Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents

Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail

Suzanne Roberts · 262 pages

It was 1993, Suzanne Roberts had just finished college, and when her friend suggested they hike California’s John Muir Trail, the adventure sounded like the perfect distraction from a difficult home life and thoughts about the future. But she never imagined that the twenty-eight-day hike would change her life. Part memoir, part nature writing, part travelogue, Almost Somewhere is Roberts’s account

The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.

Jennifer Baggett, Holly Corbett, Amanda Pressner · 551 pages

Three friends at a crossroads in their twenties quit their high pressure New York media jobs, leave their friends and everything familiar behind, and embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world.

My Life in France

Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun

Travels

Michael Crichton · 377 pages

Here is a record of Michael Crichton's astonishing adventures. It is a vision of travel not as escape but as exhilaration, as a testing of self, and as spiritual education. Crichton shows us travel as turmoil and as peace. All of this voyages, outward and inward, from his twenties to his mid-forties, have been journeys into awareness--leading him to the excitement and benison of direct expeirence

Going Somewhere: A Bicycle Journey Across America

Brian Benson · 277 pages

"Brian Benson has a million life plans but no sense of direction. So when he meets and falls for Rachel, he's ready to go wherever she'll take him. In a whirlwind of new love, they embark on a bicycle trip from northern Wisconsin to western Oregon. As the pair progress through stunning landscapes, they contend with merciless winds, vivid characters, broken bikes and bodies--and the looming questio

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed · 315 pages

A powerful, blazingly honest memoir: the story of an eleven-hundred-mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe—and built her back up again. At twenty-two, Cheryl Strayed thought she'd lost everything when her mother died young of cancer. Her family scattered in their grief, her marriage was soon destroyed, and slowly her life spun out of control. Four years after her mot

The Road to Mecca

Muhammad Asad · 380 pages

This autobiographical work by one of Europe's best known convert to Islam gives us a rounded portrait of a man in search of adventure and truth. It is part spiritual autobiography, part summary of the author's intuitive insights into Islam and the Arabs, part an impressive travelogue. Punctuated with abundant adventure, moments of contemplation, colorful narrative, brilliant description and lively

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values

Robert M. Pirsig · 418 pages

"The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called 'yourself.'"One of the most important and influential books of the past half-century, Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a powerful, moving, and penetrating examination of how we live and a meditation on how to live better. The narrative of a father on a summer motorcycle trip across America's Northwest with his young

Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

Susan Jane Gilman · 313 pages

They were young, brilliant, and bold. They set out to conquer the world. But the world had other plans for them. Bestselling author Susan Jane Gilman's new memoir is a hilarious and harrowing journey, a modern heart of darkness filled with Communist operatives, backpackers, and pancakes. In 1986, fresh out of college, Gilman and her friend Claire yearned to do something daring and original that d

All Over the Map

Laura Fraser · 279 pages

Celebrating her fortieth birthday, Laura Fraser confronts the trajectory of her life. Divorced and childless in her thirties, she found solace in the wanderlust that had always directed her heart, but now she wonders if her passion for travel (and for short-lived romantic rendezvous) has deprived her of what she secretly wants most: a husband, a family, a home. How to reconcile what seem to be two

Atlas of the Human Heart

Ariel Gore · 319 pages

memoir by young 21st century woman who was very daring.

No Baggage: A Minimalist Tale of Love and Wandering

Clara Bensen · 320 pages

Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

Alice Steinbach · 278 pages

"In the tradition of Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea and Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, in Without Reservations we take time off with Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Steinbach as she explores the world and rediscovers what it means to be a woman on her own."--BOOK JACKET.

Driving Hungry: A Memoir

Layne Mosler · 313 pages

"A delicious memoir that takes us from Buenos Aires to New York to Berlin as the author, driven by wanderlust and an unrelenting appetite, finds purpose, passion, and unexpected flavor. Layne Mosler's search for her next meal based on a recommendation from a cab driver starts in Buenos Aires: After leaving a tango club following a terrible turn on the dance floor, she impulsively asks her taxista

Almost French: A New Life In Paris

Sarah Turnbull · 320 pages

A delightful, fresh twist on the travel memoir, Almost French takes us on a tour that is fraught with culture clashes but rife with deadpan humor. Sarah Turnbull's stint in Paris was only supposed to last a week. Chance had brought Sarah and Frederic together in Bucharest, and on impulse she decides to take him up on his offer to visit him in the world's most romantic city. Sacrificing Vegemite f

Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World

Rita Golden Gelman · 320 pages

The true story of an ordinary woman living an extraordinary existence all over the world. “Gelman doesn’t just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the people’s lives. This is an amazing travelogue.” —Booklist At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita Golden Gelman left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of trav

Uganda Be Kidding Me

Chelsea Handler · 257 pages

In this uproarious collection, the author answers the most frequently asked traveler's questions, hot travel trips, and travel etiquette, none of which should be believed. Wherever she travels, one thing is certain: she always ends up in the land of the ridiculous. Now, in this uproarious collection, she sneaks her sharp wit through airport security and delivers her most absurd and hilarious stori

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

Karma Gone Bad: How I Learned to Love Mangos, Bollywood and Water Buffalo

Jenny Feldon · 321 pages

When Jenny's husband gets transferred to India for work, she looks forward to a new life filled with glamorous expat friends and exciting adventures. What she doesn't expect is endless bouts of food poisoning, buffalo in the streets, and crippling loneliness in one of the most densely populated countries in the world. Ten thousand miles away from home, Jenny struggles to fight off depression and a

A Year Without Make-Up: Tales of a 20-Something Traveler

Stephanie Yoder · 112 pages

Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment

Suzanne Morrison · 339 pages

"When Suzanne Morrison decides to travel to Bali for a two-month yoga retreat, she wants nothing more than to be transformed from a twenty-five-year-old with a crippling fear of death into her enchanting yoga teacher, Indra--a woman who seems to have found it all: love, self, and God. But things don't go quite as expected."--Page 4 of cover.

Dork Whore: My Travels Through Asia as a Twenty-Year-Old Pseudo-Virgin

Iris Bahr · 224 pages

Eat, Pray, Love

Elizabeth Gilbert · 341 pages

This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cult

Tracks: A Woman's Solo Trek Across 1700 Miles of Australian Outback (Vintage Departures)

Robyn Davidson · 280 pages

“I arrived in the Alice at five a.m. with a dog, six dollars and a small suitcase full of inappropriate clothes.... There are some moments in life that are like pivots around which your existence turns…” For Robyn Davidson, one of these moments comes at age twenty-seven in Alice Springs, a dodgy town at the frontier of the vast Australian desert. Davidson is intent on walking the 1,700 miles of