The story of a 1,100 mile solo hike that broke down a young woman reeling from catastrophe--and built her back up again. In the wake of her mother's death, Strayed's family scattered and her own marriage was soon destroyed. With nothing to lose, she made an impulsive decision: to hike more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, from the Mojave Desert through California and Oregon to Washington State. And she would do it alone. This is...

The inspiring story of a son and his dying mother, who form a "book club" that brings them together as her life comes to a close.

Thirty-five years ago, when "searching for America" was not yet the cliche it has since become, Steinbeck hit the highways with his French poodle, Charley. In a custom-built camper he named Rosinante after Don Quixote's steed, the two traveled the country--10,000 miles and 34 states. Their varied experiences comprise several slices of small-town, back-roads Americana. Steinbeck laments the rise of plastic-covered everything, the vacuousness of "sad...

Women weren't supposed to take their lives into their own hands, light out by themselves, have independent, off-the-beaten-path adventures. Nonetheless, throughout history there have been women who cast off the shackles of expectation, stepped out of the cave, and slashed their way into history. Here are Cleopatra, joan of Arc, Bonnie Parker(of Bonnie and Clyde), Amelia Earhart, Isadora Duncan, Mata Hari, Belle Star, Gertrude Bell, Daisy Bates, Anne...

Noah's path from apartheid South Africa to the desk of The Daily Show began with a criminal act: his birth. Born to a white Swiss father and a black Xhosa mother, at the time such a union was punishable by five years in prison. As he struggles to find himself in a world where he was never supposed to exist, his mother is determined to save her son from the cycle of poverty, violence, and abuse that would ultimately threaten her own life. With an incisive...

"My father and mother should have stayed in New York where they met and I was born. Instead, they returned to Ireland when I was four ... When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I managed to survive at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." So begins the...

Drawing from the newly catalogued Washington papers at the University of Virginia, the author paints a full portrait of Washington's life and career in the context of eighteenth-century America, richly detailing his private life and illustrating the ways in which it influenced his public persona. When Washington died in 1799, Ellis tells us, he was eulogized as "first in the hearts of his countrymen." Since then, however, his image has been chiseled...

The author reveals the story of his struggle through the challenges of adolescence, detailing the taunting he endured from bullies, the joys of making his first real friends, and his quest to escape his difficult home life.

An enterprising teenager in Malawi builds a windmill from scraps he finds around his village and brings electricity, and a future, to his family.

Discusses the lives, education, successes, and failures of such explorers as John Franklin, Robert Peary, Matthew Henson, Roald Amundsen, and Robert Falcon Scott as they ventured into the Arctic and Antarctic.