There's still time for readers of all ages to participate in our Read Beyond the Beaten Path Summer Reading Challenge! You can read any books you like for this challenge, but if you'd like to read about travelers actually going beyond the beaten path, here are 15 nonfiction books about people traveling near and far, by land, air, and sea.
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World travel : an irreverent guide
by Anthony Bourdain Complemented by essays, a traveler’s guide to Bourdain’s favorite destinations shares essential advice on where to stay, what to eat and what to avoid in such locales as Paris, Shanghai and Buenos Aires. |
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Bicycling with butterflies : my 10,201-mile journey following the monarch migration
by Sara Dykman An outdoor educator and field researcher recounts her incredible journey following the annual migration of the threatened monarch butterfly by biking with them on a 10,000 mile, round-trip journey through three countries. |
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The hiking book from hell / : My Reluctant Attempt to Learn to Love Nature
by Are Kalvo Sometime around his forties, Are Kalvo starts losing his friends...to the mountains. Friends who used to meet him at the pub are now hiking and skiing every weekend, and when they do show up, all they talk about is feeling at one with nature (without a hint of irony). When Are realizes he's the only person who hasn't posted a selfie on a mountain, he starts to wonder: does he have it all wrong? To find out, Are buys some ridiculously expensive gear and heads into the woods. The result of his sardonic trek is at once a smart and funny take-down of outdoors culture, and a reluctant surrender to nature's undeniable pull. |
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Leave only footprints : My Acadia-to-zion Journey Through Every National Park
by Conor Knighton A CBS Sunday Morning correspondent presents a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America’s National Parks, which turned out to be the road trip of a lifetime that changed his views on everything from God and love to politics and technology. |
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The best American travel writing 2021
by Padma Lakshmi Padma Lakshmi presents the best travel writing of the year. |
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Nowhere for very long : the unexpected road to an unconventional life
by Brianna Madia A woman defined by motion, the author, in this chronicle of living in the wild, learning and unlearning, heads into the canyons of Utah, along with her three dogs and a beat-up van, where she explores the outside world and the spirit within. |
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The same river twice : a memoir of dirtbag backpackers, bomb shelters, and bad travel
by Pam Mandel A product of beige California suburbs, Mandel was overlooked and unexceptional. When her father ships her off on a youth group tour of Israel, he inadvertently catapults his seventeen-year-old daughter into a world of angry European backpackers, seize-the-day Israelis, and the fall out of cold war-era politics. Border violence hadn't been on the birthright tour agenda. But then neither had domestic violence, going broke, getting wasted, getting sick, or getting lost. With no guidance and no particular plan, utterly unprepared for what lies ahead, Mandel says yes to everything and everyone, embarking on an adventure across three continents and thousands of miles, from a cold water London flat to rural Pakistan, from the Nile River Delta to the snowy peaks of Ladakh and finally, back home to California, determined to shape a life that is truly hers. |
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Riverman : an American odyssey
by Ben McGrath Drawing on his own encounter with Dick Conant, this riveting true story follows the American folk hero who, living a remarkable life far outside the staid confines of modern existence, paddled the rivers of America until his disappearance in 2014 while on the way to Florida. |
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Fat girls hiking : an inclusive guide to getting outdoors at any size or ability
by Summer Michaud-Skog Provides practical advice for aspiring hikers with a body-positive bent and offers personal and heartfelt stories and reviews of trails to welcome and encourage people of all body types, sizes and backgrounds to enjoy outdoor recreation. |
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The catch me if you can : one woman's journey to every country in the world
by Jessica Nabongo Celebrated traveler and photographer Jessica Nabongo-the first documented Black woman to visit all 195 countries in the world-shares her journey around the globe with fascinating stories of adventure, culture, travel musts, and human connections. |
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Where the deer and the antelope play : the pastoral observations of one ignorant American who loves to walk outside
by Nick Offerman With wit, heartwarming stories and a keen insight into new and exciting ways to see both the past and the future of the country, the actor, writer and woodworker takes a literary journey to America's frontier to celebrate the people and landscape that have made it great. |
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An Indian among los Indígenas : a native travel memoir
by Ursula Pike A memoir by Ursula Pike (Karuk) of her time serving with the Peace Corps in Bolivia. Focusing on international travel from a California Indian perspective, the memoir asks what it means to be both colonizer and colonized, and inquires into the challenges of building relationships between Indigenous groups from very different places. |
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The Bears Ears : a human history of America's most endangered wilderness
by David Roberts A personal and historical exploration of the Bears Ears country and the fight to save a national monument. The Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, created by President Obama in 2016 and eviscerated by President Trump in 2017, contains more archaeological sites than any other region in the United States. It's also a spectacularly beautiful landscape, a mosaic of sandstone canyons and bold mesas and buttes. This wilderness, now threatened by oil and gas drilling, unrestricted grazing, and invasion by jeep and ATV, is at the center of the greatest environmental battle in America since the damming of the Colorado River to create Lake Powell in the 1950s. In The Bears Ears, acclaimed adventure writer David Roberts takes readers on a tour of his favorite place on earth as he unfolds the rich and contradictory human history of the 1.35 million acres of the Bears Ears domain. Weaving personal memoir with archival research, Roberts sings the praises of the outback he's explored for the last twenty-five years. |
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A sailor, a chicken, an incredible voyage : the seafaring adventures of Guirec and Monique
by Guirec Soudée A man and his chicken sail 45,000 nautical miles in this powerful story of following your dreams no matter what stands in your way. When Guirec Soudée was 21 years old, he bought a 30-foot sailboat and set out across the Atlantic, despite having only sailed a dinghy before. His only companion? His plucky pet hen, Monique. Guirec never intended to sail the world with a chicken, but after reaching the Caribbean, he and Monique made for Greenland--and emerged from the pack ice 100 days later. Their next goal? San Francisco. Then, Antarctica. But first, could they navigate the treacherous Northwest Passage? One thing was for sure: Monique would help her trusty skipper by laying an egg! -Heart-stopping adventure story: navigating treacherous icebergs with achicken on the mast is just one of many nail-biting maneuvers from this action-packed book. -Perfect for readers of The Art of Racing in the Rain: Guirec and Monique's bond is unlike anything you've ever seen before. -Inspirational: Guirec shows that allyou have to do is believe to achieve something big. -Photographs and maps: show the epic voyage and provide breaks in the text. Guirec and Monique's unbelievable journey won the hearts of people all over the world and caused a social media frenzy when ithappened. Now, in their long-awaited first book, readers will uncover their gripping voyage from start to finish. |