travel

Examines the life and accomplishments of Henry Hudson, the famed explorer who lent his name to several geographic locations in North America.

Hooman Majd, an American journalist born in Iran, disembarked at the Tehran airport in February 2011. With him were his wife Karri and infant son, Khash. The family planned to stay for a year, and Hooman, son of a diplomat under the Shah and grandson of an ayatollah, was looking forward to his visit, the first time he had lived in his homeland since childhood. His book recounts his family's domestic adventures and a tumultuous year in Iranian politics. The result provides an unusual insight into a little-understood country.

The story of Jim Ziolkowski, the man behind the organization buildOn--which turns inner city teens into community leaders at home and abroad--and his mission to change the world one community at a time. Under Jim's leadership, buildOn volunteers have contributed more than 850,000 hours of community service, and the organization has constructed more than 430 schools worldwide, from the South Bronx, to Detroit, Chicago, and Oakland, to Haiti, Senegal, Nicaragua, and Nepal.

Tim Cope undertook a journey not successfully completed since the days of Genghis Kahn, and traveled by horseback across the entire length of the Eurasian steppe, a distance of six thousand miles. He made the three-year journey alone, with only a trusty dog for company, and a succession of thirteen horses.

After his election defeat in 1912 with his just-established third party, the Bull Moose Party, Theodore Roosevelt looked for a punishing physical challenge to take his mind off the loss. What he found was The River of Doubt, a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. He made the trip with his son Kermit, and Brazil's most famous explorer, Candido Mariano da Silva Rondon. Facing an unbelievable series of hardships including loosing their canoes and supplies to rapids, enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks, Theodore Roosevelt changed the map of the Western Hemisphere forever. Three men died and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. Although he and his son survived his health was never the same.

Even today there remain tribes in the far reaches of the Amazon rainforest that have avoided contact with modern civilization. Deliberately hiding from the outside world, they are the unconquered, the last survivors of an ancient culture that predates the arrival of Columbus. Journalist Scott Wallace chronicles an expedition into the Amazon's uncharted depths, discovering the rainforest's secrets while moving ever closer to a possible encounter with one such tribe of seldom-glimpsed warriors known to repulse all intruders with showers of deadly arrows.

Michael Cosgrove had a beautiful family, a successful career, and a lovely home overlooking the Pacific Ocean. At the age of sixty he decided to leave it all behind and sail around the world. In his attempt to avoid the inevitable, growing old, weak, and frail, Cosgrove did the unthinkable. He broke his budget to outfit the boat, refused to read the manuals, and sailed dangerously. In the midst of his terror he tried to keep his dream of doing something grand alive.

In an account of her time in the small village of Kamakwie in Sierra Leone, the author describes the inhabitants' daily struggles with poverty, memories of the recent civil war, and hopes for the future.

Told in alternating voices, a travelogue capturing the changing relationship between a mother and her adult daughter follows their sixteen-city, twelve-country tour during which their adventures and mishaps brought them closer together.

In 1850 Heinrich Barth joined a small British expedition into unexplored regions of Islamic North and Central Africa. One by one his companions died and Barth alone eventually reached Timbuktu. His five and a half year 10,000 mile journey ranks among the greatest journeys in exploration and his discoveries are considered indispensible by modern scholars of Africa.