Following his return to America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The "AT" offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with Bryson's comic genius, it also provides endless opportunities to test his own powers of ineptitude and to witness the majestic silliness...

"When Martha Summerhayes (1844-1926) came as a bride to Fort Russell in Wyoming Territory in 1874, she "saw not much in those first few days besides bright buttons, blue uniforms, and shining swords," but soon enough the hard facts of army life began to intrude. Remonstrating with her husband, Jack Wyder Summerhayes, that she had only three rooms and a kitchen instead of "a whole house," she was informed that "women are not reckoned in at all in the...

Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed -- and what hasn't. Following a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, by way of places...

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother's rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America - from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington State - and to do it along. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the...

"Twain's firsthand portrait of the steamboat age and the science of riverboat piloting recalls the history of the Mississippi River, from its discovery by Europeans to the writer's own time." *** "Mark Twain's famous account of life on the Mississippi in the old steamboat days and his own experiences as a pilot. Its historical sketches, its frequent passages of vivid description, and its humorous episodes combine to make [this] a masterpiece of the...

While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveller, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armour-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing...

The magic tree house takes Jack and his sister Annie to the Great Plains where they learn about the life of the Lakota Indians.

The Heffley family road trip starts off full of promise, then quickly takes several wrong turns--with everything from a fender bender to crazed seagulls--but even the worst road trip can turn into an adventure, and this is one the Heffleys will not soon forget.

Penguin Classics commemorates the 50th anniversary of Steinbeck's Nobel Prize with two stunning new editions of his best-loved worksAt age fifty-eight, John Steinbeck and his poodle, Charley, embarked on a journey across America. This chronicle of their trip meanders from small towns to growing cities to glorious wilderness oases. Still evocative and awe-inspiring after fifty years, Travels with Charley in Search of America provides an intimate look...

Their magic tree house takes Jack and Annie deep into the sea, where they meet up with dolphins, sharks, and octopi as they search for the answer to an ancient riddle. Morgan le Fay will make Jack and Annie masters of the tree house if only they can solve four riddles -- which will take four books, of course! Dolphins at Daybreak begins the third set of four books in this magical (and increasingly popular) series! Jack and Annie are off in the Magic...