Best of
Travel

1942

West with the Night


Beryl Markham - 1942
    Beryl Markham’s life story is a true epic. Not only did she set records and break barriers as a pilot, she shattered societal expectations, threw herself into torrid love affairs, survived desperate crash landings—and chronicled everything. A contemporary of Karen Blixen (better known as Isak Dinesen, the author of Out of Africa), Markham left an enduring memoir that soars with astounding candor and shimmering insights. A rebel from a young age, the British-born Markham was raised in Kenya’s unforgiving farmlands. She trained as a bush pilot at a time when most Africans had never seen a plane. In 1936, she accepted the ultimate challenge: to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean from east to west, a feat that fellow female aviator Amelia Earhart had completed in reverse just a few years before. Markham’s successes and her failures—and her deep, lifelong love of the “soul of Africa”—are all told here with wrenching honesty and agile wit. Hailed as “one of the greatest adventure books of all time” by Newsweek and “the sort of book that makes you think human beings can do anything” by the New York Times, West with the Night remains a powerful testament to one of the iconic lives of the twentieth century.

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay: An Unforgettable Comic Chronicle of Innocents Abroad in the 1920s


Cornelia Otis Skinner - 1942
    Some of the more amusing anecdotes involve a pair of rabbit-skin capes that begin shedding at the most inopportune moments and an episode in which the girls are stranded atop Notre Dame cathedral at midnight. And, of course, there's romance, in the form of handsome young doctor Tom Newhall and college "Lothario" Avery Moore.

The Gobi Desert - The Adventures of Three Women Travelling Across the Gobi Desert in the 1920s


Mildred Cable - 1942
    They were the first English women to cross the Gobi Desert after twenty years of working as missionaries in the Shansi province of China. This is the kind of travel book which is the result of 13 years of continous travel and thorough knowledge of the region. They describe the Chinese Inns, the monasteries, the archaeological sites, the abandoned cities and the life in the oasis towns. This book brings alive the Gobi Desert and shows how relevant it is still nowadays for those wanting to discover this fascinating part of the world.

Headhunting In The Solomon Islands Around The Coral Sea


Caroline Mytinger - 1942
    The author managed to keep her head but recorded the life of the people with her paintings and sketches. Its become a minor travel classic.

The St Lawrence (Rivers of America series, #20)


Henry Beston - 1942
    Lawrence River has been an integral player in the formation of Canada as we know it today. But as writer and naturalist Henry Beston reminds us, this great passageway carries much more than historical significance to the wildlife of its waters and banks. Travelling along the river more than 70 years ago, Beston expertly observed its natural environment as he researched the greatest survey of the land and its people that had yet been written.