Search results for ""Travelers' Tales, Incorporated""

Venturing in Ireland showcases an irresistible collection of true stories that transport the reader to an Emerald Isle of dynamic, youthful jubilation, folk music-filled pubs, and coexisting modern and traditional cultures in a land where ancient stone tombs predate the Pyramids. This anthology explores a variety of aspects of life in southwest Ireland, from luxuriant gardens to local stout breweries, from castles and ancient ruins to whale watching in the Celtic Sea. The writers plunge into the core of Irish culture, singing folk songs at a pub’s roundtable and set dancing in a small town’s hall. From Lismore Castle to Mizzen Head, they delve into the cultural riches of the Irish countryside, even meeting local nuns with an expertise in ancient stone circles.

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The latest edition of the annual collection of real-life womens' travel stories includes tales of travel to Senegal, Spain, Calcutta. France, Greece, and many other locales. Original.

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For Westerners, Asia has always had an exotic appeal. The cultures, religions, and ways of life across the continent are foreign to us, and thus compelling. We want to understand what it means to live in a place with 4,000 years of continuous civilization. We want to roam among the world’s highest mountains and explore the tropical backwaters full of mystery and intrigue. We want to see a tiger, ride an elephant, bask in the radiance of the monument of love, the Taj Mahal. In this new century especially, Asia is a continent for women to explore. Yes, there were predecessors, such as 19th century cultural explorer Isabella Bird, but women have turned to Asia in large numbers in recent years, finding a spiritual and emotional draw to the continent that goes beyond their call to more familiar places such as Europe and North America. Women are seeking adventure, connection, and an understanding of the world and its peoples, and no place offers a more enticing opportunity to do this than Asia.

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We all have our favorite aphorisms, our family myths, our wise words that help us get through tough times. Stories to Live By is a collection of inspiring stories meant to offer solace, provide guidance, and illuminate pathways to change. These short tales explore the human condition and illustrate through anecdotes how people have found joy in life. They look at human foibles and help us understand how to accept and avoid them, and point us toward a greater sense of tranquility and happiness.

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They say dogs have it made. Well, these dogs certainly do. The dogs here get to see the world, from the tracks of the Iditarod in Alaska to an across-the-USA jaunt with her master on horseback to a table at a fine Paris restaurant. These dogs are sometimes pampered, other times challenged, but always appreciated as they accompany their owners on their journeys. In this book you will: look for dingoes in Australia feel what it's like to have a guide dog by your side prepare for a dog show stay in a four-star hotel that caters to dogs see how your dog can break the cultural ice in rural Mexico and much more. This book spans every continent and every emotion, and also provides many leads in a resource section to information for travelling with your own canine friend.

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With its vast vistas, splendid sunsets, and rich history, the American Southwest has always inspired superb writing. Travelers’ Tales Southwest features a selection of some of the best. Tony Hillerman explores the wonders of Canyon de Chelly, while Douglas Preston takes the reader on a poignant journey into the land of the Hopi. Barbara Kingsolver learns how to live in harmony with the desert, and Barbara Beckwith joins the secret world of Native American pottery hunters. The book covers a wide physical and mythic terrain, with essays on director John Ford’s dramatic use of Monument Valley, and the Mad Monks’ bizarre excursion through “Planet Nevada.”

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With a bottomless taste for the absurd, Doug Lansky takes the reader on a global odyssey. In Naples, reputedly the world’s worst place to drive, Lansky rents a car. In Berlin, he dons a latex jumpsuit and spiked collar for a visit to the notoriously erotic Kit Kat Club. And in Tokyo, determined to deepen his appreciation for sumo wrestling, Lansky takes lessons from a master and rediscovers how it feels to be lifted into the air by a wedgie. Other adventures include climbing Mount Kilimanjaro in ill-fitting hiking boots, competing with the mobs to get picked for The Price Is Right, and tandem hang gliding with a daredevil pilot in New Zealand.

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“Melting pot,” a phrase inevitably associated with the United States, may be even more applicable to Mexico, where ancient civilizations merge with modern cultures in a cross-current of peoples, languages and dialects, art and music, religions, hidden cosmologies, and fabled ruins. Travelers’ Tales Mexico explores this deep diversity in essays by important writers who have experienced it firsthand. On his journey south of the border, Carlos Fuentes reveals layer upon layer of history in Mexico City’s town square; Alice Adams discovers her love for Frida Kahlo’s work; Pete Hamill unearths the ghosts of Hollywood in Puerto Vallarta; and Mary Morris moves to San Miguel to find a writer’s life. Travelers’ Tales Mexico is a lyrical reminder of why it’s both a pleasure and a necessity to visit this magnificent country.

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Travel can take many forms with a vast array of destinations, but there's one trip everyone will eventually take. The Ultimate Journey offers a choice selection of true stories from major writers about the final adventure. Crossing all geographical and spiritual boundaries, these writers in the fields of travel and spirituality tell touching, and often surprising, stories of their brushes with death. In a different way, each writer learns an important lesson about life. One traveler tries to make sense of a mysterious rescue from certain death on a bridge in Afghanistan. Another watches a holy man in India bring a crushed fly back to life. A third encounters an old woman in a cemetery in Mexico who tells her more about herself than anyone could know. Contributors include Sogyal Rinpoche, Edward Abbey, Pico Iyer, Mary Morris, Barbara Kingsolver, among others.

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Broad target audience, including young and old fans of Mike Birbiglia, David Sedaris, Samantha Irby, Julia Sweeney and Scott Carpenter…anyone who enjoys armchair travel and/or comedic memoir…readers able to recognize, embrace and poke fun at their Inner Alarmist…and perhaps, especially, readers who live along the Front Range or anywhere in the Rocky Mountain West, where Janna lives, and where several of the stories take place. In the midst of cultural transformation, social unrest and a global health crisis: grounded levity, uplifting-yet-thoughtful stories, and a sense of perspective are all appealing if not necessary. While the book is humor, and does not explicitly address current events, Janna’s voice is feminist, socially-aware, cognizant of and sensitive to issues of race, gender and class, and readers should discover currents and undercurrents highly pertinent to our turbulent times. Multiple websites that appeal to a reading public have posted articles, since February, 2020, extolling uplifting books. From bookriot.com and getliterary.com to today.com and goodhouskeeping.com, uplifting and inspirational books have been featured and promoted since COVID-19 started. Fans of Janna’s work may have seen her performance of some of these stories during the brief tour of the solo piece (You Are Reminded That Your Safety Is Your Own ResponsibilityIn terms of “author’s circles” readers: Janna is a professor of Communication at Regis University, with a community of approximately 775 faculty and over 2,300 students; she’s also on faculty in the Mile High MFA writing program. She has taught there for sixteen years and, including former majors and advisees, participates in an alumni network of around 1,600; she can also call up a community from her former graduate program at the University of Massachusetts.

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Patricia Harris began visiting Spain shortly after the death of dictator Francisco Franco and has witnessed the country's renaissance in art, culture, and cuisine as it rejoined Europe. Drawing on three decades of intimate acquaintance with the country, she leads readers along twisting mountain roads, down to the docks of fishing villages, into the shoe outlets of Elche, and out to the muddy saffron fields of La Mancha. She takes you down city streets of Barcelona, Madrid, Sevilla, and San Sebastian to dark flamenco clubs, sybaritic public baths, endlessly inventive tapas bars, design shops full of mantillas and fans, and into a brightly tiled chocolateria for hot chocolate and churros at 3 a.m. She explores the art from Velazquez to Picasso, architecture from the phantasmagorical vision of Antoni Gaudi's Sagrada Familia to the cool suspension spans of Santiago Calatrava. She tells the tales of some formidable Spanish women, from a fourth-century B.C. goddess to a queen who wrested Spain from the Moors, to the twenty-first-century winemakers who elevated Spain's Toro and Rueda onto the world stage. Literary, sexy, whimsical, and even spiritual, 100 Places in Spain Every Woman Should Go is for the smart and curious traveler who wants to see Spain, her way.

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This book will appeal to: lovers of travel literature the thousands of writers who entered the Solas Awards over the past ten years and counting readers who love powerful, inspiring true stories about life and the world

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A vividly intense and personal saga.... It stirred such powerful emotions..." —Marina Romanov, grandniece of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia One Hundred Years of Exile: A Romanov's Search for Her Father’s Russia is the story of one woman’s journey through 100 years of history to find peace with her father. Tania Romanov Amochaev and her father were both exiled from their homelands as infants; both knew life in refugee camps. Their shared fate does not lead to mutual understanding. The family’s immigration to San Francisco heralded a promising new future—but while Tania just wanted to be an American, her father could not trust that this was his final asylum. His fears and his resistance to assimilation leave Tania with deep resentment toward him and her Russian heritage. Decades later, his unexpected death exposes Tania’s open wounds and a host of unanswered questions about her father and his story. A serendipitous meeting with a last surviving member of the Russian royal family, followed by a baffling error that miraculously connects her with unknown relatives, catapults Tania on a quest for answers in her father’s homeland. Tania’s story proves inseparable from Russia’s, featuring Cossacks who fled revolution, a family who survived Stalin, and a family of royal exiles, culminating in a meeting between princess and peasant. One Hundred Years of Exile is a moving story of how revisiting the past can bring not only forgiveness and redemption, but something far more powerful as well. "Romanov has situated her absorbing story exactly at the intersection of history and memoir. It's a wonderful read." —Tamim Ansary, author of Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes

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Since publishing its original edition of "A Woman's World" in 1995, Travelers' Tales has been the recognized leader in women's travel literature, and with the launch of the annual series "The Best Travel Writing" in 2004, the obvious next step was an annual collection of the best women's travel writing of the year. This title is the second in an annual series - "The Best Women's Travel Writing" - that presents stimulating, inspiring, and uplifting adventures from women who have traveled to the ends of the earth to discover new places, peoples, and facets of themselves. The common threads connecting these stories are a woman's perspective and fresh, lively storytelling and compelling narrative to make the reader laugh, weep, wish she were there, or be glad she wasn't. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes are as eclectic as in all of our books, including stories that encompass spiritual growth, hilarity and misadventure, high adventure, romance, solo journeys, stories of service to humanity, family travel, and encounters with exotic cuisine.

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Imagine sitting down with a group of friends who are also expert gardeners. That’s the effect of this useful, accessible book, which features professionals sharing their knowledge of a wide range of topics including design and maintenance, tips on flowers, foliage, and garden produce, how to establish habitat gardens or low-water/low-maintenance ones, and controlling weeds and other pests. Here is authoritative advice on specific choices from alstroemerias to orchids, along with seasonal suggestions and ideas. The book's conversational tone gives inspiration and insider knowledge to enthusiasts at all skill levels.

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People travel for countless reasons, but no matter the route, duration, or destination, our journeys often share a common result: they transform us. The traveller is a pilgrim, wittingly or unwittingly, and never comes home the same. Travel can be the bearer of extraordinary gifts which break through the crust of old experience and reawaken us to the joys, mysteries, and miracles of everyday life. Whether it be a new understanding of a foreign culture or an epiphany that opens new inner worlds, travel is a catalyst for living a richer life. We've selected some favourite stories from the books in our award-winning series, stories of transformation and insight about simple but profound gifts travellers have received from people, places, and experiences around the world - from an unforgettable language teacher in Bangkok to the tambourine men of Recife, from a tomato festival in Spain to a mutton feast in Tibet, from a Barcelona train station to a Baja desert. The Gift of Travel will light a match in the firebox of your wanderlust, with stories of world travel.

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In this lively collection from an array of accomplished writers, readers meet an old woman who imparts an invaluable midnight message on a Greek island; brothers who heal old family wounds in Ireland; and travelers who awaken to the mystery of their souls in such disparate places as St. Peter’s in Rome and a dusty road in India. Contributors include Phil Cousineau, Kim Chernin, David Yeadon, Don George, and Jan Morris. The Spiritual Gifts of Travel reveals the myriad ways that travel renews the spirit. “The tales ring clear and loud with the universal need to travel the road toward self.” — Francesca de Grandis, author of Be a Goddess!

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Whether it roots us in our own backyard or takes us across continents, watching birds calls us to stillness and demands our keen attention to the details that flicker around us. This collection of stories will appeal to bird lovers everywhere.'

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Pilgrimage comes in many forms: traditional and unconventional, religious and secular, intended and accidental. Yet it always entails mindfulness - a soulful presence that summons meaning to the surface. This book showcases a diverse array of spirit-renewing journeys from pilgrims of many kinds from places as far away as Tibet's Mount Kailish and as near as sacred New Mexico soil. Includes contributions from Jack Hitt, William Dalrymple, Rabbi David A. Cooper, among others.

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100 Places in Greece Every Woman Should Go, a series of 100 essays overflowing with charm, wit, and wisdom, is an indispensable tool to plan your next trip to a country where the voices of the goddesses still whisper in the winds. Uncover the unexpected charms of Athens, float down the real River Styx, and learn of miraculous healing involving snakes, saintly relics, and women's underwear. Learn how Corinth's ancient temple prostitution gives new meaning to the term "sex and the city," and discover an ancient mystery cult on Lesbos. Sail to Leros, birthplace of Artemis and an island known as a destination for the insane, and make a stop on Skopelos to see that fantastic cliff top church where Meryl Streep belted out Abba tunes. With style, intelligence, and personal anecdotes, archaeologist and award-winning travel writer Amanda Summer is your personal guide to the best of Greece. Crisp, humorous storytelling introduces the temples, shrines, grottoes, and churches of this magnificent country, intricately woven with stories of the women -- from goddesses to artistic legends like Melina Mercouri and Maria Callas. Sexy, scholarly and spiritual, 100 Places in Greece Every Woman Should Go is a must for every traveler.

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What happens when a Korean-American preacher's kid refuses to get married, travels the world, and quits being vegetarian? She meets her polar opposite on an online dating site while sitting at a cafe in Paris, France and ends up in Paris, Maine, learning how to hunt. A memoir and a cookbook with recipes that skewer human foibles and celebrates DIY food culture, Deer Hunting in Paris is an unexpectedly funny exploration of a vanishing way of life in a complex cosmopolitan world. Sneezing madly from hay fever, Lee recovers her roots in rural Maine by running after a headless chicken, learning how to sight in a rifle, shooting skeet, and butchering animals. Along the way, she figures out how to keep her boyfriend's conservative Republican family from "mistaking" her for a deer and shooting her at the clothesline.

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The Best Travel Writing 2011 is the eighth volume in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing -- from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. Sweat, suffer, and fall in love in Guyana, meet a traveler who conducts his own detente in Russian baths, and encounter the light of a stranger in Burma. Further tales include methods on comprehending the nuances of bargaining in Senegal and an archaeologist who digs up her own past in Greece.

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Since publishing the original edition of A Woman's World in 1995, Travelers' Tales has been the recognized leader in women's travel literature. The Best Women's Travel Writing 2010 is the sixth book in an annual series that presents stimulating, inspiring, and uplifting adventures from women who have traveled to the ends of the earth to discover new places, peoples, and facets of themselves. The common threads connecting these stories are a woman's perspective and fresh, compelling storytelling to make the reader laugh, weep, wish she were there, or be glad she wasn't. In The Best Women's Travel Writing 2010 readers will discover the hidden magic of Flamenco in Spain, walk the night and its terrors in Benin, have an excellent last day in Costa Rica, poke their way into the psyche of a security agent in Kabul, learn something new about death and Mexico in San Miguel de Allende, travel the darker side of the Hawaiian fantasy, draw a map of Argentinian tango, meet the best people in the world in Zimbabwe...and much more.

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Author and explorer James Michael Dorsey has spent two decades visiting the world’s most remote tribal cultures. In BABOONS FOR LUNCH and Other Sordid Adventures, he tells his remarkable travel stories in rollicking accounts that keep readers off balance and eager for more. Many stories are funny, others are poignant, and quite a few are heart stopping, while others are unique insights into remote ways of life most of the world does not know exists. In this book the reader will climb a remote volcano in Ethiopia, cross the Sahara Desert with nomads, undergo a tribal exorcism, and visit shamans, healers, witch doctors, and holy men. This is not your average travel book, but an entree to some of the world’s remote corners and people.

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The secret is out: Cuba is the world’s sexiest, most magnetic travel destination. What isn’t a secret is that folks from around the corner and around the globe have been exploring and falling in love with the largest Caribbean island for decades. Now you can too with 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go, written from the unique perspective of a New Yorker who has called Havana home for more than 15 years. The 100 places profiled in this book are the result of decades of travel, research, and living in Cuba by a US journalist with uncommon access, ensuring travelers incomparable experiences. Much more than a prescriptive list, these narratives incorporate adventures and mishaps, insider opinion, slang, gossip, and conversations with Cubans during a historic shift which saw Soviet support evaporate, Fidel Castro take his final bow, economic reforms whiffing suspiciously of capitalism, and quasi-normalization with the United States. From exclusive interviews with prestigious Cubans to tales from intrepid travelers, these stories decipher the mysteries of Cuba while describing the country’s most alluring sites, sounds, and off-the-beaten track locales. Author Conner Gorry has spent decades writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet (Cuba included), reporting from post-disaster situations, and covering Cuban life from the inside for a variety of international publications. Her expertise in parsing Cuban machismo and gender politics, analyzing the role and impact of Cuban women, and ferreting out the best places for women traveling solo or with children enriches the book. She first visited Cuba in 1993 and has been permanently based in Havana since 2002 where she reports on everything from clinical trials to questionable fashion. She has written several books about Cuba and founded the island’s only English-language bookstore, Cuba Libro, in 2013; most of her explorations for 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go were made on a 1946 Harley-Davidson, leading one observer to say: ‘Conner’s Cuba is where Shakespeare and Company meets Easy Rider.”

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This is a new series that presents the Travelers' Tales experience in a new and different format. "30 Days in the South Pacific" was the first new book in this sub-series. Each book features 30 carefully-chosen stories to bring the reader on a month-long journey of wonder.

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Too many travel guides are dry lists of attractions or portentous histories of a place. This isn't the case with The Thong Also Rises. Hot on the (high) heels of Sand in My Bra and Whose Panties Are These? comes this collection of the best in women’s travel and humor writing. These Ms-adventures take readers around the world and back again — and they’ll be happy to be reading rather than experiencing some of these adventures. Subjects include learning how to go to the bathroom with a pig in Thailand, trying to explain that sex toy to customs while Mother is watching, attending naked wedding ceremonies on Valentine’s Day in Jamaica, conquering that consuming fear of wooden puppets with a visit to Prague, boarding a crusty old Soviet Bomber in Laos, and more. Contributors include such notable writers and comedians as Jill Connor Browne, Wanda Sykes, Laurie Notaro, Wendy Dale, and Ayun Halliday.

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A good story improves with the telling, and nothing improves a travel story more than something going wrong. Once the anguish fades, the frustration, embarrassment, danger, and inconvenience provide great material for a tale that can be told again and again. The adventurers in What Color is Your Jockstrap? encounter just about every absurd, surreal, and wacky moment imaginable, from a monster dildo that won’t go away to becoming the prey of religious zealots at the world’s largest human gathering. The proverbial “hair in my soup” at a French restaurant is spiced up by the proprietor’s remarkable solution to the “problem.” Nothing is too ridiculous on the road, and as these men and women generously share without shame or undue embarrassment, they prove again and again that a sense of humor is the one tool no traveler should be without.

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Richard Sterling is known variously as Conan of the Kitchen, the Indiana Jones of Gastronomy, the Man Who Will Eat Anything—Once, and the Fearless Diner. In How to Eat Around the World, Richard takes the reader on a gastronomical romp from the high style of European cuisine (Service a la Russe) to eating congealed blood from a wood bowl in the Philippines. Richard truly has tried everything, at least once, and in this book he demystifies exotic cuisine so it becomes more accessible and helps readers understand the varying mores and dining customs of the world’s peoples. He explains how differing cuisines have influenced each other, how food, like language, has migrated across continents, and how sharing meals can be the most meaningful and articulate way to engage a culture and share your own experience. Richard helps readers become comfortable with the world’s cuisines so they can seek out the exotic or simply feel at ease eating foods that appear strange, unappealing, or simply different.

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Whether kept on the nightstand or tucked in a backpack or briefcase, this volume of travel vignettes will inspire readers who dream of faraway places. Famous travelers and ordinary men and women share their stories. Each day offers a reflection or anecdote, providing an illuminating collection of travel wisdom and reminding readers of their past experiences--or of their dreams to be on the road. Features selections from classic and contemporary storytellers including Buddha, St. Augustine, Lawrence Durrell, Benjamin Disraeli, Paul Theroux, Jon Krakauer, Mary Morris, Peter Matthiessen, Tim Cahill, Jan Morris, Richard Halliburton, and Isabella Bird.

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"Someday, when I am rich, I am going to invite someone from my travels to visit me in America." Brad Newsham was only 22 when he scribbled this note in his journal with "only an immature sense of the staying power of ideas." Years later, this casual prophecy came true, and Newsham documents the events that led up to it in Take Me with You. This is the sweet story of his 100-day journey through the Philippines, India, Egypt, Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, as he seeks just the right person to bring to America. The book covers a wide geography not just of land, but also of spirit. "Brilliant, sharp, unswerving travel writing by a man skilled at letting the scales fall from his eyes; it is a memoir of travel seen through time and resolve - in short, a wonderful book." - Herbert Gold, author of Bohemia, Daughter Mine, and Best Nightmare on Earth

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Food -- its smells, textures, colors, flavors, and rituals -- is tied intrinsically to place. This heartwarming, surprising, and sumptuous collection of stories reveals our obsession with how food nourishes and sustains us, teaches us about other cultures, and creates community and connection with others. From the award-winning editor of Travelers' Tales Food, here is another collection of funny and sometimes frightening true stories of eating that will make your mouth water while helping you better understand other cultures. Notable authors include Jeffrey Steingarten, Frances Mayes, Jonathan Raban, John Krich, and Maxine Kumin.

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The Billy Gogan story is a fictional memoir told by an old Army general of his adventures as a young man. Billy Gogan, American, opens with recently orphaned Billy Gogan fleeing Ireland on the eve of the Great Hunger -- either because he is the son of a dangerous revolutionary, or because his cousin doesn't trust him around his daughter. Billy befriends a destitute Irish peasant named Maire and her young daughter Fiona, and together they endure a harsh passage to New York, America's greatest city. They get separated as they debark, and Billy searches tirelessly for them in the dangerous Five Points, ground zero in the collision of Americans, ex-slaves, and Irish refugees. Here, Billy completes his education. Already able to declaim Cicero and construe Aristotle, he learns voting fraud from Bill Tweed, the future head of Tammany Hall, and the numbers game from Charlie Backwell, Tammany's top bookie. Finally, Brannagh O'Marran, the beautiful mulatta daughter of the Irish madam of Gotham's finest brothel, teaches him about love. Billy eventually finds Maire and Fiona, and the three of them plan their future together. But that future is taken in a cruel stroke, and nothing will ever be the same.

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France is steeped in refined traditions, with its rich history, exquisite art, robust culture, and varied cuisine. Writer Erin Byrne was changed by traveling around this country with the ghosts of artists and historical figures who shared with her their guides to living. Wings: Gifts of Art, Life, and Travel in France is a collection of essays drawn from Byrne's travels across the country. From Cezanne's studio in Aix-en-Provence to a tiny village in the Jura Mountains, from a neighborhood bistro on the Left Bank of Paris to a plain high above the Normandy beaches, she travels through France collecting stories, characters, tastes, and secrets that act as ingredients for change, then takes those experiences and digs deeper to uncover meaning. Henri Cartier-Bresson issues a challenge, Sainte Genevieve offers resilience, Salvador Dali seduces, Picasso entertains, and a wrought iron sign portends the future. Wings is about the gifts that we all glean from our travels. This book will inspire readers to unwrap their own images and impressions in a new way.

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Stand back! The tales in this raunchy round-the-world romp might get you dirty. We've all had unspeakable experiences while traveling that we're ashamed to admit, but these often become our best stories in the retelling. The writers in this collection cast inhibition aside and reveal their weirdest and worst moments and how they made the best of them. And memorable moments in exotic destinations come in all shapes and sizes: insects as big as Pam Anderson's left tit, regrettable sex, stink-eyed officials, horrible healers, Lady Gaga's shoes and Madonna's special meal, trigger-happy militants, and peeping Tom rock stars. Adventure vicariously as: Spud Hilton (not Monty Python) finds the Holy Grail by accident. Meghan Ward squats, and then the toilet grunts back, in Goa. Kasha Rigby proved how tough she is on National Geographic's Ultimate Survival Alaska, but is she a match for a 90-year-old bone breaker in Guatemala? Namibians stereotype Chinese men as Bruce Lee--Gerald Yeung wonders if attacking baboons will do the same. Keph Senett (hoping not to follow in the footsteps of Pussy Riot) braves bombs, police and a Soviet-era sofa bed to play soccer at the LGBT games in Putin's Russia. Jabba-the-Turd versus Shannon Bradford in an epic showdown in Argentina. And many more...

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Kin to the Wind is the memoir of Moro, a guitarist and composer, who traveled the world as a troubadour, using only his guitar performances as currency. This talented former member of the world-famous New Christy Minstrels has played in over 50 countries -- in royal palaces, in African casbahs, and even on a British warship in trade for his passage across the Indian Ocean. Bedouin smugglers took him across the Arabian Desert in their camel caravan, listening to his music beneath desert stars. Howard Hughes personally came to hear him at an engagement in Las Vegas, and an Italian duchess who found him performing with a street-dancing flamenco troupe of gypsies in 1961 assisted him in obtaining a visa for Algeria where he then toured during the violent Seven Years' War. Moro's memoir is an account of life's magic, suffused with an almost childlike innocence in his pursuit of dreams and his belief in the goodness of people the world over.

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The tales in this collection present a uniqu e portrait of the United States through the eyes of a host o f renowned travellers that includes Bill Bryson, Jim Harriso n, E. Annie Proulx and Jan Morris. '

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As Andrew McCarthy wrote in The New York Times Book Review, “For more than 20 years, Travelers’ Tales has been publishing books that might best be described as the literary equivalent of a group of travelers sitting around a dim cafe, sipping pints or prosecco and trading their best stories.” Now, new from Travelers’ Tales comes The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12: True Stories from Around the World—the latest collection in the best-selling, award-winning series that invites you to ride shotgun alongside intrepid female nomads as they wander the globe discovering new places, faces, and facets of themselves. “In story after story,” McCarthy wrote about the previous volume of The Best Women’s Travel Writing, “the refreshing absence of bluster and bravado, coupled with the optimism necessary for bold travel, create a unifying narrative that testifies to the personal value and cultural import of leaving the perceived safety of home and setting out into the wider world.” The essays in this volume are as diverse as the destinations, exploring themes of kindness, transformation, nature, friendship, family, strength, and resilience. In The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 12, you will… Settle a thirteen-year debt in Cuba Learn to survive in the polar regions of Canada Witness an amateur autopsy in Ireland Get chloroformed, robbed, read to, and propositioned in Italy Summit Kilimanjaro in Tanzania Get lost and found on a dark and rainy morning in northern France Find joy in Azerbaijan while walking across two continents Explain American reality TV to a bewildered bunch in Bolivia Fear for your life on a stormy Adriatic Sea Bear witness at the site of a volcano disaster in Indonesia Contemplate the perils of too much safety in Nepal Get conned and taken for a ride in Colombia Track one of the world’s most elusive animals in India Travel the world on stolen plane tickets Outgrow nihilism and embrace friendship at a convent in Spain …and much more!

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The points of view and perspectives in The Best Travel Writing 2009 are global, and the themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity, misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. Reading these stories is like sitting in a cafe filled with fellow travelers swapping tales about past adventures and ideas on where to head next. This edition takes the reader on a harrowing raft ride off the coast of Panama, on a whirlwind tour from Florence to Santorini, into the wilds of Patagonia, and to a colorful village in Ghana.

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The Best Travel Writing 2007 is the fourth volume in the annual series Travelers' Tales launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing — from Nobel Prize winners to emerging writers. These 29 stories cover the globe, from probing the depths of a culture in Jerusalem to riding the rails in India and trying to save a life in Costa Rica. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, absolute hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisine. In The Best Travel Writing 2007 readers will become a sex slave in Zambia, watch karma play its part in rough travel in Costa Rica, rediscover Jewish roots in Germany, see preconceptions crumble aboard a tramp ferry on the Red Sea, comprehend the social magic of the Mexican taco stand, discover how a restaurant can make miracles with only fish in Italy, hang on the knife’s edge between life and death on a mountain in New Zealand, become a kick boxer in Thailand, escape a volcanic eruption in Vanuatu…and much more.

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From revolution to embargo, from the charms of old Havana to the beaches of the Bay of Pigs, from the hypnotic rhythms of Caribbean music to voodoo influences, Cuba is a country of passion and complexity, a political dinosaur on the verge of dramatic change. Travelers’ Tales Cuba is an eye-opening literary ensemble, in which Cuba emerges with all its strengths and weaknesses, convictions and contradictions.In Travelers’ Tales Cuba:• Swivel your hips with Stephanie Elizondo Griest as she dances with Havana’s mistress of rumba• Pick up hitchhikers with Dave Eggers and meet the starting center for the Cuban women’s national basketball team• Feel the heartbeat of Cuba on late night musical excursions with Henry Shukman• Learn the Cuban secret to life—making the most of what you have—with Cristina Garcia• Join Patrick Symmes on his search for the Ernesto "Che" Guevara legend• Glimpse the quirks, charm, and creativity of Cubans on an unusal bus ride with Eduardo Galeano... and much more.

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Adventures in Wine takes you to the wine country like no other wine book: behind the scenes, into the vineyards and cellars, with some of the world's finest wine writers. Here the emphasis is not on the wine - though it's always present - but on the richly textured tapestry that wine has woven into our world for centuries. Each story is a personal exploration of a place on earth that is fortunate enough to be called wine country. Yes, you'll visit Napa and Provence and Tuscany, but also Greece and Hungary, Arizona and Alsace, Georgia and Georgia (the state and the country). These writers let the world of wine affect them deeply: Gerald Asher discovers a moment of rare happiness with a wine he can never name, Karen MacNeil is led inexorably from midtown Manhattan to a mountaintop vineyard in California, vintner Steve Edmunds discovers that perhaps the wine is making him, not the other way around - and novelist Jim Harrison reveals how wine helped save his life. These are the stories that wine country travelers tell each other late into the evening, when pretense is put aside and deeper truths are revealed. There's also plenty of rollicking good fun, such as learning how Kit Snedaker craftily gets the upper hand on snooty sommeliers; joining Bob Blumer, the Surreal Gourmet, as he works the harvest at Burgundy's most august domaine, Romanée-Conti; and wading into the Seine with DeAnne Musolf Crouch to catch trout - with a net. There's something for every wine lover in Adventures in Wine, including history, technology, and Peter Mayle searching for a spittoon. So uncork a bottle and take a trip to the wine country with some of the most observant, engaging, and enlightening guides you'll ever meet between the covers of a book.

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These stories of travel in Central America -- Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama -- are adventurous and quirky, sobering and enlightening. Readers visit a Panamanian island known for its wildlife; glimpse the wealthy Generation X repatriates of Nicaragua; and meet a charming Guatemalan revolutionary. Authors include Paul Theroux, Jennifer Harbury, Ronald Wright, Joan Didion, Randy Wayne White, and Rigoberta Menchu. Travelers' Tales Central America provides a new window into this astonishingly beautiful and complex part of the world. "For the thoughtful traveler, these books are an invaluable resource." -- Pico Iyer

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San Francisco is spoken of in the same breath as Paris, Venice, and Rome, and has earned the slogan "America’s Favorite City" for its openness, dramatic beauty, cultural amenities, the diversity of its neighborhoods and population, and its icons—the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, cable cars, Fisherman’s Wharf, and fog. It sits on the tip of a peninsula on the edge of a continent in one of the world’s most seismically active areas—no wonder there has always been a "sitting on the edge" mentality here. The city appeared instantly—just add gold and stir!—when that precious ore was discovered in the nearby hills in 1848. It was a boomtown that lasted, and all of that rich history is captured in Travelers’ Tales San Francisco along with clear portraits of today’s city. In these true stories you will explore the North Beach of the Beat era and beyond with Herbert Gold, discover true romance on a cable car with Michele Anna Jordan, uncover the real Mission district with John Krich, marvel at the city’s wild light with Andrei Codrescu, gumshoe through Sam Spade’s San Francisco with Don Freeman, and learn what it means to be a "quintessential San Franciscan" with the late Herb Caen.

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Travelers' Tales Love & Romance is a collection of literary essays -- all true stories -- of love, lust, and romance encountered while traveling. They range from a tender story of how travel kept the spark in a 50-year marriage, to one woman's story of becoming engaged to a Figi Island tribesman, to the tale of an erotic romp with an unsuspected opium smuggler. Some stories are touching, others are frightening; all involve love in its many guises waiting to surprise and delight the unsuspecting traveler.

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Here are 28 awe-inspiring stories of danger and survival, guaranteed to get your heart pumping. Whether trapped in an underwater cave, escaping an avalanche, fending off a thug, or surviving a storm at sea, each author faces moments of raw terror and finds deep reserves of courage. From mountain ice to jungle rot, from bombed-out villages and urban ghettos to wild animals and depraved humans, our authors struggle with life, death, and their very sanity on their travels. Notable authors include Sebastian Junger, Eric Hansen, Peter Maass, Bill Buford, Janine Jones, and William T. Vollmann.

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From Tanzania to China, Peru to the Arctic Circle, these stories are passports into a world where family travel has become par for the course. You'll discover how travel restores, revitalizes, and reveals the family, and how traveling with family can give us balance, roots, and stronger wings to explore the world.

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Rife with misadventures, brushes with death, and moments of existential insight, The End of the World Notwithstanding is a hilarious yet reflective look at the emotional experiences that make everyday life exciting—and the physical ones that remind us we’re lucky to be alive. I’m traveling alone, renting a cabin at a normally tranquil spot—that’s called foreshadowing—on the banks of the Big Laramie River at the edge of the Medicine Bow National Forest. So begins Janna L. Goodwin’s lighthearted collection of nail-biting stories, all true, and all of which fill the listener with wonder … as in, “I wonder how any of us survives?” Encounters with wildfire, insects, house pets, weather, gravity, predators, bullies, and the most potent force of all—fear itself—unfold in remote landscapes of the American West (and Midwest); on the neon-splashed sidewalks of Hollywood; at a Catskills summer camp for actors; in the lavish apartment of a famous senator; in a Hawaiian beach condo; on the side of a mountain above the Mediterranean Sea; and far beneath the streets of Paris. Goodwin looks for and ultimately finds meaning (if not security) in a clear-eyed acknowledgment of our shared, human condition—and in laughter.

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