Best Books for Travelers

Bill Bryson and an old friend, both badly out of shape, set out to hike the Appalachian Trail. Very funny, and quietly informative about the trail's history and the forests it runs through.

In 1960 John Steinbeck set off around the country in a camper truck with his poodle, Charley. A portrait of America at a turning point, and a gentle, wandering read for someone who likes the road.

One caveat: Later reporting has questioned how much of the trip happened as written. Read it as a portrait, not a log.

Paul Theroux rides trains from Massachusetts to the southern end of South America, writing about everyone he meets along the way. Sharp, observant and a classic of the form.

One caveat: Theroux is a grouch on the page. Some readers love that.

After her mother's death, Cheryl Strayed hikes more than a thousand miles of the Pacific Crest Trail alone, with no experience and a pack too heavy to lift. It is as much about grief as about hiking.

One caveat: Frank about drugs and loss.

An illustrated guide to hundreds of the world's strangest places, organized by region, from abandoned towns to unlikely museums. Large, handsome and endlessly browsable — the rare travel book that works better as a gift than as a read.

Alain de Botton on anticipation, exotic places and the gap between the trip we imagine and the one we get. Short essays, easy to read on a plane, and oddly consoling after a disappointing vacation.

A practical case for long-term travel, and how to fund, plan and actually take months on the road. It has been handed to would-be long-term travelers for more than twenty years, and it treats the idea as achievable rather than romantic.

David Grann retraces the route of Percy Fawcett, a British explorer who vanished in the Amazon in 1925 while searching for a lost city. It reads like a novel and it ends somewhere genuinely unexpected.