close
 

archive

Cockpit Confidential

Cockpit Confidential

Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers & Reflections

by Patrick Smith

Paperback, 303 pages, Sourcebooks Inc, $14.99, published May 7 2013 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Cockpit Confidential
  • Everything You Need to Know About Air Travel: Questions, Answers & Reflections
  • Patrick Smith

The author of the online feature Ask the Pilot addresses common passenger questions and concerns.

News and Reviews
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls

Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls

by David Sedaris

Hardcover, 275 pages, Little Brown & Co, $27, published April 23 2013 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Let's Explore Diabetes With Owls
  • David Sedaris

A collection of essays by the humorist traces his offbeat travel experiences, which involve surreal encounters with everything from French dentistry and Australian kookaburras to Beijing squat toilets and a wilderness Costco in North Carolina.NPR Bestseller

News and Reviews
Paris to the Pyrenees

Paris to the Pyrenees

A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James

by David Downie

Hardcover, 317 pages, W W Norton & Co Inc, $27.95, published April 1 2013 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Paris to the Pyrenees
  • A Skeptic Pilgrim Walks the Way of Saint James
  • David Downie

David Downie chronicles the pilgrimmage he took with his wife from Paris to the Pyrenees and ultimately to the sanctuary of Saint James, a journey on which they followed age-old trails through France rather than the commercialized Spanish route.

News and Reviews
Never Look A Polar Bear In The Eye

Never Look A Polar Bear In The Eye

A Family Field Trip to the Arctic's Edge in Search of Adventure, Truth, and Mini-Marshmallows

by Zac Unger

Hardcover, 296 pages, Perseus Books Group, $25, published January 29 2013 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Never Look A Polar Bear In The Eye
  • A Family Field Trip to the Arctic's Edge in Search of Adventure, Truth, and Mini-Marshmallows
  • Zac Unger

Zac Unger writes about Churchill, Manitoba, Canada, a.k.a. the polar bear capital of the world, where polar bears can be found roaming past coffee shops and scratching their backs against fence posts and front doorways.

News and Reviews
Travels With Epicurus

Travels With Epicurus

A Journey To A Greek Island In Search Of A Fulfilled Life

by Daniel Klein

Hardcover, 164 pages, Penguin Books, $20, published October 30 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Travels With Epicurus
  • A Journey To A Greek Island In Search Of A Fulfilled Life
  • Daniel Klein

The co-author of Plato and a Platypus describes how he journeyed to Greece with a suitcase full of philosophy books in order to learn how to achieve a fulfilling old age, explaining how he came to regard old age as a valuable life stage filled with simple and heady pleasures.

News and Reviews
Cold

Cold

Adventures in the World's Frozen Places

by Bill Streever

Hardcover, 292 pages, Little Brown & Co, $24.99, published July 22 2009 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Cold
  • Adventures in the World's Frozen Places
  • Bill Streever

A narrative account of the author's forays into some of the world's coldest regions describes his encounters with splashing through an Arctic swimming hole, investigations into ancient and more recent ice ages, and examinations of animal hibernation habits.

News and Reviews
The Grand Tour

The Grand Tour

by Agatha Christie and Mathew Prichard

Hardcover, 376 pages, Harper, $29.99, published November 20 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • The Grand Tour
  • Agatha Christie and Mathew Prichard

Told in never-before-published letters and photos taken from the Queen of Mystery's very own archives, this exciting travelogue, steeped in history and illustrated with photos, postcards, newspaper clippings and memorabilia, documents her eye-opening yearlong voyage around the British Empire in 1922.

News and Reviews
Apocalyptic Planet

Apocalyptic Planet

Field Guide to the Everending Earth

by Craig Childs

Hardcover, 343 pages, Random House Inc, $27.95, published October 2 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Apocalyptic Planet
  • Field Guide to the Everending Earth
  • Craig Childs

Discusses the Earth's inherent instability and susceptibility toward violent natural disasters and climate extremes, challenging beliefs about apocalyptic inevitabilities while revealing how to change humanity's place within the planet's cycles.

News and Reviews
Man Seeks God

Man Seeks God

My Flirtations With the Divine

by Eric Weiner

Paperback, 349 pages, Twelve , $14.99, published November 6 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Man Seeks God
  • My Flirtations With the Divine
  • Eric Weiner

After a health scare, an atheist travels the world searching for an experience of the divine, from meditating with Tibetan lamas in Nepal and unblocking his chi in China, to studying the Kabbalah in Israel.

News and Reviews
The Longest Way Home

The Longest Way Home

One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down

by Andrew McCarthy

Hardcover, 273 pages, Free Press, $26, published September 18 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • The Longest Way Home
  • One Man's Quest for the Courage to Settle Down
  • Andrew McCarthy

Actor-turned-travel writer Andrew McCarthy meditates on how travel has helped him overcome life-long fears and confront his resistance to commitment, tracing his soul-searching visits to the Patagonia, the Amazon and Mount Kilimanjaro.

News and Reviews
Where China Meets India

Where China Meets India

Burma And The New Crossroads of Asia

by Thant Myint-U

Paperback, 371 pages, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $18, published September 18 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • Where China Meets India
  • Burma And The New Crossroads of Asia
  • Thant Myint-U

Where China Meets India: Burma And The New Crossroads Of Asia analyzes the inherent potential of recently dissolved boundaries between China and India; it cites a clash between modern and traditional worlds throughout affected regions while considering Burma's strategic centrality and the ways it is being targeted.

News and Reviews
The Beautiful and the Damned

The Beautiful and The Damned

A Portrait of the New India

by Siddhartha Deb

Paperback, 253 pages, Faber & Faber, $15, published September 18 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • The Beautiful and The Damned
  • A Portrait of the New India
  • Siddhartha Deb

This portrait of globalized India is based on the author's undercover assignment for The Guardian, during which he worked at a Delhi call center and traveled through the subcontinent, observing its cultural contradictions and the human cost of monumental changes.

News and Reviews
The Unconquered

The Unconquered

In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes

by Scott Wallace

Paperback, 494 pages, Broadway, $16, published July 24 2012 | purchase
close

Purchase Featured Books

  • The Unconquered
  • In Search of the Amazon's Last Uncontacted Tribes
  • Scott Wallace

A National Geographic writer describes his harrowing journey with 34 other people into the depths of the Amazon rain forest, in an attempt to track one of the last uncontacted tribes on the planet, the "People of the Arrow," a group of deft archers who defend themselves with a vengeance.

News and Reviews

NPR thanks our sponsors

Become an NPR Sponsor

Podcast + RSS Feeds

Podcast RSS

  • Books