A Time of Gifts

Travels with Charley: In Search of America

John Steinbeck · 256 pages

A quest across America, from the northernmost tip of Maine to California's Monterey Peninsula To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the tress, to see the colors and the light—these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years. With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the

Istanbul: Memories and the City

Orhan Pamuk · 384 pages

A shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost writer. Orhan Pamuk was born in Istanbul and still lives in the family apartment building where his mother first held him in her arms. His portrait of his city is thus also a self-portrait, refracted by memory and the melancholy—or hüzün—that all Istanbullus share. With cinematic fluidit

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning

Laurie Lee · 192 pages

It was 1934 and a young man walked to London from the security of the Cotswolds to make his fortune. He was to live by playing the violin and by labouring on a London building site. Then, knowing one Spanish phrase, he decided to see Spain. For a year he tramped through a country in which the signs of impending civil war were clearly visible. Thirty years later Laurie Lee captured the atmosphere o

Out of Africa

Isak Dinesen, Karen Blixen · 389 pages

The author relates her experience in Kenya, describing not only her own youth but also the country's traditions and people.

West with the Night

Beryl Markham · 293 pages

West with the Night is the story of Beryl Markham--aviator, racehorse trainer, beauty--and her life in the Kenya of the 1920s and '30s.

Under the Tuscan Sun

Frances Mayes · 287 pages

Now in paperback, the #1 San Francisco Chronicle bestseller that is an enchanting and lyrical look at the life, the traditions, and the cuisine of Tuscany, in the spirit of Peter Mayle's *A Year in Provence*. Frances Mayes entered a wondrous new world when she began restoring an abandoned villa in the spectacular Tuscan countryside. There were unexpected treasures at every turn: faded frescos b

The Way of the World

Nicolas Bouvier · 309 pages

Bitter Lemons of Cyprus

Lawrence Durrell · 287 pages

M Train

Patti Smith · 288 pages

M Train is a journey through eighteen "stations." It begins in the tiny Greenwich Village cafâe where Smith goes every morning for black coffee, ruminates on the world as it is and the world as it was, and writes in her notebook. We then travel across a landscape of creative aspirations and inspirations: from Frida Kahlo's Casa Azul in Mexico, to a meeting of an Arctic explorer's society in Berlin

North to the Orient

Anne Morrow Lindbergh · 248 pages

The Colossus of Maroussi

Henry Miller · 244 pages

"The Colossus of Maroussi is an impressionist travelogue by Henry Miller, which was first published in 1941 by Colt Press of San Francisco. It is set in pre-war Greece of 1939, and is ostensibly a characterization of the "Colossus" of the title, George Katsimbalis, a poet and raconteur. The work is frequently heralded as Miller's best."--Wikipedia.

The Worst Journey in the World

Apsley Cherry-Garrard · 607 pages

The Worst Journey in the World is a 1922 memoir by Apsley Cherry-Garrard of Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910–1913. It has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning of human suffering under extreme conditions. ---------- Contains: - [Worst Journey in the World

The White Road: Journey into an Obsession

Edmund de Waal · 416 pages

"An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted"--

Here Is New York

E.B. White · 56 pages

What is most amazing about E.B. White's "Here Is New York," This book written in 1948 says: "A single flight planes no bigger than a wedge of geese can quickly end t his island fantasy, burn the towers, crumble the bridges, turn the underground passages into lethal chambers, cremate the millions." The city is both the perfect target and the perfect demonstration of nonviolence. White says, "This i

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s

Cornelia Otis Skinner, Emily Kimbrough · 247 pages

Two ingenues "do the Continent" pre-WWII. Skinner takes us from the innocence of youth in the 1920s to the dawn of WWII, replete with all the faux pas and fiascoes you would expect from youth taking Europe on their own in the early part of the twentieth century when innocence still existed and innuendo was unheard of. A great read.

Life on the Mississippi

Mark Twain · 462 pages

At once a romantic history of a mighty river, an autobiographical account of Twains early steamboat days, and a storehouse of humorous anecdotes and sketches, here is the raw material from which Mark Twain wrote his finest novel, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I Was Born There, I Was Born Here

Mourid Barghouti · 216 pages

In 2000 Mourid Barghouti published I Saw Ramallah, the acclaimed memoir that told of returning in 1996 to his Palestinian home for the first time since exile following the Six-Day War in 1967. I Was Born There, I Was Born Here takes up the story in 1998 when Barghouti returned to the Occupied Territories to introduce his Cairo-born son, Tamim, to his Palestinian family. Ironically, a few years lat

A Tale of Love and Darkness

Amos Oz · 533 pages

Love and darkness are just two of the many forces which run through Amos Oz's extraordinary, moving autobiographical novel. He takes us on a bold, courageous journey through his childhood and adolescence, and into the infernal marriage of two kind, well-meaning people: his parents. At the tragic heart of the story, its defining moment, is the suicide of his mother, when Amos was twelve-and-a-half

Notes from a Small Island

Bill Bryson · 324 pages

After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al. back to the States for a while. But before leaving his much-loved Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around old Blighty, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had for so long been his home. The resulting book was a eulogy to the country that produced M

My Family and Other Animals

Gerald Durrell · 285 pages

My Family and Other Animals is an autobiographical work by naturalist Gerald Durrell, telling of the part of his childhood he spent on the Greek island of Corfu between 1935 and 1939.

Cross Creek

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings · 368 pages

Warm, leisurely account of author's neighbors, and her everyday affairs while living for thirteen years in a remote section of the Florida hammock at Cross Creek.

Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir

D.J. Waldie · 192 pages

This is an exquisitely realized and wholly original memoir of growing up in blue-collar 1950s Lakewood, California, the quintessential post-World War II American suburb and the prototype for the countless tract developments that would follow. At once a portrait of the author's coming of age, as well as a history of Lakewood, Holy Land is about the way places shape lives. It's about the difficulti

The Snows of Yesteryear

Gregor von Rezzori · 280 pages

Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam

Andrew X. Pham · 344 pages

"Catfish and Mandala is the poignant, lyrical tale of an American odyssey - a solo bicycle voyage around the Pacific Rim to Vietnam - made by a young Vietnamese-American man in pursuit of both his adopted homeland and his forsaken fatherland. Intertwined with an often humorous travelogue spanning a year of discovery is a memoir of war, escape, and, ultimately, family secrets."--BOOK JACKET. "Ther