Audiobook Best Sellers in Travel and Adventure
The River of Doubt (Unabridged)
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.
The River of Doubt; it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.
Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.
>From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.
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Walk and Talk Venice (Unabridged)
Get ready for a one-of-a-kind audio experience: discover Venice through intimate, guided audio walking tours of the city’s most historic and enchanting quarters. There are four guided tours for you to listen to as you walk through Venice, plus essential Italian words and phrases that every traveler wants to know.
Based on the acclaimed classic guidebook Venicewalks, and featuring an exclusive traveler’s Italian tutorial from bestselling language instructor Dr. Robert Blair, Walk and Talk Venice offers the expert guidance that can make you feel at home in this enchanting city, helping you to speak the language as you enjoy the history and beauty of Venice as never before. Make the most of your trip, or plug in, sit back, and let your imagination take you there, with Walk and Talk Venice.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Flight of Passage
In the summer of 1966, Rinker and Kernahan Buck - 2 teenaged schoolboys from New Jersey - bought a dilapidated Piper Club airplane for $300, rebuild it, and piloted it on a record-breaking flight across America - navigating all the way to California without a radio because they couldn’t afford one. Their trip retraced a mythical route flown by their father, Tom Buck, a brash, colorful ex-barnstormer who had lost a leg in a tragic plane crash before his sons were born - but who so loved the adventure of flight that he taught his boys to fly before they could drive.
The journey west, and the preparations for it, become a figurative and literal process of discovery as the young men battle thunderstorms and wracking turbulence, encounter Arkansas rednecks, Texas cowboys, and the languid, romantic culture of small-town cafés, cheap motels, and dusty landing strips of pre-Vietnam America. The brothers have a lot to resolve among themselves too - as Kern, the shy, meticulous, dedicated dreamer, and Rinker, the rebellious second son, must finally come to understand and depend on each other in the complex way that only brothers can.
Most of all, Flight of Passages is a timeless story of fathers and sons. These 2 young men must separate from their difficult, quirky father - literally by putting a country’s distance between them - but they do it on their father’s terms: in an airplane. As he looks back, from the perspective of now being a father himself, Rinker Buck’s tale of 2 young men in search of themselves and their country becomes a story about the eternal enigma of family - of the distance and closeness of generations, of peace lost so that understanding can be gained - and it is explored with a storytelling power that is both brave and rare.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Walk and Talk Florence (Unabridged)
Get ready for a one-of-a-kind audio experience: discover Florence through intimate, guided audio walking tours of the city’s most historic and enchanting quarters. There are four guided tours for you to listen to as you walk through Florence, plus essential Italian words and phrases that every traveler wants to know.
Based on the acclaimed classic guidebook Florencewalks, and featuring an exclusive traveler’s Italian tutorial from bestselling language instructor Dr. Robert Blair, Walk and Talk Florence offers the expert guidance that can make you feel at home in this enchanting city, helping you to speak the language as you enjoy the history and beauty of Florence as never before. Make the most of your trip, or plug in, sit back, and let your imagination take you there, with Walk and Talk Florence.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
A Walk in the Woods
“Not long after I moved with my family to a small town in New Hampshire, I happened upon a path that vanished into a wood on the edge of town.” So begins Bill Bryson’s hilarious book, A Walk in the Woods. Following his return to America after 20 years in Britain, Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. The AT, as it’s affectionately known to thousands of hikers, 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 test his own powers of ineptitude, and to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. But A Walk in the Woods is more than just a laugh-out-loud hike. Bryson’s acute eye is a wise witness to this fragile and beautiful trail, and as he tells its fascinating history, he mak
es a moving plea for the conservation of America’s last great wilderness. An adventure, a comedy, a lament, and a celebration, A Walk in the Woods is destined to become a modern classic of travel literature.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Far Eastern Tales (Unabridged)
Far eastern Tales is a collection of Maugham’s short stories, all born of his experiences in Malaysia, Singapore, and other outposts of the former British Empire. The stories included on this recording are Footprints in the Jungle, Mabel, P & O, The Door of Oportunity, The Buried Talent, Before the Party, Mr. Know-all, Neil MacAdam, The End of the Flight and The Force of Circumstance.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
The Fortune of War (Unabridged)
The H.M.S. Leopard pulled into the bay of Pulo Batang looking more like a shabby merchant ship that a man-of-war. The crew had endured a calamitous voyage plagued by gaol-fever, pursued by the Dutch Waakzaamheid, and struck by an iceberg. Suffice it to say, Jack Aubrey was ready for home.
The return journey aboard La Fleche proves delightful for both Aubrey and his particular friend. Stephen Maturin, with high winds and beautiful skies. It is when La Fleche nears the coast of Brazil that tragedy strikes. Accidental fire ravages the ship, forcing the crew into lifeboats. Rescued eventually by the Java, Aubrey and Maturin meet with yet another deterrent to their journey home when the Java engages the U.S.S. Constitution in battle, and loses. Aubrey, now a POW in Boston, waits for word of a prisoner exchange, while Maturin renews his friendship with the raven-haired expatriate, Diana Villiers.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Into Thin Air (Unabridged)
Into Thin Air is the definitive, personal account of the deadliest season in the history of Everest by the acclaimed journalist and author of Eiger Dreams and Into the Wild. On assignment for Outside magazine, Krakauer, an accomplished climber, went to the Himalayas to report on the growing commercialization of the planet’s highest mountain. Everest has always been a dangerous mountain. From the first British expeditions in the 1920s until 1996, one climber has died for ever 4 who have attained the summit. This shocking death toll has not put a damper on the burgeoning business of guided ascents, however, in which amateur alpinists with alarmingly disparate skills are ushered up the mountain for a $65,000 fee. To ascend into the thin, frigid air above 26,000 feet - the cruising altitude of a commercial jetliner - is an inherently irrational act. The environment is unimaginably harsh, the margin for error miniscule. Krakauer examines wha
t it is about Everest that has compelled so many people - including himself - to throw caution to the wind, ignore the concern of loved ones, and willingly subject themselves to such risk, hardship, and expense. Written with emotional clarity and supported by his unimpeachable reporting, Krakauer’s frank eyewitness account of what happened on the roof of the world is a singular achievement.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
In a Sunburned Country (Unabridged)
Every time Bill Bryson walks out the door memorable travel literature threatens to break out. His previous excursion up, down, and over the Appalachian Trail resulted in the sublime best seller A Walk in the Woods. Now he has traveled around the world and all the way “Down Under” to Australia, the only island that is also a continent and the only continent that is also a country. Australia exists on a vast scale, a shockingly under-discovered country with the friendliest inhabitants, the hottest, driest weather, the most peculiar and lethal wildlife to be found on this planet, and more things that can kill you in extremely malicious ways than anywhere else: sharks, crocodiles, the ten most deadly poisonous snakes on the planet, fluffy yet toxic caterpillars, seashells that actually attack you, and the unbelievable box jellyfish. In a Sunburned Country is a delectably funny, fa
ct-filled and adventurous performance by a writer who combines humor, wonder, and unflagging curiosity. Wherever Bryson goes he finds Australians who are cheerful, extroverted, and unfailingly obliging. They are the beaming products of a land with clean, safe cities, cold beer, and constant sunshine. Australia is an immense and fortunate land, and it has found in Bryson its perfect guide.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Deep Survival (Unabridged)
After her plane crashes, a 17-year-old girl spends 11 days walking through the Peruvian jungle. Against all odds, with no food, shelter, or equipment, she gets out. A better equipped group of adult survivors of the same crash sits down and dies. What makes the difference?
Examining such stories of miraculous endurance and tragic death, Deep Survival takes us from the tops of snowy mountains and the depths of oceans to the workings of the brain that control our behavior. Through close analysis of case studies, Laurence Gonzales describes the essence of a survivor and offers 12 “Rules of Survival”.
In the end, he finds, it is what’s in your heart, not what’s in your pack, that separates the living from the dead. This audiobook will change the way we understand ourselves and the great outdoors.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Lost in My Own Backyard (Unabridged)
From the author of such travel adventure classics as Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Road Fever, comes an informative and entertaining travelogue through one of America’s favorite destinations: Yellowstone National Park. On his several-hundred-mile trek across the wilderness, the author explores such natural wonders as glaciers and geysers, muses about the microbiology of thermal pools, and witnesses moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight. Inevitably, he runs into Yellowstone’s various inhabitants, including a grizzly bear with a footprint “about the size of a pizza”, and others he had previously seen only on television.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Into the Wild (Unabridged)
In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. His body - along with a camera with five rolls of film, an SOS note, and a cryptic diary written in the back pages of a book about edible plants - was found six months later by a hunter.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
The Places in Between (Unabridged)
In January 2002, Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan, surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day, he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers’ floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders, and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion: a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan’s first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following. Through these encounters, by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny, Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map’s countless “places in be
tween”.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Eat, Pray, Love (Unabridged)
Around the time Elizabeth Gilbert turned 30, she went through an early-onslaught midlife crisis. She had everything an educated, ambitious American woman was supposed to want: a husband, a house, a successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed with panic, grief, and confusion. She went through a
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Shadow Divers (Unabridged)
In 1991, acting on a tip from a local fisherman, two scuba divers discovered a sunken German U-boat, complete with its crew of 60 men, not too far off the New Jersey coast. The divers, realizing the momentousness of their discovery, began probing the mystery. Over the next six years, they became expert and well-traveled researchers, taught themselves German, hunted for clues in Germany, and constructed theories corrective of the history books, all in an effort to identify this sunken U-boat and its crew. During that time, three of their colleagues died exploring the wreck, including a father and son team. In 1997, when it all seemed in vain, the two divers came up with a final plan, so dangerous that the book ends with this last
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Roughing It (Unabridged)
“If there is any life that is happier than the life we led on our timber ranch, it must be the sort of life which I have not read of in books or experienced in person,” wrote Mark Twain, and now you can share in that experience. The beloved American humorist spent seven years on a “pleasure trip” through the untamed wilderness of Nevada. Twain intended to spend three months touring silver mines, but the lure of rough terrain and comfortable clothes proved irresistible - as will this vibrant travelogue.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Into Africa (Unabridged)
“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” So goes the signature introduction of New York Herald star journalist Henry Morton Stanley to renowned explorer Dr. David Livingstone, who had been missing for six years in the wilds of Africa. Into Africa ushers us into the meeting of these remarkable men. In 1866, when Livingstone journeyed into the heart of the African continent in search of the Nile’s source, the land was rough, unknown to Europeans, and inhabited by man-eating tribes. The man sent to find him was an orphan and a drifter who had great ambition but little success to show for it. The book shows how, over the course of their nine-year relationship, Stanley ironically rose in power and prominence while Livingstone was relegated to isolation and danger in Africa.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Post Captain (Unabridged)
Post Captain is the second novel in Patrick O’Brian’s beloved adventure series. In 1803 Napoleon smashes the Peace of Amiens, and Captain Jack Aubrey, Royal Navy, taking refuge in France from his creditors, is interned. He escapes from France, from debtors’ prison, from a possible mutiny, and pursues his quarry straight into the mouth of a French-held-harbor. Stephen Maturin’s struggles, with himself as much as with a proud and intelligent woman, are woven into Aubrey’s, straining their friendship at times to the breaking point.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Assassination Vacation
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination Vacation, she takes us on a road trip like no other, a journey to the pit stops of American political murder and through the myriad ways they have been used for fun and profit, for political and cultural advantage.
>From Buffalo to Alaska, Washington to the Dry Tortugas, Vowell visits locations immortalized and influenced by the spilling of politically important blood, reporting as she goes with her trademark blend of wisecracking humor, remarkable honesty, and thought-provoking criticism. We learn about the jinx that was Robert Todd Lincoln (present at the assassinations of Presidents Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley) and witness the politicking that went into the making of the Lincoln Memorial. The resulting narrative is much more than an entertaining and informative travelogue, it is the disturbing and fascinating story of how American death has been manipulated by popular culture, including literature, architecture, sculpture, and, the author’s favorite, historical tourism.
Though the themes of loss and violence are explored and we make detours to see how the Republican Party became the Republican Party, there are lighter diversions into the lives of the three presidents and their assassins, including mummies, show tunes, mean-spirited totem poles, and a 19th-century biblical sex cult.
In Order of Appearance:
Conan O’Brien…Robert Todd Lincoln
Eric Bogosian…John Wilkes Booth
Stephen King…President Abraham Lincoln
Dave Eggers…Mike Ryan
Catherine Keener…Gretchen Worden
Jon Stewart…President James A. Garfield
Tony Kushner…John Humphrey Noyes
Brad Bird…Charles Guiteau & Emma Goldman
Daniel Handler…President William McKinley
Greg Giraldo…President Theodore Roosevelt
David Rakoff…Leon Czolgosz
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Adventure Capitalist
In Adventure Capitalist, legendary investor Jim Rogers, dubbed “the Indiana Jones of finance” by Time magazine, proves that the best way to profit from the global situation is to see the world mile by mile.
Rogers and his fiancée, Paige Parker, began their “Millennium Adventure” on January 1, 1999, from Iceland. They traveled through 116 countries, including many where most have rarely ventured, such as Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Angola, Sudan, Congo, Colombia, and East Timor. They drove through war zones, deserts, jungles, epidemics, and blizzards. They had many narrow escapes.
They camped with nomads and camels in the Western Sahara. They ate silkworms, iguanas, snakes, termites, guinea pigs, porcupines, crocodiles, and grasshoppers.
Best of all, they saw the real world from the ground up - the only vantage point from which it can be truly understood - economically, politically, and socially.
Here are just a few of the author’s conclusions:
Adventure Capitalist is the most opinionated, sprawling, adventurous journey you’re likely to take within the pages of a book - the perfect read for armchair adventurers, global investors, car enthusiasts, and anyone interested in seeing the world and understanding it as it really is.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
Bill Bryson Collector’s Edition
Notes from a Small Island
After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson decides to move his wife and kids back to his homeland, the United States. But not before taking one last trip around Britain, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had so long been his home. The result is a hilarious social commentary that conveys the true glory of Britain.
Neither Here nor There
Thirty years after backpacking across Europe, Bryson decides to retrace the journey he undertook in the halcyon days of his youth, carrying with him a bag of maps, old clothes, and a stinging wit honed to razor sharpness by two decades of adult experience.
I’m a Stranger Here Myself
Bryson reads “somewhere” that nearly three million Americans believe they have been abducted by aliens; clearly the Americans need him back. So after years of raising his family in Britain with his English wife, the brood moves to the States, allowing Bill to chronicle the quirkiest aspects of life in America as he reveals his own rules for life.
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.
My Life in France (Unabridged)
In her own words, here is the captivating story of Julia Child’s years in France, where she fell in love with French food and found “her true calling”.
>From the moment the ship docked in Le Havre in the fall of 1948 and Julia watched the well-muscled stevedores unloading the cargo to the first perfectly soigne meal that she and her husband, Paul, savored in Rouen en route to Paris, where he was to work for the USIS, Julia had an awakening that changed her life. Soon this tall, outspoken gal from Pasadena, California, who didn’t speak a word of French and knew nothing about the country, was steeped in the language, chatting with purveyors in the local markets, and enrolled in the Cordon Bleu.
After managing to get her degree despite the machinations of the disagreeable directrice of the school, Julia started teaching cooking classes herself, then teamed up with two fellow gourmettes, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, to help them with a book they were trying to write on French cooking for Americans. Throwing herself heart and soul into making it a unique and thorough teaching book, only to suffer several rounds of painful rejection, is part of the behind-the-scenes drama that Julia reveals with her inimitable gusto and disarming honesty.
This memoir is laced with wonderful stories about the French character, particularly in the world of food, and the way of life that Julia embraced so wholeheartedly. Above all, she reveals the kind of spirit and determination, the sheer love of cooking, and the drive to share that with her fellow Americans that made her the extraordinary success she became.
Le voici. Et bon appetit!
Available at Audible.com here or try Amazon.com here.