A list of books, many of which received at least one starred review (indicating a work of unusual merit) from the following review sources: Booklist (BL), Publisher's Weekly (PW), Kirkus, and Library Journal (LJ). Additional titles of interest may be included on this list. Titles are listed alphabetically by author.

2003

• Lost in Mongolia|
  Author: Angus, Colin
  Publisher: Broadway $ 12.95 (paper) ISBN: 0767912802
  Kirkus
  The adrenaline junky who brought us Amazon Extreme now takes on an expedition that makes Survivor look like a luxury tour.
  Updated 6.30.03

• The Darkest Jungle: The True Story of the Darien Expedition and America's Ill-Fated Race to Connect the Seas
  Author: Balf, Todd
  Publisher: Crown $ 24.95 ISBN: 009609890
  Kirkus
  Based on the vividly detailed log entries of the U.S. Darien Exploring Expedition, this is a rich, utterly compelling historical narrative that will thrill readers who enjoyed Isaac's Storm, the accounts of the Shackleton expedition, and all similar sagas of adventure at the limits of endurance.
  Updated 10.8.03

• I Saw Ramallah
  Author: Barghouthi, Murid
  Publisher: Vintage $ 12 (paper) ISBN: 1400032660
  Library Journal Booklist
  Palestinian poet Barghouti relates his homecoming to Ramallah after 30 years in exile, offering a moving account of what it means to be a Palestinian today. Winner of the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature.
  Updated 4.29.03

• Chasing the Sea: Lost Among the Ghosts of Empire in Central Asia
  Author: Bissell, Tom
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375421300
  Kirkus
  In this high-octane narrative, Bissell chronicles his journey--sometimes raucous, sometimes powerfully sobering--through Uzbekistan to the disappearing Aral Sea.
  Updated 11.12.03

• A Tale of Two Valleys: Wine, Wealth and the Battle for the Good Life in Napa and Sonoma
  Author: Deutschman, Alan
  Publisher: Broadway $ 23.95 ISBN: 0767907035
  PW
  A Tale of Two Valleys takes young business writer Deutschman to one of America's favorite destinations--California wine country, where he explores the clash of the old and the new in Napa and Sonoma Valleys. This is an exciting romp that will remind readers of Tom Wolfe at his best.
  Updated 11.17.03

• Madness Visible
  Author: Di Giovanni, Janine
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375410732
  Kirkus PW
  From an internationally celebrated war correspondent comes a searing firsthand chronicle--told with extraordinary immediacy--of the ordeal of the Balkan people during the continuing breakup of Yugoslavia.
  Updated 8.25.03

• Yoga for People Who Can't Be Bothered to Do It
  Author: Dyer, Geoff
  Publisher: Random $ 22 ISBN: 0375422145
  PW
  In Dyer's deft hands, what seems like an abstract idea--the search for the essence of experience--becomes an opportunity for storytelling: for a bracing, riotous, and addictive chronicling of anticipation and expectation as he travels about the globe.
  

• Tibet, Tibet
  Author: French, Patrick
  Publisher: Knopf $ 25 ISBN: 1400041007
  Kirkus
  Updated 8.25.03

• Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and Journey to the Ends of the Earth
  Author: Glick, Daniel
  Publisher: Peresus $ 26 ISBN: 1586481541
  PW
  In this frank and funny memoir, a suddenly single father--and nationally known environmental reporter--takes his children on a world tour of some of the world's rare and endangered life forms while reckoning with loss, change, and the challenges of parenting.
  

• Hallowed Ground: A Walk at Gettysburg
  Author: McPherson, James M.
  Publisher: $ ISBN:
  Booklist Kirkus LJ
  McPherson takes us on one of his Gettysburg tours, with stops at important spots. He reflects on the meaning of the battle in the hearts and minds of Americans, describes the key events of those terrible three days in July 1863, and places the struggle in the greater contexts of American and world history.
  
  Updated 3.13.03

• Black Earth: A Journey Through Russia After the Fall
  Author: Meier, Andrew
  Publisher: Norton $ 28.95 ISBN: 0393051781
  Kirkus PW
  With the power of Lenin's Tomb and Balkan Ghosts, this is an illuminating portrait of contemporary Russia--a country in limbo, a land of vast potential struggling with an unfinished past. Black Earth is a penetrating view of the new Russia from a bold new voice in political journalism.
  Updated 6.30.03

• The World: Travels 1950-2000
  Author: Morris, Jan
  Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393052087
  Kirkus Booklist
  Ranging from Manhattan to Venice, Oxford to the Middle East, and Paris to South Africa, the book provides Morris's eyewitness accounts of such seminal moments as the first successful ascent of Everest, the historic Eichmann trial, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the handover of Hong Kong.
  Updated 10.2.03

• High Lattitudes: An Artic Journey
  Author: Mowat, Farley
  Publisher: Steerforth $ 15.95 ISBN: 1586420615
  Kirkus
  In a voice alternately filled with rage, humor, and pathos, Mowat seasons his story with photos, maps, and verbatim transcriptions of testimonies from northern peoples, Inuit and white, at a time when the old ways of life were disappearing.
  

• Sicilian Odyssey
  Author: Prose, Francine
  Publisher: National Geographic $ 20 ISBN: 0792265351
  Booklist
  A blending of art and cultural criticism, travel writing, and personal narrative, Sicilian Odyssey is Prose's imaginative consideration of the diverse cultural legacies found juxtaposed and entangled on the Mediterranean island of Sicily.
  Updated 3.13.03

• Stolen Figs, and Other Adventures in Calabria
  Author: Rotella, Mark
  Publisher: North Point $ 25 ISBN: 0865476276
  PW Kirkus LJ
  Rotella's Stolen Figs is a marvelous evocation of Calabria and Calabrians, whose way of life is largely untouched by the commerce that has made Tuscany and Umbria into tourist redoubts. This is a model travelogue--at once charming and wise, and full of the earthy sense of life that characterizes Calabria and its people.
  

• The Bookseller of Kabul
  Author: Seierstad, Asne
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 19.95 ISBN: 0316764500
  Kirkus PW
  Invited to live with a Kabul bookseller and his family for several months, an award-winning journalist now gives readers a first-hand look at Afghani life as few outsiders have seen it.
  Updated 10.2.03

• In Search of King Solomon's Mines
  Author: Shah, Tahir
  Publisher: Arcade $ 24.95 ISBN: 1559706414
  Library Journal
  A shop near the site of the temple built by King Solomon is where Shah, the author of the much-praised Trail of Feathers and Sorcerer's Apprentice, begins his journey. Intrigued by a map he finds there, he sets out to find the king's gold mines, and the clues point across the Red Sea to Ethiopia. Tahir Shah's trail takes him and his readers on a quest described as both "quixotic" (Huntsville Times) and "challenging" (Publishers Weekly).
  

• Dark Star Safarai: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town
  Author: Theroux, Paul
  Publisher: Houghton Miffliin $ ISBN: 0618134247
  Kirkus LJ
  Widely acclaimed as one of the world's best travel writers, Theroux takes readers on the ultimate journey across the world's most complex and mysterious continent.
  

• Cook: The Extraordinary Voyages of Captain James Cook
  Author: Thomas, Nicholas
  Publisher: Walker $ 28 ISBN: 0802714129
  PW
  Blending an elegant, assured style with bold, cross-disciplinary originality, Thomas breathes life into the complex and controversial legacy of Captain James Cook, an often-misunderstood man.
  Suggested Reading List: Sea Stories
  Updated 10.7.03

• The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland
  Author: Thomson, Hugh
  Publisher: Overlook $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585673552
  PW
  

• Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana's Cajun Coast
  Author: Tidwell, Mike
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 23 ISBN: 0375420762
  Kirkus
  Tidwell--a celebrated travel and environmental writer--introduces readers to the surprisingly varied population of the Louisiana area. He describes the food, the music, the culture, and the lives of those who live along the bayou--a complex, compelling character itself.
  

2002

• Amazon Extreme: Three Men, a Raft, and the World's Most Dangerous River
  Author: Angus, Colin
  Publisher: Broadway $ 22.95 ISBN: 0767910508
  Library Journal
  Culminating in an astonishing victory that garnered major media coverage, this is the pulse-pounding story of three guys who truly went off the deep end, and one who came back to write a riveting recollection of their Amazon adventure.
  Raftyenisey Web Site includes information about the Amazon trip.
  

• In Lands Not My Own: A Wartime Story
  Author: Ainsztein, Reuben
  Publisher: Random $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507574
  Kirkus
  Told with an eloquence reminiscent of Conrad, here is a tale of heartbreaking sorrow, courage, and the extraordinary resilience of the human spirit. In Lands Not My Own is the story of one man's journey across war-torn Europe and his personal testimony to the horrors that give birth to war and are nurtured by it.
  

• West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Reflects on Islam and the West
  Author: Ansary, Tamim
  Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux $ 22 ISBN: 0374287570
  Kirkus Booklist
  Shortly after militant Islamic terrorists destroyed the World Trade Center, Tamim Ansary of San Francisco sent an e-mail to 20 friends, telling how the threatened U.S. reprisals against Afghanistan looked to him as an Afghan American. He has now emerged as one of the most eloquent voices on the conflict between Islam and the West and this is his deeply personal account.
  

• Breaking Clean
  Author: Blunt, Judy
  Publisher: Knopf $ 24 ISBN: 0375401318
  Kirkus PW
  An astonishing literary debut: the true story of a remarkable woman's life in the contemporary American West, where the lessons she learned carried her through blizzards, devastating prairie fires, and extreme isolation.
  Suggested Reading List: Nature
  

• Blues for Cannibals: the Notes from Underground
  Author: Bowden, Charles
  Publisher: North Point $ 24 ISBN: 0865476241
  Booklist
  

• Hold the Enlightenment: More Travel, Less Bliss
  Author: Cahill, Tim
  Publisher: Villard $ 24.95 ISBN: 0375507663
  Publishers Weekly
  America's funniest adventure writer returns with his most entertaining collection of essays yet as he travels the globe and faces down challenges that are animal, topographical--and human.
  

• I'll Know It When I See It: A Daughter's Search for a Home in Ireland
  Author: Carey, Alice
  Publisher: Clarkson $ 22 ISBN: 060960984x
  Kirkus PW
  By turns bittersweet and laugh-aloud funny, I'll Know It When I See It tells an Irish-American woman's story of restoring a cottage in Ireland and reclaiming her roots.
  

• Soul of Nowhere: Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land
  Author: Childs, Craig
  Publisher: Sasquatch $ 22.95 ISBN: 1570613060
  Kirkus
  In Soul of Nowhere, Craig Childs answers the call of fierce places; the more desolate the landscape, the more passionately he is drawn to it.
  

• Land's End: A Walk Through Provincetown
  Author: Cunningham, Michael
  Publisher: Crown $ 16 ISBN: 0609609076
  Kirkus
  The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours explores one of America's oldest towns--Provincetown, on the tip of Cape Cod. Known as a summer mecca of beautiful beaches and quirky stores, the town has attracted an impressive array of artists and writers.
  

• The Light at the End of the World: A Journey Through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures
  Author: Davis, Wade
  Publisher: National Geo $ 35 ISBN: 0792264746
  Booklist
  

• Plundering Paradise: The Hand of Man on the Galapagos Islands
  Author: D'Orso, Michael
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0060193905
  Kirkus
  Against the spectacular backdrop of the Galpagos Islands, D'Orso tells a riveting story of modern-day piracy, greed, and the struggle to save one of the planet's last untouched natural treasures from human destruction.
  Suggested Reading List: Nature
  

• Ninty Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole
  Author: Fleming, Fergus
  Publisher: Grove $ 26 ISBN: 0802117252
  Kirkus PW
  The acclaimed author of Barrow's Boys and Killing Dragons relates the epic story of the men who stopped at nothing to unravel the mysteries of the North Pole. In scintillating detail he tells of the wing governments and fantastic eccentrics who, despite their heroic failures, often achieved massive celebrity as they battled to reach the top of the world.
  

• Me and Shakespeare: Adventures With the Bard
  Author: Gollob, Herman
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 26 ISBN: 0385498179
  Kirkus
  One of the most entertaining and unusual books on Shakespeare ever written is a distinguished book editor's memoir that attests to the lifelong power of literature to enrich, enlarge, and exalt.
  

• Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before
  Author: Horwitz, Tony
  Publisher: Holt $ 26 ISBN: 0805065415
  PW
  In an exhilarating tale of historic adventure, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Confederates in the Attic retraces the voyages of Captain James Cook, the Yorkshire farm boy who drew the map of the modern world.
  Suggested Reading List: Sea Stories
  Updated 8.28.02

• The Rural Life
  Author: Klinkenborg, Verlyn
  Publisher: Little Brown $ 20 ISBN: 0316741671
  Kirkus
  The hugely admired author of The Last Fine Time preserves and makes new the sights, smells, sounds, and poetry of country living. Klinkenborg reveals the beauty of the American landscape, not from a scenic overlook, but through a screened-in porch or from the window of a pickup driving down an empty highway in the teeth of an approaching storm.
  

• I Have Seen the World Begin
  Author: Jensen, Carsten
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 28 ISBN: 0151007683
  Booklist
  Fusing social commentary and history with vibrant descriptions of people and places, Jensen brilliantly evokes the sights, sounds, and smells of these venerable civilizations.
  

• Still Love in Strange Places: A Memoir
  Author: Kephart, Beth
  Publisher: Norton $ 24.95 ISBN: 0393050742
  Kirkus
  When Beth Kephart met and fell in love with the artist who would become her husband, she had little knowledge of the place he came from - an exotic coffee farm high in the jungle hills of El Salvador. Yet, love, she finds, means taking in not only the stranger who is one's lover, but also a stranger's history - in this case, a country, language, people and culture utterly foreign to a young American woman. Kephart's transcendently lyrical prose (often compared to the work of Annie Dillard) has already earned her a National Book Award nomination. - from the author's web site.
  

• American Pie: Slices of Life (and Pie) from America's Back Roads
  Author: Ledraoulec, Pascale
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0060197366
  Library Journal
  An engaging, quirky travelogue and adventure-cookbook brings back from the highways and backroads a homemade slice of America.
  

• The Stone Boudoir: Travels Through the Hidden Villages of Sicily
  Author: Maggio, Theresa
  Publisher: Perseus $ 25 ISBN: 0738203424
  Booklist
  In this sparkling book, Theresa Maggio takes readers on a journey in search of Sicily's most remote and least explored mountain towns. A beautifully wrought meditation on time and place, The Stone Boudoir will be treasured by all who love fine travel writing.
  

• A Desert Calling: Life in a Forbidding Landscape
  Author: Mares, Michael A.
  Publisher: Harvard $ 29.95 ISBN: 0674007476
  Library Journal
  Travel with Michael Mares into the deserts of Argentina, Iran, Egypt, and the American Southwest and encounter a rich and memorable variety of small, tenacious animals. Observe the remarkable behavioral, physiological, and ecological adaptations that have allowed them to persist in an arid world.
  

• Trouser People
  Author: Marshall, Andrew
  Publisher: Counterpoint $ 26 ISBN: 1582431205
  Kirkus
  Part travelogue, part history, part reportage, The Trouser People is an enormously appealing and vivid account of Sir George Scott, the unsung Victorian adventurer who hacked, bullied, and charmed his way through uncharted jungle to help establish British colonial rule in Burma.
  
  

• The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit
  Author: Meloy, Ellen
  Publisher: Pantheon Books $ 24 ISBN: 0375408851
  Kirkus
  From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and in the deep canyons of the Southwest, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy plumbs her lifelong intoxication with light and color, expressed as a profound attachment to landscape.
  Suggested Reading List: Nature
  

• The Stones of Balazuc: A French Village Through Time
  Author: Merriman, John
  Publisher: Norton $ 27.95 ISBN: 0393051137
  Library Journal
  This is a story of resilience. It is also a love letter from an acclaimed historian who with his family has made Balazuc his adopted home. Here, fully realized, is a place that is both universal and irreducibly French.
  

• Following the Sun: A Bicycle Pilgrimage from Andalusia to the Hebrides
  Author: Mitchell, John Hanson
  Publisher: Counterpoint $ 26 ISBN: 1582431361
  Kirkus
  Mitchell spins the story of his entrancing, sun-drenched bicycle journey fromthe beaches of Southern Spain to solar temples in the Outer Hebrides.
  

• French Revolutions
  Author: Moore, Tim
  Publisher: St Martins $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312290454
  Kirkus Booklist
  Determined to tackle the most fearsome physical challenge outside of classical mythology, Moore, the ultimate amateur, resolves to complete all 2,256 miles of the Tour de France in the weeks before the professionals set off in this epic comic depiction of how to hilariously exceed one's limits.
  

• Midnight to the North
  Author: Nickerson, Sheila
  Publisher: Tarcher $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585421332
  Kirkus
  The true story of what happened on the ill-fated Polaris expedition, from the perspective of the Inuit woman whose skills enabled all 19 members to survivethe longest ice drift in history.
  

• The Blue Bear: A True Story of Friendship, Tragedy, and Survival in the Alaskan Wilderness
  Author: Schooler, Lynn
  Publisher: Ecco $ 25.95 ISBN: 0066210852
  PW
  This haunting memoir is about the search for one of the world's most elusive animals, the friendship it forged, and the tragedy that ensued.
  Suggested Reading List: Nature
  

• On the Water: Discovering America in a Row Boat
  Author: Stone, Nathaniel
  Publisher: Broadway $ 21.95 ISBN: 0767908414
  Kirkus
  

• 8 Men and a Duck: An Improbable Voyage by Reed Boat to Easter Island
  Author: Thorpe, I.J.
  Publisher: Free $ 24 ISBN: 0743219287
  Kirkus
  Bill Bryson meets Thor Heyerdahl in this hilarious and perilous adventure, as an award-winning journalist sails 2,500 miles from South America to Easter Island in a reed boat.
  Suggested Reading List: Sea Stories
  

• The Last Opium Den
  Author: Tosches, Nick
  Publisher: Bloomsbury $ 16.95 ISBN: 158234227x
  PW
  Driven by romantic, spiritual, and medicinal imperatives, Nick Tosches goes in search of something that may no longer exist--an opium den. Weaving hallucinogenic quests with razor sharp prose, Tosche's trip becomes a deeper meditation on what true fulfillment is.
  

• The Best American Travel Writing 2002
  Author: Wilson, Jason (ed)
  Publisher: Houghton $ 27.50 ISBN: 0618118799
  Kirkus
  

• In Ruins
  Author: Woodward, Christopher
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 24 ISBN: 0375421998
  Kirkus
  Woodward has penned a wondrous meditation--at once a travelogue, memoir, and history--on the meaning of ruins and their persistent hold on the imagination.
  

2001

• Far Appalachia: Following the New River North
  Author: Adams, Noah
  Publisher: Delacorte $ 23.95 ISBN: 0385320108
  Booklist
  The host of NPR's All Things Considered and author of the beloved national bestseller Piano Lessons returns to the memoir format--and to the land of his forebears--as he follows an ancient river into the heart of contemporary Appalachia.
  

• Ultimate Journey: Retracing the Path of an Ancient Buddhist Monk in a Search for Enlightment
  by Bernstein, Richard
  Publisher: Random $ 26 ISBN: 0375400095
  Kirkus
  In the year 629, a Buddhist monk named Hsuan Tsang, one of the most storied figures of Chinese history, set out across Asia in search of the Buddhist Truth. Nearly a millennium and a half later, Richard Bernstein retraces the monk's steps and reflects on the mysteries and paradoxes of Buddhist philosophy and on the nature of the Ultimate Truth that was Hsuan Tsang's goal.
  

• Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
  by Elliot, Jason
  Publisher: St Martins $ 30 ISBN: 0312274599
  PW
  Part travelogue, part historical evocation, part personal quest, and part reflection on the joys and perils of passage, An Unexpected Light captures perfectly the emotional lure of a seldom-glimpsed world. It is a poignant look at Afghanistan and a heartfelt reflection on the experience of travel itself.
  
  

• Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
  Author: Feiler, Bruce S.
  Publisher: Morrow $ 26 ISBN: 0380977753
  LJ PW
  In the tradition of Thomas Cahill and Bruce Chatwin, this fascinating book takes readers on a firsthand journey through the greatest stories ever told, drawing from the latest archaeological research about each site and exploring how geography affects the larger narrative of the Bible.

• Playing the Moldovans at Tennis
  Author: Hawks, Tony
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312280106
  Booklist
  A bestseller in England, this work by the author of Round Ireland with a Fridge finds Hawks on an extraordinary travel adventure in an attempt to beat all 11 members of the Moldovan soccer team at tennis.
  

• River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze
  by Hessler, Peter
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 26 ISBN: 0060195444
  PW Kirkus LJ
  In the tradition of Iron & Silk comes a powerful memoir about a young American teacher in the Peace Corps living in the small Chinese city of Fuling as it navigates increasing waves of cultural and social upheaval.

• Sorcerer's Apprentice
  by Shah, Tahir
  Publisher: Arcade $ 25.95 ISBN: 1559705809
  Kirkus Booklist
  As a child, Tahir Shah learned the secrets of illusion from an Indian magician. This is the story of his apprenticeship to one of India's master conjurors and his initiation into the brotherhood of godmen. Learning to unmask and practice illusion, he seeks out the subcontinents sadhus, sages, sorcerers, hypnotists, and humbugs. His quest exposes a side of India that most writers never imagine exists.
  
  

• Return Passages: Great American Travel Writing 1780-1910: American Travel Writing from Exploration to Art
  by Ziff, Larzer
  Publisher: Yale $ 29.95 ISBN: 0300082363
  Kirkus
  Larzer Ziff traces the history of distinctively American travel writing through the stories of five great representatives. John Ledyard (1752-1789) , John Lloyd Stephens (1805-1852), Bayard Taylor (1825-1878), Mark Twain, and Henry James.
  

2000

• The Last River: The Tragic Race for Shangri-La
  by Balf, Todd
  Publisher: Crown $ 24 ISBN: 0609606255
  PW
  The Last River is the breathtaking account of a world-class kayak team's quest to make the first descent through the foam, fury, and unexplored mysteries of the treacherous Tsangpo Gorge in the remote heart of Tibet. This is the story of that ill-fated adventure and a riveting evocation of one of the planet's wildest and most alluring places.

• In A Sunburned Country
  by Bryson, Bill
  Publisher: Broadway $25 ISBN: 0767903854
  PW Booklist Kirkus
  The bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods now takes a truly outrageous tour Down Under, revealing hundreds of entertaining eccentricities about the world's largest island--and about himself. Leaving no Vegemite unsavored, readers will accompany Bryson as he dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in sweltering deserts, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House.

• Circles: 50 Round Trips Through History, Technology, Science and Culture
  by Burke, James
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster $ 25 ISBN: 074320008x
  PW
  The bestselling author of The Knowledge Web plumbs the history of technology to reveal the surprisingly circular nature of change, giving proof why The Washington Post calls Burke "one of the most intriguing minds in the Western world".

• Why Angels Fall: A Journey Through Orthodox Europe from Byzantium to Kosovo
  by Clark, Victoria
  Publisher: St Martins $ 29.95 ISBN: 0312233965
  Kirkus

• Barrow's Boys; The Original Extreme Adventurers, a Stirring Story of Daring, Fortitude, and Outright Lunacy
  by Fleming, Fergus
  Publisher: Atlantic Monthly $ 26 ISBN: 0871138042
  Kirkus Library Journal
  Adventure literature at its best: the breathtaking story of England's heroic 19th-century expedition to the Arctic, the heart of Africa, and Antarctica, under the command of John Barrow.

• An Ocean to Cross: Daring the Atlantic, Claiming a New Life
  by Fordred, Liz
  Publisher: McGraw-Hill $ 22.95 ISBN: 0071355049
  Kirkus
  In a story of courage and triumph over adversity, Fordred tells how she and her husband, both paralyzed from accidents, realized their dreams of building a boat and sailing from Rhodesia to a new life in America.

• From Paris to the Moon
  by Gopnik, Adam
  Publisher: Random House $ 23.95 ISBN: 0679444920
  Booklist
  The comic-romantic adventures of an American family in Paris is penned by The New Yorker writer and author of the magazine's popular "Paris Journal" column. The private story is rooted in the sentimental re-education of a weary American through the experience of his son's childhood in France.

• Orchid Fever: A Horticultural Tale of Love, Lust and Lunacy
  by Hansen, Eric
  Publisher: Pantheon ISBN: 0679451412 $ 23
  PW
  A travel writer and author of Motoring with Mohammed journeyed the four corners of the Earth for five years to explore the beautiful world of orchids, and along the way encountered orchid smugglers, corrupt botanists, visionary breeders, a network of plant police, and attack dogs.

• Round Ireland with a Fridge
  by Hawks, Tony
  Publisher: Thomas Dunne $ 23.95 ISBN: 0312242360
  Booklist
  "Round Ireland with A Fridge . . . . is a sort of alternative Michael Palin tome and a far better read than you would expect. It is part autobiography, part travelogue, and part Guinness addled ramblings."--The Irish Times.
  

• Yonder: A Place in Montana
  by Hemingway, John
  Publisher: National Geographic $ 25 ISBN: 0792276876
  Booklist
  This affecting memoir tells the story behind the "Bar 20", Heminway's 36-acre ranch, and his search for traces of the ranch's former owners.

• Eccentric Islands: Travels Both Real and Imaginary
  by Holm, Bill
  Publisher: Milkweed $ 22.95 ISBN: 1571312455
  Kirkus PW
  Part traveler's journal, part philosophical essay, this literary expedition across the map to actual and imagined islands explores how those islands encourage eccentricity and genius.

• Side Tracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer
  by Holmes, Richard
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 30 ISBN: 0679438467
  Library Journal PW
  The author of Coleridge takes readers on a fascinating journey of "side tracks" -- what Holmes calls intriguing literary digressions he would take while he was in a biographical pursuit of a subject. This collection of essays focus on Shelley, Voltaire, Zelda Fitzgerald, and others, while including a radio-play, a ballet treatment, travelogue, and more.

• Coyote Nowhere: In Search of America's Last Frontier
  by Holt, John
  Publisher: St. Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312252102
  Kirkus
  Forget Coors and SUVs, drive-in espresso kiosks, glitsy ski lodges and other skewed images of the West. Coyote Nowhere focuses the "real West"--the Northern high plains. We see the ranchers, Native American's and other inhabitants who take on this vast and rugged land, with all its merciless weather.

• Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home
  by Iyer, Pico
  Booklist
  Iyer explores the impersonal spaces that we all frequent as global inhabitants--shopping malls, airport terminals, custom renovated downtowns - spaces that are defined by their placelessness.
  

• Walk Toward Oregon
  by Josephy, Alvin M., Jr.
  Publisher: Knopf ISBN: 0375409106 $ 28
  PW Booklist
  From the celebrated historian, noted for his writings about the American West and the American Indian, comes a wonderfully engaging account of his journey across the 20th century.

• Kangaroo Dreaming: An Australian Wildlife Odyssey
  by Kanze, Edward
  Publisher: Random $25 ISBN: 0609607960
  Booklist

• Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory
  by Karny, Yo'av
  Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux $ 25 ISBN: 0374226024
  Kirkus
  The story of the Caucasus region and the Chechen people is told by an intrepid and sophisticated Israeli journalist. Highlanders offers a better understanding of the region described as a "museum of civilizations."
  

• Great Arc: The Dramatic Tale of How India Was Mapped and Everest Was Named
  by Keay, John
  Publisher: HarperCollins $ 24 ISBN: 0060195185
  Booklist
  In the tradition of Longitude and Fermat's Enigma comes a riveting tale of science and adventure in 19th-century India culminating in the discovery of the world's highest mountain--Mt. Everest.
  

• Journey of the Pink Dolphins: An Amazon Quest
  by Montgomery, Sy
  Publisher: Simon & Schuster ISBN: 068484558x
  Booklist
  From the popular nature writer and NPR commentator comes an intoxicating blend of animal science, natural history, and mythic lore about the Amazon's rare pink dolphins. of full-color photos.

• Frost on My Moustache: The Artic Expoits of a Lord and a Loafer
  by Moore, Tim
  Booklist
  In a welcome antidote to the Shackleton narratives and other manly survival stories set in the extremes, Moore writes with scathing self-deprecation about his misadventures in Iceland, Norway, and Spitzbergen (north of the Arctic Circle).

• Dances with Luigi: A Grandson's Determined Quest to Comprehend Italy and the Italians
  by Paolicelli, Paul E.
  Publisher: St Martins $ 24.95 ISBN: 0312251882
  Booklist
  Why would a man who was a hero to his home village in Italy suddenly break all ties and never speak of his homeland again? This is the question at the heart of Paolicelli's spirited memoir as he travels back to Italy in hopes of piecing together his grandfather's mystery.

• Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America With Einstein's Brain
  by Paterniti, Michael
  Publisher: Dial $ 18.95 ISBN: 0385333005
  Booklist PW
  A brilliant young writer, an 84-year-old pathologist, and Albert Einstein's brain rocket across the country through the palpable zeitgeist of contemporary America. Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique road trips in modern literature.
  

• The Adventurist: My Life in Dangerous Places
  by Pelton, Robert Young
  Publisher: Doubleday $ 24.95 ISBN: 0385495676
  LJ
  Tales of derring-do are presented by an adventurer extraordinaire, author of Come Back Alive and The World's Most Dangerous Places. This breakneck autobiography is by a man passionate to learn about the stranger and wilder places in the world as he takes readers where they might never willingly go.

• Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves
  by Rose, David
  Publisher: National Geographic $ 25 ISBN: 0792276965
  Booklist
  Alison Hargreaves' solo ascent of Mt. Everest in 1995 without supplemental oxygen cemented her reputation as an accomplished mountaineer. Tragically, she died at age 33 during a violent storm on K2. In this book, two experienced climbers carefully and powerfully illustrate Hargreaves' passion for climbing.

• Chasing the Mountain of Light: Across India on the Trail of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond
  by Rushby, Kevin
  Library Journal
  

• The Snakebite Survivor's Club
  by Seal, Jeremy
  Publisher: Harcourt $ 24 ISBN: 0151005354
  PW
  A riveting, hands-on adventure with the world's deadliest snakes, recounted with humor and horror by one of the most original travel writers of today. "A white knuckle read."--The Daily Mail.

• In Search of Moby Dick: The Quest for the White Whale
  by Severin, Tim Publisher: Basic Books $24 ISBN: 0465076963
  Booklist
  In In Search of Moby Dick, Severin sets about determining the likelihood of the existence of one of the most iconic modern myths - the Great White Whale. He begins to perceive the lush weave of fact and fiction, actual experience and extravagant yarn that is Moby Dick.
  Suggested Reading: In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Philbrick, Nat

• Sacred Monkey River: A Canoe Trip with the Gods
  by Shaw, Christopher
  Publisher: Norton $ 26.95 ISBN: 0393048373
  Kirkus
  In a book that is a fitting tribute to Bruce Chatwin's Songlines, Barry Lopez's Arctic Dreams, and Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard, Shaw takes readers on an adventurous voyage into the heart of Mesoamerica, offering an exploration of its spiritual geography. Line drawings & photos.

• Living with Cannibals and Other Women's Adventures
  by Slung, Michele
  Publisher: National Geographic $ 22 ISBN: 0792276868
  LJ
  Slung showcases the inspiring, pulse-pounding stories of adventurous women from the 19th century to the present. These accounts have been culled from the National Geographic Society's vast 111-year-old collection of first-person narratives by women explorers.

• Driving Over Lemons: An Optimist in Andalucia
  by Stewart, Chris
  Publisher: Pantheon $ 22 ISBN: 0375410287
  Booklist
  Under the Tuscan Sun meets A Year in Provence -- in this refreshing tale about a family who busy and renovates a precariously-situated yet charming farm house in the sunny hills of Spain. Peter Mayle hails Driving Over Lemons as "Wonderful...I love this book."

• Chasing Che: A Motorcycle Journey in Search of the Guevera Legend
  by Symmes, Patrick
  Publisher: Vintage ISBN: 0375702652 $ 13 (trade paper)
  Kirkus
  Half a century after Motorcycle Diaries comes an adventure through modern-day South America to rediscover a revolutionary's past and his enduring influence.

• Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings 1985-2000
  by Theroux, Paul
  Publisher: Houghton $ 27 ISBN: 0618034064
  Kirkus
  This collection of Theroux's essays and articles over the past 15 years follows his highly successful Sunrise with Seamonsters. This volume, however, is devoted exclusively to travel writings that capture such scenes as the snowy Maine woods and Hong Kong on the eve of the hand-over.

• In Siberia
  by Thurbron, Colin
  Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0060195436 $ 26
  PW Kirkus Library Journal
  An evocative portrait of one of the most breathtaking yet little-known places on earth, written by England's #1 bestselling, award-winning author -"one of the two or three best living travel writers, in some ways probably "the" best" (Jan Morris).

• In the Mountains of Heaven: True Tales of Adventure on Six Continents
  by Tidwell, Mike
  Publisher: Lyons $ 24.95 ISBN: 1585740500
  Booklist
  In this collection of 25 essays, award-winning travel writer Mike Tidwell shatters the mold of the travel genre. More than adventurous tales of getting from here to there, Tidwell draws out the personalities of those he meets along his travels to the four corners of the globe. Readers will meet a Bombay prostitute, a Hanoi barber, a real-life Tarzan in the Amazon rain forest, and others.

1999

• Working at Play: A History of Vacations in the United States
  by Aron, Cindy Sodik
  PW
  With vivid detail and much insight, Working at Play offers a lively historyof the vacation, throwing new light on the place of work and rest in American culture.

• America Day by Day
  by Beauvoir, Simone de
  Kirkus Library Journal
  The ultimate American road book - the detailed diary of Simone de Beauvoir's four-month journey from one coast of the United States to the other, and back again. Fascinating passages are devoted to Hollywood, the Grand Canyon and other destinations.

• I'm A Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away
  by Bryson, Bill
  Kirkus
  Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are his hallmark, Bryson, who recently returned to the U.S. after living abroad for 20 years, proves that there's truly no place like home, especially if it's in America.

• Accursed Mountains: Journeys in Albania
  by Carver, Robert
  PW
  

• Yes We Have No: Adventures in the Other England
  by Cohn, Nik
  Kirkus
  The kaleidoscopic England that Cohn travels is made up of techno-freaks and soccer obsessives, faith healers and fetishists, graffiti artists, Rastas, and Elvis impersonators.

• Other Side of Everest: Climbing the North Face Through a Killer Storm
  by Dickenson, Matt
  PW
  This harrowing successor to Into Thin Air and The Climb provides new perspectives on the devastating storm of 1996 that claimed the lives of eight climbers and rocked the mountaineering world. of photos.

• Climbing High: A Woman's Account of Surviving the Everest Tragedy
  by Gammelgaard, Lene
  PW
  The internationally bestselling account of the 1996 Everest disaster by one of the few who reached the summit and survived.

• Golden Age of Travel: 1880-1939
  by Gregory, Alexis
  Booklist
  

• River Horse: A Voyage Across America
  by Heat-Moon, William Least
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  The acclaimed, bestselling author of Blue Highways and PrairyErth chronicles his unique journey through America's waterways, from Atlantic to Pacific. Brimming with history, drama, hilarity, and wisdom, River Horse is a Blue Highways on water and ranks among the greatest American travelogues.

• Encore Provence: New Adventures in the South of France
  by Mayle, Peter
  PW
  The author of A Year in Provence and Toujours Provence celebrates a beloved homecoming to the area with a joyous mix of Gallic characters, adventure, and culinary treats.

• An Innocent in Scotland: More Curious Rambles and Singular Encounters
  by McFadden, David W.
  PW
  

• Catfish and Mandela: A Two-Wheeled Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
  by Pham, Andrew X.
  Kirkus Library Journal
  A Vietnamese Bicycle Days, this vibrant, picaresque memoir is written with narrative flair and a wonderful, eye-opening sense of adventure - one man's unforgettable search for cultural identity.

• In Nevada: The Land, the People, God and Chance
  by Thomson, David
  Booklist
  Part contemplation, part appreciation, part informal travel guide, this book examines and experiences the gamblers mix of hope and anxiety, the isolation and closeness, the beauty and banality - and the state of mind- of Nevada.

1998

• Endurance: Shackelton's Legendary Antartic Expedition
  by Alexander, Caroline
  PW
  Drawing on previously unavailable sources, this riveting account of Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1914 expedition to Antarctica presents, for the first time, 150 images by Australian photographer Frank Hurley, whose stunning visual record of the ordeal was - amazingly - preserved.

• Almost and Island: Travels in Baja California
  by Berger, Bruce
  Kirkus
  Eight hundred miles long, Baja California is the remotest region of the Sonoran desert, a land of volcanic cliffs, glistening beaches, fantastical boojum trees, and some of the greatest primitive murals in the Western Hemisphere. In this book, Berger recounts tales from his three decades in this extraordinary place, enriching his account with the peninsula's history, its politics, and its probable future - rendering a striking panorama of this land so close to the United States, so famous and so little known.

• A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
  by Bryson, Bill
  PW
  A laugh-out-loud account of an outrageously rugged hike - by the beloved comic author of Lost Continent and Notes from a Small Island. Published in the 75th anniversary year of the Appalachian Trail.

• The Road to Ubar: Finding the Atlantis of the Sands
  by Clapp, Nicholas
  Booklist Kirkus
  The most fabled city in ancient Arabia was Ubar, but like Sodom and Gomorrah, Ubar was destroyed by God for the sins of its people. Buried in the desert without a trace, it became known as "the Atlantis of the Sands". Now, in one of the most entertaining stories of scientific discovery and archaeological investigation ever written, Nicholas Clapp recounts the rediscovery of this ancient lost city. Subject of a "Nova" on PBS.

• From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East
  by Dalyrmple, William
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  In 587, two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in an arc across the entire Byzantine world. On the way, John Moschos and his pupil Sophronius the Sophist stayed in caves, monasteries and remote hermitages, collecting the wisdom of the stylites and the desert fathers. More than 1,000 years later, using Moschos's writings as his guide, William Dalrymple sets off to retrace their footsteps. A rich and gripping blend of history and spirituality, adventure and politics, this work is threaded with Dalrymple's unique send of black comedy.

• Lasso the Wind: Away to the New West
  by Egan, Timothy
  Library Journal
  Third-generation westerner Timothy Egan has traveled, fishing rod and notebook in hand, to the rivers and deserts and mountains and ranches and cities of the region in order to tell the story of the contemporary West as he sees it.

• Face of the Deep
  by Farber, Thomas
  Kirkus
  Consider waves beating against a shore, their swells forming a pattern of involutions. So Guggenheim scholar Thomas Farber spirals fluidly around his subject, the Pacific, that is his abiding love. Farber writes movingly of his experiences surfing, sailing, and diving in Pacific waters, chance encounters in bars and backwaters, and other reflections.

• Driving to Detroit: An Automative Odyssey
  by Hazelton, Lesley
  Kirkus
  In this moving and captivating memoir, a British expatriate, car junky, and veteran travel writer takes the wheel and crosses the country in search of the elusive American dream. Along the way, she rediscovers herself and what America is all about.

• Million Truths: A Decade in China
  by Jakobson, Linda
  Kirkus
  As a Finnish correspondent living in China, author Linda Jakobson describes the changes that have been taking place there over the past ten years. A result of hundreds of interviews with Chinese of all ages and of all ranks, this personal, wide-reaching, and intelligent book speaks on several topics and comes to some startling conclusions.

• Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future
  by Kaplan, Robert D.
  Booklist PW
  The bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and The Ends of the Earth traveled through the American West to assemble this mind-changing preview of America's future.

• Demonic Comedy: Some Detours in the Baghdad of Saddam Hussein
  by Roberts, Paul William
  PW Kirkus
  Paul William Roberts first visited Iraq during the Arab summit in 1990. He went back in 1991 during the Gulf War. One of the few journalists to get into Iraq, he was arrested by soldiers on the outskirts of Baghdad at the height of the Allied attack and witnessed the nightmarish effect of the bombing on the city's civilians and infrastructure. In 1995, he received a surprise invitation to the "International Babylon Festival" and was able to revisit what little was left of Baghdad. Roberts ranges from Hunter Thompson-like gonzo journalism to skilled historical analysis, untangling the complicated history of Iraq and its neighbors, to intrepid interviews, discussing movies and religion with a frightening array of madmen, from Hussein himself, the man "whose mother looked like Anthony Quinn playing Mother Teresa", to Assad Bayoud al-Tamimi, the less than benevolent father figure of the Islamic Jihad. At once chilling and hysterically funny, The Demonic Comedy is a unique travel memoir, an eye-witness testament to the horrors of dictatorship and the devastation of war. - Jackey Copy.

• Room Service: Reports from Eastern Europe
  by Swartz, Richard
  Kirkus
  Room Service offers detailed images of the people and places of Richard Swartz's adopted slice of Europe, and thoughtful reflection on his status as a privileged outsider. We meet Serbian poets and priests in the service of war, the bewitching wife of a Romanian bigot, a Czech factory manager turned hotel porter in the wake of 1968, Ceaucescu's masseuse, the king of all the gypsies, a cantor who is the last survivor of a Jewish community, and many others - famous, infamous, and anonymous - who take their places in a fascinating, moving, and sometimes cuttingly funny history of a region at the brink of enormous change. -Jacket copy.

• Midnight in Sicily: On Food, History, Travel and La Costa Nostra
  by Robb, Peter
  PW Kirkus
  In 1995 Giulio Andreotti, seven-time prime minister of Italy, went on trial both for murder and for his association with the Sicilian mafia. Midnight in Sicily chronicles the development of the extraordinary events surrounding this scandal, exposing the sordid connection between Italy's politicians and organized crime.

• Road Swing
  by Rushdin, Steve
  PW
  With wit and an eye for the absurd, Sports Illustrated writer Steve Rushin goes behind the sports pages to reveal what baseball, football, basketball, and all the rest really mean. The result is a sports-addled Blue Highways and a reflection of themes unique to the American character.

• Terra Incognita: Travels in Antartica
  by Wheeler, Sara
  PW
  Ever since the time of Captain Cook, Antarctica has captured the imagination of countless explorers who set off against great odds in search of riches and honor, for science or a better world. Sara Wheeler weaves together her own experiences on the ice with the grueling adventures of Antarctica's most mythic figures - the Norwegian Roald Amundsen, who beat his rival to the Pole by twenty-nine days; Ernest Shackleton, whose men lived on seal and penguin blubber for three months when their ship was pierced by an iceberg; Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who famously braved the polar winter to hunt down rare penguin eggs that were ignored and eventually lost back home; Robert Falcon Scott, whose heroic example inspired countless young men to sacrifice themselves in the First World War. Accounts of these epic expeditions alternate with Sara Wheeler's own adventures in Antarctica, where a motley crew of scientists, drifters and dreamers search for bacterial traces that might hold the key to life on Mars, harass penguins and seek to measure this still largely impenetrable land. - Jacket copy.

1997

• Questions of Heaven: The Chinese Journeys of an American Buddhist
  by Ehrlich, Gretel
  Booklist PW
  PW Editors' Favorite Books of 1997
  A haunting pilgrimage to one of China's holy mountains. "Ehrlich's highly personal travelogue centers on her attempt to find what remains of (the) once-flourishing spiritual culture in the sacred mountains of western China. . . . (Ehrlich) intersperses her personal narrative with bits of the intellectual, political, historical and spiritual". -Alexandra Hall, The New York Times Book Review.

• Journeys With Elsa Cloud
  by Hadley, Leila
  Booklist PW
  In a memoir that Norman Mailer calls the "best travel book I've ever read", Lelia Hadley records a journey to India inspired both by her lifelong love of travel and by a desire to reconcile with her estranged daughter, Veronica, who was living in India.

• Tropical Classical: Essays from Several Directions
  by Iyer, Pico
  PW
  The acclaimed author of Video Night in Kathmandu continues his one-man reinvention of the essay in an eloquent new book which soars from the remotest places on the planet to the frontiers of contemporary literature, culture, and manners.

• Lost Tribe: A Harrowing Passage into New Guinea's Heart of Darkness
  by Marriott, Edward
  Booklist Kirkus
  Two years before this story begins, the Liawep were a lost tribe. There were seventy-nine of them, living in deep jungle in far northwest Papua New Guinea. They worshipped a mountain and dressed in leaves. They hid when planes flew overhead, believing them to be evil sanguma birds. There was no record of them in census books; as far as the outside world was concerned they did not exist. Edward Marriott first heard about the Liawep tribe in 1993, when their 'discovery' by a missionary hit the international headlines. Unable to believe that anyone could still be truly lost, he set out to find them himself, to hear their stories, hopes for the future and fears for their changing world. Banned by the Papua New Guinea government from visiting them, he assembled his own patrol and crossed the jungle illegally. However, nothing could prepare him for what he found nor for the dramatic events that followed. Intriguing and impressive, The Lost Tribe is both a compelling adventure story and an extraordinary account of a small society caught at a time of dramatic change. - Publisher marketing.

• Long Way From St. Louis: Travel Memoirs
  by McElroy, Colleen J.
  Kirkus
  McElroy travels the world discovering new facets of her African American woman's experience - in prose that waltzes at the sedate pace of Arthur Murray, leaps with the grace of ballet, and clickety-clacks, with the energy of tap. Following female heroes who took no stuff, McElroy remains true to herself. - Publisher marketing.

• Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys
  by MClean, Duncan
  Kirkus
  Both a quest for a musical grail and a wildly funny travelogue, Lone Star Swing captures the singular wonders of Texas and its maverick inhabitants, its staggering 100-in-the-shade heat and its mouth-blistering chiles. Above all, it captures the spirit of the glorious mongrel music - once incredibly popular, now all but forgotten - the music of Western Swing.

• Snakes and Ladders: Glimpses of India
  by Mehta, Gita
  Booklist
  n this personally charged work of reflection and reminiscence, readers are guided through India's multi-hued mosaic. A high profile writer, Mehta gives a loving but unflinching assessment of India today - entertaining, informative and wholly personal.

• Names of Things: A Passage in the Egyptian Desert
  by Morrow, Susan Brind
  LJ
  It was not easy for Susan Brind Morrow to leave her rural New York home for the Egyptian desert. But once she was there, the tragic memories of two dead siblings and a childhood of eccentric withdrawal crumbled in the dry heat along with any notion of safety. This book interweaves a moving memoir of an American childhood with an adventurous woman's courageous search for hidden meanings.

• No Mercy: A Journey to the Heart of the Congo
  by O"Hanlon, Redmond
  Booklist LJ
  PW Editors' Favorite Books of 1997
  Redmond O'Hanlon has journeyed among headhunters in deepest Borneo with the poet James Fenton, and amid the most reticent, imperilled and violent tribe in the Amazon Basin with a night-club manager. This, however, is his boldest journey yet. Accompanied by Lary Shaffer - an American friend and animal behaviorist, a man of imperfect health and brave decency - he enters the unmapped swamp-forests of the People's Republic of the Congo, in search of a dinosaur rumored to have survived in a remote prehistoric lake. The flora and fauna of the Congo are unrivalled, and with matchless passion O'Hanlon describes scores of rare and fascinating animals: eagles and parrots, gorillas and chimpanzees, swamp antelope and forest elephants. But as he was repeatedly warned, the night belongs to Africa, and threats both natural (cobras, crocodiles, lethal insects) and supernatural (from all-powerful sorcerers to Samale, a beast whose three-clawed hands rip you across the back) make this a saga of much fear and trembling. Omni-present too are ecological depredations, political and tribal brutality, terrible illness and unnecessary suffering among the forest pygmies, and an appalling waste of human life throughout this little-explored region. - Jacket copy.

• Setting Foot on the Shores of Connemara & Other Writings
  by Robinson, Tim
  PW
  

• Legends of the American Desert: Sojourns in the Great Soutwest
  by Shoumatoff, Alex
  PW Kirkus
  This beautifully written narrative captures the multifaceted American Southwest, unearthing surprising inhabitants who have made this majestic, untamed land their home.

• Gypsy in Me: From Germany to Romania in Search of Youth, Truth and Dad
  by Simon, Ted
  Kirkus
  

• Open Lands: Travels Through Russia's Once Forbidden Places
  by Taplin, Mark
  PW Kirkus
  Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Mark Taplin, a public information officer in the American embassy in Moscow, decided to visit seven cities and regions long hidden from foreign eyes. Everywhere he went he found a collapsing economy, mass graves, destroyed churches and labor camps (many still in use). But he also found the Russian people and the Russian spirit. The people Taplin meets all come alive on the page and he gives readers and infectious hope of a people struggling to be reborn.

• In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia
  by Wood, Michael
  PW
  Between 334 and 324 B.C. the Macedonian Army, led by Alexander the Great, marched relentlessly across Asia. Historian Michael Wood actually retraced Alexander's 22,000-mile epic journey, and In an exciting blend of history, travel, and adventure, recounts the Macedonian conquest as recorded in many ancient documents. Ties-in to a BBC-PBS documentary series.

1996

• Desert Places
  by Davidson, Robyb
  Booklist
  In 1992 Robyn Davidson traveled through a year's migration cycle with the Rabari, pastoral nomads of northwest India. Displaying a writer's acute eye for detail and a traveler's keen appreciation for the beauty to be found in the earth's most desolate landscapes, Davidson explores her own desert places even as she immortalizes a culture about to die.

• Disappearance: A Map - A Meditation on Death and Loss in the High Latitudes
  by Nickerson, Sheila
  Booklist Kirkus
  Alaska looms as the main character of this lyrically beautiful memoir that weaves together the author's personal experiences, the story of humankind's futile struggle to domesticate Alaska's timeless landscape, and the record of the many people who have disappeared forever in a quest to control and conquer this vast wilderness.

• Island Out of Time: A Memoir of Smith Island in the Chesapeake
  by Horton, Tom
  Kirkus
  Smith Island is a marshy archipelago in mid-Chesapeake Bay, nine miles fron the mainland, home to 500 watermen and their families. In an eloquent tribute to that community, the author of Bay Country provides a portrait of a people who have remained intimately connected to the place in which they live, far past the time when "place" and "nature" have immediate consequence to most of our lives.

• Of Tigers and Men: Entering the Age of Extiction
  by Ives, Richard
  Kirkus
  

• Ends of the Earth: A Journey at the Dawn of the 21st Century
  by Kaplan, Robert D.
  PW
  Having drawn a startlingly prescient portrait of the Bosnian catastrophe in his bestseller, Balkan Ghosts, Robert Kaplan now travels more widely and ambitiously. In this gritty tour de force of travel writing and political reportage, he covers an arc from West Africa to Southeast Asia, across a world in which nation-states are giving way to warring nationalities and where metastasizing populations compete for dwindling resources.

• Travels With a Hungry Bear: A Journey to the Russian Heartland
  by Kramer, Mark
  PW
  

• Sahara Unveiled: A Journey Across the Desert
  by Landewische, William
  Booklist
  The world's most vast and forbidding desert is revealed in all its cruelty and wonder in this masterpiece of contemporary travel writing by the author of Cutting for Sign. Determined to see the Sahara as its inhabitants do, Langewiesche crossed this enormous desert from Algiers to Dakar, braving its natural and human dangers and depending on its sparse sustenance and suspect charity.

• Bad Land: An American Romance
  by Raban, Jonathan
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  Seduced by the government's offer of 320 acres per homesteader, Americans and Europeans rushed to Montana and the Dakotas to fulfill their own American dream in the first decade of this century. Raban's stunning evocation of the harrowing, desperate reality behind the homesteader's dream strips away the myth - while preserving the romance - that has shrouded our understanding of our own heartland.

• Fez of the Heart: Travels Around Turkey in Search of a Hat
  by Seal, Jeremy
  PW
  Inspired by a dusty fez in his parents' attic, Jeremy Seal set off in 1993 to trace the astonishing history of this cone-shaped hat. Soon, the quintessentially Turkish headgear became the key to understanding a country beset by contradictions. Seal's investigations took him from the fez-topped headstones of Istanbul's ghostly cemeteries to the remote town on the Black Sea where Ataturk, the father of modern Turkey, first banned the fez in 1925. From there Seal traveled around the country, visiting eastern cities where intractable fez wearers were once hanged, exploring the troubled Kurdish southeast, watching the production of fez-shaped hats for whirling dervishes in the mystical central city of Konya. The result of his unusual journey is an engaging and agile mix of history and travel, politics and reportage. - Jacket Copy.

• Dinner with Persephone
  by Storace, Patricia
  PW
  A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Dinner with Persephone mixes affection with detachment as an American poet perfectly evokes a country delicately balanced between past and present, East and West. Alongside breathtaking descriptions of beaches and villages, Orthodox rituals and classical myths, Patricia Storace culls through dream books, pop songs, and soap operas to give readers an archaeology of the Greek psyche.

• Sweet Tea with Cardamom: A Journey Through Kurdistan
  by Thornhill, Teresa
  Library Journal
  The Kurds are often described as the largest number of people without a state in the world. After the Gulf War in 1991, Kurds in Iraq were brutally put down by Saddam Hussein's genocidal regime. The U.N. moved in and set up safe havens and, for a brief period, the Kurds set out on the road to self-government and democracy. In these heady but precarious days of 1993, Teresa Thornhill journeyed twice to Iraqi Kurdistan. She traveled widely throughout northern Iraq, encountering peshmerga (guerilla fighters), British soldiers, ordinary villagers, and the educated elite. She sought out and met many Kurdish women who were survivors of Saddam Hussein's atrocities. Thornhill found her self deeply moved by the Kurds she met and became increasingly involved with their plight. Sweet Tea with Cardamom records with insight and passion the land, the people and the struggle at a unique moment in the fight for a free Kurdistan. - Publisher Marketing.

• River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze and Back in Chinese Time
  by Winchester, Simon
  PW
  It is the symbolic heart of China. Rising in the mountains of the Tibetan border, it pierces 3,900 miles of rugged country before debouching into the oily swells of the East China Sea. Its path embraces every geographic feature and almost every ethnic group, and its banks are home to both scenic splendor and foul industrial pollution. Connecting China's heartland cities with that volatile coastal giant Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters. And to travel up those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China. Long off-limits to foreigners, the far reaches of the Yangtze are still off-limits to most tourists and travelers simply by dint of the difficulty in traversing the terrain. But, for Simon Winchester, traveling the length of this mighty river was a lifelong dream and, together with a Chinese companion, he set out to do just that. The result is this unforgettable portrait of China. Endlessly curious, urbane, witty, and knowledgeable, Winchester introduces us to a world we might otherwise have missed. To follow him on his adventures up the Yangtze is to experience the essence of China - to absorb its flavors as well as learn its history and politics, to feel its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and to meet up en route with uncommon people in remote and almost inaccessible places. This is travel writing at its best: lively and informative, amusing and thoroughly engaging. - Jacket copy.

1995

• Six Years After D-Day: Cycling Through Europe
  by Alsmeyer, Marie Bennett
  PW
  

• Byzantine Journey
  by Ash, Jon
  Kirkus
  

• After Sorrow: An American Among the Vietnamese
  by Borton, Lady
  Kirkus
  After Sorrow spans an American woman's twenty-five years of experience in Viet Nam. It is the story of the ordinary Vietnamese whom Americans fought against but never had the chance to know. Lady Borton has come to know these people intimately from her work there, first in a Quaker Service rehabilitation center for civilian amputees in South Viet Nam (1969-71), and up to the present. After Sorrow centers on the last eight years, during which Lady made repeated visits to three villages, one a former Viet Cong base in the Mekong Delta of southern Viet Nam, another a rice-farming commune in the Red River Delta of northern Viet Nam, and the third, Ha Noi, which Vietnamese call their "largest village". In this deeply moving memoir, Lady's women friends recall their own roles in the struggles that climaxed in the American War. These are war stories of a kind we have not heard before: women's stories of courage, guile, patience, and fate; of climbing mountains and hiding in rivers and capturing prisoners, of carrying rifles beneath vats of fish sauce in canoes, of mourning husbands, of thousands missing. In Lady Borton's previous book, Sensing the Enemy, she wrote about the Boat People who left Viet Nam. After Sorrow is the strong and uplifting story of the people who stayed. - Jacket Copy.

• Size of the World
  by Greenwald, Jeff
  PW
  

• Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians
  by Marsden, Philip
  PW
  

• Walking Towards Walden: A Pilgrimage in Search of Place
  by Mitchell, John Hanson
  Booklist
  Starting from an ancient burial site, John Mitchell and friends began a 15-mile hike to the tomb of Henry David Thoreau. They sauntered through the landscape where our literature and history began -the woods favored by the Transcendentalists. On each mile, they explore not only the landscape before them but also certain timeless themes.

• Pillars of Hercules: A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean
  by Theroux, Paul
  Kirkus
  The bestselling travel writer and novelist now takes us on a magical tour of the Mediterranean. Theroux's other bestselling travel books include The Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron Rooster, and The Happy Isles of Oceana.

• Luck of the Irish: Our Life in County Clare
  by Williams, Niall & Christine Breen
  PW
  In their fourth book, Williams and Breen, the authors of O Come Ye Back to Ireland, When Summer's in the Meadow, and The Pipes Are Calling chronicle their life and adventure in this beautiful country, where fewer and fewer Irish men and women are lucky enough to be able to live.

1994

• Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe
  by Applembaum, Anne
  PW Kirkus
  

• Exit into History: A Journey Through the New Eastern Europe
  by Hoffman, Eva
  PW Kirkus
  In this intimate narrative journey, Hoffman returns to her Polish homeland and five other countries -Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and the two nations of the former Czechoslovakia - to vividly portray a landscape in the midst of change. "Alert and intuitive". -The Washington Post.

• Biografi: A Traveller's Tale
  by Jones, Lloyd
  PW
  Controversial and acclaimed in its previous editions, this dazzling hybrid of travel writing and imaginative writing is now being published for the first time in the U.S. Traveling to Albania in 1991, the author finds a relentlessly bizarre world of half-truths where individuals and the country are being forced to reimagine an identity.

• Sacred Horses: The Memoirs of a Turkmen Cowboy
  by Maslow, Jonathan
  PW
  

• Raven's Exile: A Season on the Green River
  by Meloy, Ellen
  Booklist
  

• Secret Life of the Seine
  by Rosenblum, Mort
  Kirkus
  World-weary foreign correspondent Mort Rosenblum takes the reader aboard his 54-foot launch tied up alongside the barges in the center of Paris. He introduces us to the characters who share his life along the river, ranging from eccentric movie stars and reclusive novelists to the barge families still trying to earn a living moving freight through the canals of Europe.

1993

• Pecked to Death by Ducks
  by Cahill, Tim
  Booklist
  In his latest tour of the earth's remote, exotic, and dismal places, the author of Road Fever and A Wolverine Is Eating My Leg sleeps with a grizzly bear, witnesses demonic possession in Bali, and survives a run-in with something called the Throne of Doom in Guatemala. Vivid and outrageously funny.

• 36 Views of Moung Fuji: On Finding Myself in Japan
  by Davidson, Cathy N.
  Kirkus
  

• In the Footsteps of Ghenghis Khan
  by Defrancis, John
  PW
  

• King Leopold's Dream: Travels in the Shadow of the African Elephant
  by Gavron, Jeremy
  PW
  

• Zero Three Bravo: Solo Across America in a Small Plane
  by Gosnell, Mariana
  PW
  

• Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World
  by Iyer, Pico
  Booklist PW Kirkus
  The author of Video Night in Kathmandu ups the ante on himself in this sublimely evocative and acerbically funny tour through the world's loneliest and most eccentric places. From Iceland to Bhutan to Argentina, Iyer remains both uncannily observant and hilarious.

• Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
  by Kaplan, Robert D.
  PW
  From the assassination that set off World War I to the ethnic warfare sweeping Bosnia and Croatia, the Balkans have been the crucible of the 20th century - the place where terrorism and genocide were first practiced as tools of policy. This enthralling political travelogue helps us understand that region's anguish.

• Great American Bus Ride: An Intrepid Woman's Cross-Country Adventure
  by Kurtz, Irma
  PW
  

• Stalin's Nose: Travels Around the Bloc
  by MacLean, Rory
  PW
  

• Journey to the Vanished City: The Search for the Lost Tribe of Israel
  by Parfitt, Tudor
  Booklist
  

• Last Old Place: A Search Through Portugal
  by Proper, Datus G.
  Kirkus
  

• Temple of the Jaguar: Travels in the Yucatan
  by Schueler, Donald G.
  PW
  

• Border of Blue: Along the Gulf of Mexico from the Keys to the Yucatan
  by Turner, Frederick
  PW
  

1992

• Red Odyssey: A Journey Through the Soviet Republics
  by Akchurin, Marat
  Kirkus
  

• Cannibal Queen: An Aerial Odyssey Across America
  by Coonts, Stephen
  Kirkus
  The acclaimed nonfiction account of the bestselling author's flight across America in a vintage biplane.

• Wind, Sand, and Silence: Travels With Africa's Last Nomads
  by Englebert, Victor
  Booklist
  

• In Search of Ghenghis Khan
  by Severin, Timothy
  Kirkus
  Eight centuries ago Genghis Khan rode out of the steppes of Mongolia to establish the largest empire ever achieved by any one man. Now Tim Severin, award-winning author of The Brendan Voyage, has retraced the tracks of Khan's feared horde. culture has changed.

• Happy Isles of Oceania: Paddling the Pacific
  by Theroux, Paul
  Kirkus
  Theroux chronicles his journey - by kayak - through a world of wonders among the islands of the Pacific, from New Zealand to New Guinea, Tahiti to Hawaii. Theroux investigates seldom-visited shores, meets remarkable people, and explores fabled Easter Island in this witty account.

• Back of Beyond: Travels to the Wild Place of the Earth
  by Yeadon, David
  Kirkus
  

1991

• Dave Barry's Only Travel Guide You'll Ever Need
  by Barry, Dave
  Kirkus
  Complete with maps, histories, quaint local facts (France's National Underwear Changing Day is March 12), song lyrics, helpful hints on how to get through Customs (all insects must be spayed), and tidbits from Dave Barry's own fond vacation nightmares, this book features everything readers need to know in this incredibly insane comprehensive reference from a Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist.

• No Longer Enemies, Not Yet Friends: An American Soldier Returns to Vietnam
  by Downs, Frederick
  Kirkus
  

• Great Journeys
  by Griffiths, Philip
  Kirkus
  

• Motoring With Mohammed: Journeys to Yemen and the Red Sea
  by Hansen, Eric
  Kirkus
  With these beautifully evocative and brilliantly irreverent memoirs of a shipwreck on an island in the Red Sea, and the quest ten years later for the travel journals buried there, Hansen introduces a forgotten corner of the Middle East. "Mr. Hansen is a first-rate writer". -The New Yorker.

• Prairyerth (A Deep Map)
  by Heat-Moon, William Least
  Kirkus
  Bill McKibben has called this book "the deepest map anyone ever made of an American place" - a majestic survey of land and time and people in a single county of the Kansas plains. It takes the author - by car, on foot, and in mind - into the core of our continent and backward and forward through a brilliant spectrum of time and place. There is no other book like it. - Publisher Marketing.

• Turkish Reflections: A Biography of a Place
  by Settle, Mary Lee
  Kirkus
  After a twenty-year absence, Mary Lee Settle returns to the land she calls the happiest home she has ever known. A land of intersecting continents, cultures, and contradictions, Turkey beckons her on a cross-country journey, in search of the country's soul - a personal odyssey into history, legend, rumor, and myth.

1990

• What Am I Doing Here
  by Chatwin, Bruce
  Kirkus
  Here is a journey into the interior of a celebrated novelist and traveler, charged with all of the narrative power and intellectual challenge of his fiction.

• Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest
  by Egan, Timothy
  Kirkus
  The Seattle correspondent for The New York Times ranges through the Pacific Northwest--from the salmon fisheries and logging camps to the used-up "resource towns" and the manicured English gardens of Vancouve - in this exemplary blend of history, geology, anthropology, and politics. A Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award winner.

• Footloose in the Himalaya
  by Harding, Mike
  Kirkus
  

• Life on the Road
  by Kuralt, Charles
  Kirkus
  

• A Year in Provence
  by Mayle, Peter
  PW
  A funny - and often hilarious - month-by-month account of the charms and frustrations of moving into an old French farmhouse in Provence and adapting to a very different way of life.

• Borderlines: A Journey in Thailand and Burma
  by Nicholl, Charles
  Kirkus