Travel

The humor writer's new book details his travels across America to fulfill ten personal goals, including working at the world's largest McDonalds, finding and kissing 60s actress Tina Louise, and photographing his dog in front of Babe Ruth's tomb. His previous book is called Roadside America.

Comedian David Brenner. He's written a new book about the pitfalls of traveling.

Photographer and adventurer Galen Rowell. Rowell has been called a cross between Sir Edmund Hillary and Ansel Adams. He's made a career out of traveling to the world's wild places and capturing them on film. An accomplished skier and mountaineer, Rowell has made more than 20 trips to the Himalayas and hundreds of climbs throughout the world.

Writer and adventurer Lawrence Millman. His new book, "Last Places," recounts Millman's journey along the old Viking route across the North Atlantic from Norway to Newfoundland. He traveled as primitively as possible, fought off dive-bombing skuas (pterodactyl-like birds with five-foot wingspans), stayed with an Eskimo hermit endowed with supernatural powers, and camped in some of the world's most pristine spots. His writing has been compared to Bruce Chatwin and Edward Hoagland.

Journalist Eddy L. Harris. Harris' book, "Mississippi Solo," is Harris' chronicle of his 23-hundred mile journey down the Mississippi by canoe. This was by no means an idyllic voyage for a black man traveling alone, and Harris faced racism and the threat of violence, in addition to the normal problems of such a lengthy journey. (Interview by Sedge Thomson)

Adventurer and author Tristan Jones. Tristan Jones is almost certainly the most intrepid sailor alive. At last count he's journeyed more than 450-thousand miles in small boats. That includes 20 crossings of the Atlantic, and 3 and a half circumnavigations. Many of those miles were racked up during the course of exceedingly dangerous, some would say foolhardy, adventures. Jones tried to sail as close as possible to the North Pole, and as a result spent a year frozen in the Arctic ice pack.

Travel writer and essayist Jan Morris. In her 1974 autobiography "Conundrum," Morris talked about her search for sexual identity and her sex change operation. The sequel, "Pleasures of a Tangled Life," is a collection of personal essays describing the experiences and sensations that have brought Morris pleasure over the years.

Novelist, essayist, and reporter Barbara Grizutti Harrison. Her new book is called "Italian Days." It's a chronicle of her travels through Italy, but it's also more introspective, influenced by her parents Italian heritage and her conversion to Catholicism after a childhood spent in the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Airline expert George Brown. In his new book, The Airline Passenger's Guerrilla Handbook, Brown explains how to beat the air travel system. He tells how to find the cheapest fares, accumulate frequent flyer points, how to beat jet lag, even how to make love while in flight.

Book Critic John Leonard reviews a posthumous collection of essays by writer Bruce Chatwin. The collection is titled What Am I Doing Here? Chatwin, who wrote extensively about his world travels and the collisions of cultures, died last year from a Chinese fungus that infected him on one of his trips.