Frank Carlson Library

Bryson shares his experiences hiking the Appalachian Trail with a childhood friend. The two encounter eccentric characters, a blizzard, getting lost, and rude yuppies along the way.

Paul Theroux, the author of the train travel classics The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, takes to the rails once again in this account of his epic journey through China. He hops aboard as part of a tour group in London and sets out for China's border. He then spends a year traversing the country, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of a unique moment in history. From the barren deserts of Xinjiang to the ice forests...

"In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years to live--but only if she 'lived restfully.' ... Instead, she decided she wanted to see the Pacific Ocean just once before she died. She bought a cast-off brown gelding named Tarzan, donned men's dungarees, loaded up her horse, and headed...

With his intelligent poodle, Charlie, as his traveling companion, John Steinbeck re-explores his native United States in a camping truck. This book is comprised of his conversations with people throughout the country and his personal observations.

This volume brings together James's writings on Great Britain and America. The essays of "English Hours" convey the freshness of James's 'wonderments and judgments and emotions' on first encountering the country that became his adopted home for half a century. He captures the varied life of London in a series of walks through that 'murky, modern Babylon,' which contains 'the most romantic town-vistas in the world.'...James includes vivid accounts...

In August 1914, explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew set sail from England for Antarctica, where Shackleton hoped to be the first man to cross the uncharted continent on foot. Five months later, the Endurance-just a day's sail short of its destination-became locked in an island of ice, and its destiny and men became locked in history. For ten months the ice-moored Endurance drifted until it was finally crushed, and Shackleton and his men drifting...