Americas
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Soundings—Journeys in the Company of Whales: Doreen Cunningham
Published by Blackstone Pub / Scribner, 2022, 320 pages “Then, the whales came. I heard them before I saw them, their breath hissing through the air. Punctuating the silence. The sound was so startling, so alien, it broke the world… Continue reading
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Following Nellie Bly—Her Record-Breaking Race Around the World: Rosemary J. Brown
Published by Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2021, 184 pages “I want to go around [the world] in eighty days or less. I think I can beat Phileas Fogg’s record. May I try it?” The idea came from Nellie Bly,… Continue reading
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Elsewhere—One Woman, One Rucksack, One Lifetime of Travel: Rosita Boland
Published by Doubleday, 2018, 272 pages Rosita Boland has a bad case of fernweh, an ache for distant places, a wanderlust which has her leaving her native Ireland to discover the world. “My friend Róisín once asked me why I loved… Continue reading
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Black Woman Walking—A Different Experience of World Travel: Maureen Stone
Published by Gazelle Drake Publishing, 2002, 408 pages Black Woman Walking is a wide-ranging book—Maureen Stone is not just a hiker but also a sociologist. She travels widely and walks everywhere she possibly can, in Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia, and… Continue reading
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How to Climb Mont Blanc in a Skirt—A Handbook for the Lady Adventurer: Mick Conefrey
Published by ONEWorld Publications, 2011, 224 pages “Take every precaution and abandon all fear.” Mary Hall, c. 1905 Why is it, when asked to imagine an explorer, people inevitably think of a sunburned unshaven white man squinting into the sun?… Continue reading
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Around the World in 80 Trains—A 45,000 Mile Adventure: Monisha Rajesh
Published by Bloomsbury Publishing, 2019, 336 pages “Trains are rolling libraries of information, and all it takes is to reach out to passengers to bind together their tales.” Monisha Rajesh loves trains (in fact she wrote a similar book about riding… Continue reading
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Flâneuse—Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice and London: Lauren Elkin
Published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017, 336 pages Flâneur is a French word that means “one who wanders aimlessly”. It always refers to a man with time and money, who walks the streets of a city. Elkin appropriates the concept… Continue reading
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The Shooting Star—A Girl, Her Backpack and the World: Shivya Nath
Published by Penguin, 2018, 201 pages The Shooting Star starts with Shivya Nath deep in the Amazon rainforest (around the border between Ecuador and Peru), taking part in a shamanic cleansing ritual that involves drinking ayahuasca, an Amazonian plant that is… Continue reading
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Around the Bloc—My Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana: Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Published by Random House, 2004, 416 pages Growing up in Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest dreams of becoming a foreign correspondent and roaming the world. The advice of a journalist to learn Russian opens the door to what turns into a… Continue reading
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Alone Time—Four Cities, Four Seasons and the Pleasures of Solitude: Stephanie Rosenbloom
Published by Viking, 2018, 288 pages Slow down and take the time to look around you: that is the message of this book, an antidote to our busy and always-on culture. It is, as its title suggests, a paean to… Continue reading
Women's Travel Books 