The Vagabond's Way: 366 Meditations on Wanderlust, Discovery, and the Art of Travel

“Thought-provoking, encouraging, and inspiring” (Gretchen Rubin) reflections on the power of travel to transform our daily lives—from the iconoclastic travel writer, scholar, and author of Vagabonding\nFor readers who dream of travel, yearn to get back out on the road, or want to enrich a journey they’re currently on, The Vagabond’s Way explores and celebrates the life-altering essence of travel. Each day of the year features a one-page meditation on an aspect of the journey, anchored by words of wisdom from a variety of thinkers—from Stoic philosopher Seneca and poet Maya Angelou to Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Grover from Sesame Street.\nIconoclastic travel writer and scholar Rolf Potts embraces the ragged-edged, harder-to-quantify aspects of travel that inevitably change travelers’ lives for the better in unexpected ways. The book’s various sections mirror the phases of a trip, including\n• dreaming and planning the journey: “All life-affecting journeys—and the unexpected wonders they promise—become real the moment you decide they will happen.” 
• embracing the rhythms of the journey: “The most poignant experiences on the road occur in those quiet moments when we recognize beauty in the ordinary.” 
• finding richer travel experiences: “Developing an instinct to venture beyond the obvious on the road allows you to see places as mysteries to be investigated.” 
• expanding your comfort zone: “No moment of instant gratification can compare to savoring an experience that has been earned by enduring the adversity that comes with it.”\nThe Vagabond’s Way encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren’t able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.

Potts, Rolf

Religion & Spirituality

Ballantine Books

“Thought-provoking, encouraging, and inspiring” (Gretchen Rubin) reflections on the power of travel to transform our daily lives—from the iconoclastic travel writer, scholar, and author of Vagabonding\nFor readers who dream of travel, yearn to get back out on the road, or want to enrich a journey they’re currently on, The Vagabond’s Way explores and celebrates the life-altering essence of travel all year long. Each day of the year features a meditation on an aspect of the journey, anchored by words of wisdom from a variety of thinkers—from Stoic philosopher Seneca and poet Maya Angelou to Trappist monk Thomas Merton and Grover from Sesame Street.\nIconoclastic travel writer and scholar Rolf Potts embraces the ragged-edged, harder-to-quantify aspects of travel that inevitably change travelers’ lives for the better in unexpected ways. The book’s various sections mirror the phases of a trip, including\n• dreaming and planning the journey: “All life-affecting journeys—and the unexpected wonders they promise—become real the moment you decide they will happen.” 
• embracing the rhythms of the journey: “The most poignant experiences on the road occur in those quiet moments when we recognize beauty in the ordinary.” 
• finding richer travel experiences: “Developing an instinct to venture beyond the obvious on the road allows you to see places as mysteries to be investigated.” 
• expanding your comfort zone: “No moment of instant gratification can compare to savoring an experience that has been earned by enduring the adversity that comes with it.”\nThe Vagabond’s Way encourages you to sustain the mindset of a journey, even when you aren’t able to travel, and affirms that travel is as much a way of being as it is an act of movement.

With a new foreword by Tim Ferriss • “Vagabonding easily remains in my top-10 list of life-changing books. Why? Because one incredible trip, especially a long-term trip, can change your life forever. And Vagabonding teaches you how to travel (and think), not just for one trip, but for the rest of your life.”—Tim Ferriss, from the foreword There’s nothing like vagabonding: taking time off from your normal life—from six weeks to four months to two years—to discover and experience the world on your own terms. In this one-of-a-kind handbook, veteran travel writer Rolf Potts explains how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel. Now completely revised and updated, Vagabonding is an accessible and inspiring guide to • financing your travel time • determining your destination • adjusting to life on the road • working and volunteering overseas • handling travel adversity • re-assimilating back into ordinary life Praise for Vagabonding “A crucial reference for any budget wanderer.”—Time “The book is a meditation on the joys of hitting the road. . . . It’s also a primer for those with a case of pent-up wanderlust seeking to live the dream.”—USA Today “I couldn’t put this book down. It’s a whole different ethic of travel. . . . [Potts’s] practical advice might just convince you to enjoy that open-ended trip of a lifetime.”—Rick Steves “Potts wants us to wander, to explore, to embrace the unknown, and, finally, to take our own damn time about it. I think this is the most sensible book of travel-related advice ever written.”—Tim Cahill, founding editor of Outside

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

Travel

Reference

Villard Books

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. 
For as long as people have traveled to distant lands, they have brought home objects to certify the journey. More than mere merchandise, these travel souvenirs take on a personal and cultural meaning that goes beyond the object itself. Drawing on several millennia of examples-from the relic-driven quests of early Christians, to the mass-produced tchotchkes that line the shelves of a Disney gift shop-travel writer Rolf Potts delves into a complicated history that explores issues of authenticity, cultural obligation, market forces, human suffering, and self-presentation. Souvenirs are shown for what they really are: not just objects, but personalized forms of folk storytelling that enable people to make sense of the world and their place in it.'
Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.
Souvenir features illustrations by Cedar Van Tassel

Souvenir (Object Lessons)

Bloomsbury Academic

Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is a collection of rollicking travel tales from a young writer USA Today has called Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age.” For the past ten years, Rolf Potts has taken his keen postmodern travel sensibility into the far fringes of five continents for such prestigious publications as National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, and The New York Times Magazine. This book documents his boldest, funniest, and most revealing journeysfrom getting stranded without water in the Libyan desert, to crashing the set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in Thailand, to learning the secrets of Tantric sex in a dubious Indian ashram.Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is more than just an entertaining journey into fascinating corners of the world. The book is a unique window into travel writing, with each chapter containing a commentary track”endnotes that reveal the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale. Offbeat and insightful, this book is an engrossing read for students of travel writing as well as armchair wanderers.

Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer

Travel Writing

Travelers' Tales

At the outset of summer in 1990, a Houston gangsta rap group called the Geto Boys was poised to debut its self-titled third album under the guidance of hip-hop guru Rick Rubin. What might have been a low-profile remix release from a little-known corner of the rap universe began to make headlines when the album's distributor refused to work with the group, citing its violent and depraved lyrics. When The Geto Boys was finally released, chain stores refused to stock it, concert promoters canceled the group's performances, and veteran rock critic Robert Christgau declared the group "sick motherfuckers." One quarter of a century later the album is considered a hardcore classic, having left an immutable influence on gangsta rap, horrorcore, and the rise of Southern hip-hop. Charting the rise of the Geto Boys from the earliest days of Houston's rap scene, Rolf Potts documents a moment in music history when hip-hop was beginning to replace rock as the transgressive sound of American youth. In creating an album that was both sonically innovative and unprecedentedly vulgar, the Geto Boys were accomplishing something that went beyond music. To paraphrase a sentiment from Don DeLillo, this group of young men from Houston's Fifth Ward ghetto had figured out the "language of being noticed" - which is, in the end, the only language America understands.

Geto Boys' The Geto Boys (33 1/3)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher*
Unexpected stories from unexpected places.
Many places can feel like nowhere: a desert, an isolated village, even the middle of a bustling, impersonal city. And then something happens: an adventure, a revelation, an experience that changes the whole landscape. The discovery that every place is the centre of the world to somebody and has its own riches and wonders. The authors of these 30 real-life tales find passion, surprise and illumination in the middle of Borneo or Beijing, in a Mayan mountain village, along a timeworn trail in Tuscany, on an isolated South Pacific island, or under a desert moon in Mali.
These richly varied stories all celebrate and illuminate one simple truth: if we embark on each adventure with an open heart and an open mind, travel will take us places we never planned to go, and enrich and enlighten us in ways we never otherwise would have known.
Featuring stories by: Anthony Sattin, Danny Wallace, Jason Elliot, Pam Houston, Ralph Potts, Pico Iyer, Tim Cahill, Simon Winchester
About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel.
TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category
'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times
'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) 
*#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

Lonely Planet Tales from Nowhere (Lonely Planet Travel Literature)

WINCHESTER, Simon

Houston, Pam

IYER, PICO

George, Don

Elliot, Jason

Sattin, Anthony

Wallace, Danny

Cahill, Tim.

Lonely Planet

The Irresponsible Traveller is a light but edgy collection of true tales about the stickiest situations in which travel writers and travel celebrities have found themselves over the years. From being chased by a sea lion to being accosted by Brazilian kidnappers, these are the scrapes they'll never forget – whether entertaining, amusing or downright terrifying. Publishing to coincide with Bradt's 40th anniversary, this collection of short stories comes from a hand-picked selection of contributors who have had special connections with Bradt over the years.

Irresponsible Traveller: Tales of Scrapes and Narrow Escapes

PALIN, Michael

Ammon et al, Christina

MURPHY, DERVLA

Bradt Travel Guides

Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is a collection of rollicking travel tales from a young writer USA Today has called Jack Kerouac for the Internet Age.” For the past ten years, Rolf Potts has taken his keen postmodern travel sensibility into the far fringes of five continents for such prestigious publications as National Geographic Traveler, Salon.com, and The New York Times Magazine. This book documents his boldest, funniest, and most revealing journeysfrom getting stranded without water in the Libyan desert, to crashing the set of a Leonardo DiCaprio movie in Thailand, to learning the secrets of Tantric sex in a dubious Indian ashram. Marco Polo Didn’t Go There is more than just an entertaining journey into fascinating corners of the world. The book is a unique window into travel writing, with each chapter containing a commentary track”endnotes that reveal the ragged edges behind the experience and creation of each tale. Offbeat and insightful, this book is an engrossing read for students of travel writing as well as armchair wanderers.

Marco Polo Didn't Go There: Stories and Revelations from One Decade as a Postmodern Travel Writer (Travelers' Tales Guides)

La très mirifique et déchirante histoire de l'homme qui inventa le livre de poche

INCULTEDERMARGE

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