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America is massive and diverse and incredible, with spectacular deserts, mountain ranges, volcanic features, ancient forests, waterfalls, canyons, glaciers, caves, and swamps. It is a country that needs to be explored. For this post in the LMG Book Club I have a selection of books to inspire you to visit the USA.

 

Books to Inspire You to Visit the USA

 

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

At twenty-six, Cheryl Strayed thought she had lost everything. In the wake of her mother’s rapid death from cancer, her family disbanded and her marriage crumbled. With nothing to lose, she made the most impulsive decision of her life: to walk eleven-hundred miles of the west coast of America – from the Mojave Desert, through California and Oregon, and into Washington state – and to do it alone. She had no experience of long-distance hiking and the journey was nothing more than a line on a map. But it held a promise – a promise of piecing together a life that lay in ruins at her feet.

Strayed’s account captures the agonies – both mental and physical – of her incredible journey; how it maddened and terrified her, and how, ultimately, it healed her. Wild is a brutal memoir of survival, grief and redemption: a searing portrayal of life at its lowest ebb and at its highest tide.

 

 

 

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

 

 

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

Roaring down the desert highway, Raoul Duke and his attorney Dr. Gonzo are seeking out the dark side of the American Dream. Armed with a drug arsenal of stupendous proportions, they confront casino operators, police officers and assorted Middle Americans, in surreal, chemically enhanced encounters.

Hilarious, hallucinogenic and subversive, Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical novel is a cult classic and a masterpiece of gonzo journalism.

 

 

 

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

In April 1992, Chris McCandless set off alone into the Alaskan wild. He had given his savings to charity, abandoned his car and his possessions, and burnt the money in his wallet, determined to live a life of independence. Just four months later, Chris was found dead. An SOS note was taped to his makeshift home, an abandoned bus.

In piecing together the final travels of this extraordinary young man’s life, Jon Krakauer writes about the heart of the wilderness, its terribly beauty and its relentless harshness. Into the Wild is a modern classic of travel writing, and a riveting exploration of what drives some of us to risk more than we can afford to lose.

 

 

 

Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote

It’s New York in the 1940s, where the martinis flow from cocktail hour till breakfast at Tiffany’s. And nice girls don’t, except, of course, for Holly Golightly: glittering socialite traveller, generally upwards, sometimes sideways and once in a while – down. Pursued by to Salvatore ‘Sally’ Tomato, the Mafia sugar-daddy doing life in Sing Sing and ‘Rusty’ Trawler, the blue-chinned, cuff-shooting millionaire man about women about town, Holly is a fragile eyeful of tawny hair and turned-up nose, a heart-breaker, a perplexer, a traveller, a tease. She is irrepressibly ‘top banana in the shock deparment’, and one of the shining flowers of American fiction.

 

 

 

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

A lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee’s classic novel – a black man falsely charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man’s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a coming-of-age story, an anti-racist novel, a historical drama of the Great Depression and a sublime example of the Southern writing tradition.

 

 

 

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

When Esther Greenwood wins an internship on a New York fashion magazine in 1953, she is elated, believing she will finally realise her dream to become a writer. But in between the cocktail parties and piles of manuscripts, Esther’s life begins to slide out of control. She finds herself spiralling into depression and eventually a suicide attempt, as she grapples with difficult relationships and a society which refuses to take women’s aspirations seriously.

The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath’s only novel, was originally published in 1963 under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The novel is partially based on Plath’s own life and descent into mental illness, and has become a modern classic. The Bell Jar has been celebrated for its darkly funny and razor sharp portrait of 1950s society and has sold millions of copies worldwide.

 

 

 

Lonely Planet USA’s Best Trips

Discover the freedom of open roads with Lonely Planet’s USA’s Best Trips, your passport to coast-to-coast advice on uniquely encountering the USA by car. Featuring 51 amazing road trips, from 2-day escapes to 2-week adventures, you can wind your way down the California Coast, gaze up at the Rocky Mountains, or immerse yourself in New England’s history, all with your trusted travel companion. Jump in the car, turn up the tunes, and hit the road!

 

 

 

The Rough Guide to the USA

Practical travel guide to the USA with a free eBook featuring points-of-interest structured lists of all sights and off-the-beaten-track treasures, with detailed colour-coded maps, practical details about what to see and to do in the USA. The Rough Guide to the USA also includes details on how to get there and around, pre-departure information, as well as top time-saving tips, like a visual list of things not to miss in the USA, expert author picks and itineraries to help you plan your trip. This guide book has been fully updated post-COVID-19.

 

 

 

I Left My Tent in San Francisco by Emma Kennedy

It’s 1989, and Emma and her best friend Dee head to the USA to make their fortune. But completely inept and virtually unemployable, they discover that they can’t even get a job in McDonald’s.

Forced to travel from California to New York with only pennies in their pockets, they bounce from scrape to scrape, surviving on their wits and the kindness of strangers. Bad luck and misfortune throw everything their way – snakes, earthquakes, black magic and incontinent dogs. They even get kidnapped by a sex-crazed midget in a Ferrari. This never happened to Jack Kerouac.

A startlingly honest and ridiculously funny book, I Left My Tent in San Francisco tells the miraculous story of how the hapless pair made it back alive to tell the disastrous tale.

 

 

 

In America: Travels With John Steinbeck by Geert Mak

In 1960 John Steinbeck and his dog Charley set out in their green pickup truck to rediscover the soul of America, visiting small towns and cities from New York to New Orleans.The trip became Travels With Charley, one of his best-loved books.

Half a century on, Geert Mak sets off from Steinbeck’s home. Mile after mile, as he retraces Steinbeck’s footsteps through the potato fields of Maine to the endless prairies of the Midwest and stumbles across glistening suburbs and boarded-up stores, Mak searches for the roots of America and what remains of the world Steinbeck describes. How has America changed in the last fifty years; what remains of the American dream; and what do Europe and America now have in common?

 

 

 

Interstate: Hitch Hiking Through the State of a Nation by Julian Sayarer

Recruited to work on a big documentary project, Julian goes to New York convinced he has hit big time at last. Finding the project cancelled he wanders the city streets and hitchhiking to San Francisco slowly starts to seem like the most sensible option for his career as a travel writer.

The story finds an unseen America in rough shape; Julian meets a place of Interstates, forgotten towns and food deserts, always grappling with the scale and energy of the US. Julian tells a tale of Steinbeck, Kerouac and the vast, thundering indifference of American geography and culture at the start of a new century.

 

 

 

Call of the Wild: My Escape to Alaska by Guy Grieve

Guy Grieve’s life was going nowhere – trapped in a job he hated, commuting 2,000 miles a month and up to his neck in debt. But he dreamed of escaping it all to live alone in one of the wildest, most remote places on earth – Alaska.

And just when he’d given up hope, the dream came true. Suddenly Guy was thrown into one of the harshest environments in the world, miles from the nearest human being and armed with only the most basic equipment. And he soon found – whether building a log cabin from scratch, hunting, ice fishing or of course dodging bears in the buff – that life in the wilderness was anything but easy…

Part Ray Mears, part Bill Bryson, CALL OF THE WILD is the gripping story of how a mild-mannered commuter struggled with the elements – and himself – and eventually learned the ways of the wild.

 

 

 

Have you ever read a book that has inspired you to travel?

Let me know in the comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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