* indicates a book that appears in our feature "Around the World in 80+ Books"published in the April 2002 issue of National Geographic Traveler.
Canada
Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw,by Will Ferguson (2004). This collection of essays about Ferguson's travels to the little known or undervalued bits of Canada—Churchill, Manitoba; Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan; Thunder Bay, Ontario—benefits from the Canadian humorist's dry wit. If you like Bill Bryson, you'll like Ferguson's pointed musings on what defines Canada and what it means to be Canadian.
*Chasing Monarchs: Migrating with the Butterflies of Passage, by Robert Michael Pyle (1999). Monarchs are well-traveled, so peripatetic readers would be wise to take wing with lyrical lepidopterist Pyle as he trails monarchs south from their breeding grounds in British Columbia; down the Columbia, Snake, Bear, and Colorado Rivers; across the Bonneville Salt Flats; to the Mexican border; and finally up the California coast.
Consumption,by Kevin Patterson (2007). Victoria knows only the nomadic Inuit life—until she is hospitalized at age 10 in a Manitoba sanatorium for tuberculosis. When she finally returns home after six years, she finds her family now living in Rankin Inlet on the Hudson Bay but feels a stranger to both her family and her culture. Patterson, who worked as a doctor in the Arctic, paints a fascinating portrait of modern Arctic life, where walrus hunting and sled dogs coexist with satellite TV and convenience foods.
Kamouraska, by Anne Hébert (1973). Set in a small 19th-century Quebec town, this based-on-real-life thriller has a seemingly submissive wife plotting with her American lover to murder her husband. Hébert is one of Canada's most lauded writers.
The Shipping News,by Annie Proulx (1993). After tragedy befalls his unfaithful wife, a desperate father relocates with his children and an elderly aunt to a remote harbor on the coast of Newfoundland. The icy, gray fishing village is filled with a cast of unforgettable townies that paints a picture of life in Canada's far-flung reaches. This novel is a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner.
The Stone Diaries,by Carol Shields (1993). The Tyndall-stone municipal buildings of Winnipeg and southern Manitoba's rural towns inform Shields's Pulitzer Prize-winning fictional autobiography of an "ordinary" middle-class wife and mother whose life spans the 20th century.
Vancouver,by David Cruise and Alison Griffiths (2003). A richly imagined novel penned by a husband and wife team traces thousands of years of Canadian history through the shared stories of an epic cast of characters. Invoking Native American whalers, Chinese immigrants, Russian explores, trappers, and fishermen, Vancouver recounts the city's distinct culture, stunning landscape, and adventurous past.
The Crystal Frontier,by Carlos Fuentes (1995). One of the best known Mexican writers, Carlos Fuentes makes a powerful social commentary in these nine fictional stories, capturing how his country's tumultuous relationship with the U.S. impacts Mexicans of every class.
God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madre,by Richard Grant (2008). Just south of the U.S. border is Mexico's Sierra Madre range, a dangerous region known as one of the largest drug-producing areas in the world. Journalist Grant relates how he survived his journey there in this adventure tale.
In the Sierra Madre,by Jeff Biggers (2006). The Sierra Madre—Pancho Villa's hiding place and a land of intrigue—is home to some of Mexico's most isolated indigenous cultures. Biggers lived among one of these groups, the Raramuri, for almost a year, getting an insider's look at their struggle to maintain their way of life amid tourists, drug traffickers, and loggers, who have also discovered the labyrinthine canyons of the Sierra Madre.
The Life and Times of Mexico,by Earl Shorris (2004). Shorris' award-winning book is a non-fiction narrative spanning 3,000 years of Mexican history, art, and politics. From the Spanish Invasion to the Dirty War of the 1970s, Shorris gives readers an insider's understanding of how Mexico came to be what it is today.
Mexico: A Traveler's Literary Companion,edited by C.M. Mayo (2006). This compilation of stories from many of Mexico's noted writers provides an insider's look at the people of the deserts, mountains, and jungles that make up this diverse country.
Mexico Feast and Ferment,by Tom Owen Edmunds (1992). From ghoulish festivities on the Day of the Dead celebrated countrywide, to the quiet of dawn in the small town of Jalisco, Edmunds' photography captures the reality of Mexico. Rather than spring-breakers and tequila shots, in Edmunds' Mexico you'll see the honest faces of Mexico's people.
Oaxaca Journal,by Oliver Sacks (2002). Neurologist Oliver Sacks, best known for his books The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, is also a major fan of ferns. In Oaxaca Journal, Sacks travels to southern Mexico on a "fern foray" that sidetracks into rich descriptions of Oaxacan culture, cuisine, and history.
Stones for Ibarra,by Harriet Doerr (1978). Doerr's first novel relates how an American couple, Richard and Sara Everton, set out from San Francisco for Ibarra, "a declining village of one thousand souls" in Mexico. The Evertons, the only foreigners in the town, hope to restore an ancestral house and copper mine. The mundane details of Mexican village life are cast in new light in this affectionate portrait.
*Blue Highways: A Journey into America,by William Least Heat-Moon (1982). After losing his job, the author embarks on a 13,000-mile (20,920-kilometer) trip down America's back roads, into forgotten nooks and crannies from the South to the Pacific Northwest. The characters he meets make the journey come alive. As Robert Penn Warren said of Least Heat-Moon: "He has a genius for finding people who have not even found themselves."
Cross Country, by Robert Sullivan (2006). The Road Trip: A quintessential and uniquely American rite-of-passage. Join Robert Sullivan as he drives from Oregon to New York with his wife and two children. Sullivan's musings on the cultural history and symbolism of the road trip evoke great western landscapes as well as seedy truck stop fast-food joints. In his funny and moving way, Sullivan gives the impression that the only thing larger than America's Great Plains is the bonding that occurs on a trip across them.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After 20 Years Away, by Bill Bryson (1999). After living in England for two decades, expatriate Bryson relocates to Hanover, New Hampshire, and documents his return in this collection of humorous essays. Bryson provides an insider/outsider point of view on classic Americana like motels, malls, and diners.
*The Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America,by Bill Bryson (1989). An appropriate update of Steinbeck's search for idyllic America, Bryson's journey from his native Des Moines across dozens of states reads like a hilariously bitchy postcard. Bryson articulates those nasty thoughts we've all had while driving past strip malls, but in the end his unsentimental love of "Americanness" is what rises to the top.
My Antonia, by Willa Cather (1918). As a boy, orphan Jim Burden travels by train from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. There, he meets and becomes enthralled with Antonia, a young Bohemian immigrant, as they explore the frontier landscape together: "The grass was the country, as the water is the sea …. There was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to be running."
On the Road,by Jack Kerouac (1957). The soul of the Beat movement, Kerouac's coast-to-coast drama is the ultimate travel book. From New York jazz joints to small-town Virginia diners, the characters' quest for personal freedom leads the reader to all corners of American life.
Portraits of America,by William Albert Allard, foreword by Richard Ford (2001). Allard's photographs celebrate cowboys, jazz musicians, Amish farmers, and others who make up small-town America. His quiet images masterfully capture the American spirit that pervades baseball stadiums and bars alike.
The Roads Taken: Travels Through America's literary Landscapes,by Fred Setterberg (1993). Travel writer Setterberg takes readers on a literary ramble through history, with visits to Thoreau's Maine woods; Hemingway's Michigan; Zora Neale Hurston's voodoo-soaked New Orleans; Willa Cather's Nebraska hometown; and Mark Twain's Nevada newspaper stomping grounds. Along the way, he muses on nature, memory, and the national character as seen through the eyes of America's greatest writers and most striking landscapes.
*Travels with Charley: In Search of America,by John Steinbeck (1961). "When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would cure this itch," Steinbeck begins. The itch in question went unscratched until, at 58, he launched a road trip from Maine to California—accompanied by his poodle, Charley. The America he discovers surprises both himself and his readers.
Winesburg, Ohio, by Sherwood Anderson (1919). The thread connecting these 24 stories about a fictional Ohio town is nervous local reporter, George Willard. "Nothing quite like it has ever been done in America," raved H. L. Mencken about the collection, which describes the everyday troubles that besiege a cast of simple-minded Midwesterners—"grotesques," as the Ohio-born Anderson called them. With these tales of dusty farmhouses, flocks of chickens, and the pointless musings of lonely men, he became one of the premier storytellers of his generation.
All Aunt Hagar's Children, by Edward P. Jones (2006). Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Jones takes us beyond the pomp and politics of the capital to focus on the everyday lives of African Americans living in Washington, D.C. In 14 stories, he weaves a cast of characters across generations, some still intimately connected to the rural south. In "Tapestry," a newlywed couple journeys north by train, fantasizing about the good fortune that awaits them in the capital, only to be struck by the realities of urban life.
All Over but the Shoutin',by Rick Bragg (1997). Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times feature writer Bragg tells of his impoverished childhood in Piedmont, Alabama. Abandoned by his father at a young age, his family struggled to make ends meet in a place "where grandmothers hold babies on their laps under the stars and whisper in their ears that the lights in the sky are holes in the floor of heaven." From days following his mother to the cotton fields to gigs at small-town newspapers, Bragg forges his identity as a premier southern voice.
All the President's Men,by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (1974). The two reporters who chronicled the Watergate break-in and its ensuing cover-up and exposure detail their journalistic journey through the scandal.
An American Childhood,by Annie Dillard (1987). Dillard's Pittsburgh of the 1950s: brightly-colored streetcars, slate-shingle roofs, a rich industrial history. An ode to her hometown, this classic memoir recounts how, as a young girl, Dillard was fascinated by her surroundings. She writes: "Our Pittsburgh was like Rome, or Jericho, a palimpsest, a sliding pile of cities built ever nearer the sky, and rising ever higher over the rivers. If you dug, you found things."
American Girl: Scenes from a Small-Town Childhood,by Mary Cantwell (1992). Former New York Times editor Cantwell grew up by the sea in Rhode Island in the 1940s and '50s. Her lovely prose—evoking memories of her home on Hope Street in Bristol, the soda fountain, grandma's corsets, and small-town parades—reads like a breath of fresh air. With the author's amused observations of local immigrants, gossips, and snobs, it's also a study in the nuances of American social status.
Appalachian Legacy,by Shelby Lee Adams (1998). Is it exploitation to publish stark images of the poorest mountain folk? What if the subjects of the photos treasure the images? These questions linger as you view the startling portraits in Appalachian Legacy, our favorite in a series of three books by Shelby Lee Adams, which also includes Appalachian Portraits (1993) and Appalachian Lives (2003). Accompanying text—almost as rich as the pictures themselves—tells the often sad stories of the people in the portraits, some of whom Adams has returned to photograph repeatedly over a period of 25 years.
Bastard Out of Carolina,by Dorothy Allison (1992). In this first novel, Allison writes about a poor, country family struggling against their "white trash" label in 1950s Greenville, South Carolina. Though an unvarnished tale that includes family violence and sexual abuse, Allison writes with such delicate empathy that it leads the reader to rethink preconceived ideas of rural America.
The Bostonians,by Henry James (1886). Initially published as a serial in a magazine, this novel is James's intriguing portrayal of a Civil War veteran and lawyer, his Bostonian feminist cousin, and her protégé.
Bread Givers: A Struggle between a Father of the Old World and a Daughter of the New,by Anzia Yezierska (1925). In this authentic tale of Jewish-American immigrant life in the early 1920s, Polish émigrée Anzia Yezierska deftly conjures up the world of New York's Lower East Side. Yezierska's coming-of-age story is rich with descriptions of crowded streets and overpopulated tenement rooms filled with the struggling newly arrived.
The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes, by Langston Hughes (1995). The first collected edition of all 860 poems published by the writer in his lifetime details African-American life. Hughes lived in D.C. with his mother and worked as a busboy at the Wardman Park Hotel.
*Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War,by Tony Horwitz (1998). Witty Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Horwitz spent two years traveling through "the unvanquished South" (Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, the Carolinas, Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama), trying to understand why Americans are still obsessed with the war.
The Dante Club,by Matthew Pearl (2003). A strange killer is on the loose in 19th-century Boston; American literary icons Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes aim to discover his or her identity.
A Death in Belmont,by Sebastian Junger (2006). Junger explores the story of Albert DeSalvo, the man who claimed to be the Boston Strangler. Junger was a baby during the Boston Strangler rape-and-murder spree (1962-64). One victim was a neighbor who was killed during the same time DeSalvo was working on a construction project at the Junger home.
Done Deal,by Les Standiford (1993). The first in a string of satire-laden thrillers features Miami everyman contractor Johnny Deal scrambling to figure out what happened to his wife after her car was forced off a bridge into the Intracoastal Waterway. His search leads him to a gallery of eccentric Florida characters and through settings including Little Havana.
Gone With the Wind, by Margaret Mitchell (1936). Tara—Scarlett O'Hara's fictional childhood home—may be the place most strongly associated with Mitchell's Civil War epic, but the bulk of the action takes place in Atlanta, the author's birthplace. Scarlett moves to Atlanta's Peachtree Street as a war widow and lives through its siege, bombardment, burning, and reconstruction.
The Great Bridge: The Epic Story of the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge,by David McCullough (1983). A book worthy of the mighty bridge it so thoroughly portrays, this nonfiction work brims with memorable details and portraits of key players in this unique New York saga.
Here Is New York,by E.B. White (1949). Originally an essay penned in 1948 for Holiday magazine, this entertainingly quick read speaks of places long gone but still manages to nail New York City's unique modus operandi and unflagging magnetism. John Adams,by David McCullough (2001). The historian's account reads more like a novel (though is entirely nonfiction); watch Adams's rocky relationship with Thomas Jefferson and the love story with his wife, Abigail Adams, unfold, and witness as he transforms from American Revolution zealot to second president of the United States.
Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir, by Anatole Broyard (1993). A stylish literary man who went on to be a New York Times book critic—and one of the most acclaimed essayists of post-World War II times—writes about New York's downtown scene in the late 1940s.
Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler (2005). Mahler evokes a year in the life of New York City: the gritty days of the Son of Sam, Studio 54, a knock-down-drag-out mayoral race, Reggie Jackson, punk rock, prostitutes, lingering racial tensions, and the infamous blackout on a muggy summer night. This is the story of New York, of people sitting on stoops and reading the New York Post. You can practically smell the smoke in the air and hear the crowds at Yankee Stadium. A New York Times notable book of the Year, now an ESPN miniseries.
A Man in Full,by Tom Wolfe (1998). A novel written by one of America's most renowned social satirists, A Man in Full delves into the heart of Atlanta's political and cultural scenes, from mayoral press conferences to Freaknik, a black college spring-break festival held annually in Atlanta.
Miami, by Joan Didion (1987). The prolific writer turns her observant eye and finely tuned prose to noir-like impressions of Latin Miami, focusing on the politics and culture of its Cuban exiles.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,by John Berendt (1994). While this best-selling page-turner reads like a potboiler mystery, it is a true account of a murder in Savannah in the early 1980s. From blue-blood society ladies and drawling southern belles to voodoo priestesses and the memorable Lady Chablis, the characters are as evocative of Savannah as the Spanish moss that drapes the city's trees.
Mystic River,by Dennis Lehane (2001). Three childhood friends in Boston are brought back together by the murder of a daughter and each must face their own demons. This psychological thriller inspired the Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood film.
The Night Gardener,by George Pelecanos (2007). A 14-year-old girl turns up dead in a Washington, D.C. park, and detective Gus Ramone is unable to solve the case; cut to 20 years later and his investigation of a similar style murder, this time of his son's friend. Detective fiction featuring the gritty side of D.C. streets and local characters.
*Old Glory: A Voyage Down the Mississippi,by Jonathan Raban (1981). Not for the first time, a Brit tells us what we need to know about America. Raban's trip in a 16-foot (five-meter) motorboat is part Huckleberry Finn, part Mosquito Coast. "It is as big and depthless as the sky itself," writes Raban of the great river, which he sees as a perfect metaphor for America: vast, rich, unpredictable.
Once Upon a Time When We Were Colored,by Clifton L. Taulbert (1991). Taulbert reminisces about growing up in the segregated cotton town of Glen Allan, Mississippi, in the 1950s. Even as bigotry is present, his account is uplifting and positive in its portrayal of a tight-knit black community. Taulbert is raised by an extended family of "front porch people," strengthened by Sunday services and the success of role models like Jackie Robinson. A vivid and moving account of the Jim Crow south.
On Earth's Furrowed Brow: The Appalachian Farm in Photographs,by Tim Barnwell (2007). Taken over 25 years in the mountains of western North Carolina, eastern Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia, these black-and-white photographs depict a region bathed in the beauty of apple trees, hay bales, and one-room houses. Portraits of local people look beyond hillbilly stereotypes and show them engaged in the everyday activities of planting, shelling beans, and leisure activities that celebrate their rich cultural heritage. Hand-carved fiddles, quilts, split oak baskets, blowguns, and other crafts illustrate the intersection of rural traditions and modern life.
Patriot Games,by Tom Clancy (1987). Clancy's fictional romp set in D.C. features CIA analyst Jack Ryan's attempt to save the Prince and Princess of Wales from a plot on their life, and along the way he encounters Naval cadets, Irish terrorists, and royal offspring. Personal History,by Katharine Graham (1997). Graham details her work as the publisher of the Washington Post, taking over for her husband Philip after his suicide in 1963, and helming the paper through the Watergate '70s to the Clinton-scandal '90s.
The Pine Barrens,by John McPhee (1968). Renowned Princeton essayist and New Yorker contributor McPhee paints a compelling portrait of the largely uninhabited wilderness in south central New Jersey known as the Pine Barrens. With a keen eye for detail, he examines "The Pineys," the small, idiosyncratic community that lives on the land, as well as threats to the wild's preservation.
The Sound and the Fury,by William Faulkner (1929). Faulkner's challenging masterpiece centers on the troubled Compson family of Jefferson, Mississippi, serving as a metaphor for the disintegration of the Old South. Four dysfunctional siblings squabble over the family fortune after the death of their grandmother, including the mentally slow Benjy, neurotic Quentin, greedy Jason, and Caddy, upon whom it falls "to hold that crumbling household together," as Faulkner wrote in the introduction. The fictional town of Jefferson is based on Oxford, near where Faulkner was born.
To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee (1960). In her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Lee sets vivid characters and a gripping story of racial injustice against the backdrop of 1930s small-town Alabama. Lee draws on her own experiences of growing up in Alabama to craft not only a deeply human story about Big Themes but also an intimate portrait of a distinctly Southern town.
Tourist Season, by Carl Hiaasen (1986). The Miami Herald columnist's first in a chain of satirical mysteries with the Sunshine State—particularly Miami—as the endangered backdrop features sleazy businessmen, corrupt politicians, dumb rednecks, crazed exiles, empty-headed tourists, and other plagues on South Florida.
A Turn in the South, by V. S. Naipaul (1989). Naipaul—born in multiracial Trinidad of Indian heritage—brings a fresh, outsider's perspective to the American South. Part travelogue and part oral history, Naipaul holds court with everyone from Bible-thumping politicians to underpaid busboys during his travels through tobacco farms, destitute plantations, and rising metropolises.
Washington, D.C.,by Gore Vidal (1967). This historical novel traces the political fortunes of a conservative senator with presidential aspirations in the time of the New Deal and McCarthy era. Vidal was raised in Washington and attended St. Albans school, attached to the National Cathedral. Waterfront: A Walk Around Manhattan,by Phillip Lopate (2005). An acclaimed essayist and archetypal New Yorker leads readers on a riverside tour of town. He deftly and enjoyably mixes wit and wisdom, covering the cultural, sociological, and historic aspects of the city's perimeter.
Where Peachtree Meets Sweet Auburn: A Saga of Race and Family,by Gary Pomerantz (1996). In this acclaimed work of historical nonfiction, Pomerantz traces the multi-generational history of two eminent Atlanta families, the white Allens and the black Dobbses. Set against the milieu of politicians' ambitions, the intermeshed narratives of the two dynasties prove emblematic of the Peach City's own dazzling metamorphosis into one of the New South's most cosmopolitan urban centers.
Vermont Tradition: The Biography of an Outlook on Life, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher (1953). "To those of us who live here it is as familiar and life giving as air or water, and as difficult to define in terms of human satisfaction . . . the tang of an upland October morning, the taste of a drink from a cold mountain spring," writes Fisher. A novelist and beloved Vermonter, Fisher's ode to the Green Mountain State is an anecdotal history, encapsulating what makes the state unique.
*Bad Land: An American Romance,by Jonathan Raban (1996). There's a brutal beauty to the Dakotas and eastern Montana (a region described on old maps as the "Great American Desert"); the Enlarged Homestead Act of 1909 lured scores of settlers with 320-acre (130-hectare) land grants, but within a few years most had been defeated by drought and desperation. Raban's evocation of the place and its people stands as testimony to the grit and enduring legacy of America's homesteaders.
A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole (1980). In this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Toole captures the absurd and raucous city of New Orleans through his protagonist, the inimitable Ignatius J. Reilly. Obese, unemployed, and living with his mother, Reilly gets a job as a hot dog vendor in the teeming French Quarter, delivering monstrously funny tirades against modern life and embarking on adventures with an unforgettable cast of local characters.
The Coast of Chicago,by Stuart Dybek (1990). A fiction writer and poet, Dybek evokes the gritty projects of his native Chicago in this story collection, chosen by the city-wide book club, One Book, One Chicago. In this patchwork of sharply honed memories, the city emerges as the haunting, magical home of the El Train, the White Sox, and a host of ethnic tenements. Music wafts over the city in "Chopin in Winter," a short story set in 1942 in Dybek's parents' flat on West 18th Street.
The Devil in the White City,by Erik Larson (2003). Based on true events, the book tells the twin stories of Daniel Burnham, architect of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, and H.H. Holmes, a serial killer, depicting the beauty and the horror of Chicago in the late 19th century.
The Grapes of Wrath,by John Steinbeck (1939). A severe drought in the 1930s left the southwestern Great Plains states a sprawling "dust bowl," forcing hundreds of thousands of people to become migrant workers in the struggle for survival. Steinbeck's classic novel remains the most poignant portrait of that migration. He focuses on the tragedies and indomitable spirit of the Joad family, who abandon their Oklahoma farm and travel westward to California looking for work.
Great Plains,by Ian Frazier (1989). This well-researched travelogue by Frazier meanders through 25,000 miles (40,234 kilometers) of prairie—that rich swath of flat land running south from the Dakotas, through Kansas and down toward Oklahoma and Texas—inspiring awe and humor at its vast history and geology. From Native Americans to Bonnie and Clyde, Frazier approaches each subject with contagious enthusiasm and wit. "He treats the land and its stories as gifts to be shared, a kind of potluck to which we're all invited," wrote Newsweek.
The House on Mango Street,by Sandra Cisneros (1988). This acclaimed novella is the coming-of-age tale of Esperanza Cordero in the Latino quarter of Chicago. Here, in 44 spare, often funny vignettes, we see the barrio through her eyes, with all of its colorful traditions, characters, and poverty. She yearns to leave her neighborhood and have a house of her own: "Not a flat. Not an apartment in back. Not a man's house. Not a daddy's. A house all my own."
The Jungle,by Upton Sinclair (1906). Socialist author Sinclair exposes the working conditions in the Chicago stockyards in this classic narrative.
The Liar's Club, by Mary Karr (1995). In this heartfelt memoir, Karr recounts a tumultuous childhood in the East Texas oil town of Leechfield, known for little else but its mosquitoes. In the rough hewn Southern drawl of her youth ("it's raining like a cow pissing on a flat rock"), she paints a picture of life near the Gulf Coast: one filled with religious bookshops, clamoring thunderstorms, and restless kids. From her mentally unstable mother to her lying, drinking father (they divorce and eventually remarry), the author—incredibly—tells of her family dysfunction with a sincere, seemingly effortless humor and affection.
The Time Traveler's Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger (2003). A man time-travels to different periods in his own life in this unusual love story set in Chicago's Newberry Library.
Ask the Dust,by John Fante (1939). A young Los Angeles screenwriter comes to terms with his budding career, set against the backdrop of a love-hate relationship with a Mexican waitress. This novel paints a vivid picture of thirties-era Bunker Hill, then a ritzy neighborhood-turned-slum.
Backcast,by Lou Ureneck (2007). This deeply moving memoir explores two uncharted territories: the wilderness of Alaska, specifically the Kanektok River in the southwestern part of the state, and the wilderness of Parenthood, specifically the region where a recently divorced father and his teenage son try to find new ways to understand each other.
Baghdad by the Bay,by Herb Caen (1949). This collection of essays by the Pulitzer Prize-winning San Francisco newspaper columnist profiles the city, its people, and its landmarks as they were in the 1940s.
The Black Dahlia,by James Ellroy (1987). The great L.A. crime writer's noir novel details the investigation of the torture and death of a beautiful aspiring actress. Ellroy powerfully depicts the gritty landscape of postwar Hollywood.
The Call of the Wild, by Jack London (1903). After the death of his owner, a domesticated dog from California cuts his teeth as the leader of a sled dog team in Alaska during the 1897 Gold Rush. London's adventure tale of hardship and survival in the Klondike races "past the Scales and the timber line, across glaciers and snowdrifts hundreds of feet deep, and over the great Chilcoot Divide, which stands between the salt water and the fresh and guards forbiddingly the sad and lonely North."
*Coming into the Country,by John McPhee (1976). Alaska might be America's least portable state—photographs and travel tales rarely capture the complex sensuality of this frozen zone. But McPhee's passionate detachment brings the variety of Alaska into sharp focus; he spends time among miners, grizzly bears, a young Athabaskan chief, politicians, bush pilots, and durable (if cockeyed) settlers, and paints a picture that stretches from urban culture to pipeline-crossed wilderness to remote Arctic expanses.
A Crack in the Edge of the World: America and the Great California Earthquake of 1906,by Simon Winchester (2005). This work of historical nonfiction by the best-selling storyteller and scholar studies San Francisco's 1906 natural disaster and its aftershocks through time, space, and society.
Daughter of Fortune,by Isabel Allende (1999). In this multicultural, historical novel, our adventurous heroine travels from Chile to gold rush-era San Francisco to search for her lost lover, but she finds herself instead.
*Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness,by Edward Abbey (1968). Abbey delivers a lovably prickly meditation on the Southwest. Living in Utah as a ranger at Arches National Monument left him with an abiding affection for the places conjured here.
The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth (1986). Written entirely in sonnets, this witty social commentary tracks a bevy of young professional Californians, including an aspiring artist, a software executive, a Stanford lawyer, and her troubled brother. A multi-dimensional love story in which rent, pets, religion, and politics divide and conquer the well-meaning lovers, Vikram's best-selling debut novel was described by Publisher's Weekly as full of "comic sallies on feline behavior, bumper stickers, responses to 'personals' ads, and other facets of the contemporary scene as refracted through the California lifestyle."
*The Good Rain: Across Time and Terrain in the Pacific Northwest, by Timothy Egan (1990). Egan's brooding book focuses on his native Washington State and the concerns of the region: timber and loggers, salmon, fruit-growing, urban development, Native Americans, and the Columbia River.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius,by Dave Eggers (2000). In this tender, witty memoir, a young man raises his adolescent brother while exploring San Francisco's Gen-X culture during the '90s.
Historic Photos of Sacramento,by James Scott and Tom Tolley (2007) This coffee-table volume compiles black and white archival photos that capture the events and flavor of the city's transformation from the late 19th century through World War II hardships and its ascent to a historical and political hub of the Golden State.
If You Lived Here, I'd Know Your Name: News from Small-Town Alaska,by Heather Lende (2005). Alaska obit-writer Lende writes about death to celebrate life. Each chapter profiles a birth, wedding, or death that introduces us to the colorful folk of Haines (pop. 2,500), among them the one-legged lady gold miner, the tattooed Presbyterian pastor, and a school principal/Roy Orbison impersonator.
The Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition,ed. by Gary E. Moulton (1983-2001). This 13-volume set chronicles the Lewis and Clark expedition's grueling 1804 journey west across mountains and rivers toward the Pacific. Moulton, a historian at University of Nebraska, provides fascinating footnotes that put the voyage into context. "Lewis and Clark loom over the narrative literature of the West as the Rockies loom over the rivers that run through them. These Journals are to the narrative of the American West as the Iliad is to the epic or as Don Quixote is to the novel," wrote the New York Review of Books.
The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan (1989). This multigenerational novel set in San Francisco's Chinatown and in China details the complex relationships between mothers and daughters, the past and present, and Chinese and American cultures.
A Land Gone Lonesome: An Inland Voyage along the Yukon River,by Dan O'Neill (2006). Alaskan O'Neill chronicles his journey down the Yukon River from Dawson, Yukon Territory, to Circle City, Alaska. As O'Neill writes of his exploration of the northern wilderness, its history and inhabitants, he also retells the lore of the Yukon region—"the original record of human memory in this place."
The Loved One,by Evelyn Waugh (1948). Before Six Feet Under came The Loved One—Waugh's hilarious send-off of the Los Angeles funeral industry. His satire of blithe American attitudes toward sex and romance, of British expats in Los Angeles, and of Hollywood is still scathingly relevant.
The Maltese Falcon,by Dashiell Hammett (1929). San Francisco private-eye Sam Spade investigates his partner's murder, dodges shady characters, and uncovers jewel-encrusted treasure in this classic of hard-boiled detective fiction.
The Man Who Could Fly And Other Stories,by Rudolfo Anaya (2006). In this collection of 18 short stories, spanning 30 years, the many landscapes that make up the American Southwest and Northern Mexico—from deserts to tropical forests—are reflected in the relationships between New Mexico native Anaya's varied characters.
McTeague,by Frank Norris (1899). Inspired by a sensational 1893 murder case, this naturalist novel portrays a dark, violent San Francisco at the turn of the 20th century.
The Oregon Trail: An American Saga, by David Dary (2004). Historian Dary uses a pastiche of historical documents, including journal entries and newspaper accounts, to sketch the history of Oregon's settlement beginning in the 1800s. He introduces a diverse cast of characters—fur traders, missionaries, farmers, gold seekers—and creates an action-packed tale of a great migration through the eyes of the people that lived it.
The Pleasure of My Company,by Steve Martin (2003). This novella chronicling the daily ordeal of a mildly autistic ex-programmer in Santa Monica illustrates that extreme neurosis can exist in sunny Los Angeles, too.
*Roughing It,by Mark Twain (1872). Every American traveler (and Yankee travel writer) rambles in the comforting shadow of Twain, who in 1869 satirized the pretensions of mindless travelers to Europe and the Holy Land in The Innocents Abroad and who here spins a fictionalized recollection of his stagecoach trip through the West and his subsequent adventures in the Pacific. Beneath his genteel demeanor beats the heart of a streetwise original.
Run River,by Joan Didion (1963). Didion wrote her first novel right out of college when she was working at Vogue. This gripping story of marriage, adultery, and murder among the great grandchildren of Western pioneers is set along the banks of her native Sacramento.
The Shadow Catcher,by Marianne Wiggins (2007). In this historical novel, Wiggins turns the lens on the controversial American West photographer Edward Curtis, who snapped the portraits of thousands of Native Americans throughout the early 20th century. Critics argue that he objectified his subjects and virtually deserted his family in pursuit of fame. The protagonist, a woman on a quest to accurately portray Curtis's life, discovers parallels to her own complicated father. With Curtis's photographs interspersed with Wiggins's evocative prose, this book is a delight for anyone wanting to take a profound journey into history, family, and the American imagination.
Skid Road: An Informal Portrait of Seattle,by Murray Morgan (1951). This accessible and engaging history of Seattle's early days stars the infamous characters that founded the city. A must-read if you're visiting downtown, Pioneer Square, or the Capitol Hill neighborhoods.
The Slide Area: Scenes of Hollywood Life,by Gavin Lambert (1959). Narrated by a screenwriter, these short stories provide evocative descriptions of Hollywood, the Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and other distinctive L.A. spots.
Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays,by Joan Didion (1961). If you want to know about California, then you want to read Joan Didion. In this 1960s collection of essays, the Sacramento native captures the counter-culture lifestyle of San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury in the title essay.
Snow Falling on Cedars, by David Guterson (1994). Centered around the murder trial of a Japanese fisherman on a small island in Puget Sound, Guterson's debut novel deals with lingering bitterness and racism in the aftermath of World War II. Forests of stately cedars shrouded in mist serve as the haunting backdrop for this page-turning mystery that travels back in time to reveal the truth about war and loss.
The Swan: Tales of the Sacramento Valley,by Andrew F. O'Hara (2004) Written by a retired California Highway Patrolman, these short stories revolve around everyday people, with the Sacramento Valley as the connecting thread between them.
Tales of the City, by Armistead Maupin (1978). The first in a series of six novels praised for their compassion and humor and set in 1970s San Francisco follows the lives of a young woman, her gay friend, and their transsexual landlord.
Until Proven Guilty,by J. A. Jance (1985). The first in an old-fashioned murder mystery series starring Seattle detective J. P. Beaumont offers an insider's tour of gritty 1960s Seattle.
*Vanishing Breed: Photographs of the Cowboy and the West, by William Albert Allard (1982). Traveler staffers are unabashed photophiles. We love Jack Dykinga's red-rock studies in Desert: The Mojave and Death Valley and Michael Melford's endless landscapes in Big Sky Country: The Best of Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming and Idaho. But there's something 100 percent American about Allard's take on our Western lands that leaves us feeling proudly patriotic.
Wild Yosemite: Personal Accounts of Adventure, Discovery, and Nature,edited by Susan M. Neider (2007). Experience one of the country's first national parks through the eyes of great activists and thinkers. These early writings touch on everything the pristine, 1,200-mile (1,931-kilometer) stretch of wilderness has to offer, from its Giant Sequoias, close calls with avalanches, native birds, and breathtaking views. Frederick Law Olmsted called Yosemite "the greatest glory of nature," and in this volume he is joined by Theodore Roosevelt, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Mark Twain, Horace Greeley, and Sierra Club founder John Muir, who campaigned tirelessly to preserve Yosemite's beauty.
Wild Meat and the Bully Burgers,by Lois-Ann Yamanaka (1996). This debut novel by Hawaii-born Yamanaka chronicles the tumultuous, darkly comic coming of age of Lovey Nariyoshi, a girl from a working-class Japanese-American family in Hilo, Hawaii. Mainstream American ideas of beauty and success permeate 1970s Hawaii, and Nariyoshi feels uncomfortable in her own skin. She is bullied at school and works picking macadamia nuts, all the while daydreaming about living with a haole (white) family. Written in Pidgin, Wild Meat is a collection of vignettes that paint a portrait of the Big Island as a place of cultural contradictions.
The Willow Field,by William Kittredge (2006). The American West: The mere phrase sends the imagination reeling. These seductive landscapes are in good hands in Kittredge's debut novel, complemented by his stark, powerful writing, which explores the ill effects of modernism's encroach on the West through the book's main character, Rossie Benasco. Annie Dillard calls Kittredge "one of our finest writers," and the Washington Post raves that "you'll want to strap on spurs and head out for the territory."
A Yellow Raft in Blue Water, by Michael Dorris (1987). Alternately narrated by three generations of Native American women, this contemporary novel takes place on an Indian reservation in Montana. (Dorris himself was part Modoc and spent portions of his childhood on an eastern Montana reservation.) The perspectives of Rayona, a troubled teenager of mixed race, her mother, and grandmother, are braided together in a story that reveals the complexities of modern Indian life. Rayona's grandmother, known as Aunt Ida, watches soap operas all day and her uncle is killed in Vietnam. Her desire to leave the reservation ultimately leads her back home, where she rediscovers that her identity is tied to land and family.
