Thurston Clarke

A close-up on one of American history's most splendid events, JFK's inaugural week, and the creation of the speech that inspired a generation and brought hope to a nation, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country." On the January morning when John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency and stood to speak those words, America was divided. Citizens around the world were torn by fears of war. Kennedy's speech-called...

Widely considered a jewel of contemporary travel literature, Equator is Thurston Clarke's magnificent, witty account of his solo journey along the earth's torrid midsection-a grueling twenty-five-thousand-mile odyssey that spanned three years and as many continents. His was a perilous trek across an almost surreal landscape-where a first-class hotel appeared smack in the middle of a leper colony and a one-time Pacific island paradise stood as a...

The Last Caravan is a powerful and dramatic account of how the great African drought of the early 1970s transformed the nomadic Tuareg, the famous blue-veiled men of the Beau Geste legend. Thurston Clarke recounts their story in his words and theirs, allowing them to come to life as they describe their sufferings and wanderings in search of food and comfort. Their story is a powerful one of ecological disaster, of the courage and nobility of an ancient...

One night in the reform club, Phileas Fogg bets his companions that he can travel across the globe in just eighty days. Breaking the well-established routine of his daily life, he immediately sets off for Dover with his astonished valet Passepartout. Passing through exotic lands and dangerous locations, they seize whatever transportation is at hand - whether train or elephant - overcoming set-backs and always racing against the clock.