Best Louisville Kentucky Travel Books

Secret Louisville: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure is a book that answers questions you didn't even realize you had about the city that stands proudly along the Ohio River. You get the picture: Think of this book as a scavenger hunt of sorts for Kentucky's largest city, covering the strange, the surprising, and sometimes the silly locales, history, and facts.

Whether you cheered along for the 1980 and 1986 March Madness victories, or whether you're a more recent supporter in the Rick Pitino era, these are the 100 things every fan needs to know and do in their lifetime. Mike Rutherford is the founder and manager of the Louisville sports website Card Chronicle and the college basketball editor for SB Nation.

Louisville was home to fine cuisine long before the famous restaurant rows on Bardstown Road, Frankfort Avenue and East Market Street. Michelle Turner, a practicing attorney, loves restaurants, recipes, photography and cooking.

She wasn’t quite sure moving to Montana and marrying a cowboy was a better option—but, head over heels in love, she did it anyway. Knadler articulates her journey in a manner so self-deprecating and hilarious that it doesn't take long to realize she isn't ridiculing rural Virginia, she’s analyzing her own place in it...She is braver than most writers would be about exposing the vulnerable underbelly of her new marriage, and about how close she came to throwing in the clogs. "Jessie Knadler's story about leaving the glossy office buildings and late nights of Manhattan to take a chance on love and create a new life in rural Lexington, Virginia, sounds like something out of a movie. “Jessie Knadler’s memoir, Rurally Screwed …is more than a fast-paced ride through the rodeo scene of relationships from Manhattan to Montana, but an examination of American life, the things we take for granted and the things we ought to cherish. “At once brutally honest and over-the-top hilarious, Rurally Screwed is the most engaging and relatable book about marriage I've ever read. Jessie, as a character in the book and in real life, is a strong, witty, courageous and hilarious woman.”— Breathe. Rurally Screwed entertains by continuing well past the ‘I do’ and, best of all, this is a real-life romance, a memoir with a hilarious narrator… Rurally Screwed is also a hero's journey as Jessie navigates her relationship with various identities—a child from Montana, a woman from New York, a wife in rural Virginia. Her searing wit and unflinching honesty is a pleasure to read…Fans of Ree Drummond's The Pioneer Woman will love Rurally Screwed, as will anyone who has fallen madly in love with his or her opposite.”— Book Club Classics.

The handsome barns and well-tended pastures found throughout central Kentucky have been the home to international racing champions, and now individuals from all over the world, including England, Ireland, Japan, Dubai, and Saudi Arabia, have a stake in the region's flourishing horse industry. As preeminent racing historian Edward L. Bowen notes in his introduction, "It is a special place where the ruler of Dubai and a stable groom have something in common; the queen of England can admire a leathery old jockey; a philanthropist and a veterinary professor have the same goals; and a $2 bettor celebrates at the same moment that a corporate CEO grits his teeth in disappointment." His work has appeared in several national publications, including Architectural Digest, National Geographic, and the Smithsonian Guides to Natural America.