Blog Posts by Subject: Travel writing

If you had to name an artist or writer from the Beat Generation, the core male group may first come to mind: Huncke, Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac. But a group of women were creating their own literary works, and are considered by some to be the unsung heroes of the movement.

Take a Library Francophile quiz to find out if you are truly enamored with French culture, customs, and cuisine.

If you can tear yourself away from the scenery, read one of these nonfiction selections on train travel.

A look at forgotten pastimes as well as classic activities that children can enjoy today with guidebooks for families, past and present.

Find your own sense of joie de vivre in these books about Parisian history and culture.

Postcards are a fantastic visual resource for a place’s past that are often underutilized by scholars. They offer rich evidence of culture and architecture as a visual record of the past.

Books and destinations from around the world were discussed at the most recent Open Book Night, and lots of recommendations were picked up along the way.

Thomas Jefferson recorded, measured, and calculated things obsessively. He kept copious notes in his account book on the distances he traversed and the roads he traveled.

Welcome back to the Reader’s Den! This August we’re making a virtual escape from the hot and steamy New York summer with Bill Bryson’s classic travelogue, A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail, originally published in 1996.

Whether your desire is to visit a faraway locale for a taste of the local delicacies, or just to shake up your weeknight cooking with some new, unfamiliar spices, there is so much inspiration to be found at the library.

The first guidebooks to New York City were written by the navigators, explorers, crewmen, trail-makers, and settlers who sailed west from Europe across the Atlantic Ocean in the 16th and 17th centuries.

New Russian-language books on European and Asian history and culture.

Narrative or creative nonfiction is a somewhat newly recognized genre. Naturally, as librarians we have a great appreciation for the research, the primary source documents and interviews, but it is the narrative, the skillful pacing, the phrasing, and the insight that make it read like a thriller that set these books apart from other nonfiction.

For many of us who come from large families, the only way we were able to visit new places was by driving. Here are some great titles for children to enjoy while on a family road trip.

The lost tribe of Coney Island... building the Statue of Liberty... a culinary history of America in 100 bites... the sinking of refugee ship The Wilhelm Gustloff during World War II... a close-up of the planet Mars... forgiving, remembering, and forgetting in personal and political contexts... a road trip through presidential libraries... curious New York activities... what online data can tell us about ourselves... reducing inequality in the 21st century... the history of New York's mass transit systems between 1940 and 1968... tales from a world traveler...

Gangsters and true crime, New York City history, financial literacy, MacArthur, FDR, Khrushchev, Lindsay, Main Street, U.S.A., travel, learning and self-discovery, climate change, foreign policy, the collective afterlife, and great pizza are among the wide-ranging topics coming up at our Author @ the Library talks in July 2014! We hope you’ll join us for insightful discussions with the authors of these 

I once heard it said that no one ever got drunk by reading the label on a bottle of wine. This is an apt metaphor for the difference between studying another region of the world versus experiencing it firsthand. What does it mean to become drunk on another culture, to internalize the experience of a different place to such an extent that it alters you?

In Europe on 5 Wrong Turns a Day, Doug Mack takes a decades old travel guide and puts it to the modern-day test. Arthur Frommer's 1963 edition of Europe on 5 Dollars a Day (we still have several of these in our collections available for your perusal) was the book that got regular Americans, including Mack's mother, excited about crossing the Atlantic for the first time. Mack decides to use it without consulting