"Outdoor educator and field researcher Sara Dykman made history when she became the first person to bicycle alongƯside monarch butterflies on their storied annual migration--a round-trip adventure that included three countries and more than 10,000 miles. Equally remarkable, she did it solo, on a bike cobbled together from used parts. Her panniers were recycled buckets. In Bicycling with Butterflies, Dykman recounts her incredible journey and the...

Have you ever wondered what Vietnam is like some forty years after the war has ended? Then come along with the author as he returns to visit his ancestral homeland for the first time after a decades-long absence. Retrace his steps with him around his former hometown of Saigon in the south, and then follow him along on an itinerary of discovery to other unique destinations throughout the country: Hoi-An, the best-preserved medieval seaport in Southeast...

In the early 1980s, after finishing her architecture degree and splitting up with her boyfriend, Elspeth Beard set off (almost on a whim) to ride her BMW motorcycle around the world, a feat that very few men and no woman had by then achieved. Two and a half years later, Elspeth returned to London several stones lighter, decades wiser, feeling triumphant. She'd ridden through post-revolutionary Iran while it was at war with Iraq and closed to Westerners....

"Chinese was the earliest truly global cuisine. When the first Chinese laborers began to settle abroad, restaurants appeared in their wake. Yet Chinese has the curious distinction of being both one of the world's best-loved culinary traditions and one of the least understood. For more than a century, the overwhelming dominance of a simplified form of Cantonese cooking ensured that few foreigners experienced anything of its richness and sophistication--but...

The story of the remarkable journey of the man who walked the length of the Grand Canyon below the rim.

"In Alta California, Nick Neely chronicles his 650-mile trek on foot from San Diego to San Francisco, following the route of the first overland Spanish expedition into what was soon called Alta California. Led by Gaspar de Portolá in 1769, the expedition sketched a route that would become, in part, the famous El Camino Real. It laid the foundation for the Golden State we know today, a place that remains as mythical and captivating as any in the...

"A pilot's world travels, from the author of Skyfaring"-- In his small New England hometown, Mark Vanhoenacker spent his childhood dreaming of elsewhere-- of the distant, real cities he found on the illuminated globe in his bedroom, and of one perfect metropolis that existed only in his imagination. These cities were the sources of endless comfort and escape, and of a lasting fascination. Streets unspoiled, towers shone, and anonymous crowds bustled...

The first man to walk the entire length of the Grand Canyon, Colin Fletcher relates the experiences of his two-month hike and describes the awesome timelessness and vastness of this lonely region. "The day Colin Fletcher first saw the Grand Canyon, he knew he had to walk through it from one end to the other. The Grand Canyon had been run by boat, but no one had ever attempted the journey by foot, and the experts said it could not be done. Still,...