Showing results by publisher "Brilliance Audio" in Travel & Tourism

Holidays in Hell follows P. J. O’Rourke on a global fun-finding mission to the most desperate places on the planet, from the bombed-out streets of Beirut to the stultifying blandness of Heritage USA. P.J.’s unforgettable adventures abroad include storming student protesters’ barricades in South Korea, interviewing Communist insurrectionists in the Philippines, and going undercover in Arab garb at Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock Mosque. Packed with P.J.’s classic riffs on everything from Polish nightlife under communism to Third World driving tips....

Fueled by a powerful curiosity - and by a need to see, feel, and hear, firsthand and close-up - Michael Crichton's journeys have carried him into worlds diverse and compelling - swimming with mud sharks in Tahiti, tracking wild animals through the jungle of Rwanda. This is a record of those travels - an exhilarating quest across the familiar and exotic frontiers of the outer world, a determined odyssey into the unfathomable, spiritual depths of the inner world.

Before The Perfect Storm, before In the Heart of the Sea, Steven Callahan's Adrift chronicled one of the most astounding voyages of the century and one of the great sea adventures of all time. In some ways the model for the new wave of adventure books, Adrift is now an undeniable seafaring classic, a riveting firsthand account by the only man known to have survived for more than a month alone at sea, fighting for his life in an inflatable raft after his small sloop capsized.

Laura was in her early twenties and directionless when she quit her job to backpack in Bolivia. Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life. 

Author Mark Plotkin, chief ethnobotanist for Conservation International, has spent much of the past 15 years tracking the shamans of the northeast Amazon. Their knowledge of healing plants may hold the cure to some of today's most devastating diseases. This book is a critically acclaimed account of his apprenticeship to these powerful wise men, a gripping journey into a wild and wonderful world seldom glimpsed by outsiders.

The Last Flight is the heroic story of Gil Connor, an Army helicopter pilot as he struggles with the finality of a terminal illness. Haunted by the horrors of war and a turbulent past, Connor is torn between ending his embattled life and saving the survivors of a remote Alaska plane crash. Amid the turmoil of an approaching storm and almost certain failure, his underlying intentions are unknown, even to himself, until the very end.

The Curse of Oak Island is a fascinating account of the strange, rich history of the island and the intrepid treasure hunters who have driven themselves to financial ruin, psychotic breakdowns, and even death in pursuit of answers. And as Michigan brothers Marty and Rick Lagina become the latest to attempt to solve the mystery, as documented on the History Channel’s television show The Curse of Oak Island, Sullivan takes listeners along to follow their quest firsthand.  

In his number-one best seller The Perfect Storm, Sebastian Junger describes Linda Greenlaw as "one of the best sea captains, period, on the East Coast." Now Greenlaw tells her own riveting story of a 30 day swordfishing voyage aboard one of the best-outfitted boats on the East Coast, complete with danger, humor, and characters so colorful they seem to have been ripped from the pages of Moby Dick. The excitement starts immediately, even before Greenlaw and her five-man crew leave the dock.

In 2003, software engineer David Miller left his job, family, and friends to hike 2,172 miles of the Appalachian Trail. AWOL on the Appalachian Trail is Miller’s account of this thru-hike from Georgia to Maine. Listeners are treated to rich descriptions of the Appalachian Mountains, the isolation and reverie, the inspiration that fueled his quest, and the rewards of taking a less conventional path through life. While this book abounds with introspection and perseverance, it also provides useful passages about hiking gear and planning.

Not many Brits move to Poland to work in a fish and chip shop. Fewer still come back wanting to be a Member of the European Parliament. In 2016, Ben Aitken moved to Poland while he still could. It wasn’t love that took him but curiosity: he wanted to know what the Poles in the UK had left behind. He flew to a place he’d never heard of and then accepted a job in a chip shop on the minimum wage. When he wasn’t peeling potatoes he was on the road scratching the country’s surface.

In France, Johnson is like an alien from another planet. Everything is strange to him. His goal is to speak French without going to prison, drive without being squashed like a bug, dance the tango without losing his marriage, and belt out a tune with a world-class jazz combo without being booed off the stage. Repeatedly, the author fearlessly steps into harm's way. He joins a summer acting troop and witnesses the French version of sexual liberation.

On the evening of her twenty-second wedding anniversary, Katherine Price can't wait to celebrate. But instead of receiving an anniversary card from her husband, she finds a note asking for a divorce. Fifty-five and suddenly alone, Katherine begins the daunting task of starting over. She has her friends, her aging mother, and her career to occupy her, but the future seems to hold little promise - until, after a winter of heartbreak, Katherine is persuaded to try a home exchange holiday in the South of France.

Most people don’t expect wood to flavor their food beyond the barbecue, if at all, and gastronomists rarely discuss the significance that wood has on ultimate taste. But trees and wood have a far greater influence over our plate and palate than you might think. A world trip brimming with fascinating encounters, unexpected turns, beautiful landscapes, scientific discoveries, and historic connections, The Flavor of Wood is the story of a passionate flavor hunter, and offers listeners unparalleled access to some of the world’s highest quality cuisine and unknown tree flavors. 

Many fantasize about dramatically changing their lives - living in accordance with their ideals rather than the exigencies of job, bills, and possessions. William Powers actually does it. Here, his family, with baby in tow, searches for balance, community, and happiness in a small town in Bolivia. They build an adobe house, plant a prolific orchard and organic garden, and weave their life into a community of permaculturists, bio-builders, artists, and creative businesspeople. Can this Transition Town succeed in the face of encroaching North American capitalism?

This is Cuba is a true story that begins in the summer of 2009 when a young American photo-journalist is offered the chance of a lifetime - a two-year assignment in Havana. For David Ariosto, the island is an intriguing new world, unmoored from the one he left behind. From neighboring military coups, suspected honey traps, salty spooks, and desperate migrants to dissidents, doctors, and Havana’s empty shelves, Ariosto uncovers the island’s subtle absurdities, its Cold War mystique, and the hopes of a people in the throes of transition.

Roads bind our world—metaphorically and literally—transforming landscapes and the lives of the people who inhabit them. Roads have unparalleled power to impact communities, unite worlds and sunder them, and reveal the hopes and fears of those who travel them.

Before Georgetown physics professor Francis Slakey decided to climb the highest mountain on every continent and surf every ocean, he had shut himself off from other people. His lectures were mechanical; his relationships were little more than ways to fill the evenings. But as his journey veered dangerously off course, everything began to change. A gripping adventure of the body and mind, To the Last Breath depicts the quest that leads Slakey around the globe, almost takes his life, and opens his heart.

P. J. O’Rourke is one of his generation’s most celebrated political humorists, hailed as “the funniest writer in America” by both Time and The Wall Street Journal. Twenty-three years ago he published the classic travelogue Holidays in Hell, in which he trotted the globe as a “trouble tourist,” a chaos rubberneck, sight-seeing at wars, rebellions, riots, political crises, and other monuments of human folly. After the Iraq War - “too old to keep being scared stiff and too stiff to keep sleeping on the ground” - he retired from what foreign correspondents call “being a s**thole specialist.”

Everyone wants to escape their boring, stagnant lives full of inertia and regret. But so few people actually have the bravery to run - run away from everything and selflessly seek out personal fulfillment on the other side of the world where they don’t understand anything and won’t be expected to. The world is full of cowards. Tim Anderson was pushing 30 and working a string of dead-end jobs when he made the spontaneous decision to pack his bags and move to Japan.

Somewhere in Arizona’s Chocolate Mountains lie the Big Maria Mine and a wealth of gold lost for 100 years. There’s only one problem: Those mountains are now the home of the US Army Proving Ground, the world’s largest active artillery range. But for Harry, Ricky, and Frank, three down-at-the-heels guys with few dollars but plenty of dreams, the gold offers each of them a chance for a new life. Are scuba diving through an underwater ghost town; facing down a hungry mountain lion; doing the hesitation waltz across a minefield; matching wits with potheads, pit bulls, and bikers; and braving the might of Uncle Sam’s full arsenal worth it?