Søgeresultater: 15

Summary: Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes recounts Robert Louis Stevenson's 120 mile, 12 day hike, accompanied only by his stubborn and unwieldy donkey, through the Cévennes of south-central France. A pioneering piece of outdoor literature, it is one of Stevenson's earliest works, and one of the earliest accounts of hiking and camping for recreation rather than necessity. Stevenson's route is still popular today; recently when asked why the Scotsman still informs the identity of the Cevennes, a politician and historian of the area remarked "Because he showed us the landscape that makes us who we are."

Summary: After a bout with the measles that left his vision impaired, Harvard undergrad Richard Henry Dana signed up for a two-year engagement as a sailor, thinking that the fresh sea air might improve his vision. The diary that Dana kept during his stint on the open sea formed the basis for this wildly popular memoir, which was later made into a movie. A must-read for fans of rip-roaring nautical tales or social history buffs

Summary: Books such as The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn have firmly established Mark Twain's reputation as one of the best-loved American humorists, but the author's non-fiction works are packed with as much laughter and keen insight as his popular novels. In the series of essays presented in the volume Roughing It , Twain recounts his years as a soldier, sailor, and speculator in the Wild West

Summary: Writer Jack London lived a life that paralleled the amazing exploits of the action-adventure heroes in his novels. The Cruise of the Snark is an engaging travelogue that details a South Pacific sea voyage that London took in 1907 in a vessel known as the Snark

Summary: Supported by a family inheritance that gave her £500 a year, Mary Henrietta Kingsley traveled to Africa to complete the book her father had started. The subject was the culture of Africa and Kingsley stayed with local people while she learned to survive in the African jungles, studied cannibal tribes, discovered new species of fish, and climbed Mount Cameroon by a route untouched by any European before her. Kingsley's ideas greatly influenced European ideas about Africa and the African people and her 1897 account, Travels in West Africa , quickly became a best-seller

Summary: When Sir Henry Ernest Shackleton was beaten to the South Pole in 1912, he decided to trek across the continent via the pole instead. Before his ship even reached the continent it was crushed in pack ice. Shackleton managed to bring his entire team home by his masterful leadership through a series of incredible events. He has become a cult figure and a role model for great leadership

Summary: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • 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 had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s death, her family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. Four years later, with nothing more to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life. With no experience or training, driven only by blind will, she would hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State—and she would do it alone. Told with suspense and style, sparkling with warmth and humor, Wild powerfully captures the terrors and pleasures of one young woman forging ahead against all odds on a journey that maddened, strengthened, and ultimately healed her

Summary: THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE The original bestseller from the beloved author of UNDERLAND, LANDMARKS and THE LOST WORDS - Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape ' The Old Ways confirms Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature' Scotland on Sunday Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations. 'Sublime . . . It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday Times 'Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again' Metro 'He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony Gormley

Summary: Following the Equator is an account by Mark Twain of his travels through the British Empire in 1895. He chose his route for opportunities to lecture on the English language and recoup his finances, impoverished due to a failed investment. He recounts and criticizes the racism, imperialism and missionary zeal he encountered on his travels - and all with his particular brand of wit

Summary: Before his literary career took off and he emerged as one of America's foremost men of letters, Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot in the antebellum South and Midwest. This fascinating account offers a brief history of commercial boating in the period and a probing, insightful, and eminently entertaining look at Twain's own experiences

Summary: 'The book that redefined travel writing' Guardian Bruce Chatwin sets off on a journey through South America in this wistful classic travel book With its unique, roving structure and beautiful descriptions, In Patagonia offers an original take on the age-old adventure tale. Bruce Chatwin's journey to a remote country in search of a strange beast brings along with it a cast of fascinating characters. Their stories delay him on the road, but will have you tearing through to the book's end. 'It is hard to pin down what makes In Patagonia so unique, but, in the end, it is Chatwin's brilliant personality that makes it what it is... His form of travel was not about getting from A to B. It was about internal landscapes' Sunday Times

Summary: Scholar and self-taught ethnographer Lafcadio Hearn spent much of his life documenting and interpreting Japanese culture for Western audiences. His observations and essays in Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan offer an exciting look into the daily lives of the Japanese in a bygone era