnant of the Old South with
  the unpredictable twists and turns of a landmark
  murder case.
• It is a spellbinding story peopled by a gallery
  of remarkable characters the well-bred society
  ladies of the Married Woman's Card Club the
  turbulent young redneck gigolo the hapless
  recluse who owns a bottle of poison so powerful
  it could kill every man, woman, and child in
  Savannah the aging and profane Southern belle
  who is the 'soul of pampered self-absorption'
  the uproariously funny black drag queen the
  acerbic and arrogant antiques dealer the
  sweet-talking, piano-playing con artist young
  blacks dancing the minuet at the black debutante
  ball and Minerva, the voodoo priestess who works
  her magic in the graveyard at midnight.
• These and other Savannahians act as a Greek
  chorus, with Berendt revealing the alliances,
  hostilities, and intrigues that thrive in a town
  where everyone knows everyone else. Midnight in
  the Garden of Good and Evil A Savannah Story is
  a sublime and seductive reading experience.
  Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written,
  this enormously engaging portrait of a most
  beguiling Southern city is certain to become a
  modern classic.(Barnes and Noble.com).

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Driving Mr. Albert A Trip Across America with
Einsteins Brainby Michael Paterniti

• Paterniti follows up on a story he once heard
  that Einsteins brain has been stored, since his
  death, in a Tupperware container, in a basement
  in New Jersey. When he learns the story is true,
  he tracks down the man who is storing the brain,
  and the two of them decide to travel across the
  country to deliver it to Einstiens last living
  relative.

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The Legacy of Lunaby Julia Butterfly Hill

• Julia Butterfly Hill spend a year living in an
  ancient cedar tree named Luna to try to stop
  the Maxaam Corporation from chopping down the
  tree as part of their clear-cutting. Hills
  story is one about environmentalism, courage, and
  the rescue of the natural Californian landscape.

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Into the Wildby Jon Krakauer

• Krakauer retraces the steps across the American
  West that were followed by Chris McCandless, a
  young man from a well-to-do family who
  mysteriously forfeited his inheritance to live
  alone in the wilderness of Alaska but was found
  dead only months after beginning his journey.

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All Over But the Shoutinby Rick Bragg

• Rick Bragg tells of his mother, who
  single-handedly raised three sons while working
  as a cotton-picker and ironing woman in the
  South. Bragg attributes his success as a
  journalist (he has won the Pulitzer Prize) to his
  mothers sacrifices, which allowed him to go to
  school rather than work, and then edge his way up
  the ladder of success in his profession.

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AFRICA
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The Shadow of KilimanjaroOn Foot Across East
Africaby Rick Ridgeway

• The author shares the story of his experiences
  while on a five-hundred-kilometer walking tour of
  East Africa from Mt. Kilimanjaro to the shores of
  the Indian Ocean and discusses some of the
  environmental issues that are threatening the
  land.

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Looking for Lovedu Days and Nights in Africaby
Ann Jones

When Ann Jones decided to travel overland from
Tangier to the southern tip of Africa with an
Englishman she barely knew, she lived firsthand
the worst and best of travel. Muggleton, at 28
half Jones's age and twice her size, turns out to
be a road warrior with a foul temper who insists
on charging headlong across a continent with
practically no roads. The chasms of mud and water
that cover the "roads" of Zaire cause the duo
innumerable hardships and frustrations. Muggleton
comes down with malaria, Jones's feet turn gray
and her toenails fall off, the jeep falls to
pieces--all to cover in five days what passing
Africans walk in two.
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Malaria Dreams An African Adventure.By
Stuart Stevens 

• Malaria Dreams is a tale of high adventure
  across Africa, recounted with the wit and humor
  that delighted readers of Night Train to
  Turkistan, Stuart Stevens's highly praised first
  book. The story begins when a "geologist" friend
  mentions to Stevens that he has a Land Rover in
  the Central African Republic which he'd like to
  get back to Europe. It's only later, when Stevens
  discovers that half of Africa thinks his friend
  is a spy and the other half is convinced he's a
  diamond smuggler, that the intrepid author begins
  to realize he should have asked a few more
  questions before leaving home. And then there's
  the small problem of the Land Rover's seizure by
  the minister of mines, who has appropriated it as
  his personal car. It is a new Land Rover. The
  minister likes it very much.
• Three months later, Stevens and his
  twenty-three-year-old companion (the only woman
  to ever transfer from Bryn Mawr to the University
  of Oklahoma) have somehow managed to drive-though
  not in the ill-fated Land Rover-across the
  wildest part of Africa, emerging scathed but
  still alive on the shores of the Mediterranean.
• Malaria Dreams takes readers along on close
  encounters with killer ants in Cameroon,
  revolutionary soldiers in the middle of Lake Chad
  (a huge mudhole lacking any water), and strangely
  frenzied Peace Corps parties in Niger. There's a
  long search for a functional set of springs in
  Timbuktu and near disastrous bouts with sickness
  and automotive malfunctions in the middle of the
  Sahara.
• Through it all, Stevens and his ex-fashion model
  companion battle the odds, and often each other,
  to return home to tell this unlikely, highly
  amusing tale.

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The Names of Things A Passage in the Egyptian
Desertby Susan Brind Morrow

• Susan Brind Morrow takes readers from her
  magical and sometimes troubled childhood in New
  York State, to the austere splendors of the
  Egyptian desert. Written with a keen
  understanding of language, Brind Morrow traces
  the routes of ideas and images through word
  origins and time, bringing forth an inner life of
  words. (Publishers notes).

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Take Me With Youby Brad Newsham

• After two decades of travels around the world,
  Brad Newsham decides to pack his bags again to
  return the gift of magic that travel has brought
  into his life. His plan is to give a little of
  that back to someone he meets along the way--to
  invite a new untraveled friend to visit him,
  all-expenses paid, in America. Over the course of
  100 days through the Philippines, India, Egypt,
  Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, he
  asks, "What would these people make of my
  culture?

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AUSTRALIA
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In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

• Australia, Bryson informs us in his hilarious
  travelogue, has more things that can kill you
  than any other continentand then he goes about
  telling us stories of various travelers and their
  unfortunate encounters with these dangers. In
  the meantime, he also tells a very funny story of
  his own journey through the land down under.

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The Lost Tribe A Harrowing Passage into New
Guineas Heart of Darknessby Edward Marriott

• The author shares his experiences searching for
  the Liawep tribe, a group of less than one
  hundred natives found living in the deep jungle
  of Papua New Guinea in 1993, and discusses what
  happened to the small society of primitive people
  when they were confronted with modern life.

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ANTARCTICA
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Mrs. Chippys Last Expeditionby Caroline
Alexander

• A fact-based memoir in which Mrs. Chippy, a male
  cat belonging to the ship on which Sir Ernest
  Shackleton set out to explore Antarctica in 1914,
  discusses his role in keeping the expedition on
  the right track.

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The Endurance Shackletons Legendary Antarctic
Expeditionby Caroline Alexander

• Provides an account of the Shackleton expedition
  of 1914, during which explorer Ernest Shackleton
  and his crew of twenty-seven set out to cross the
  Antarctic continent on foot, only to have their
  ship, Endurance, break up eighty-five miles short
  of their destination, leaving them stranded for
  close to two years. Includes a photographic
  record of the adventure.

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The Artarctic Challengedby Admiral Lord
Mountevans

• Mountevans is the only living survivor of an
  expedition to Antarctica made by Scott in the
  International Geophysics Year (1956-9). He
  reviews all that is known about the Antarctic
  down to the 1956 expeditions and summarizes the
  dangerous features of the continent, the
  hardships there, and the possible valuable
  discoveries that were yet to be made.

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THE MIDDLE EAST and ASIA
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Honeymoon in Purdah by Alison Wearing

• A collection of essays in which Canadian Alison
  Wearing reflects on the experiences she had while
  traveling through Iran and the wide variety of
  people she met while she was there. Her essays
  offer a humorous, insightful perspective on the
  land, people, culture, and politics of the
  country.

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Seven Years in Tibetby Heinrich Harrer

• Originally published in 1953, this adventure
  classic recounts Austrian mountaineer Heinrich
  Harrer's 1943 escape from a British internment
  camp in India, his daring trek across the
  Himalayas, and his happy sojourn in Tibet, then,
  as now, a remote land little visited by
  foreigners. Warmly welcomed, he eventually became
  tutor to the Dalai Lama, teenaged god-king of the
  theocratic nation. The author's vivid
  descriptions of Tibetan rites and customs capture
  its unique traditions before the Chinese invasion
  in 1950, which prompted Harrer's departure. A
  1996 epilogue details the genocidal havoc wrought
  over the past half-century.

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The Snow Leopardby Peter Matthiesen

• In the autumn of 1973, the writer Peter
  Matthiessen set out in the company of zoologist
  George Schaller on a hike that would take them
  250 miles into the heart of the Himalayan region
  of Dolpo, "the last enclave of pure Tibetan
  culture on earth." Their voyage was in quest of
  one of the world's most elusive big cats, the
  snow leopard of high Asia, a creature so rarely
  spotted as to be nearly mythical Schaller was
  one of only two Westerners known to have seen a
  snow leopard in the wild since 1950.

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All the Way to Heavenby Stephen Alter

• Stephen Alter chronicles the experiences he had
  as he spent his childhood living at a hill
  station in the Himalayas and discusses how he and
  his brothers combined their American heritage
  with the Indian culture.

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Iron and Silkby Mark Salzman

• The author recalls, in a series of humorous and
  serious essays, his experiences living in China,
  where he was a teacher of English and a student
  of martial arts.

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Big Snake The Hunt for the Worlds Longest
Pythonby Robert Twigger

• Poet Robert Twigger sets out in East Asia to
  claim a prize established by Theodore Roosevelt
  to reward anyone who captured alive the longest
  snake in the world. In the 86 years that the
  prize went unclaimed, the money grew from 1000
  to 50,000 and Twigger was determined to earn it,
  so he set off to find the snakewithout
  experience or a strategy.

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Night Train to Turkistan Modern Adventures
Along Chinas Ancient Silk Roadby Stuart Stevens

• A very funny account of Stevens journey to
  Chinese Turkistan, which had been closed to
  visitors since 1949.

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Talking to High Monks in the Snow An Asian
American Odysseyby Lydia Minatoya

• Lydia Minatoya, a Japanese American, returns to
  her ancestral village in Japan, where her
  "reunion" with distant family members is both
  hilarious and moving.

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Within Reach My Everest Storyby Mark Pfetzer

• The author describes how he spent his teenage
  years climbing mountains in the United States,
  South America, Africa, and Asia, with an emphasis
  on his two expeditions up Mount Everest.

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Into Thin Air A Personal Account of the Everest
Disaster by Jon Krakauer

• In the spring of 1996, twelve climbers perished
  on Mount Everest. Some were experienced
  mountaineers, but several were notthey were
  wealthy individuals who had paid for the
  opportunity to summit the worlds most formidable
  mountain. Krakauer, a climber in another group,
  was nevertheless a part of the tragedy and in
  this account of the events, he admits guilt over
  what happened, and wonders whether he could have
  something that would have prevented the tragedy.

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FRANCE
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Encore ProvenceNew Adventures in the South of
Franceby Peter Mayle

• After returning briefly to the United States,
  the author goes back to his home in Southern
  France and resumes his life as a permanent guest
  of the French people. His tales of life abroad
  paint a humorous picture of the French people and
  culture.

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ITALY
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Under the Tuscan Sunby Frances Mayes

• Frances Mayes starts off by saying "I am about
  to buy a house in a foreign country. A house with
  the beautiful name of Bramasole." Tall, square
  and apricot-colored with faded green shutters,
  the lovely old farm house that Frances and her
  husband buy is in Tuscany. They return every
  summer, they tend the olives and grapes, they
  plant potatoes and build a stone wall. The book
  has Tuscan soil under its fingernails, Tuscan sun
  on its back and the flavor of Tuscany throughout.

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Bella Tuscanyby Frances Mayes

• Following up on her bestselling novel, Under the
  Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes returns to her beloved
  villa in the small hill town of Cortona, Italy.
  Welcomed back like an old friend, she is soon
  puttering in the garden, and as Mayes devotees
  might expect, busy in the kitchen as well. As
  Mayes rediscovers her taste for la dolce vita,
  she embarks on a journey of cultural awakening
  and embraces a newfound romance with the Italian
  language and people. (www.amazon.com)

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SOUTH AMERICA
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Along the Inca RoadA Womans Journey into an
Ancient Empireby Karin Muller

• Amazon.com What's an American woman doing
  shaking a pink cape at a bull on a hillside in
  Peru? Ask Karin Muller, a self-described vagabond
  who is game for anything, especially if it's a
  traditionally male task in strictly sex
  role-divided South America. After years of
  contemplating the thin red line of the Inca Road
  on her map of the world, Muller takes off with a
  grant from the National Geographic Society (which
  also supplied a cameraman) for a six-month jaunt
  through Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Chile. Along
  the way, she searches for remnants of the ancient
  stone-paved road and jumps headfirst into
  whatever adventure she can find. First stop, a
  cuy doctor whacks her on the back and head with a
  whimpering guinea pig, then offers her a
  diagnosis based on the quality of the animal's
  intestines. She's tear-gassed in an indigenous
  antigovernment protest, and dresses in an orange
  cloak, gold sparkles, and black face paint (a
  concoction made of tar and animal fat) to pull a
  200-pound roast pig during the Festival of Mama
  Negra. In a surreal moment, she witnesses the
  mysterious crash of a Brazilian military
  helicopter in the Andean highlands, and in a
  horrific one, crawls through a mole-like tunnel
  deep into a mountainside where men spend years
  digging for gold, leaving only to eat, wash, and
  haul their ore 423 steps to a giant crushing
  machine. She even watches a military crew clear
  live mines planted by Peruvians during the
  Ecuador-Peruvian border war.
• Throughout her adventures, Muller weaves a
  lively history of the rise and fall of the Incan
  empire.

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Pass the Butterwormsby Tim Cahill

• "Outside" magazine editor Tim Cahill tells of
  his adventures and exotic dining experiences in
  remote areas of the world such as Honduras, Peru,
  Iranian Jaya, and the North Pole.

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Road Fever A High-Speed Travelogueby Tim Cahill

• If you define "adventure travel" as anything
  that's more fun to read about than to live
  through, then Tim Cahill's Road Fever is the
  adventure of a lifetime. Along with professional
  long-distance driver Garry Sowerby, Cahill drove
  15,000 miles from the southernmost tip of Tierra
  del Fuego to the northernmost terminus of the
  Dalton Highway in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, from one
  end of the world to another, in a record-breaking
  23 1/2 days. Just like the authors'
  camper-shelled GMC Sierra truck, the narrative
  bounces along at a relentless pace. Along the way
  Cahill and Sowerby cope with mood swings, engine
  trouble, Andean cliffs, obstinate bureaucracies,
  slick highways, armed and uncomprehending
  soldiery (not to mention the challenges of
  securing O.P.M., or Other People's Money--the
  sine qua non of adventure, Cahill observes).
  Author of such off-the-wall travelogues as Pass
  the Butterworms and Jaguars Ripped My Flesh,
  Cahill is equipped with the correct amalgam of
  chutzpah and dementia to survive what can only be
  called "The Road Trip From Hell." Readers,
  however, will thoroughly enjoy themselves.

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Running the Amazon by Joe Kane

• In 1985 a team of hand-picked adventurers,
  including writer Joe Kane, embarked on a journey
  that would take them to the remote headwaters of
  the Amazon Basin. But that was just the beginning
  of the trip. Their goal to navigate the world's
  longest river from source to mouth, a feat never
  before recorded. After reaching (via a goat
  trail) a glacial trickle above 17,000
  feet--debatably the farthest source of the
  Amazon--the team descends to a point where kayaks
  can be deployed. From there the trip entails
  kayaking through one of the nastiest white-water
  canyons on the planet, a stretch of water that
  has previously claimed the lives or quickly
  halted the plans of all who attempted to conquer
  it navigating an unmapped gorge known
  affectionately as the Abyss sneaking through the
  "Red Zone," an area closed to foreigners and
  occupied by the notorious Shining Path rebels
  and, finally, paddling to the Atlantic by sea
  kayak through 3,000 miles of hot jungle.
• Hired initially to chronicle the project from
  dry land, Kane quickly assumes a more integral
  role as a much-needed paddler, and as such he is
  able to provide vivid, first-hand descriptions of
  the treacherous water encountered. But in many
  ways the water is the least imposing obstacle to
  success. Along the way the team is beset by
  financial difficulties, a crisis of leadership,
  attacks from armed rebels, and the defection of
  team members. Kane's account of this six-month
  ordeal is much more than a travelogue of athletic
  endeavor--it's a fascinating portrait of the
  planning, politics, and personal struggles
  involved in mounting a modern-day expedition
  through a vast expanse of largely uncharted
  territory.

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American Chicaby Marie Arana

• The author, who grew up in Peru in the 1950s,
  was surrounded by native servants who filled her
  with magical legends and tales of fearsome
  spirits when she moved to New Jersey with her
  family in 1959, the author found herself slipping
  between cultures and choosing when to be American
  and when to be Peruvian.

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My Old Man and the SeaA Father and Son Sail
Around Cape Hornby David Hays and Daniel Hays

• The account of a father and son's voyage from
  New London, Connecticut, around Cape Horn, and
  back in a 25 foot boat.

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SPAIN
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Driving Over Lemonsby Chris Stewart

• When English sheep shearer Chris Stewart (once a
  drummer for Genesis) bought an isolated farmhouse
  in the mountains outside of Granada, Spain, he
  was fully aware that it didn't have electricity,
  running water, or access to roads. But he had
  little idea of the headaches and hilarity that
  would follow (including scorpions, runaway sheep,
  and the former owner who won't budge). This
  rip-roaringly funny book about seeking a place in
  an earthy community of peasants and shepherds
  gives a realistic sense of the hassles and
  rewards of foreign relocation. Stewart's
  hilarious and beautifully written passages are
  deep in their honest perceptions of the place and
  the sometimes xenophobic natives, whose reception
  of the newcomers ranges from warm to gruff.