With wit, heartwarming stories and a keen insight into new and exciting ways to see both the past and the future of the country, the actor, writer and woodworker takes a literary journey to America's frontier to celebrate the people and landscape that have made it great.

When Conor Knighton set off to explore America's "best idea," he worried the whole thing could end up being his worst idea. A broken engagement and a broken heart had left him longing for a change of scenery, but the plan he'd cooked up in response had gone a bit overboard in that department: Over the course of a single year, Knighton would visit every national park in the country, from Acadia to Zion. In Leave Only Footprints, Knighton shares informative...

"Does George Washington still matter? The bestselling author argues for his unique contribution to the forging of America by retracing his journey as a new President through the former colonies, now an unsure nation. A new first-person voice for Philbrick, weaving history and personal reflection into one narrative. When George Washington became president in 1798, the United States of America was still a loose and quarrelsome confederation and a tentative...

New York Times bestselling author of The Wordy Shipmates and contributor to NPR's This American Life Sarah Vowell embarks on a road trip to sites of political violence, from Washington DC to Alaska, to better understand our nation's ever-evolving political system and history.
Sarah Vowell exposes the glorious conundrums of American history and culture with wit, probity, and an irreverent sense of humor. With Assassination...

Anecdotes, observations, and reflections collected during a solo cross-country drive. When Jacobson announced that she planned to drive across the country alone, she was met with lots of questions and opinions. The most common one: Why? Having always found comfort in solitude, she spent the journey mulling over the big questions-- What do I really want? What is the worst possible scenario in which I could run into my ex? How has the decision to wear...

"As a boy, Robert Kaplan recalls his father driving trucks across the country to earn a living for his family, a man who witnessed and understood America from a ground-level perspective. In Earning the Rockies, Kaplan undertakes his own cross-country journey to recapture an appreciation and understanding of American geography that is often lost in the jet age. Along the way, he witnesses both prosperity and decline--increasingly cosmopolitan cities...

Author Bill Bryson tells the comical story of his return to America after living in England for two decades. When he returned stateside with his English wife and their four children, he was greeted by a whole new landscape which included microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental floss hotlines-- and the thought that 3 million Americans believe they had been abducted by aliens at some point.

"In 1914 Henry Ford and naturalist John Burroughs visited Thomas Edison in Florida and toured the Everglades. The following year Ford, Edison, and tire maker Harvey Firestone joined together on a summer camping trip and decided to call themselves the Vagabonds. They would continue their summer road trips until 1925, when they announced that their fame made it too difficult for them to carry on. Although the Vagabonds traveled with an entourage of...

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas by renowned writer Peter Matthiessen (1927-2014), the National Book Award-winning author of the new novel In Paradise
In 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen Buddhism, was also on a...

Describes the difficulties faced by the first woman to make a cross-country journey from New York to San Francisco in an automobile in 1909.