San Antonio College Library

This is a Collection of Writing About one of James Salter's Passions-Travel. An exceptional companion with whom to share experiences, Salter hikes, skis, and climbs along the way, often with notable sportsmen. Some of the pieces are brief and poignant, while others develop slowly and unfold with Salter's inimitable restrained elegance. All of them are infused with the skill of a novelist who just as astutely describes the sheer drop of a ski run as...

No previous generation has ever travelled so energetically or so obsessively as ours, nor has travel writing ever been so much in fashion as it is now. But behind the self-conscious literary artistry of today's narratives there lies a rich and fascinating history of travel writing, stretching back over several thousand years. Travel writing has emerged from migration, war, exploration, trade, conquest, pilgrimage, science, and poetic longing. But...

From the Publisher: A fascinating, definitive, and very personal rumination on the history, science, philosophy, art, and literature of walking, by a skilled cultural commentator. Geoff Nicholson, author of Bleeding London and Sex Collectors, turns his eye to the intellectual and cultural history of that most common of activities-walking. This simple, omnipresent activity has inspired numerous subcultures, literary and artistic legacies, sporting...

For a man who liked being called the American, Mark Twain spent a surprising amount of time outside the continental United States. Biographer Roy Morris, Jr., focuses on the dozen years Twain spent overseas and on the popular travel books The Innocents Abroad, A Tramp Abroad, and Following the Equator he wrote about his adventures. Unintimidated by Old World sophistication and unafraid to travel to less developed parts of the globe, Twain encouraged...

Collects top nineteenth-century discovery voyage stories, including those about Fridtjof Nansen's solitary walk to the North Pole, Mary Kingsley's forays into the West African jungle, and Richard Burton's forbidden pilgrimage to Mecca.

"Critics have long struggled to find a suitable category for travelogues. From its ancient origins to the present day, the travel narrative has borrowed elements from various genres - from epic poetry to literary reportage - in order to evoke distant cultures and exotic locales, and sometimes those closer to hand. Tim Youngs argues in this lucid and detailed Introduction that travel writing redefines the myriad genres it comprises and is best understood...

As the first extensive survey of contemporary travel writing, Tourists with Typewriters offers a series of challenging and provocative critical insights into a wide range of travel narratives written in English after the Second World War. The book focuses in particular on contemporary travel writers such as Jan Morris, Peter Matthiessen, V.S. Naipaul, Barry Lopez, Mary Morris, Paul Theroux, Peter Mayle, and the late Bruce Chatwin. It examines some...