Neither Here nor There: Travels in Europe


Bill Bryson - 1991
    In Neither Here nor There he brings his unique brand of humour to bear on Europe as he shoulders his backpack, keeps a tight hold on his wallet, and journeys from Hammerfest, the northernmost town on the continent, to Istanbul on the cusp of Asia. Fluent in, oh, at least one language, he retraces his travels as a student twenty years before.Whether braving the homicidal motorist of Paris, being robbed by gypsies in Florence, attempting not to order tripe and eyeballs in a German restaurant, window-shopping in the sex shops of the Reeperbahn or disputing his hotel bill in Copenhagen, Bryson takes in the sights, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with his hilariously caustic observations. He even goes to Liechtenstein.

360 Degrees Longitude: One Family's Journey Around the World


John Higham - 2009
    After more than a decade of planning, John Higham and his wife September bid their high-tech jobs and suburban lives good-bye, packed up their home and set out with two children, ages eight and eleven, to travel around the world. In the course of the next 52 weeks they crossed 24 time zones, visited 28 countries and experienced a lifetime of adventures. Making their way across the world, the Highams discovered more than just different foods and cultures; they also learned such diverse things as a Chilean mall isn’t the best place to get your ears pierced, and that elephants appreciate flowers just as much as the next person.  But most importantly, they learned about each other, and just how much a family can weather if they do it together. 360 Degrees Longitude employs Google’s wildly popular Google Earth as a compliment to the narrative. Using your computer you can spin the digital globe to join the adventure cycling through Europe, feeling the cold stare of a pride of lions in Africa, and breaking down in the Andes.  Packed with photos, video and text, the online Google Earth companion adds a dimension not possible with mere paper and ink.  Fly over the terrain of the Inca Trail or drill down to see the majesty of the Swiss Alps—without leaving the comfort of your chair.John Higham is an aerospace engineer with an expertise in satellites. He is also an avid traveler, frequently writing and lecturing on his own experience traversing the globe. The Highams live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit him online at www.360DegreesLongitude.com.The Voyages of Tim Vetter interviews 360 author John Higham about what it is like to travel with children, his bucket list and what he and his family have been up to since traveling around the world. Available at http://bit.ly/podcast360 or on search for "360 Degrees Longitude" on your favorite podcast store.

An Heiress of Holocaust: How my family survived the holocaust and the lasting effects on my life


Sarah Segal - 2020
    

This Is It: 2 hemispheres, 2 people, and 1 boat


Jackie Sarah Parry - 2016
     With their incurable curiosity and desire for adventure, they sold all their belongings and flew to America in search of a boat. The pull of the ocean was too strong to ignore any longer. Four years prior, they circumnavigated the globe on their thirty-three foot boat, Mariah. Now they wanted a new challenge. From the perils at Pitcairn to the grand statues of Easter Island, Jackie and Noel set sail south to the remotest inhabited island in the world. Along the way, they lose a friend and come nail-bitingly close to losing their new boat, but they gained so much more: a voyage that left them breathless from fear and a journey of not only travel but of two truly nomadic gypsies. This is a story of storms of emotions and oceans, travel, love and relationships, and two people figuring out life and fulfilling their need to move and be challenged.

HARD ROLL: A Paramedic’s Perspective of Life and Death in New Orleans


Jon McCarthy - 2017
    He chronicles some of the most formative calls of his career in this autobiography that reads like crime fiction. McCarthy demonstrates with detail and clarity that the difficult choice is often the right choice. While not for the faint of heart, each entry in this collection provides poignant insight into the bonds between medics and the people and city they serve.

Kisses From Nimbus: From SAS to MI6 An Autobiography


P.J. 'Red' Riley - 2017
    His is the story the establishment doesn’t want you to read.br>Captain P. J. “Red” Riley is an ex-SAS soldier who served for eighteen years as an MI6 agent. Riley escaped internment in Chile during the Falklands war during an audacious top-secret attempt to attack the Argentinian mainland. He was imprisoned in the darkness of the Sierra Leonean jungle, and withstood heavy fire in war-torn Beirut and Syria. In 2015, he was arrested for murder but all charges were later dropped. In this searing memoir, Riley reveals the brutal realities of his service, and the truth behind the newspaper headlines featuring some of the most significant events in recent British history. His account provides startling new evidence on the Iraq war, what Tony Blair really knew about Saddam Hussain’s weapons of mass destruction before the allied invasion, and questions the British government’s alleged involvement in the death of Princess Diana. Chaotic, darkly humorous and at times heart-wrenchingly sad, Kisses From Nimbus charts the harrowing real-life experiences of a soldier and spy in the name of Queen and country.

Becoming Frozen: Memoir of a First Year in Alaska


Jill Homer - 2015
    This memoir is a love story about the wonderful, humorous, and sometimes harrowing experiences that await when a woman throws her heart to the wind just to see where it lands. After taking a job at a weekly newspaper in Homer, Alaska, Jill and her partner forge a new life in a town where artists and sport fishermen drive the local economy, grizzly bears roam through back yards, social outings feature death-defying ski trips or kayaking rough seas in freezing rain, and business attire means wearing three sweaters to an unheated office. As Jill adapts to Homer's idiosyncrasies, she finds her own quirky hobby — riding a bike on snow. Despite having little in the way of an athletic background or talent, Jill signs up for a hundred-mile race across frozen wilderness. As the harsh Alaskan winter sets in, she launches a tenacious training routine that takes her far out of her comfort zone. Here, under the Northern Lights, battling exhaustion and extreme cold, Jill discovers the heart of Alaska. And there's no going back.

Faring to France on a Shoe


Valerie Poore - 2017
    After eight years of owning their barge, Hennie-Ha, eight years involving catastrophe and crisis, Val and her partner finally go 'faring' to France for the first time. This travelogue is about the places they visit and the people they meet along the canals on their route from the Netherlands, through Belgium and into northern France. It tells a gentle story about how they experience their life on board during the four weeks they spent cruising. Written as a journal, it follows them on their travels through rain and shine and reveals how day by day, Val learns to cast aside the stresses and demands of her job and to appreciate life's simplest of pleasures to the full. And why 'Faring to France on a Shoe'? Well, download a sample and then all will be clear, or just have a 'look inside'!

Educating Alice: Adventures of a Curious Woman


Alice Steinbach - 2004
    After chronicling her European journey of self-discovery in Without Reservations, this Pulitzer Prize—winning columnist for the Baltimore Sun quit her job and left home again. This time she roamed the world, taking lessons and courses in such things as French cooking in Paris, Border collie training in Scotland, traditional Japanese arts in Kyoto, and architecture and art in Havana. With warmth and wit, Steinbach guides us through the pleasures and perils of discovering how to be a student again. She also learns the true value of this second chance at educating herself: the opportunity to connect with and learn from the people she meets along the way.

The Sum of My Parts


James Sanford - 2011
    At first I tried to deny my condition (trying to treat a tumor with hot baths and ice packs). Eventually, I decided I would learn as much about my illness as possible while trying to keep my emotions on hold.What followed was an experience that finally forced me to deal with issues about my body that I had tried to ignore for decades. Along the way I dealt with a physician who gave me ridiculous advice and acquaintances who asked unbelievable questions. But I was also fortunate to be surrounded by people who supported me and doctors who helped me through the process.

Carry On: Stan Zuray's Journey from Boston Greaser to Alaskan Homesteader


Tim Attewell - 2017
    As the Vietnam war took more and more of his friends, and many of those who returned sank further into drugs and despair, Stan looked for meaning and found nothing. His life's purpose lay thirty-three hundred miles northwest, deep in the Tozitna River Valley in the heart of Alaska's frozen interior. Deadly cold, famine, grizzly bears, and one unruly sled dog with a grudge kept Stan on the knife's edge between survival and death. Humbled by the power of nature, the Boston greaser who was destined for prison found a new life in the wild, where one mistake can prove fatal. This is the true story of Stan Zuray's incredible journey; the reformation of a man's heart and mind in the forbidding darkness of Alaska's endless winter.

North To Alaska: The True Story of An epic, 16,000-mile cycle journey the length of the Americas


Trevor Lund - 2019
     Returning home to a job I didn’t enjoy, that dream burned at my mind until, as a mature student in 1999, I was given the opportunity to take a year out and decided now was my time. This was at a time of huge advances in communication technology but I chose to journey without a mobile phone or any other means of communicating with the outside world – something we might struggle to comprehend these days. If I got into trouble, if I got injured, if I became lost, it was up to me to sort myself out. No close friends were willing to leave the comforts of home, so the fledgling internet did at least prove useful in finding a travel companion. But within nine days of the start of my journey I found myself alone, close to the bottom of the world and with many thousands of miles of the unknown still ahead. This book tells how the desire to fulfil a burning ten-year dream helped me overcome illness, injury, exhaustion, loneliness and so much more; how I, a normal guy from a working-class family in Leeds – among many other adventures – found myself singing to bears to keep them at bay, ran out of water crossing the driest desert in the world, had a volcano rain ash down on me and found myself hiding out from bandits most nights while pedalling through Mexico.

Not in a Tuscan Villa: During a Year in Italy, a New Jersey Couple Discovers the True Dolce Vita When They Trade Rose-colored Glasses for 3Ds


John Petralia - 2013
    Within days their dream becomes a nightmare. After residing in two Italian cities, negotiating the roads and healthcare, discovering art, friends, food, and customs, the Petralias learn more than they anticipate--about Italy, themselves, what it means to be American, and what's important in life. Part memoir, part commentary, quirky and sincere, Not in a Tuscan Villa is about having the courage to step out of your comfort zone and do something challenging in later life. The adventure recaptures the Petralia's youth, rekindles their romance--and changes their lives forever.

Booky Wook Collection


Russell Brand - 2014
    The bloke can write. He rhapsodizes about heroin better than anyone since Jim Carroll. With the flick of his enviable pen, he can summarize childhood thus: ‘My very first utterance in life was not a single word, but a sentence. It was, ‘Don’t do that.’... Russell Brand has a compelling story." — New York Times Book ReviewThe gleeful and candid New York Times bestselling autobiography of addiction, recovery, and rise to fame from Russell Brand, star of Forgetting Sarah Marshall and one of the biggest personalities in comedy today.Picking up where he left off in My Booky Wook, movie star and comedian Russell Brand details his rapid climb to fame and fortune in a shockingly candid, resolutely funny, and unbelievably electrifying tell-all: Booky Wook 2. Brand’s performances in Arthur, Get Him to the Greek, and Forgetting Sarah Marshall have earned him a place in fans’ hearts; now, with a drop of Chelsea Handler’s Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang, a dash of Tommy Lee’s Dirt, and a spoonful of Nikki Sixx’s The Heroin Diaries, Brand goes all the way—exposing the mad genius behind the audacious comic we all know (or think we know) and love (or at least, lust).

Raising A Thief


Paul Podolsky - 2020