After ten years in England, expatriate American Bill Bryson was gripped by an urge to return to the land of his youth. Borrowing his mother's old Chevrolet, Bryson travelled 13,978 miles through thirty-eight states, seeing pretty much what he wanted to see, and a good deal that he didn't. He visited Mark Twain's birthplace and the place where Roosevelt died. He glimpsed the Grand Canyon through a thick fog and failed to...
Arctic explorer, survival expert and naturalist Freddy Spencer Chapman was trapped behind enemy lines when the Japanese overran Malaya in 1942. His response was to begin a commando campaign of such lethal effectiveness that the Japanese deployed an entire regiment against him, hunting for him as they did for no other. He was wounded, and racked by tropical disease. His companions were killed, or captured...