Best South U.S. Regional Travel

The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes — and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island . Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance.

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2018 explains how Walt Disney World works and how to use that knowledge to make every minute and every dollar of your vacation count. "If a restaurant serves bad food, or a gift item is overpriced, or a certain ride isn't worth the wait, we can say so, and in the process we hope to make your visit more fun, efficient, and economical." And because they've found that "spontaneity and self-discovery work about as well at Walt Disney World as they do on your tax return," The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is packed full of essential advice for anyone braving the frontiers of the mother of all theme parks. "Indispensable". ― The New York Times.

Winner of the Pat Conroy Southern Book Prize. Mississippi's #1 Bestseller of 2015 and 2016 ( The Clarion-Ledger ). A New York Times Bestseller. In Dispatches from Pluto , adventure writer Richard Grant takes on “the most American place on Earth”—the enigmatic, beautiful, often derided Mississippi Delta. They befriend an array of unforgettable local characters—blues legend T-Model Ford, cookbook maven Martha Foose, catfish farmers, eccentric millionaires, and the actor Morgan Freeman. Yet even as he observes major structural problems, he encounters many close, loving, and interdependent relationships between black and white families—and good reasons for hope. “The. truest book about the Mississippi Delta since Rising Tide .”. (Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic ). “[Grant] succeeds, and with flair. … it’s the individual voices and anecdotes he records that give Dispatches from Pluto its dissonant lilt and outré charm.” (Jonathan Miles Garden & Gun). As much as anything else, this is a book about racism in America, and Grant confronts the issue with an outsider’s honesty and aplomb.” (Amy Wilentz, author of Farewell, Fred Voodoo ). “In the best tradition of Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad , British travel writer Richard Grant explores the otherworldly Mississippi Delta by settling into an aging plantation home and letting himself be captured by an eccentric, racially-tortured and wondrously hospitable culture. “Richard Grant is the ultimate cool customer, a fearless and skilled writer navigating the backwaters of rural Mississippi with his humanity on his sleeve, trying to get to the heart of what makes the Delta such a unique and soulful place while recounting a harrowing and funny, wise and heartwarming personal journey from nomad to proud homeowner. His books include Crazy River, the adventure classic God's Middle Finger, and American Nomads, which has since been made into a BBC documentary of the same name.

The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes — and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island . Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance.

The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2018 explains how Walt Disney World works and how to use that knowledge to make every minute and every dollar of your vacation count. "If a restaurant serves bad food, or a gift item is overpriced, or a certain ride isn't worth the wait, we can say so, and in the process we hope to make your visit more fun, efficient, and economical." And because they've found that "spontaneity and self-discovery work about as well at Walt Disney World as they do on your tax return," The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World is packed full of essential advice for anyone braving the frontiers of the mother of all theme parks. "Indispensable". ― The New York Times.

Setting out on a winding road trip, Theroux discovers a region of architectural and artistic wonders, incomparable music, mouth-watering cuisine—and also some of the worst schools, medical care, housing, and unemployment rates in the nation. Theroux pulls no punches in his quest to understand this overlooked margin of American life.” — Boston Globe “A vivid contemporary portrait of rural life . * Penguin * His ability to sum up a people or a city in a few lines is undiminished * Daily Telegraph * Theroux's work remains the standard by which other travel writing must be judged * Observer * The world's most perceptive travel writer * Daily Mail * [Theroux] has the power to transport us and get under the skin of a place... the stories in Deep South make for a compelling listen -- Duncan Minshull, BBC Radio 4 This engrossing book reminds us that despite the poverty, maybe because of it, everyone has a story to tell and it's the writer's job to bear such testimony * Financial Times * HMH hardcover, 2015. Previous ISBN: 978-0-544-32352-0.

Leigh's award winning photographs have appeared in museum and gallery exhibitions, magazines and newspapers, and in three highly acclaimed books: Oystering: A Way of Life; The Ogeechee: A River and its People, and Nets & Doors: Shrimping in Southern Waters. Praise for Jack Leigh and his other books. Oystering, The Ogeechee and Nets & Doors. ...elegiac black-and-white photographs...Mr. Leigh resembles (Lewis Hine)--not esthetically, but in his ability to depict manual labor and, indeed, the South itselfs, without either sentimentality or condescension. American Photographer. In this handsome volumn, Leigh chronicles in words and images both an untamed river and a vanishing way of life. The Orlando Sentinel. ...the book's sepia-tinted photographs and shared anecdotes form an affectionate and plain-spoken portrait of the vanishing lifestyle of the rural South...Leigh has captured a way of life on film that few outsiders will ever see.

Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection: This special eBook edition of Cheryl Strayed’s national best seller, Wild ,features exclusive content, including Oprah’s personal notes highlighted within the text, and a reading group guide. Amazon Best Books of the Month, March 2012: At age 26, following the death of her mother, divorce, and a run of reckless behavior, Cheryl Strayed found herself alone near the foot of the Pacific Crest Trail--inexperienced, over-equipped, and desperate to reclaim her life. While readers looking for adventure or a naturalist's perspective may be distracted by the emotional odyssey at the core of the story, Wild vividly describes the grueling life of the long-distance hiker, the ubiquitous perils of the PCT, and its peculiar community of wanderers. But Strayed doesn't want sympathy, and her confident prose stands on its own, deftly pulling both threads into a story that inhabits a unique riparian zone between wilderness tale and personal-redemption memoir. Two months before Wild was published I stood on a Mexican beach at sunset with my family assisting dozens of baby turtles on their stumbling journey across the sand, then watching as they disappeared into the sea. Echoing the ever-popular search for wilderness salvation by Chris McCandless (Back to the Wild, 2011) and every other modern-day disciple of Thoreau, Strayed tells the story of her emotional devastation after the death of her mother and the weeks she spent hiking the 1,100-mile Pacific Crest Trail. As her family, marriage, and sanity go to pieces, Strayed drifts into spontaneous encounters with other men, to the consternation of her confused husband, and eventually hits rock bottom while shooting up heroin with a new boyfriend. Woefully unprepared (she fails to read about the trail, buy boots that fit, or pack practically), she relies on the kindness and assistance of those she meets along the way, much as McCandless did.

They were pushing, adventurous, and fearless men, who thought nothing of laying down their lives in the service of a friend, or often, it might be, only as a matter of humanity. Equipped with nothing but their skill and endurance, a few ponies, a gun or two, and provisions enough to last them for the day, they set out to make their way through a vast wilderness that held all the terrors of the unknown. In 1882, while Mr. Hamilton was a witness in the Star Route trial in Washington, the Smithsonian Institution endeavored to photograph these signs, but with indifferent success. His story also gives, for the first time, an account of three years of the life of the great scout and mountaineer, Bill Williams, one of the prominent figures in the early history of the plains. William Thomas Hamilton was born into a wealthy family in England but was brought to American when he was two years old.

The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes — and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island . Accompanied only by his old college buddy Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged butts over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Awed by merely the camping section of his local sporting goods store, he nevertheless plunges into the wilderness and emerges with a consistently comical account of a neophyte woodsman learning hard lessons about self-reliance.

A must-read for any of the thousands of listeners who made Boers part of their daily routine, The Score of a Lifetime is a freewheeling, frank portrait of a man, a career, a station no one thought would survive, and a city that loves its sports. Terry Boers is a legend in Chicago sports media.