Bent Northrop Memorial Library

"A series of reflections on the author's experiences learning a new language and living abroad, in a dual-language edition"--

One woman, 10,000 miles on foot, 6 countries, 8 pairs of hiking boots, 3,000 cups of tea, 1,000 days and nights. Not since Cheryl Strayed's adventure on the Pacific Crest Trail has there been such a powerful epic by a woman alone. In Wild by Nature, National Geographic Explorer Sarah Marquis takes you on the trail of her ten-thousand-mile solo hike from Siberia to Thailand, at which point she was transported by boat to complete the hike at her favorite...

An author of guidebooks for travelling businessmen goes through life "accidently". It is an accident tinged with purpose when he gets involved with the astonishing Muriel and her talent for finding adventure.

The true story of 63-year-old Maine farmer Annie Wilkins who, in 1954, rode her horse across America, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean. "The incredible true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion. In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from...

Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell's classic "Politics and the English Language,"but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories--our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking--expose and distort our realities. In the first of the book's three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern...

In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life. A woman defined by motion, Brianna Madia bought a beat-up bright orange van, filled it with her two dogs Bucket and Dagwood, and headed into the canyons of Utah with her husband. Nowhere for Very Long is her deeply felt, immaculately...

"On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed in a conflict with native Hawaiians. How did Cook, who was unique among captains for his respect for Indigenous peoples and cultures, come to that fatal moment? Hampton Sides' bravura account of Cook's last journey...

"Amitav Ghosh unravels the impact of the opium trade on global history and in his own family-the climax of a yearslong project"-- When Amitav Ghosh began the research for his monumental cycle of novels the Ibis Trilogy, he was startled to learn how the lives of the nineteenth-century sailors and soldiers he wrote about were dictated not only by the currents of the Indian Ocean but also by the precious commodity carried in enormous quantities on those...

After New York City emptied out in March 2020, Glynnis MacNicol, aged forty-six, unmarried with no children, spent sixteen months alone in her tiny Manhattan apartment. The isolation was punishing. A year without touch. Women are warned of invisibility as they age, but this was an extreme loneliness no one can prepare you for. When the opportunity to sublet a friend's apartment in Paris arose, MacNicol jumped on it. Leaving felt less like a risk than...

"From the author of the epic adventure tale The Emerald Mile comes the most dramatic and deeply moving account ever of walking the Grand Canyon, a highly dangerous, life-changing 750-mile trek. The Grand Canyon is an American treasure, visited by more than 6 million people a year, many of whom are rendered speechless by its vast beauty, mystery, and complexity. Now, in A Walk in the Park, author Kevin Fedarko chronicles his year-long effort to find...