Washoe County Library System

A sequel to "Notes from a Small Island" stands as the author's tribute to his adopted country of England and describes his riotous return visit two decades later to rediscover the country, its people, and its culture. In 1995 Bill Bryson got into his car and took a weeks-long farewell motoring trip about England before moving his family back to the United States. The book about that trip, Notes from a Small Island, is uproarious and endlessly endearing,...

Robert Macfarlane sets off from his Cambridge home to follow the ancient tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea-paths that form part of a vast network of routes which criss-cross Britain

"Landmarks is a book about the power of language - 'strong style, single words' - to shape our sense of place. It is both a field guide to the literature the author loves (Nan Shepherd, Roger Deakin and many more), and a 'word-hoard', gathering an astonishing archive of place-terms from old Norse to Anglo-Romani, living Norman to Hebridean Gaelic. Over the book's course, via its chapters, its glossaries and surprise of its postscript - we come to...

A visual itinerary, an emotional visit to a family's homeland, a souvenir of the trip of a lifetime, or the virtual realization of a fantasy vacation - whatever the inspiration, one thing's certain - locations like this won't be seen any other way.

From the merlin to the golden eagle, the goshawk to the honey buzzard, James Macdonald Lockharts stunning debut is a quest of beak, talon, wing, and sky. On its surface, Raptor is a journey across the British Isles in search of fifteen species of birds of prey, but as Lockhart seeks out these elusive predators, his quest becomes so much more: an incomparably elegant elegy to the beauty of the British landscape and, through the birds, a journey toward...

After eleven years as an American living in London, the renowned travel writer Paul Theroux set out to travel clockwise around the coast of Great Britain to find out what the British were really like. The result is this perceptive, hilarious record of the journey. Whether in Cornwall or Wales, Ulster or Scotland, the people he encountered along the way revealed far more of themselves than they perhaps intended to display to a stranger. Theroux captured...

"The five centuries between the end of Roman Britain and the death of Alfred the Great have left few voices save a handful of chroniclers, but Britain's 'Dark Ages' can still be explored through material remnants but above all, landscapes. In the Land of Giants explores Britain's lost medieval past by walking its paths and exploring its lasting imprint on valley, hill and field. From York to Whitby, from London to Sutton Hoo, from Edinburgh to Anglesey...

"Trae and Corey will take you from the smallest of small towns to major US metropolises (or is it metropoli? We haven't a fartin' clue!). They'll even cross the pond to sip tea in some of them fancy kings-and-castles places that PBS Viewers Like You can't stop yapping about. From Chickamauga to Cheyenne, New York to New Orleans, Seattle to Scotland—no matter where these two wandering jesters go, there's something to roast, something to toast,...

"Considered a masterpiece of nature writing, and the book that launched the international wild swimming movement, Roger Deakin's Waterlog is a fascinating and inspiring journey into the aquatic world that surrounds us. In an attempt to discover his island nation from a new perspective, Roger Deakin embarks from his home in Suffolk to swim Britain-the seas, rivers, lakes, ponds, pools, streams, lochs, moats, and quarries. Through the watery capillary...