New York: Boni & Liveright, (1922). Hardcover first edition - A fascinating account of a trip by two suffragists (the author and her friend Charlotte Jordan) from Ohio to Death Valley - the heart of the Mohave - Although women had won the right to vote, their activism for women's rights had not ended, but they decided they needed a vacation: "Charlotte and I knew the outdoors a little. Though we were middle-aged, mothers of families and deeply involved in the historic struggle for the vote, we sometimes looked at the sky. . . I had some not altogether contemptible peaks to my credit and she had canoed in the Canadian wilds, so when we decided that a vacation was due us we chose the outdoors." As they passed through the Mojave on the train heading to Los Angeles where a car was awaiting them, they determined that that was where they wanted to visit, but it was actually when they returned the next year, that they took a trip in the spring in a wagon pulled by a mule and a horse, with the "Worrier", the sheriff of an almost deserted mining town, as a guide, that they actually reached Death Valley. While this does not ignore the hardships and dangers, Perkins is always aware of the ever-changing beauty of the desert. Illustrated with photographs. Hard to find. 227 pp.

Boston / Monument Beach: By the author, n.d. (ca 1895). Hardcover first edition - An informal guide to some of the people and places on Cape Cod, including Buzzards Bay (where President Grover Cleveland has a summer residence) and extending along the shore of Buzzards Bay to New Bedford - this book, of course, pre-dated by several years the construction of the Canal, which separated the Cape from the rest of Massachusetts. Profusely illustrated with photographs of houses, hotels, libraries, lighthouses, scenic spots and long time residents of the Cape. The trip goes up the North side of the Cape through Sandwich and the villages of Barnstable, to Provincetown and back along the South side, to Falmouth and more. Includes a section on his memories of growing up on the Cape. Also included are 7 full page ads for hotels on Cape Cod, and also a double full-page ad by the author, a real estate broker, offering the chance to make some money by investing in land in the area. Printed at the Press of the Chas. S. Binner Company, Boston on glossy stock. 188 pp.

London: Faber & Faber, (1949) dj. Hardcover first edition - The first biography of this 16th century Portuguese adventurer and explorer who left Portugal in 1537 as a common soldier but whose travels were intended to help him establish himself as a merchant. Pinto traveled to the coast of India, Japan, China, and Malaya and more - was thrown into prison by the Chinese, introduced firearms to Japan, and succeeded in becoming wealthy but after meeting Saint Francis Xavier, he joined the newly formed Jesuit Society and headed a mission to Japan, only to recognize its futility. His autobiography - Peregrinacao or Pilgrimage - was published posthumously in 1614. While some of the claims in this work might have been inaccurate, Collis considers them compatible with historical events and Pinto's work as the most complete European account of 16th century Asian history. Includes 13 illustrations, bibliography, index. 313 pp

New York: Grand Central Publishing, (2017) dj. Hardcover first edition - A book which surpasses his fiction in adventure and suspense. "In 2012, Preston joined a team of explorers searching for Ciudad Blanca ('The White City'), a legendary ruin hidden in the dense jungle of eastern Honduras. The city also known as 'the Lost City of the Monkey God' - was literally a legend; while various hucksters and hoaxers had claimed to have discovered the abandoned metropolis, no credible evidence had ever been presented. In addition to the objective hazards of tropical disease, wild boars, and the deadly fer-de-lance viper, locals stoked the mystique, describing various curses awaiting would-be discoverers. But this team had an advantage that previous searchers had lacked: LIDAR, an advanced laser-imaging technology able to penetrate the dense jungle canopy - just enough - and return detailed elevation profiles from which subtle, man-made anomalies could be identified. Almost immediately, two major sites emerged, their scale and architecture indicating a civilization to rival another local, more famous power, the Maya." But the dangers were real- and Preston and severl other contracted a horrifying disease in the jungle. Illustrated with photographs in color. Sources and bibliography, index. viii, 326 pp. Map endpapers. ISBN: 978-1455540006.

New York: Farrar & Rinehart, (1930). Hardcover - Fred Puleston ran away from home at 17 and went to Africa as an agent for Hattan & Cookson he stayed there off and on for 14 years: 1882 to 1896. This book - which describes those experiences - includes some surprising statements - For example "All white men (except missionaries) of his acquaintance in the Congo had black 'harems'."[one to three native girls - he approved the custom.] Cannibalism was common among the blacks; three of Agent Puleston's friends were eaten. Twice he met Explorer Stanley, "discoverer" of Livingstone. Other chapters deal with witch doctors, and in one he contrasts slavery in Africa as practiced by Africans versus that of white men, whom he accuses of turning two islands into "hell holes." Puleston is also known as one who exposed Alfred Aloysius ("Trader") Horn. Indignation at the gross ignorance of Congo Africa which he detected in the "Horn-books" caused Dr. Puleston (then a prosperous Miami, Florida physician) to exclaim to friends, "I can't believe this man was ever in the Congo!" Illustrated with fantastic art deco paintings and drawings by Andre Durenceau (as one commentator noted "his illustrations tended towards the provocative, and even at times the erotic and grotesque.") including a color frontispiece and endpapers, 5 black and white glossy full page plates and several small drawings at the tail of some of the chapters. 318 pp.

New York: Edward Burlingame / Harper Collins, (1990) dj. Hardcover first edition - Selected by WorldHum in 2006 as one of the top 30 literary travel books of all time: "Like a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville, Jonathan Raban has traveled the length and breadth of the United States, observing Americans with the keen eye of a foreigner. [This] book traverses the pathways of American immigration from late 19th century Ellis Island to late 20th century Seattle. In the book, Raban fully inhabits each place he visits, even borrowing an old black labrador named Gypsy in Alabama to feel more at home among the locals. He investigates whether a foreigner can truly become an American. In the end Raban realizes that one can adopt American ways but can never become completely American." 373 pp. ISBN: 0-060182091.

Carbondale, IL: Swedish Pioneer Historical Society / Southern Illinois University Press, (1982) dj. Hardcover first edition - Letters and diary entries by Roos, who left the constraints she felt doomed to as a woman in Sweden in the 1850s and so traveled to America to test her ability to be independent, spending four years on a plantation in South Carolina as a governess, just as the slavery debate was entering its most heated phase. She comments on contrasts: freedom and slavery, cold and heat, great industriousness and total apathy, but when she returns to Sweden, confident in her independence, she has only scorn for the arguments she heard espousing the "good" of slavery. As she pleaded for the rights of women in Sweden, she drew analogies between those theories of slavery and the treatment of women. Translated and with a preface by Carl L. Anderson, who notes that at the end of the 19th century she was recognized as one of the 'three pioneering women and leaders who transformed social and economic conditions for women.'Photographs, footnotes. xvi, 152 pp. ISBN: 0-80931018X.

New York: Arno Press, 1974. Hardcover - A one volume reprint of this work originally published in two volumes in 1883. The author, an Englishman, first visted the US in 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, and although he was in the North, his sympathies (as a member of a family who had held slaves in the West Indies) were with the South. This is a profusely illustrated account of the author's second American tour, made in 1879, with chapters on New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Richmond, Augusta, Atlanta, New Orleans, Chicago, Omaha, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco (including China Town) - not a very flattering look, especially when it comes to ethnic minorities. A title in the Foreign travelers in America, 1810-1935 series. Each volume is numbered individually, but a total of almost 700 pp. ISBN: 0-405-054718.