Books like A time of gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor

Bill Bryson humorously chronicles a two–person hike along the Appalachian Trail, mixing lively anecdotes with insightful looks at its history, ecology, and the people who live along the route.

George Orwell’s autobiographical essay, *Down and Out in Paris and London*, chronicles his years of poverty and unemployment in the city streets and hostels of Paris and London, revealing the harsh realities of 1930s street life.

Paul Theroux’s 1973 four‑month train voyage across the United Kingdom, Europe, the Middle East and Southeast Asia becomes a vivid record of travel, railroads, and personal encounters.

Journeying through Nepal’s Dolpo highlands, Peter Matthiessen and biologist George Schaller track the elusive snow leopard while exploring Buddhist spirituality and Himalayan wilderness.

A journey through ancient paths, filled with natural history, literature, and the stories of those who walked them.

"Let's get lost together . . . "Lost in My Own Backyard brings acclaimed author Tim Cahill together with one of his--and America's--favorite destinations: Yellowstone, the world's first national park. Cahill has been "puttering around in the park" for a quarter of a century, slowly covering its vast scope and exploring its remote backwoods. So does this mean that he knows what he's doing? Hardly. "I live fifty miles from the park," says Cahill, "but proximity does not guarantee competence. I've spent entire afternoons not knowing exactly where I was, which is to say, I was lost in my own backyard."Cahill stumbles from glacier to geyser, encounters wildlife (some of it, like bisons, weighing in the neighborhood of a ton), muses on the microbiology of thermal pools, gets spooked in the mysterious Hoodoos, sees moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight, and generally has a fine old time walking several hundred miles while contemplating the concept and value of wilderness. Mostly, Cahill says, "I have resisted the urge to commit philosophy. This is difficult to do when you're alone, twenty miles from the nearest road, and you've just found a grizzly bear track the size of a pizza."Divided into three parts--"The Trails," which offers a variety of favorite day hikes; "In the Backcountry," which explores three great backcountry trails very much off the beaten track; and "A Selected Yellowstone Bookshelf," an annotated bibliography of his favorite books on the park--this is a hilarious, informative, and perfect guide for Yellowstone veterans and first-timers alike. Lost in My Own Backyard is adventure writing at its very best.From the Hardcover edition.

Abby Clover faces a new threat when Wolfbane, the fear‑some leader of the Night Witches, returns for vengeance after her earlier defeat. Amid magic, sea adventures, and time‑travel twists, Abby must protect her world once more.

As World War II was ending and the cold war was just beginning, a twenty-eight-year-old naval hero, decommissioned before war's end because of his crippling injuries, traveled through a devastated Europe. During that trip, John F. Kennedy kept a diary, never before published and until now unknown - even to Kennedy scholars. As the diary makes clear, that European trip was a turning point in the future President's life. The scion of one of America's wealthiest families, Jack Kennedy had grown up in the shadow of an adored older brother destined for greatness. For himself, Jack had intended a quiet career as a college professor or perhaps as an author. But when Joe Kennedy, Jr. was killed in the skies over the English Channel, the expectations of his family and the mantle of leadership passed on to JFK. Would he accept them? That was the question that confronted Kennedy as he traveled in the company of cabinet secretaries and generals, future presidents and prime ministers, toured a humbled Germany, and faced for the first time the power of post-war Russia and the perfidy and bloody-mindedness of Communists in power. It was on this trip, the diary shows, that Kennedy first confronted the "long twilight struggle" for the preservation of Western freedom that would define his Presidency. In these few months an agenda for a Presidency began to be forged. For as the closing pages of the diary make clear, it was at this time that the challenge was accepted, the mantle taken up, and Kennedy began laying plans for his first run for Congress, the first step in his journey to the White House. Prelude to Leadership offers, as Hugh Sidey says in his Introduction, an "intriguing new trove" of insight into the mind of a future president preparing himself for a "still distant challenge." It reveals a man who, not yet thirty, understood not only that a new world drama was taking shape, but that he was destined to play a great role in it.