United States Audiobooks | Travel

Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America

A cross-country hitchhiking journey with America's most beloved weirdo John Waters is putting his life on the line. Armed with wit, a pencil-thin mustache, and a cardboard sign that reads "I'm Not Psycho," he hitchhikes across America from Baltimore to San Francisco, braving lonely roads and treacherous drivers. But who should we be more worried about, the delicate film director with genteel manners or the unsuspecting travelers transporting the Pope of Trash? Before he leaves for this bizarre adventure, Waters fantasizes about the best and worst possible scenarios: a friendly drug dealer hands over piles of cash to finance films with no questions asked, a demolition-derby driver makes a filthy sexual request in the middle of a race, a gun-toting drunk terrorizes and holds him hostage, and a Kansas vice squad entraps and throws him in jail. So what really happens when this cult legend sticks out his thumb and faces the open road? His real-life rides include a gentle eighty-one-year-old farmer who is convinced Waters is a hobo, an indie band on tour, and the perverse filmmaker's unexpected hero: a young, sandy-haired Republican in a Corvette. Laced with subversive humor and warm intelligence, Carsick is an unforgettable vacation with a wickedly funny companion-and a celebration of America's weird, astonishing, and generous citizenry.

John Waters (Author), John Waters (Narrator)

Audiobook

Under Magnolia: A Southern Memoir

A lyrical and evocative memoir from Frances Mayes, the Bard of Tuscany, about coming of age in the Deep South and the region's powerful influence on her life.The author of three beloved books about her life in Italy, including Under the Tuscan Sun and Every Day in Tuscany, Frances Mayes revisits the turning points that defined her early years in Fitzgerald, Georgia. With her signature style and grace, Mayes explores the power of landscape, the idea of home, and the lasting force of a chaotic and loving family. From her years as a spirited, secretive child, through her university studies a period of exquisite freedom that imbued her with a profound appreciation of friendship and a love of travel to her escape to a new life in California, Mayes exuberantly recreates the intense relationships of her past, recounting the bitter and sweet stories of her complicated family: her beautiful yet fragile mother, Frankye; her unpredictable father, Garbert; Daddy Jack, whose life Garbert saved; grandmother Mother Mayes; and the family maid, Frances's confidant Willie Bell.Under Magnolia is a searingly honest, humorous, and moving ode to family and place, and a thoughtful meditation on the ways they define us, or cause us to define ourselves. With acute sensory language, Mayes relishes the sweetness of the South, the smells and tastes at her family table, the fragrance of her hometown trees, and writes an unforgettable story of a girl whose perspicacity and dawning self-knowledge lead her out of the South and into the rest of the world, and then to a profound return home. From the Hardcover edition.

Frances Mayes (Author), Frances Mayes (Narrator)

Audiobook

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.

Tony Horwitz (Author), Arthur Addison (Narrator)

Audiobook

Brasilien: Land der Zukunft

Stefan Zweig reiste in den 30er Jahren mehrfach nach Südamerika, begeisterte sich für Kultur und Lebensart der Brasilianer und schrieb einen Klassiker der Reiseliteratur: Brasilien. Land der Zukunft. In brillantem Stil erzählt er anschaulich von portugiesischen Abenteurern, begeisterten Missionaren und gierigen Goldgräbern. Später geht es dann um Kaiser, Kaffee und Kautschuk. Die Schattenseite der Entwicklung: Sklaverei. Doch als Zweig in den 30er Jahren des letzten Jahrhunderts Rio besucht, lernt er eine tolerante Gesellschaft kennen, die ihm, dem in Europa Verfolgten, Hoffnung für die Zukunft gibt. Max Volkert Martens liest Stefan Zweig - Hochgenuß für die Ohren.

Stefan Zweig (Author), Max Volkert Martens (Narrator)

Audiobook

Brasilien Sagen & Legenden: Eine sagenhafte Reise in die Geschichte Brasiliens

Gehen Sie auf eine sagenhafte Reise in die Geschichte Brasiliens. Anhand von vielen geschichtlichen Daten und Fakten erzählt dieses Hörbuch viele Anekdoten des fünftgrößten Landes der Erde. Wie die Nacht auf die Erde kam, Ein Vogel, der kein Vogel ist, A Mula sem Cabeça, Die Inconfidència Mineira, Der Schrei von Ipiranga, Der Curupira, Anhangüera, An Ehren Reich, Die Sage vom Tijuca-Gebirge, Yàra, die Mutter der Gewässer. Die Wasserfälle von Iguazú, O Boto. Die Augen der Götter. Muiraquita, Carne Vale. Der Saci-Pererê. Hören Sie die schönsten Sagen und Legenden Brasiliens auf zwei CDs. Das Hörbuch enthält über zwei Stunden Audio-Material, eine illustrierte Landkarte mit allen wichtigen Sagenorten Brasiliens sowie ein Booklet mit weiteren Informationen zu Bräuchen, Sehenswürdigkeiten und der Geschichte des Landes.

Patrick Wolfmar, Paul Ehrenreich (Author), Marion Von Stengel (Narrator)

Audiobook

Walden on Wheels

The story of a student who went to extraordinary lengths - including living in a van on a campus parking lot - to complete his education without sacrificing his financial future. In a frank and self-deprecating voice, memoirist Ken Ilgunas writes about the existential terror of graduating from college with $32,000 in student debt. Inspired by Thoreau, Ilgunas set himself a mission: get out of debt as soon as humanly possible. To that end, he undertook an extraordinary 3-year transcontinental journey, driving to Alaska and taking a series of low-paying jobs. Debt-free, Ilgunas then enrolled himself in a master's program at Duke University, using the last of his savings to buy himself a used Econoline, his new "dorm." The van, stationed in a campus parking lot, would be an adventure, a challenge, a test of his limits. It would be, in short, his "Walden on Wheels." Ilgunas went public in a widely read Salon article that spoke to the urgent student debt situation in America today. He offers a funny and pointed perspective on the dilemma faced by those who seek an education but who also want to, as Thoreau wrote, "live deep and suck out all the marrow of life."

Ken Ilgunas (Author), Nick Podehl (Narrator)

Audiobook

Here Is Where: Discovering America's Great Forgotten History

The centerpiece of a major national campaign to indentify and preserve forgotten history, Here Is Where is acclaimed historian Andrew Carroll's fascinating journey of discovery in which he travels to each of America's fifty states and explores locations where remarkable individuals once lived or where the incredible or momentous occurred. Sparking the idea for this audiobook was Carroll's visit to the spot where Abraham Lincoln's son was once saved by the brother of Lincoln's assassin. Carroll wondered, How many other unmarked places are there where intriguing events unfolded -- or where extraordinary men and women made their mark? And then it came to him: the idea of spotlighting great hidden history by traveling the length and breadth of the United States, searching for buried historical treasure. In Here Is Where, Carroll drives, flies, boats, hikes, kayaks and trains into the past, and in so doing, uncovers stories that inspire thoughtful contemplation, occasional hilarity and often, awe. Among the things we learn: *Where the oldest sample of DNA in North America was discovered *Which obscure American scientist saved 400 million lives *Which famous FBI agent was the brother of a notorious gangster *Which cemetery contains one million graves - but only one marked *How a 14 year old boy invented television Featured prominently in Here Is Where are an abundance of firsts (including the first elevator, the first modern anesthesia, the first cremation, and the first murder conviction based on forensic evidence), outrages (from massacres, to forced sterilizations, to kidnappings) and breakthroughs (from the invention of the M-1 carbine to the recovery of the last existing sample of Spanish Flu to the building of the rocket that made possible space travel). A profound reminder that the ground we walk is often the top sedimentary layer of amazing past events, Here Is Where represents just the first step in an ongoing project that will recruit citizen historians to preserve what should be remembered.

Andrew Carroll (Author), Andrew Carroll (Narrator)

Audiobook

Healthy Living in the Catskills: A Joe & Lorie Special

In this two-hour public-radio documentary, husband and wife Joe Bevilacqua (Joe Bev) and Lorie Kellogg explore the rural byways within four miles of their home in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains of New York State and find local business owners working to promote healthy lifestyles that have a national impact. 1. Sheldon Lublin has traveled the world, hitchhiked across the country, met Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, and recently retired from his successful psychotherapy practice in New York City. 2. Dick and Pat Peters, owners of Peter’s Market, in Napanoch, New York, went on a journey to becoming a healthy alternative market. 3. John Hiller and Carol Debberman created vegetarian Sunshine Burgers in Ellenville, New York, and they are sold at Peter’s Market and in markets across the country. 4. A collage of water sounds recorded in the Catskills. 5. Oleh and Nadia Maczaj are the owners of Rusty Plough Farm, a small family farm that grows certified organic vegetables, flowers, and berries, as well as eggs from free-range hens. The farm is located in Ulster County, New York, nestled between the Shawangunk Mountains and the Catskills. It consists of thirty-six acres, including crop fields; wild blueberry stands; woodlots; a pond; a maze of old stone walls; an old rusty plough; wild turkeys, deer, hawks, squirrels; the occasional bear; multitudes of frogs and newts; Sneakers and Sandy the barn cats; and the house, barn, and greenhouse.

Joe Bevilacqua, Joe Bevilacqua (Author), Joe Bevilacqua, Joe Bevilacqua, Lorie Kellogg, Lorie Kellogg (Narrator)

Audiobook

Blue Highways: A Journey into America

Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads. William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi." His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.

William Least Heat-Moon (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

Audiobook

Here, There, Elsewhere: Stories from the Road

From the acclaimed author of Blue Highways, PrairyErth, and Roads to Quoz, a dazzling collection of travel tales from the road. HERE, THERE, ELSEWHERE draws together for the first time William Least Heat-Moon's greatest short-form travel writing. Personally selected by the writer, these pieces take us from Japan, England, Italy, and Mexico to Long Island, Oregon, Arizona, from small towns to big cities, ocean shores and inland mysteries. Including Heat-Moon's reflections on writing these pieces, HERE, THERE, ELSEWHERE is much more than the usual collection of amber; it is a coupled summation of craft and memory. A perfect treasury of prose and provocation for readers old and new, Heat-Moon's most recent work reveals his absolute mastery across pages many and few.

William Least Heat-Moon (Author), Joe Barrett (Narrator)

Audiobook

AWOL on the Appalachian Trail

In 2003, software engineer David Miller left his job, family, and friends to hike 2,172 miles of the Appalachian Trail. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail is Miller's account of this thru-hike from Georgia to Maine. Listeners are treated to rich descriptions of the Appalachian Mountains, the isolation and reverie, the inspiration that fueled his quest, and the rewards of taking a less conventional path through life. While this book abounds with introspection and perseverance, it also provides useful passages about hiking gear and planning. This is not merely a travel guide; it is a beautifully written and highly personal view into one man's journey and the insights gained by abandoning what is comfortable and routine. "David Miller's AWOL makes you feel the pain and joy of an Appalachian Trail thru-hike...In vivid colors, David paints a picture of his memorable journey." - Larry Luxenberg Director of the Appalachian Trail Museum

David Miller (Author), Christopher Lane (Narrator)

Audiobook

America, You Sexy Bitch

In the summer of 2011, McCain and Black embarked on a balls-out, cross-country tour. Along the way, they spoke to politicians, gun lovers, abortion-rights advocates and opponents, gay parents, flag burners, Muslims, poker players, Tea Partiers, Minutemen, veterans, teen moms, bikers, fast food workers, and a hooker or two. They toured the White House. They fired semiautomatic weapons. They stopped and ate at every Olive Garden along the way. But mostly they talked to each other about their differences, their similarities. It's Chelsea Handler meets Hunter S. Thompson in a political cannonball run across America.

Meghan McCain, Michael Ian Black (Author), Meghan McCain, Michael Ian Black (Narrator)

Audiobook

United States Audiobooks in Travel