Showing results by publisher "Audible Studios" in Travel Writing & Commentary

In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Haim Watzman took a two-week journey up the Jordan Rift Valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface, and people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seem to build Gardens of Eden on earth. And he discovered that the geography’s instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee.

Taking a trip is like a having a love affair: You arrive at your destination liberated from the mundane details of ordinary life, free to shuck off your inhibitions and awaken to the landscape of the senses. In Foreign Affairs, writers from around the globe explore the romance of travel in 21 explicit stories set in evocative locales, including Rome, Brussels, Tokyo, St. Lucia, Vietnam, and Santorini. Contributors include Opal Palmer Adisa, Lisabet Sarai, and Linda Jaivin (author of the best seller Eat Me).

Most New Yorkers, even famous ones, have cherished rituals and favorite places that connect them to their city in unique ways. They have their beloved restaurants, museums, parks, galleries, landmarks, haunts, and hideaways. It may be watching tango dancers on Saturday nights in Central Park. Or riding a bike over the Brooklyn Bridge for a slice of Grimaldi's pepperoni pizza and a view of the Manhattan skyline from across the East River.

A pampered Long Island princess hits the road in a converted bus with her wilderness-loving husband, travels the country for one year, and brings it all hilariously to life in this offbeat and romantic memoir. Doreen and Tim are married psychiatrists with a twist: She’s a self-proclaimed Long Island princess, grouchy couch potato, and shoe addict. He's an affable, though driven, outdoorsman.

With his distinctively witty, anecdotal, and disarming voice, John Yow now journeys to the shore and shares his encounters with some of the most familiar and beloved coastal birds. Out of his travels—from North Carolina's Outer Banks, down the Atlantic coast, and westward along the Gulf of Mexico—come colorful accounts of twenty-eight species, from ubiquitous beach birds like sanderlings and laughing gulls to wonders of nature like roseate spoonbills and the American avocets.

Turn Left at the Trojan Horse has been described as On the Road meets Eat, Pray, Love because it goes well beyond a road trip. More than just a funny and profound narrative of Brad Herzog's cross-country trek toward a college reunion in Ithaca (New York) and more than another reimagining of Odysseus's ancient journey (he visits places like Troy, OR... Iliad, MT... Apollo, PA...), it is a memoir exploring the parameters of a heroic existence - by chronicling the lives of people in America's oft-ignored spaces, by examining the universal truths embedded in ancient myths, and by undertaking a fair bit of self-evaluation.

When Doug Mack picked up a 1963 edition of Europe on Five Dollars a Day, he stumbled on an inspired idea: to boldly go where millions have gone before, relying only on the advice of a travel guide that's nearly a half century out-of-date. Add to the mix his mother's much- documented grand tour through Europe in the late 1960s, and the result is a funny and fascinating journey into a new (old) world, and a disarming look at the ways the classic tourist experience has changed- and has not-in the last generation.

In September of 2005, the Peace Corps sent Michael Levy to teach English in the heart of China's heartland. His hosts in the city of Guiyang found additional uses for him: resident expert on Judaism, romantic adviser, and provincial basketball star, to name a few. His account of overcoming vast cultural differences to befriend his students and fellow teachers is by turns poignant and laugh-out-loud funny.

Paris has long been a storied center of art and culture, and of romance, but in the 1920s its magnetism was especially irresistible. From around the world writers, artists, and composers steamed in, to visit or linger, some to reside. This book - a work of immense erudition spiced with anecdotes and gossip - documents their haunts and habits, their comings and goings, their relationships intimate and artistic.

Reporting from Jerusalem for The New York Times and Fox News respectively, Greg Myre and Jennifer Griffin, witnessed a decades-old conflict transformed into a completely new war. The West has learned a lot about asymmetrical war in the past decade. At the same time, many strategists have missed that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has become one of them. This book shows the importance of applying these hard-won lessons to the longest running, most closely watched occupation and uprising in the world.

Amy Sedaris meets Woody Allen in an uproarious memoir of self discovery. In her critically acclaimed memoir Dork Whore, Iris Bahr finally lost her virginity in the summer between high school and Brown University. In this book, she’s ready for love a year later - but not much wiser. Through all of her uproarious capers, she tries to reconcile her craving for mindblowing sex with her desire for a meaningful relationship - all in an attempt to become an adult. Sort of.

After the death of his brother and the sudden end of his marriage, and after his ex-wife moved to another state leaving him alone with their two young children, Dan Glick embarked on single fatherhood in an unusual way: he took his kids on a journey around the world. The idea was to go see some of the world's rare life forms before they disappeared from the planet, and to do it before the kids themselves would grow up and chart their own paths.

The Rio Grande is simultaneously one of the most watched and least understood rivers in the world. Some stretches of the Rio pass for endless miles through remote wilderness, boxed in by canyons hundreds of feet high and inhabited by only the hardiest animals and humans. That's why journalist Keith Bowden decided to become the first person to travel the entire length of the Rio as it forms the border between America and Mexico.

They were bored, broke, burned out, and turning 40, so when Ben and Dinah saw the advert looking for a husband and wife team with young kids to write a guidebook about family travel around Britain, they jumped at the chance. With naïve visions of staring moodily across Coniston Water and savouring Cornish pasties, they embark on a mad-cap five-month trip with daughter Phoebe, four, and son Charlie, two, embracing the freedom of the open road with a spirit of discovery and an industrial supply of baby wipes.

While birding literature is filled with tales of expert observers spotting rare species in exotic locales, John Yow reminds us that the most fascinating birds can be the ones perched right outside our windows. In thirty-five engaging and sometimes irreverent vignettes, Yow reveals the fascinating lives of the birds we see nearly every day. Following the seasons, he covers forty-two species, discussing the improbable, unusual, and comical aspects of his subjects' lives.

In the Year of the Shark, a chance encounter between a ne'er-do-well writer and a tropical storm left him marooned on the deserted end of a Caribbean island and charged with the rescue of his four shipmates. There, Mishka Shubaly learned some valuable life lessons - among them that in the absence of whiskey, wine, and water, urine will get the job done.

For anyone who ever wanted to be an archaeologist, Ian Graham could be a hero. This lively memoir chronicles Graham's career as the "last explorer" and a fierce advocate for the protection and preservation of Maya sites and monuments across Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. It is also full of adventure and high society, for the self-deprecating Graham traveled to remote lands such as Afghanistan in wonderful company.

Leaving from Brooklyn, New York, in August 1911, John Muir, at the age of seventy-three and traveling alone, embarked on an eight-month, 40,000-mile voyage to South America and Africa. The 1911-12 journals and correspondence reproduced in this volume allow us to travel with him up the great Amazon, into the jungles of southern Brazil, to snowline in the Andes, through southern and central Africa to the headwaters of the Nile, and across six oceans and seas in order to reach the rare forests he had so long wished to study.

Whether your idea of travel at its finest is trekking through Europe with a backpack, a map and a foreign-language dictionary; road-tripping across America in a fully loaded RV; or cruising the Caribbean aboard a luxury liner, Chicken Soup for the Traveler’s Soul celebrates the people you’ll meet, the lands you’ll discover and the lessons you’ll learn. Like traveling itself, the stories in this book will take you on a journey of adventure, insight, and discovery. Through the real-life experiences of others, you’ll see that regardless of the destination, it is the journey that provides the fondest memories.

Peter Fleming, brother of James Bond author Ian Fleming, was one of the greatest adventurers and travel writers of the 20th century and author of several classic and best-selling books. This is the first paperback edition. It presents an exciting adventure that could never be made today - it will appeal to all interested in the region.