"Walking and writing have always gone together. Think of the poets who walk on a rhythm for their lines and the novelists who put their characters on a path. [This volume] rounds up the most memorable walker-writers from the 1300s to the modern day, from country hikers to urban strollers, from the rationalists to the truly outlandish. All of them analyse our need to put one foot in front of the other."--Back cover.

"Today, "simple living" is a rallying cry for anti-consumerists, environmentalists, and anyone concerned with humanity's effect on the planet. But what is so revolutionary about a simple life? And why are we so fascinated with simplicity today? A Philosophy of Simple Living charts the ideas, motivations, and practices of simplicity from antiquity to the present day. Bringing together an array of people, practices, and movements, from Henry David Thoreau...

From the Publisher: In the first anthology to survey the full range of gay men's autobiographical writing from Walt Whitman to the present, Gay American Autobiography draws excerpts from letters, journals, oral histories, memoirs, and autobiographies to provide examples of the best life writing over the last century and a half. Volume editor David Bergman guides the reader chronologically through selected writings that give voice to every generation...

Even in this age of extreme sports and made-for-TV survival games, there still exist places on earth where the most intrepid among us can plunge into truly unknown territory. The acclaimed adventure writer Peter Stark had waited all his life for just such an opportunity. But when he was invited to Africa to join a small expedition kayaking down Mozambique's Lugenda River, he balked. The 750-kilometer river course was largely uncharted-dotted with...