In an outrageous tour Down Under, Bryson dodges jellyfish while learning to surf at Bondi Beach, discovers a fish that can climb trees, dehydrates in the deserts in 140 degree temperatures, and tells the true story of the rejected Danish architect who designed the Sydney Opera House.

Bryson takes in the sights in Europe, dissects the culture and illuminates each place and person with humorous, caustic observations.

Features twenty-three stories and essays by the author, including pieces on urban coyotes, lion-hunting, professional kayaking in Chile, and white tigers in the Cincinnati Zoo.

At some point in every American Buddhist's life, he or she decides to take a spiritual journey to the East. Ehrlich's journey takes her to the Sichuan Province in China to climb Emei Shan, a sacred Buddhist mountain. Instead of finding a modern Shangri-La, she encounters a land destroyed by crass commercialism, corrupt monks, poverty, lamas, and scholars who are still deeply injured physically and psychologically by the atrocities of Mao Zedong's...

A visual-musical journey through time and history, featuring locations from the cradle of civilization to a modern day metropolis.

In 1985 a team of hand-picked adventurers, including writer Joe Kane, embarked on a journey that would take them to the remote headwaters of the Amazon Basin. But that was just the beginning of the trip. Their goal: to navigate the world's longest river from source to mouth, a feat never before recorded. After reaching (via a goat trail) a glacial trickle above 17,000 feet--debatably the farthest source of the Amazon--the team descends to a point...

The Vogel family of Boise, Idaho was just your normal, ordinary, everyday family one day. The next, they were anything but. Perhaps it was a midlife crisis, or maybe just a simple plea for a life less ordinary, but one day John and Nancy realized the American Dream wasn't the be-all and end-all they had hoped it was and decided to throw caution to the wind. They took off with their eight-year-old twins to explore their country on two wheels. Throughout...

Mountain man Jedediah Smith's sketch of his entry into the fur trade in 1882 and overland journey to California.

Captain James Cook's three epic journeys in the 18th century were the last great voyages of discovery. His ships sailed 150,000 miles, from the Artic to the Antarctic, from Tasmania to Oregon, from Easter Island to Siberia. When Cook set off for the Pacific in 1768, a third of the globe remained blank. By the time he died in Hawaii in 1779, the map of the world was substantially complete.