Journeys Worth Knowing

The river is a moving target, the training is brutal, and the pilot knows everything.

An American skeptic travels through the Holy Land, mocking overly enthusiastic pilgrims, dishonest guides, and the general lack of soap.

A father micromanages his son’s social ascent through 30 years of letters regarding posture, politics, and the art of the flirt.

A deputy loses Calais, a fisherman demands more boats, and John Dowland coins his unquiet thoughts into Elizabethan pop hits.

A Harvard student trades his books for a tar bucket, a bunk in a wet forecastle, and a voyage around Cape Horn.

A man sets out for a brief government stint and ends up wandering the frontier for years.

A young naturalist boards a survey ship for five years, encountering jaguars, glaciers, and severe seasickness.

The author circles the planet to lecture, but mostly stops to critique the hotels.

A wanderer catalogs the sensory grit of Sicilian lava, the acoustics of Roman ruins, and the intellectual debt owed to Italian poets.

A resident of the California desert charts a landscape where the land, not the law, sets the human limit.

A survey of the Severn and its coastal cousins, where medieval abbeys meet the soot of the early Industrial Revolution.

A guide to the bookies, 'untouchable' diplomats, and secret syndicate bosses running the swamp in the mid-century Truman era.

The river is a highway of soot, soundings, and razor fights in the engine room.

Two captains and a boat crew head west with trade beads, flannel shirts, and a very detailed diary habit.

Magellan arrives, the Dutch attack, and the Emperor of Japan sends a literal shipment of lepers to the Spanish governor.