A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail - Hardcover

Bryson, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0767902513 ISBN 13: 9780767902519

Publisher: Broadway Books, 1998

Synopsis

Published on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Appalachian Trail, a wry account by the author of The Lost Continent traces an adventurous trek past the trail's natural pleasures, human eccentrics, and offbeat comforts. $150,000 first printing. Tour.

About this title

Review:

Bill Bryson has made a living out of travelling and then writing about it. In The Lost Continent he re-created the road trips of his childhood; in Neither Here nor There he retraced the route he followed as a young backpacker traversing Europe. When this American transplant to Britain decided to return home, he made a farewell walking tour of the British countryside and produced Notes from a Small Island. Once back on American soil and safely settled in New Hampshire, Bryson once again hears the siren call of the open road--only this time it's a trail. The Appalachian Trail, to be exact. In A Walk in the Woods Bill Bryson tackles what is, for him, an entirely new subject: the American wilderness. Accompanied only by his old college friend Stephen Katz, Bryson starts out one March morning in north Georgia, intending to walk the entire 2,100 miles to the trail's end atop Maine's Mount Katahdin.

If nothing else, A Walk in the Woods is proof positive that the journey is the destination. As Bryson and Katz haul their out-of-shape, middle-aged bodies over hill and dale, the reader is treated to both a very funny personal memoir and a delightful chronicle of the trail, the people who created it, and the places it passes through. Whether you plan to make a trip like this one yourself one day or only care to read about it, A Walk in the Woods is a great way to spend an afternoon. --Alix Wilber

Review:

'Short of doing it yourself, the best way of escaping into nature is to read a book like A Walk in the Woods ... Mr Bryson has met this challenge with zest and considerable humor ... a funny book, full of dry humor ... the reader is rarely anything but exhilarated.' (The New York Times)

'This is a seriously funny book.' (The Sunday Times)

'Entertaining and often illuminating.' (The Sunday Telegraph)

About this edition

• Publisher: Broadway Books
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0767902513
• ISBN 13: 9780767902519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 274