National Network for Equitable Library Service

Chinatown, U.S.A.: a state of mind, a world within a world, a neighborhood that exists in more cities than you might imagine. Every day, Americans find "something different" in Chinatown's narrow lanes and overflowing markets, tasting exotic delicacies from a world apart or bartering for a trinket on the street — all without ever leaving the country.

In the mid-1940s, Sybille Bedford set off from Grand Central Station for Mexico, accompanied by her friend E., a hamper of food and drink (Virginia ham, cherries, watercress, a flute of bread, Portuguese rosé), books, a writing board, and paper. Her resulting travelogue captures the violent beauty of the country she visited.

"Stories Left in Stone" explores the lives, histories, and artistic legacies of Cc̀eres and Extremadura. Author Troy Nahumko has lived in the old town of Cc̀eres, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, for over a decade. His journey starts at the Cave of Maltravieso, where prehistoric art stirs a profound curiosity about the city's rich tapestry of past and present. Amid the dazzle of cobbled medieval streets, 12th century Moorish walls, fortified palaces, and 60,000-year-old handprints, Nahumko asks how locals characterize their city and leave their own marks.

A—New York Times Bestseller—Stow away with Rick Steves for a glimpse into the unforgettable moments, misadventures, and memories of his 1978 journey on the legendary Hippie Trail. In the 1970s, the ultimate trip for any backpacker was the storied “Hippie Trail” from Istanbul to Kathmandu. A 23-year-old Rick Steves made the trek, and like a travel writer in training, he documented everything along the way: jumping off a moving train, making friends in Tehran, getting lost in Lahore, getting high for the first time in Herat, battling leeches in Pokhara, and much more.

En 1835, Alexandre Dumas se rend à Naples. Huit ans plus tard, il publie Le Corricolo, récit de voyage, recueil d'anecdotes et historiettes. À bord d'un corricolo, une espèce de calèche fragile tirée par un cheval et où les Napolitains s'entassent, Alexandre Dumas passe en revue les socles de la culture napolitaine : du roi Nasone à la jettatura, en passant par San Gennaro et la révolte de Masaniello.

Of Canoes and Crocodiles is a story of adventure in the remote and threatened landscapes of Papua New Guinea. In 2018, Tony Robinson-Smith and his wife Nadya Ladouceur bought dugout canoes and paddled down the Sepik, the country's longest river. Traveling with local guides and staying in their villages, they ate smoked piranha and sago pancakes, heard tales of river gods and sorcerers, marvelled at Rainbow bee-eaters and cat-size flying foxes, sank in a tropical storm, got lost in mosquito-infested swamplands, and hid from pirates in mangroves near the sea.

Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to "go west," Amy Kaler's Half-Light: Westbound on a Hot Planet offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. Her memoir weaves together three strands: living with the knowledge of one's own aging and mortality; the slow-moving catastrophes of climate change; and the human history of the North American settler west, especially locations that hold traces of vanished pasts.

From the endangered Canadian boreal forest to the environmentally threatened Svalbard archipelago off the coast of Norway, Jenna Butler takes us on a sea voyage that connects continents and traces the impacts of climate change on northern lands. With a conservationist, female gaze, she questions explorer narratives and the mythic draw of the polar North. As a woman who cannot have children, she writes out the internal friction of travelling in Svalbard during the fertile height of the Arctic summer.

Train travel is having a renaissance. Grand old routes that had been canceled, or were moldering in neglect, have been refurbished as destinations in themselves. The Rocky Mountaineer, the Orient Express, and the Trans-Siberian Railroad run again in all their glory. Pamela Mulloy has always loved train travel. Whether returning to the Maritimes every year with her daughter on the Ocean, or taking her family across Europe to Poland, trains have been a linchpin of her life.

One of BookPage's Best Audiobooks of 2023. "Loftus is a charming narrator...goofy, engaging, and always game to do a silly voice." - The New York Times. "There's something terribly irresistible about her narration, which is often incredibly funny." - BookPage. Part travelogue, part culinary history, all capitalist critique—comedian Jamie Loftus's debut, Raw Dog, will take you on a cross-country road trip in the summer of 2021, and reveal what the creation, culture, and class influence of hot dogs says about America now.