13 Best Essays, Travel Books
Essays, Travel is a popular category for many book lovers. Our team at Speechify has curated a list of the top Essays, Travel audiobooks everyone must read.
See the top 13 Essays, Travel audiobooks below.
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The Search for the Genuine
- By: Jim Harrison
- Narrator: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hours 2 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.29(53 ratings)
4.29(53 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0022.95 USDThe first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison’s essays and journalism–some never before published. New York TimesThe first general nonfiction title in thirty years from a giant of American letters, The Search for the Genuine is a sparkling, definitive collection of Jim Harrison’s essays and journalism–some never before published.
New York Times bestselling author Jim Harrison (1937-2016) was a writer with a poet’s economy of style and trencherman’s appetites and ribald humor.
In The Search for the Genuine, a collection of new and previously published essays, the giant of letters muses on everything from grouse hunting and fishing to Zen Buddhism and matters of the spirit, including reported pieces on Yellowstone and shark-tagging in the open ocean, commentary on writers from Bukowski to Neruda to Peter Matthiessen, and a heartbreaking essay on life–and, for those attempting to cross in the ever-more-dangerous gaps, death–on the US/Mexico border.
Written with Harrison’s trademark humor, compassion, and full-throated zest for life, this chronicle of a modern bon vivant is a feast for fans who may think they know Harrison’s nonfiction, from a true “American original”.
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Here Is New York
- By: E. B. White
- Narrator: Malcolm Hillgartner
- Length: 1 hours 1 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2016
- Language: English
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4.29(7560 ratings)
4.29(7560 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.004.95 USDPerceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E. B. White’s stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America’s foremost literary figures. The New York Times named Here Is New York one of the tenPerceptive, funny, and nostalgic, E. B. White’s stroll around Manhattan remains the quintessential love letter to the city, written by one of America’s foremost literary figures. The New York Times named Here Is New York one of the ten best books ever written about the metropolis, and the New Yorker called it “the wittiest essay, and one of the most perceptive, ever done on the city.”
Included with this essay are two short poems by E. B. White: “Commuter” and “Critic,” both published in the New Yorker in 1925.
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A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again
- By: David Foster Wallace
- Narrator: Paul Garcia
- Length: 17 hours 46 minutes
- Publisher: Hachette Audio
- Publish date: February 07, 2012
- Language: English
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4.23(32762 ratings)
4.23(32762 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.98 USDIn this exuberantly praised book – a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard aIn this exuberantly praised book – a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner – David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.... Read more -
The Traces
- By: Mairead Small Staid
- Narrator: Carlotta Brentan
- Length: 7 hours 25 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.22(9 ratings)
4.22(9 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0016.95 USDThe Traces is a ranging inquiry into the seductions of memory and travel, the fragile paradox of desire, and the art of making meaning from a life. Mairead Small Staid’s debut, The Traces, is a work of memoir and criticism that explores theThe Traces is a ranging inquiry into the seductions of memory and travel, the fragile paradox of desire, and the art of making meaning from a life.
Mairead Small Staid’s debut, The Traces, is a work of memoir and criticism that explores the nature of happiness in art, literature, and philosophy, structured around a season spent in Italy and a reading of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities.
Poised between plummeting depressions, the author considers the intellectual merits of joy and the redeeming promise offered by the beauty, both natural and manmade, that surrounds her. Traveling from Florence to Rome to Capri, The Traces draws on the fields of physics, history, architecture, and cartography, spurred by thinkers from Aristotle and Montaigne to Cesare Pavese and Anne Carson.
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This Is One Way to Dance
- By: Sejal Shah
- Narrator: Priya Ayyar
- Length: 4 hours 53 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2022
- Language: English
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4.17(295 ratings)
4.17(295 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDA powerful meditation on identity and belonging, Sejal Shah explores the tension of being both invisible and hyper-visible in a country that struggles with race. The daughter of immigrants from Indian and Kenya, Shah wrestles with her experiencesA powerful meditation on identity and belonging, Sejal Shah explores the tension of being both invisible and hyper-visible in a country that struggles with race. The daughter of immigrants from Indian and Kenya, Shah wrestles with her experiences growing up in–and returning to–western New York, an area of stark racial and socioeconomic segregation. Her work illuminates how we are all marked by family and place; by the limits of our bodies; by our losses and regrets; by who and what we love; by our ambivalences and our silences. This is a book about growing up Indian in non-Indian places, about what it means to be American, South Asian American, a writer of color, and a feminist. Shah considers the implications of being asked where are you from–the geographic and cultural distances between people, how these gaps are imagined and real, constructed and changing. These literary essays will certainly appeal to readers of short stories and poetry as well.
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Desert Oracle
- By: Ken Layne
- Narrator: Ken Layne
- Length: 6 hours 30 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: August 30, 2022
- Language: English
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4.16(473 ratings)
4.16(473 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USDThis program is read by the author, Ken Layne, host of the Desert Oracle radio show. It includes an exclusive first listen to a story from Desert Oracle: Volume 2.The cult-y field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave–itsThis program is read by the author, Ken Layne, host of the Desert Oracle radio show. It includes an exclusive first listen to a story from Desert Oracle: Volume 2.
The cult-y field guide to the strange and intriguing secrets of the Mojave–its myths and legends, outcasts and oddballs, flora, fauna, and UFOs–becomes the definitive, oracular book of the desert.For the past five years, Desert Oracle has existed as a quasi-mythical, quarterly periodical available to the very determined only by subscription or at the odd desert-town gas station or the occasional hipster boutique, its canary-yellow-covered, forty-four-page issues handed from one curious desert zealot to the next, word spreading faster than the printers could keep up with. It became a radio show, a podcast, a live performance. Now, for the first time–and including both classic and new, never-before-seen revelations–Desert Oracle is available as an audiobook.
Straight out of Joshua Tree, California, Desert Oracle is “The Voice of the Desert”: a field guide to the strange tales, singing sand dunes, sagebrush trails, artists and aliens, authors and oddballs, ghost towns and modern legends, musicians and mystics, scorpions and saguaros, out there in the sand. Desert Oracle is your companion at a roadside diner, around a campfire, in your tent or cabin (or high-rise apartment or suburban living room) as the wind and the coyotes howl outside at night.
From journal entries of long-deceased adventurers to stray railroad ad copy, and musings on everything from desert flora, rumored cryptid sightings, and other paranormal phenomena, Ken Layne’s Desert Oracle collects the weird and the wonderful of the American Southwest into a single, essential volume.
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A Macmillan Audio production from MCD Books. -
The Socrates Express
- By: Eric Weiner
- Narrator: Eric Weiner
- Length: 11 hours 20 minutes
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
- Publish date: January 01, 2020
- Language: English
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4.12(1950 ratings)
4.12(1950 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0023.99 USDThe New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss embarks on a rollicking intellectual journey, following in the footsteps of history’s greatest thinkers and showing us how each–from Epicurus to Gandhi, Thoreau toThe New York Times bestselling author of The Geography of Bliss embarks on a rollicking intellectual journey, following in the footsteps of history’s greatest thinkers and showing us how each–from Epicurus to Gandhi, Thoreau to Beauvoir–offers practical and spiritual lessons for today’s unsettled times.
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We turn to philosophy for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty, and to find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope.
Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and travel in a globe-trotting pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling by train (the most thoughtful mode of transport), he journeys thousands of miles, making stops in Athens, Delhi, Wyoming, Coney Island, Frankfurt, and points in between to reconnect with philosophy’s original purpose: teaching us how to lead wiser, more meaningful lives. From Socrates and ancient Athens to Beauvoir and 20th-century Paris, Weiner’s chosen philosophers and places provide important practical and spiritual lessons as we navigate today’s chaotic times.
In a “delightful” odyssey that “will take you places intellectually and humorously” (San Francisco Book Review), Weiner invites us to voyage alongside him on his life-changing pursuit of wisdom and discovery as he attempts to find answers to our most vital questions. The Socrates Express is “full of valuable lessons…a fun, sharp book that draws readers in with its apparent simplicity and bubble-gum philosophy approach and gradually pulls them in deeper and deeper” (NPR). -
Travels
- By: Paul Bowles
- Narrator: Raphael Corkhill
- Length: 17 hours 40 minutes
- Publisher: HarperAudio
- Publish date: September 13, 2022
- Language: English
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4.1(157 ratings)
4.1(157 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0031.99 USD“Bowles is at his best when writing about places. He can evoke a place with a few sure strokes.” —New York Times “His work is art. At his best, Bowles has no peer.” —Time Travels is a thrilling anthology of the“Bowles is at his best when writing about places. He can evoke a place with a few sure strokes.” —New York Times
“His work is art. At his best, Bowles has no peer.” —Time
Travels is a thrilling anthology of the travel writings of Paul Bowles, author of the era-defining post-war novel The Sheltering Sky. The acclaimed essays in Travel–never before collected in a single volume–span more than sixty years and range from Bowles’s early days in Paris to his time spent in Ceylon, Thailand, Kenya, and his expatriate life in Morocco. Insightful, exciting, and evocative, Travels is a stunning collection of rarely seen shorter works–a showcase of the literary artistry of one of the truly great American writers of the twentieth century.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
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The Unseen Body
- By: Jonathan Reisman
- Narrator: Robert Petkoff
- Length: 8 hours 21 minutes
- Publisher: Macmillan Audio
- Publish date: November 09, 2021
- Language: English
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4.04(956 ratings)
4.04(956 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0019.99 USD“Petkoff gives a flawless performance of this doctor/naturalist’s memoir, conveying both his inquisitiveness and assuredness with aplomb.” – AudioFile “A fascinating, lyrical book… Reisman’s experiences in“Petkoff gives a flawless performance of this doctor/naturalist’s memoir, conveying both his inquisitiveness and assuredness with aplomb.” – AudioFile
“A fascinating, lyrical book… Reisman’s experiences in other cultures bring a richness and depth to The Unseen Body. The way he thinks about the body and medicine–the rivers and tributaries, the flowing and unclogging, the top-down organization of the brain–is extraordinary!”
–Mary RoachIn this fascinating journey through the human body and across the globe, Dr. Reisman weaves together stories about our insides with a unique perspective on life, culture, and the natural world.
Jonathan Reisman, M.D.–a physician, adventure traveler and naturalist–brings listeners on an odyssey navigating our insides like an explorer discovering a new world with The Unseen Body. With unique insight, Reisman shows us how understanding mountain watersheds helps to diagnose heart attacks, how the body is made mostly of mucus, not water, and how urine carries within it a tale of humanity’s origins.
Through his offbeat adventures in healthcare and travel, Reisman discovers new perspectives on the body: a trip to the Alaskan Arctic reveals that fat is not the enemy, but the hero; a stint in the Himalayas uncovers the boundary where the brain ends and the mind begins; and eating a sheep’s head in Iceland offers a lesson in empathy. By relating rich experiences in far-flung lands and among unique cultures back to the body’s inner workings, he shows how our organs live inextricably intertwined lives–an internal ecosystem reflecting the natural world around us.
Reisman offers a new and deeply moving perspective, and helps us make sense of our bodies and how they work in a way listeners have never before imagined.
A Macmillan Audio production from Flatiron Books
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This Is Portland, 2nd Edition
- By: Alexander Barrett
- Narrator: Alexander Barrett
- Length: 1 hours 5 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2018
- Language: English
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3.99(3 ratings)
3.99(3 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDCaptures the emotional experience of Portland, Oregon A first-hand look at a city that people can’t seem to stop talking about. It’s a guidebook of sorts, but not to restaurants and sightseeing. Instead, Alexander Barrett is yourCaptures the emotional experience of Portland, Oregon
A first-hand look at a city that people can’t seem to stop talking about. It’s a guidebook of sorts, but not to restaurants and sightseeing. Instead, Alexander Barrett is your friendly guide to the quirky characters and atmosphere of Portland, Oregon, and how fun, beautiful, and ridiculous it can be. With its approachable, often hilarious tone, this book is perfect for anyone who wants to learn more about bikes, beards, beers, rain, and everything else important about the city you’ve heard you should like. The expanded second edition of this popular book is sure to delight!
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A Stranger’s Pose
- By: Emmanuel Iduma
- Length: 4 hours 3 minutes
- Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
- Publish date: May 18, 2021
- Language: English
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3.87(117 ratings)
3.87(117 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0012.99 USDA Stranger’s Pose is an evocative and mesmerising account of travels across different African cities. With lyrical and absorbing prose, Emmanuel invites the reader to share in his travels, and the encounters he made along the way. AlongsideA Stranger’s Pose is an evocative and mesmerising account of travels across different African cities. With lyrical and absorbing prose, Emmanuel invites the reader to share in his travels, and the encounters he made along the way.
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Alongside these depictions of new places and people is a compelling, and very personal, meditation on the meaning of home, and the importance of intimacy to a lone traveller. Through these vignettes–an arrest in a market in N’djamena,
meeting the famed photographer Malick Sidibe in Bamako, speaking with a migrant in Tangier who says “the sea is the only way,”–Emmanuel showcases the generosity of strangers, the power of language and translation, and much more. -
Mark Twain’s Letters from Hawaii
- By: Mark Twain
- Narrator: McAvoy Layne
- Length: 3 hours 8 minutes
- Publisher: Blackstone Publishing
- Publish date: January 01, 2004
- Language: English
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3.59(110 ratings)
3.59(110 ratings)Regular Price:Try for $0.0014.95 USDThe Huck Finn of foreign correspondents provides a colorful account of old Honolulu, the island nobility, the City of Refuge on the Kona coast, and the active volcano of Kilauea. These selections of Mark Twain’s newspaper dispatches are bothThe Huck Finn of foreign correspondents provides a colorful account of old Honolulu, the island nobility, the City of Refuge on the Kona coast, and the active volcano of Kilauea. These selections of Mark Twain’s newspaper dispatches are both charming and informative. The light touch of the great humorist is seldom missing as he reveals the “loveliest fleet of islands that lie anchored in any ocean.” This recording evokes the historical era with the eye of a verbal artist and the voice of the performing artist.
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The End of the Golden Gate
- Narrator: Matt Yang King
- Length: 7 hours 28 minutes
- Publisher: Chronicle Books
- Publish date: May 25, 2021
- Language: English
Regular Price:Try for $0.0017.99 USDNATIONAL BESTSELLER! Capturing an ever-changing San Francisco, 25 acclaimed writers tell their stories of living in one of the most mesmerizing cities in the world.Over the last few decades, San Francisco has experienced radical changes with theNATIONAL BESTSELLER! Capturing an ever-changing San Francisco, 25 acclaimed writers tell their stories of living in one of the most mesmerizing cities in the world.
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Over the last few decades, San Francisco has experienced radical changes with the influence of Silicon Valley, tech companies, and more. Countless articles, blogs, and even movies have tried to capture the complex nature of what San Francisco has become, a place millions of people have loved to call home, and yet are compelled to consider leaving. In this beautifully written collection, writers take on this Bay Area-dweller’s eternal conflict: Should I stay or should I go?
Including an introduction written by Gary Kamiya and essays from Margaret Cho, W. Kamau Bell, Michelle Tea, Beth Lisick, Daniel Handler, Bonnie Tsui, Stuart Schuffman, Alysia Abbott, Peter Coyote, Alia Volz, Duffy Jennings, John Law, and many more, The End of the Golden Gate is a penetrating journey that illuminates both what makes San Francisco so magnetizing and how it has changed vastly over time, shapeshifting to become something new for each generation of city dwellers.
With essays chronicling the impact of the tech-industry invasion and the evolution, gentrification, and radical cost of living that has transformed San Francisco’s most beloved neighborhoods, these prescient essayists capture the lasting imprint of the 1960s counterculture movement, as well as the fight to preserve the art, music, and other creative movements that make this forever the city of love.
For anyone considering moving to San Francisco, wishing to relive the magic of the city, or anyone experiencing the sadness of leaving the bay–and ultimately, for anyone that needs a reminder of why we stay.
Bound to be a long-time staple of San Francisco literature, anyone who has lived in or is currently living in San Francisco will enjoy the rich history of the city within these pages and relive intimate memories of their own.
* GIVING BACK TO THE COMMUNITY: A percentage of the proceeds will be given to charities that help those in the bay experiencing homelessness. Every copy purchased offers a small way to help those in need.
Cliff Weitzman
Cliff Weitzman is a dyslexia advocate and the CEO and founder of Speechify, the #1 text-to-speech app in the world, totaling over 100,000 5-star reviews and ranking first place in the App Store for the News & Magazines category. In 2017, Weitzman was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for his work making the internet more accessible to people with learning disabilities. Cliff Weitzman has been featured in EdSurge, Inc., PC Mag, Entrepreneur, Mashable, among other leading outlets.
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