Staff Picks
#BroaderBookshelf 2022 - True Travel Tales
- Sara M.
- Friday, February 11, 2022
Collection
Fulfill the "Read a book about a journey" prompt for this year's Broader Bookshelf challenge with one of these nonfiction travel books. Travel writing can take you all the way around the world from the comfort of your living room!
Learn more about the Broader Bookshelf challenge and see more lists here.
Turn Right at Machu Picchu
Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time
Published in 2012
Traces the author's recreation of Hiram Bingham III's discovery of the ancient citadel, Machu Picchu, in the Andes Mountains of Peru, describing his struggles with rudimentary survival tools and his experiences at the sides of local guides.
Behind the Beautiful Forevers
Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
Published in 2014
Profiles everyday life in the settlement of Annawadi as experienced by a Muslim teen, an ambitious rural mother, and a young scrap metal thief, illuminating how their efforts to build better lives are challenged by religious, caste, and economic tensions.
Jerusalem
Chronicles from the Holy City
Published in 2012
"Delisle explores the complexities of a city that represents so much to so many. He eloquently examines the impact of the conflict on the lives of people on both sides of the wall while drolly recounting the quotidian: checkpoints, traffic jams, and holidays. When observing the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim populations that call Jerusalem home, Delisle's drawn line is both sensitive and fair, assuming nothing and drawing everything" --Paper band on book.
Nothing to Envy
Ordinary Lives in North Korea
Published in 2010
Follows the lives of six North Koreans over fifteen years, a chaotic period that saw the rise to power of Kim Jong Il and the devastation of a famine that killed one-fifth of the population, illustrating what it means to live under the most repressive totalitarian regime today.
A Time of Gifts
On Foot to Constantinople
Published in 2005
The author presents a chronicle of his journey, at the age of 18, on foot across central Europe, through the Lowlands to Mitteleuropa, to Teutonic and Slav heartlands, through the baroque remains of the Holy Roman Empire, up the Rhine, and down to the Danube, capturing an unrecoverable time in Europe before the devastation of World War II.
The Good Girl's Guide to Getting Lost
A Memoir of Three Continents, Two Friends, and One Unexpected Adventure
Published in 2011
Rachel Friedman has always been the consummate good girl who does well in school and plays it safe, so the college grad surprises no one more than herself when, on a whim (and in an effort to escape impending life decisions), she buys a ticket to Ireland, a place she has never visited. There she forms an unlikely bond with a free-spirited Australian girl, a born adventurer who spurs Rachel on to a yearlong odyssey that takes her to three continents, fills her life with newfound friends, and gives birth to a previously unrealized passion for adventure. As her journey takes her to Australia and South America, Rachel discovers and embraces her love of travel and unlocks more truths about herself than she ever realized she was seeking. Along the way, the erstwhile good girl finally learns to do something she's never done before: simply live for the moment.
Eat, Pray, Love
One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia
Published in 2007
Like many others, around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. Although she had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want, including a husband, a home, and a successful career as a magazine writer, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. This is an account of her yearlong worldwide pursuit of pleasure, spiritual devotion, guidance, and what she really wanted out of life.
Tell My Horse
Voodoo and Life in Haiti and Jamaica
Published in 2009
The author recounts her experiences as an initiate into the voodoo practices of Haiti and Jamaica in the 1930s.
The Travels of Ibn Battuta in the Near East, Asia and Africa 1325-1354.
Published in 2013
In 1326, Ibn Battuta began a pilgrimage to Mecca that ended 27 years and 75,000 miles later. His engrossing account of that journey provides vivid scenes from Morocco, southern Russia, India, China, and elsewhere..
Travels in West Africa
Congo Francais, Corisco and Cameroons.
Published in 2011
After a second trip to Africa, Kingsley published her first major work, "Travels in West Africa" (1897). The book was an immediate best-seller, and popular for its honest and realistic depiction of life as a native African and British imperialistic influence. Kingsley's works drew attention to native religion and law in West Africa, prompting the formation of activist groups after the author's sudden death from Typhoid on her third trip to Africa.
An African in Greenland
Published in 2001
Tete-Michel Kpomassie was a teenager in Togo when he discovered a book about Greenland--and knew that he must go there. Working his way north over nearly a decade, Kpomassie finally arrived in the country of his dreams. This brilliantly observed and superbly entertaining record of his adventures among the Inuit is a testament both to the wonderful strangeness of the human species and to the surprising sympathies that bind us all.
Deer Hunting in Paris
A Memoir of God, Guns, and Game Meat
Published in 2013
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 caf ̌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.
Finding Gobi
A Little Dog with a Very Big Heart
Published in 2017
Dion Leonard, a seasoned ultramarathon runner, crossed paths with a stray dog while competing in a 155-mile race through the Gobi Desert in China. The lovable pup, who would later earn the name Gobi, proved that what she lacked in size, she more than made up for in heart, as she went step for step with Dion over the Tian Shan Mountains, across massive sand dunes, through yurt villages and the black sands of the Gobi Desert, keeping pace with him for 77 miles. As Dion witnessed the incredible determination and heart of this small animal, he found his own heart undergoing a change as well. Whereas in the past these races were all about winning and being the best, his goal now was to make sure he and Gobi's friendship continued well after the finish line. He found himself letting Gobi sleep in his tent at night, giving her food and water out of his own limited supply, and carrying her across numerous rivers, even when he knew it would mean putting him behind in the race, or worse, prevent him from finishing at all. Although Dion did not cross the finish line first, he felt he had won something even greater -- a new outlook on life and a new friend that he planned on bringing home as soon as arrangements were made. However, before he could take her home, Gobi went missing in the sprawling Chinese city where she was being kept. Dion, with the help of strangers and a viral outpouring of assistance on the internet, set out to track her down, and reunite forever with the amazing animal that changed his life and proved to him and the world that miracles are possible.
The Old Ways
A Journey on Foot
Published in 2012
The author recounts his walking explorations through historical British territories, roads, and sea paths, drawing on themes in natural history, cartography, archaeology, and literature.
West with the Night
Published in 2013
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.
Maximum City
Bombay Lost and Found
Published in 2005
A portrait of Bombay, India, and its people chronicles the everyday life of the city and its inhabitants, from the criminal underworld of rival Muslim and Hindu gangs to the diverse people who come from the villages in search of a better life.
Venice.
Published in 2010
Venice stands, as she loves to tell you, on the frontiers of the east and west, half-way between the setting and the rising sun. Goethe calls her 'the market-place of the Morning and the Evening lands'. Certainly no city on earth gives a more immediate impression of symmetry and unity, or seems more patently born to greatness. So Jan Morris remarks, with graceful literary distinction, on the qualities that have made Venice a unique place among the world's great destinations. She has known it intimately for over six decades. In 2010, the 50th anniversary of the first publication of Venice is celebrated one of the finest travel books on the world's most famous tourist destination! Written as James Morris, this book has been slightly updated without disturbing its period flavour, and is being celebrated by Faber, the book publisher.
A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush
Published in 2010
Eric Newby's account of his journey with friend, Hugh Carless, from London to the wild mountains of the Hindu Kush, north-east of Kabul. This book covers their journey from their first steps in untried boots to their meeting with explorer Wilfred Thesiger.
Searching for Zion
Published in 2013
Documents the author's decade-long search for identity and a place of belonging as inspired by African-American and Jewish history as well as the exoduses of black communities that left ancestral homes in search of "promised lands."
Dark Star Safari
Published in 2004
In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances. Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News). In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.
Arabian Sands
Published in 2007
"Born in Addis Ababa in 1910 and educated in England, from 1945 Wilfred Thesiger spent five years exploring in and around the vast, waterless desert, the 'Empty Quarter' of Arabia. Travelling amongst the Bedu people, he experienced their everyday challenges of hunger and thirst, the trials of long marches beneath the relentless sun, the bitterly cold nights and the constant danger of death if it was discovered he was a Christian 'infidel'. He was the first European to visit most of the region, and just before he left the area the process that would change it forever had begun - the discovery of oil. Thesiger saw Arabian Sands as 'a memorial to a vanished past, a tribute to a once magnificent people'." "This edition includes an introduction by Rory Stewart discussing the dangers of Thesiger's travels, his unconventional personality and his insights into Bedu life."--Jacket.
Shadow of the Silk Road
Published in 2007
A journey along the greatest land route on earth: out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran and into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron covers some seven thousand miles in eight months. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart and camel, he travels from the tomb of the Yellow Emperor to the ancient port of Antioch. The Silk Road is a huge network of arteries splitting and converging across the breadth of Asia. To travel it is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions and inventions. But alongside this rich and astonishing past, this book is also about Asia today: a continent of upheaval. One of the trademarks of Thubron's travel writing is the beauty of his prose; another is his gift for talking to people and getting them to talk to him.--From publisher description.
The Sex Lives of Cannibals
Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
Published in 2004
At the age of 26, Maarten Troost, after racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs, decided to move to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the Earth was irresistibly romantic. This book tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish, and worst of all, no television or coffee. He contends with a cast of bizarre local characters and eventually settles into the ebb and flow of island life, just before his return to the culture shock of civilization.--From publisher description.
The Innocents Abroad, Or, The New Pilgrim's Progress
Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land, with Descriptions of Countries, Nations, Incidents, and Adventures As They Appeared to the Author
Published in 2007
Twain describes his experiences traveling in Europe and the Middle East, and pokes fun at tourists and tour guides.
A Motor-Flight Through France
Published in 1908
A Motor Flight Through France, Edith Wharton?s pre-War World I travel book, follows Edith and her husband Teddy as they jaunt through France in a Panhard-Levassor touring car which Teddy had had closed in and decked out with every possible convenience, including an electric light. Wharton describes the exhilarating freedom made possible by motor travel in a time and place when automobiles were still quite a novelty. In Part I, the Whartons pick up their car in Boulogne in May 1906 and travel to Bourges. Parts II and III are records of two motor tours on which the Whartons were accompanied by writer Henry James. Part II is from Paris to Provence and includes a visit to George Sand?s home at Nohant. Beginning and ending in Paris, Part III is a tour during Whitsuntide weekend of 1907 of the northeast section of France. Here the reader gets a glimpse at the pre-World War?I French countryside. This is the area of Marne which Wharton would later describe in Fighting France: From Dunkerque to Belfort and in her novel The Marne.
Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark
Published in 1796
Amongst her writings, this travelogue describes Mary Wollstonecraft's adventures in Sweden, Norway and Denmark.