When I was a youngster, my parents took me on 6-week journeys across the United States by car. We'd stop in a small town each night, and I would explore on foot and meet other kids at the swimming pool or ice cream shop. That slow mode of travel has become my default, and I've spent years exploring back roads, small towns, and bywaters by car, bicycle, and sailboat. I write about the strangers I've found and the "candy" I've gotten from them: strangers have lessons for all of us and are not as dangerous as we've been told.
Peter set out during the Vietnam War era to walk all the way across the United States with only a camera, a backpack, and a dog. His books, which I read as a teenager, brought fascinating strangers into my world and taught me how much those strangers can change our lives. Thanks to Peter's writing, I've always felt safe talking to strangers, and I seek them out to find out who they are and what their lives are like.
Twenty-five years ago, a disillusioned young man set out on a walk across America. This is the book he wrote about that journey -- a classic account of the reawakening of his faith in himself and his country.
"I started out searching for myself and my country," Peter Jenkins writes, "and found both." In this timeless classic, Jenkins describes how disillusionment with society in the 1970s drove him out onto the road on a walk across America. His experiences remain as sharp and telling today as they were twenty-five years ago -- from the timeless secrets of life, learned from…
Sometimes, when we read history, it seems so dry and different from our own lives that it's hard to comprehend. In the 1920s and 30s, June Burn homesteaded on an island in the San Juans, lived in Alaska, and traveled across the country with a donkey cart. Yet I can envision myself in her adventurous life because her views were so much like my own. She was a feminist and a strong, brave woman who used her writing as an excuse to talk to strangers.
Courage, gaiety, and a fresh approach to life are reflected in this unconventional autobiography. It is a story of twentieth-century pioneers as resourceful as ever they were in the days of the old frontier. June Burn and her husband Farrar determined to go their own sweet way, enjoying first hand living and not surrendering to the routines of a workaday world. Through the years they had some high and glorious adventures, which included homesteading a gumdrop in the San Juan Islands of the Pacific Northwest, teaching Eskimos near Siberia, and exploring the United States by donkey cart with a baby…
Bold, funny, and shockingly honest, Ambidextrous is like no other memoir of 1950s urban childhood.
Picano appears to his parents and siblings to be a happy, cheerful eleven-year-old possessed of the remarkable talent of being able to draw beautifully and write fluently with either hand. But then he runs into…
Richard Feynman was a complete original, a brilliant scientist who lived life on his own terms. His curiosity is contagious, and he uses humor in his memoir to talk about all the people he encountered throughout his life, both in the US and overseas. He makes even the most highly-educated scientists sound fun and approachable! Curiosity is a key element in talking to strangers, and sometimes I think he had more than anyone else who ever lived.
Richard P. Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize in physics, thrived on outrageous adventures. In this lively work that "can shatter the stereotype of the stuffy scientist" (Detroit Free Press), Feynman recounts his experiences trading ideas on atomic physics with Einstein and cracking the uncrackable safes guarding the most deeply held nuclear secrets-and much more of an eyebrow-raising nature. In his stories, Feynman's life shines through in all its eccentric glory-a combustible mixture of high intelligence, unlimited curiosity, and raging chutzpah.
Included for this edition is a new introduction by Bill Gates.
Leaving his wife at home, Steinbeck outfitted a camper in the 1950s and took off on an extended adventure with a large standard poodle named Charley. He was already a famous, award-winning author by this time, so it was easy for him to find people to talk to and learn what was going on across the United States. Although the book was intended for adults, I read it as a child, so I assumed that easygoing encounters with strangers were normal for everyone!
An intimate journey across America, as told by one of its most beloved writers
To hear the speech of the real America, to smell the grass and the trees, to see the colors and the light-these were John Steinbeck's goals as he set out, at the age of fifty-eight, to rediscover the country he had been writing about for so many years.
With Charley, his French poodle, Steinbeck drives the interstates and the country roads, dines with truckers, encounters bears at Yellowstone and old friends in San Francisco. Along the way he reflects on the American character, racial hostility, the…
The Road from Belhaven is set in 1880s Scotland. Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small girl that she can see the future. But she soon realises that she must keep her gift a secret. While she can sometimes glimpse…
In this novel, a pregnant teenager gets abandoned in a small town where she doesn't know anyone. She begins connecting with strangers, one at a time, studying them and deciding which ones are safe to talk to. Eventually, the main character has built a complete support network for herself and her child. I love the way author Billie Letts describes the process of talking to strangers and connecting with them until they become some of our closest friends. It's the same way I get candy from strangers in real life.
A 17-year-old pregnant girl heading for Califonia with her boyfriend finds herself stranded at a Wal-Mart in Oklahoma, with just $7.77 in change. But she's about to be helped by a group of down-to-earth, deeply caring people, including a bible-thumping nun and an eccentric librarian.
Full-time adventurer Margaret Meps Schulte strikes up conversations with laughing, crying, boozing, and topless strangers across the USA and beyond. Their stories, and the resulting hijinks, are her candy, rewards for breaking the rules about talking to strangers. Schulte brings unlikely real people into the light, from Betty, the vivacious mayor of a small town in Newfoundland, to Boopsie, a skinny-dipping breast cancer survivor. With over 100 illustrations by the author, these humorous, heartwarming tales will inspire readers of all ages to talk to strangers and meet new people.
When two brothers discover a 300-year-old sausage-curing cabin on the side of a Slovenian mountain, it's love at first sight. But 300-year-old cabins come with 300 problems.
Dormice & Moonshine is the true story of an Englishman seduced by Slovenia. In the wake of a breakup, he seeks temporary refuge…
An Italian Feast celebrates the cuisines of the Italian provinces from Como to Palermo. A culinary guide and book of ready reference meant to be the most comprehensive book on Italian cuisine, and it includes over 800 recipes from the 109 provinces of Italy's 20 regions.
