Drives Of A Lifetime; 500 Of The World's Most Spectacular Trips

By Keith Bellows
"Both a practical guide and an inspiring travel gift book, Drives of a Lifetime highlights 400 of the world's best car trips. The eclectic list takes readers across stunning natural landscapes of mountain, coastline, glen, and dale; into charming towns and out-of-the-way hamlets; to palatial estates, lovely gardens, and intriguing historic sites; and through bustling, thriving cities all over the world map. From America's scenic byways to the side lanes of Tuscany and the rugged dirt roads of Australia's outback—and hundreds of inviting routes in between—Drives of a Lifetime shows off the highlights of each area and tells readers exactly how to make the drive themselves. Since roads trips are a beloved cultural touchstone for Americans of every generation, Drives of a Lifetime will capture a huge and diverse audience.  (Publisher Description)  Check Our Catalog

AAA Easy Reading Road Atlas 2011

"Updated annually by the most trusted name in travel, the AAA Easy Reading Road Atlas provides comprehensive coverage of the United States, Canada and Mexico. The atlas also features crisply defined roads, handy driving distance charts and more two-page maps for better scale. And, it's all in an easy to read, 40% LARGER print size than our standard road atlas"  (Publisher Description)


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Lonely Planet USA's Best Trips

By Sara Benson

"99 of the country’s best trips! Whether you’re a local looking for a long weekend escape, or a visitor looking to explore, Lonely Planet’s Trips series offers the best itineraries – and makes it easy to plan the perfect trip time and again.

• Includes the Mid-Atlantic, New England, the South, Florida, the Great Lakes, the Great Plains, Texas, the Rocky Mountains, the Southwest, California and the Pacific Northwest
• Easy-to-use maps for every trip, plus driving times and directions
• Explore the country with trips ranging from two days to two weeks
• Theme icons make finding the perfect trip simple – no matter what your interest
• Local experts share their favorite trip ideas, including a food-lovers’ tour of Northern California from Alice Waters and a musician’s tour of the Midwest music scene
• Tune in on the road with our regional music playlists
• Family-friendly and pet-friendly listings throughout
• Green index lists the most environmentally friendly options across the country"                          (Publisher Description)      Check Our Catalog

Travels In Siberia

By Ian Frazier
"Veteran New Yorker contributor Frazier (Lamentations of the Father: Essays, 2008, etc.) begins bluntly. "Officially," he writes, "there is no such place as Siberia." It is not a country, nor a province, yet the region bearing the name is extensive, comprising eight time zones. Throughout, the author confesses to a long love affair with Russia, a relationship that has waxed and waned over the decades but in some of its brightest phases sent him back repeatedly to see what few have seen. Here Frazier records several visits: a summer's trip via cantankerous automobile across the entire region, in the company of a couple of local companions; a winter's journey by train and car, during which the car sometimes used frozen waterways for roads; and a return visit to see the effects of the emerging Russian energy industry. He prepared in a fashion familiar to readers of his previous works—read everything he could, talked with anyone who knew anything, planned and schemed and made it happen. He also studied Russian extensively and tried gamely to engage local people he encountered along the way. On the road, he visited local museums and monuments and natural wonders, and he pauses frequently for welcome digressions on the historical background. He camped, fished and ate local delicacies (and indelicacies). Endearingly, he freely admits his inadequacies, fears (during one perilous icy trip he actually composed a farewell message to his family), blunders, dour moods, regrets and loneliness. The contrasts are stark—one day, he walked through the ruins of a remote, frozen Soviet-era prison camp and later saw a ballet in St. Petersburg—and the writing is consistently rich.
A dense, challenging, dazzling work that will leave readers exhausted but yearning for more."  (Kirkus Reviews)   Check Our Catalog

The Best American Travel Writing;

Edited By Bill Buford
"The 2010 edition of this always-enjoyable series (which began in 2000) features, as usual, a collection of articles about out-of-the-way places, offbeat people, and exciting adventures. Simon Winchester visits "the most isolated permanent habitation in the world," Tristan da Cunha, a volcanic island 1,700 miles from the South African coast. Tom Bissell searches for Hakeldama, the biblical "field of blood" where Judas Iscariot hanged himself. Avi Davis travels to Romania, where he visits Sighisoara, the town where Vlad Tepes, the fifteenth-century prince (and model for Dracula), was born. J. C. Hallman takes readers to Norway, to meet the "father of the modern cruise industry." And so on. These gifted authors don't just tell us about unique or out-of-the-way places; they take us to them, show us what they look like, show us who their people are, and make us feel like we've experienced them. Readers of travel literature should be first at the gate when this series makes its annual appearance."  (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

A Week At The Airport

By Alain De Botton
"Travel writer de Botton sees the airport as the nexus of all that plagues and fascinates us about modern life: environmental destruction, high technology, constant movement, glittering distractions, consumerist temptations, and social interaction and isolation. Having accepted an invitation from British Airways to spend a week at its home, Terminal 5 of Heathrow, he is given unprecedented access to all the parts of the airport that travelers don't generally see. So, along with the shopping areas and arrival and departure and baggage-claim areas, he wanders into the huge stations for airplane repairs, the vast storage areas for rejected samples for cabin paraphernalia, the behind-the-scene offices, and the massive food-preparation areas. From a desk announcing his position as writer in residence, de Botton engages in conversations with business travelers, parting lovers, vacationing families, and the myriad workers—stationary and passing through—for whom the airport is workplace. Author of the best-selling The Art of Travel (2002), de Botton is amusing and lyrical in his observations of our modern comings and goings. Photographs add to the allure of this engaging look at air travel."  (Booklist Reviews)  Check Our Catalog

Tequila OIl; Getting Lost In Mexico

By Hugh Thomsom
"On his first trip to Mexico in the 1970s, Hugh Thomson is told by a stranger he could make money buying a car over the Texan border and taking it thousands of miles through the country to sell on the black market in Central America. What does it matter that he doesn't have a driving license? He is eighteen years old, far from home and with time to kill. It sounds like the most sensible plan in the world.
So, throwing himself on the kindness and mercy of the Mexicans he meets or crashes into, he and his beloved Oldsmobile 98 careen from one crisis to another before meeting their apocalyptic destiny in the slums of Belize City - where he returns many years later, older but not necessarily wiser, to complete his original journey.
His travels reveal a wild, off-the-beaten-track Mexico, leading him from the badlands of Chihuahua to the jungles of the Yucatan and one of the most enigmatic and least understood cultures on the planet, the Maya."  (Publisher Description) Check Our Catalog

Antarctica

 by Jeff Rubin. Ready for the adventure of a lifetime? Gape at the icebergs looming over your ship, stand awestruck in the midst of a teeming penguin colony, or glimpse a minke whale surfacing next to your Zodiac - Antarctica will astound and transform you. Written by authors with intimate knowledge of the region, this bestselling guide is your essential companion to The Ice.* More coverage of Ushuaia, Argentina, the departure point for 90% of visitors to Antarctica* New Climate Change chapter* Contributions from 26 world-renowned Antarctica experts, including historians, biologists, geologists, climatologists, environmentalists, meteorologists, paleontologists, and adventurers. --Summary (Check catalog)