Showing results by publisher "Random House Audio" in Travel & Tourism

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.

In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, Krakauer explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has himself battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, Eiger.

Can you imagine painting without Leonardo, opera without Verdi, fashion without Armani, food without the signature tastes of pasta, gelato, and pizza? The first universities, first banks, first public libraries? All Italian. New York Times best-selling author Dianne Hales attributes these landmark achievements to la passione italiana, a primal force that stems from an insatiable hunger to discover and create; to love and live with every fiber of one's being.

As a young woman, Kate Betts nursed a dream of striking out on her own in a faraway place and becoming a glamorous foreign correspondent. After college—and not without trepidation—she took off for Paris, renting a room in the apartment of a young BCBG (bon chic, bon genre) family and throwing herself into the local culture. She was determined to master French slang, style, and savoir faire, and to find a job that would give her a reason to stay.

Blind Descent explores both the brightest and darkest aspects of the timeless human urge to discover - to be first. It is also a thrilling epic about a pursuit that makes even extreme mountaineering and ocean exploration pale by comparison.

For 18 years Ed Viesturs pursued climbing's holy grail: to stand atop the world's 14 8,000-meter peaks, without the aid of bottled oxygen. But No Shortcuts to the Top is as much about the man who would become the first American to achieve that goal as it is about his stunning quest. As Viesturs recounts the stories of his most harrowing climbs, he reveals a man torn between the flat, safe world he and his loved ones share and the majestic and deadly places where only he can go.

When David Lebovitz began the project of updating his apartment in his adopted home city, he never imagined he would encounter so much inexplicable red tape while contending with perplexing work ethic and hours. Lebovitz maintains his distinctive sense of humor with the help of his partner, Romain, peppering this renovation story with recipes from his Paris kitchen.

Steve Hoffman is a perfectly comfortable middle-aged Minnesotan man who has always been desperately, pretentiously in love with France, more specifically with the idea of France. To follow that love, he and his family move, nearly at random, to the small, rural, scratchy-hot village of Autignac in the south of the country, and he immediately thinks he’s made a terrible mistake.

Jeff Shaara, America's premier Civil War novelist, gives a remarkable guided tour of one of the Civil War battlefields every American should visit. He captures the true meaning and magnitude of the conflict.

Is there an Italian way to deal with life? Can we all learn something from the Italians? Italy often arouses in Americans a unique mix of attraction and bafflement, moderate disapproval and incredible allure. From the Italians' love of poetry to an innate desire to socialize to the regional differences between the north and the south, Beppe Severgnini, who has dedicated his career to the meticulous observation of his compatriots, embarks on an enthralling quest to identify a core Italian identity and explore how that identity has evolved since the global pandemic.

Horizontal Vertigo: The title refers to the fear of ever-impending earthquakes that led Mexicans to build their capital city outward rather than upward. With the perspicacity of a keenly observant flâneur, Juan Villoro wanders through Mexico City seemingly without a plan, describing people, places, and things while brilliantly drawing connections among them.

Kinky Friedman, the original Texas Jew boy, guides readers through the sights, sounds, food, and sundry oddities of his favorite Texas city. Known for live music and food, Austin is also the home of Willie Nelson, Janis Joplin, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and a number of other music legends.

In Tuscany celebrates the abundant pleasures of life in Italy as it is lived at home, at festivals, feasts, restaurants and markets, in the kitchen and on the piazza, in the vineyards, fields, and olive groves. Combining essays by Frances Mayes and a chapter by her husband, poet Edward Mayes, each of this book's five sections highlights a signature aspect of Tuscan life.

Author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry sets out in Roads on an automotive odyssey exploring America's highways and the culture that has grown up on either side of them. Crisscrossing America in search of the present, the past and himself, McMurtry's route is also his destination.

Disappointment River is a dual historical narrative and travel memoir that at once transports listeners back to the heroic age of North American exploration and places them in a still rugged but increasingly fragile Arctic wilderness in the process of profound alteration by the dual forces of energy extraction and climate change.

In a collection of gripping stories of adventure, Doug Peacock, loner, iconoclast, environmentalist, and contemporary of Edward Abbey, reflects on a life lived in the wild, asking the question many ask in their twilight years: “Was It Worth It?”

Paradise is Larry McMurtry's most original and personal work to date. From the harsh violent landscape of west Texas to the lush sensuality and easy living of Tahiti, McMurtry answers some of the questions of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his hometown.

From the author of such travel adventure classics as Jaguars Ripped My Flesh and Road Fever, comes an informative and entertaining travelogue through one of America's favorite destinations: Yellowstone National Park. On his several-hundred-mile trek across the wilderness, the author explores such natural wonders as glaciers and geysers, muses about the microbiology of thermal pools, and witnesses moonbows arcing across waterfalls at midnight.

Rain in the Mountains brings together some of Ruskin Bond’s most beautiful works from his years spent in the foothills of the Himalayas in the town of Mussoorie. Through vivid images and lucid writing, Bond evokes the everyday sights and sounds, and captures the essence of mountain life. The musings on his natural habitat, in both prose and poetry, offer a view of that simple and affable world. Some of his writings featured in the book include: "Once Upon a Mountain Time", "Sounds I Like to Hear", "How Far Is the River" and "After the Monsoon". 

Forty years ago, author and photographer Jon Waterman took his first paddling journey into the Noatak headwaters in the Alaskan Arctic. In this fully illustrated book, he ventures once again, this time “into the thaw,” documenting the changes – both environmental and cultural – wrought by climate change. Sharing this eye-opening adventure with his son, Waterman documents the effects on altered land, wildlife and the Inuit-Inupiat life.