NCW Libraries

A fantastic book! Timothy Egan describes his journeys in the Pacific Northwest through visits to salmon fisheries, redwood forests and the manicured English gardens of Vancouver. Here is a blend of history, anthropology and politics.

Put Jonathan Raban on a boat and the results will be fascinating, and never more so than when he's sailing around the serpentine, 2,000-mile coast of his native England. In this acutely perceived and beautifully written book, the bestselling author of Bad Land turns that voyage -- which coincided with the Falklands war of 1982 -- into an occasion for meditations on his country, his childhood, and the elusive notion of home. Whether he's chatting with...

"I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back." So begins Robyn Davidson's perilous journey across 1,700 miles of hostile Australian desert to the sea with only four camels and a dog for company. Enduring sweltering heat, fending off poisonous snakes and lecherous men, chasing her camels when they get skittish and nursing them when they are injured, Davidson...

In 1886, Teresa Jordan's great-grandfather J.L. Jordan left Maryland for the West. It was on Wyoming's Iron Mountain that the Jordan ranch began and survived for nearly a hundred years. Riding the White Horse Home is Teresa Jordan's story of four generations of her family's devotion to the land, a devotion that required at once physical courage and psychic endurance. She celebrates the strength and character of the women of her family - her mother,...

The author recounts his experiences traveling through the jungles of southwestern Venezuela, the home of jaguars, assassin bugs, piranha, and the violent Yanomami Indians.

Richard Holmes knew he had become a true biographer the day his bank bounced a check that he had inadvertently dated 1772. Because for the acclaimed chronicler of Shelly and Coleridge, biography is a physical pursuit, an ardent and arduous retracing of footsteps that may have vanished centuries before. In this gripping book, Holmes takes us from France's Massif Central, where he followed the route taken by Robert Louis Stevenson and a sweet-natured...