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Road Trips

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

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Our pick for the five best great American road trip books, available as a set at 30% off.

Item EXTVL16. Buy these 5 items as a set for $61 including shipping, 30% off the retail price.
With free shipping on anything else you order.

ADD SET
TO BOOKBAG

Travels with Charley

by John Steinbeck

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2012
• PAPER
• 240 PAGES

On the road in a van with a poodle, Steinbeck sets out to discover America on a jaunt from Maine to California. Fiftieth anniversary edtion. (USA32, $16.00)

Roughing It

by Mark Twain

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2004
• PAPER
• 592 PAGES

Twain's classic work on the American West, written as he was abandoning the peripatetic life and settling down in the 1870s. Funny, irreverent, acutely observed this is vintage Twain, covering his travels in California, Nevada and Hawaii. With all 304-first edition illustrations, specially prepared maps, facsimile manuscript pages and commentary. (HWI14, $16.00)

The Oregon Trail, Sketches of Prairie and Rocky-Mountain Life

by Francis Parkman | David Levin

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1989
• PAPER
• 504 PAGES

The original, 19th-century account by the great American historian and romantic, based in part on the author's wanderings on the Oregon Trail through the plains of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and Kansas. (USW369, $16.00)

Rolling Nowhere, Riding the Rails With America's Hoboes

by Ted Conover

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2001
• PAPER
• 281 PAGES

Bed-roll in hand, Conover hopped a freight train in St. Louis to meet and mingle with modern-day hoboes. (USA415, $15.00)

Lolita

by Vladimir Nabokov

• LITERATURE
• 1989
• PAPER
• 317 PAGES

Nabokov's brilliant tale includes a marvelously realized portrait of America's motels and byways. (USA335, $15.95)

 

Also Recommended

American Places

by William Zinsser

• HISTORY
• 2007
• PAPER
• 193 PAGES

Mount Rushmore, Yellowstone, Niagara, The Alamo, Disneyland, Rockefeller Center, Pearl Harbor and Omaha Beach, William Zinsser writes of 16 iconic sites as a pilgrim and historian, rediscovering what it means to be American. The author of On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction (now out in a 25th anniversary edition), Zinsser's essays are honed to perfection. (USA167, $14.95)

A Voyage Long and Strange: Rediscovering the New World

by Tony Horwitz

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 464 PAGES

What happened in America after Columbus sailed the Ocean Blue? In this latest outing, Tony Horwitz (Blue Latitudes) takes us on a thrilling and eye-opening adventure in Pre-Mayflower America. It's not so much Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth that interest him (though they are included too), it's the places associated with forgotten explorers, many of them Spanish, like Erik the Red (Vinland gets the first chapter), Henry Hudson, Verrazano, De Soto, Cabeza de Vaca, Cortes and Balboa. Horwitz rescues whole chapters of early America from the dustbin of history in this rich mix of wit, scholarship and modern-day adventure. (NAM51, $19.00)

America Day by Day

by Simone de Beauvoir

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2000
• PAPER
• 390 PAGES

Fresh off the boat as a 30-something celebrity in New York in 1947, de Beauvoir sets out on a four-month journey, taking in the people and sights from coast to coast and back again. (USA432, $29.95)

Black Like Me

by John Howard Griffin

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2003
• PAPER

Griffen's audacious, still chillingly relevant eyewitness history of the African American experience in the south in the 1950s. (USS448, $14.00)

Blue Highways, A Journey into America

by William Least Heat Moon

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1999
• PAPER
• 429 PAGES

On the road with Ghost Dancing (his van), William Least Heat-Moon criss-crosses the country on its backroads, discovering some pretty wonderful personalities en route in this portrait of a multi-faceted eccentric America. (USA31, $15.99)

Coast to Coast, A Journey Across 1950s America

by Jan Morris

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2002
• PAPER
• 281 PAGES

Morris's trip across the country takes us back to an America markedly different from the one we live in today, and back to a time Morris calls "the very apex of American happiness" in this new edition of her first book (written as James Morris). (USA422, $17.95)

Cross Country

by Robert Sullivan

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 416 PAGES

Sullivan's marvelously digressive chronicle of a cross-country car trip, the history of the Interstate system, fast-food, variety of to-go coffee cup lids, the marvels of the roadside attraction and many, many other subjects. (USA135, $14.95)

Driving Home, An American Journey

by Jonathan Raban

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2011
• HARD COVER
• 448 PAGES

Raban ranges widely in this collection of American essays, touching on the Pacific Northwest, where he has lived since 1990, his favorite pastimes (sailing, fishing, reading), the Mississippi, books and authors. (USA452, $30.00)

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream

by Hunter S. Thompson

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1998
• PAPER
• 204 PAGES

The classic of 1970s gonzo journalism and a dizzying chronicle of a duo's drug-induced misadventures and scrapes with the people of Las Vegas. (USW254, $14.95)

Horatio's Drive, America's First Road Trip

by Dayton Duncan | Ken Burns

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2003
• HARD COVER
• 173 PAGES

The companion volume to the PBS film chronicles the nation's first road trip by Horatio Jackson, a 31-year-old Vermont doctor who drove his car from San Francisco to New York on mainly unpaved roads in 1903. (USA439, $24.95)

I See By My Outfit

by Peter S. Beagle

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2007
• PAPER
• 238 PAGES

Although better-known for his fantasy writing (The Last Unicorn), Beagle penned a winning travelogue about his journey across a changing America on a motor scooter in 1963. A classic, newly reprinted. (USA174, $14.95)

Long Way Home, On the Trail of Steinbeck's America

by Bill Barich

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2010
• HARD COVER
• 320 PAGES

Guided by whim, optimism and the spirit of Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, Barich journeys from New York in San Francisco along Route 50, weaving his experiences of small town America into a deft travelogue. (USA436, $26.00)

Mariposa Road

by Robert Michael Pyle

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2013
• PAPER
• 512 PAGES

A man, a 1982 Honda Civic and a mission: to see as many butterflies as he can in a year. The affable Robert Michael Pyle sets out from his home in Oregon on New Year's Day, visiting friends and fellow lepidopterists -- and netting butterflies from the beaches of California to the Arctic Tundra and Key West. (NAM55, $27.00)

Miles from Nowhere

by Dayton Duncan

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2000
• PAPER
• 320 PAGES

Touring the American West from the Rio Grande to the Cascades in a GMC Suburban, covering more than 30,000 miles, Duncan paints a vivid, perceptive portrait of frontier life in contemporary America. (USW675, $19.95)

Roads to Quoz, An American Mosey

by William Least Heat-Moon

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 608 PAGES

William Least Heat-Moon (Blue Highways) wanders to out-of-the-way and just plain odd places in this digressive, captivating account. (USA329, $16.99)

State by State

by Matt Weiland | Sean Wilsey

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 572 PAGES

With chapters by Rick Moody (Connecticut), Jhumpa Lahiri (Rhode Island) and Jonathan Franzen (New York), this inspired book, modeled after the WPA-era American Guides, pairs a writer with each of the 50 states. It's an irresistible tribute to the diversity of the country. (USA325, $16.99)

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

by Tom Wolfe

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 416 PAGES

Wolfe's original tale of the Merry Pranksters, a classic of 1960s hippiedom. (USS449, $16.00)

The Great Northern Express, A Writer's Journey Home

by Howard Frank Mosher

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2013
• PAPER
• 246 PAGES

A deeply personal and funny account of best selling author Howard Frank Mosher's three-month road trip across 21st-century America in order to discover the true meaning of home. (USA469, $25.00)

The Longest Road, Overland in Search of America, from Key West to the Arctic Ocean

by Philip Caputo

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2013
• HARD COVER
• 320 PAGES
• COMING IN JULY

With his wife and their two dogs in tow, Caputo journeys from Key West to Deadhorse, Alaska, covering 17,000 miles and four months, interviewing folks from all ways of life. (USA511, $28.00)

The Lost Continent, Travels in Small Town America

by Bill Bryson

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 1990
• PAPER
• 314 PAGES

Heading out from his native Des Moines, Bryson makes his way through 38 of these United States, tossing off hilarious observations of the American character and roadscapes. Forgive Bryson's cheap shots at fat people and "hicks," he's an acerbic, witty guide to the country with an irrepressible sense of the absurd. (USW180, $14.99)

Trip of the Tongue, Cross-Country Travels in Search of America's Languages

by Elizabeth Little

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2012
• HARD COVER
• 309 PAGES

What's the largest Greek city outside Greece? Astoria, Queens. Inspired by her polyglot surroundings in Sunnyside, Queens, the companionable, language-besotted Elizabeth Little packs up her Subaru and hit the road in search of people, places and languages across these United States. A companionable guide, Little uncovers a rich array of etymologies (including the origin of the word tuxedo) as she travels, 25,000 miles in all over two years, to explore languages as diverse as Navajo, Norwegian, Basque and Crow. (USA484, $25.00)

Twenty West: The Great Road Across America

by Mac Nelson

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2008
• HARD COVER
• 366 PAGES
• NEW

Neslon traces the route, history, and geography of Route 20, reflecting on the diverse history, landscape, geography, politics, culture, and other idiosyncratic people and places that he encountered during his journeys along Americaa's longest road, 3,300 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, to Newport, Oregon. (USA360, $25.00)

Way Off the Road, Discovering The Peculiar Charms of Small Town America

by Bill Geist

• TRAVEL NARRATIVE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 256 PAGES

On-air correspondent for CBS Bill Geist offers his take on small town America from Chattanooga, Tennessee to Whalan, Minnesota in this collection of charming, quirky vignettes. (USA353, $13.95)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

by Robert Pirsig

• BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
• 2008
• PAPER
• 380 PAGES

A landmark book concerning (among other things) philosophy -- and a father with his son on the road from Minnesota to California. (GEN182, $15.99)

On the Road

by Jack Kerouac

• LITERATURE
• 2008
• PAPER
• 416 PAGES

The original, unedited, rougher, wilder and more provocative 50th anniversary edition of the famed Beat poet's landmark work. (USA16, $17.00)

The Bean Trees

by Barbara Kingsolver

• LITERATURE
• 2009
• PAPER
• 246 PAGES

Spunky young Marietta Greer acquires a new name, an adopted Cherokee child and much more on an eventful road trip from Kentucky to Tucson in Kingsolver's irresistible debut novel. (USS480, $16.99)

The Grapes of Wrath

by John Steinbeck

• LITERATURE
• 1992
• PAPER
• 612 PAGES

Steibeck's epic, Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of the Joad family and their journey from Oklahoma to California in search of a new life, wonderfully detailed in it portrait of rural life in the 1930s and a classic novel of the road. John Ford made it into a movie. (USW151, $16.00)

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