Alison Hood
Content by Alison Hood
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Experienced travelers know that the true value of a pilgrimage lies not so much in reaching a destination, but in the journey itself.
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<b>A (former) nun's story</b> In the preface to her memoir, <b>The Tulip and the Pope</b>, novelist Deborah Larsen (<i>The White</i>) confesses that her recall
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In Dr.
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America, it seems, loves a good horse story.
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Most stars twinkle benignly from the heavens, enchanting us with their magical shine.
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As a follow-up to her hugely popular 1,000 Places to See Before You Die, travel writer Patricia Schultz narrows her focus (while not skimping on pages) in 1,000 Places to See in the USA a
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Hallelujah! Ruby Ann Boxcar, "Dame Edna of the double-wide world," is back and giving St. Nick a run for his money in Move Over, Santa Ruby's Doin' Christmas!.
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Ah, Paris!
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Writer Steve Almond has these three obsessions: sex, candy and heartbreak. His acclaimed short story collection, My Life in Heavy Metal, told tales of physical desire, love and longing.
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Seventeen-year-old, college-bound Lauralee Summer never thought the details of her life were so extraordinary that they would show up in newspapers and soar over the American airwaves.
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For true believers who wish confidently upon stars and blow out their birthday candles with sure expectation, Noelle Oxenhandler's new memoir will surely please - while perhaps winning over a n
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Since publishing her groundbreaking book Passages in 1976, Gail Sheehy has trained her keen eye upon diverse facets of modern American culture and life: everything from war and politics to p
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Though writer Caroline Knapp's pen was stilled with her death last June, her incisive and vigorous words speak out in an eloquent final work, Appetites: Why Women Want.
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Celebrated American author M.F.
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Celebrated American author M.F.K. Fisher once said that when she wrote about food and eating, she was really speaking to our hunger for love and warmth.
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I must confess: I have never read one of Graham Swift’s novels.
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Benjamin Franklin: In Search of a Better World, edited by Page Talbott, is a grand volume, a glorious tribute to a man to whom America owes much.
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You can't pry your husband off the couch, and your closest friend can't leave her kids. So, your next adventure will be with the best possible traveling companion you!
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Sheherazade Goldsmith wants you to grow herbs and vegetables, use energy-efficient lighting, bake bread and if you're brave enough raise a pig or two.
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Masterful storytellers know to hook their audiences quickly, going right to the heart of things.
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From sea to shining sea, there's no better traveling buddy than the exuberant Let's Go guide, Roadtripping USA: The Complete Coast-to-Coast Guide to America.
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scion of taste, R.W. Apple Jr., explicates our continent's prominent cities in Apple's America: The Discriminating Traveler's Guide to 40 Great Cities in the United States and Canada.
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The holidays are almost here, with a flurry of gift-giving just ahead.
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Mobil Travel Guides has a long tradition of pointing travelers to rigorously vetted destinations and amenities.
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The elusive and ever-private Jackie Kennedy Onassis, a woman who achieved iconic fame largely through her marriages to two powerful men, never wanted to write her memoirs.
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Buildings and roadways no more define a city than mere walls and aisles could ever define a church.
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By the time you finish the last page of Anita Diamant's lively collection of personal essays, Pitching My Tent: On Marriage, Motherhood, Friendship, and Other Leaps of Faith, you may feel as i
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Got kids? Give them the best gift of all: an educational (just don't tell them that!) family trip.
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Doing its part to encourage travel, Lonely Planet has compiled Bluelist: 618 Things to Do &andamp Places to Go, 06-07.
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In the heart of New York City stands iconic Rockefeller Center, a haven of commerce and industry, art, history and ice skating.
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Frenchman and award-winning photographer Philippe Bourseiller explored many of America's famous and lesser known national and state parks for an entire year.
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The writings of George Orwell (Animal Farm) and Evelyn Waugh (Brideshead Revisited) engaged and electrified international audiences in the first half of the 20th century.
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British biographer Amanda Mackenzie Stuart's first book characterizes the force and influence of motherhood in a literary double biography, Consuelo and Alva Vanderbilt: The Story of a Daughter an
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<B>Battling the Alzheimer's beast</B> There may be little grace mined from the back-breaking, ever-shifting process of caring for a loved one with Alzheimer's, but searing, sometimes s
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A well-known epigram says that revenge is a dish best served cold.
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100 Days in Photographs: Pivotal Events that Changed the World, by Nick Yapp, Douglas Brinkley and Chris Johns, is a powerhouse blend of image and story.
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When he was a kid in New Jersey, Steven Sorrentino loved his neighborhood luncheonette, "an exotic destination where grilled cheese sandwiches and double-decker dreams were served up in no short
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Blues musician B.B. King turned 80 in September, and The B.B. King Treasures: Photos, Mementos &and Music from B. B.
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Author and bibliophile Wendy Werris is in passionate thrall to the words of others.
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Attention all would-be princesses: There's a new memoir that'll soon have you humming Disney tunes and polishing your tiaras to a high shine.
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Kudos to filmmaker/author Kris Carr for her indefatigable courage and yeehaw!
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Virginia called me today, and she was crying, reveals professional organizer Vicki Norris in her commonsense handbook, Restoring Order to Your Home.
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Most of us had our share of candy, Coke and hot dogs when we were kids.
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Buddhist teacher Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche believes that human happiness is an inside job, an achievable state reached through intimacy with the mind's inner workings.
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She is that famous enigmatic face without eyebrows and only a half-smile, but who was Mona Lisa and what is the mystery of her enduring allure?
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Ever wondered how your favorite Hollywood celebrity decks his or her Christmas halls?
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First there was the Savannah restaurant, then the best-selling cookbooks and the Food Network shows.
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Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin: two great men, both born on February 12, 1809, are scrutinized in New Yorker contributor Adam Gopnik’s Angels and Ages: A Short Book About
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Artist Jill Butler's insouciant Wandering Paris: A Guide to Discovering Paris Your Way is a pocket-sized guide offering 14 themed adventures in the City of Light.
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All stories, they say, begin in one of two ways: A stranger came to town,' or else, I set out upon a journey,' writes novelist and essayist Barbara Kingsolver in Animal, Vegetable, Mira
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Cows grieve and weep, chickens cuddle lovingly with horses, and pigs croon happily to the moon in the magical world explored by best-selling writer Jeffrey Masson in his newest animal oeuvre, The
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Neurologist and psychiatrist Dr. Oliver Sacks’ The Mind’s Eye is the latest offering from an always eloquent and brilliant observer of the workings of the human brain.
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In 1991, John Chappelear's life fell apart. Within days, he went from being CEO of a multimillion dollar company to financial and emotional ruin.
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What if you haven't got eight weeks to shape up?
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The stories we tell ourselves about what is true in our lives have tremendous power, especially when those stories involve what we eat.
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Blaine McCormick's clever book, Ben Franklin: America's Original Entrepreneur, entices the entrepreneurial muse by mining the good doctor's autobiography for the business lessons it contains.
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Do you dream of a long weekend away, complete with posh nosh, plump pillows and a perfect shimmering martini?
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Americans buy more bottled water than they do milk and beer - and the numbers are closing in on soda, journalist Elizabeth Royte (Garbage Land) tells readers in her latest book.
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The vast spaces and close confines of the Grand Canyon, from rim to canyon floor, are given their due in Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography.
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Football season's in full swing, so get your gourmet game on with The NBC Sunday Night Football Cookbook, which stars 150 recipes from NFL players and many of America's top chefs, including
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David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, has improved upon his best-selling history, 1776, with 1776: The Illustrated Edition.
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Love, it is said, is the magic that turns our world. But sometimes that world’s axis seems to tilt, revolutions wobble and love goes awry.
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Pretty, blonde Brit Catherine Sanderson clicks and blogs her way into love, heartache and self-revelation in the amusing page-turner Petite Anglaise.
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Pulitzer Prize-winning environmental journalist Philip Fradkin (Stagecoach; A River No More) trains his literary eye on the physical, emotional and intellectual landscapes of iconic Western wr
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In the next 20 years, as the baby-boom generation ages, the numbers of people ages 65 and older will increase from approximately 13 percent to 20 percent.
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If the summer fiction offerings aren’t tempting enough to tote to the seaside, pick up Provenance: How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art by husband-and
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Do you, dear reader, dither over Mr. Darcy? Enthuse about the archness of Emma? Wail about the likes of Willoughby? If so, you just might be a Janeite.
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Writer and master muckraker Upton Sinclair catapulted to fame with his exposŽ novel on the meatpacking industry, The Jungle, which instigated the Pure Food and Drug Act.
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Frommer's nifty pocket-sized Day-by-Day Travel Guides to London, Paris and Rome are deceiving: their stature is small, but they are powerhouses of information for t
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<B>Kingston's triumphant return</B> Fire is fickle, unpredictable: a simple flame can warm and brighten, while a roaring conflagration can raze and kill.
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<b>Knocking on heaven's door</b> Roger Housden wants you to consider sin in a whole new light as a means toward enlightenment!
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Life lessons, love, work, peace and the future of our precious planet: these are the subjects under idiosyncratic discussion by 50 notable individuals interviewed in writer/photographer Andrew Zuck
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<B>Lederer's winning hand</B> With a poetic eye and precise, sardonic wit, Katy Lederer has shuffled through her biographical deck to produce an intriguing new memoir, <B>Poker Fa
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We face dizzying displays of abundance in modern American life. Our stores are packed with plenty, and we're continually bombarded with ads that exploit our every desire.
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Self-help books crowd the shelves of America’s bookstores, beckoning consumers with all sorts of hopeful promises—from thinner thighs and bigger bank accounts to spiritual and sexual ni
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Today's literary marketplace is awash in memoir. And, while the writing of many tell-all tomes might engender positive therapeutic experiences for their authors, readers often do not fare as well.
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If you've ever longed to walk in the footsteps of Hugo and Hemingway, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dante and Yeats, then Bloom's Literary Guides should be your go-to series for prowling the liter
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What appears on our national and global dinner plates has come under intense scrutiny in the last decade, as many of the world’s food production practices are devastating the natural abundanc
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<B>Love's labors found</B> The saying "all the world loves a lover" has never rung truer than in the case of that famous, ill-fated couple, Heloise and Abelard.
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Sassy Sarah Jean falls for long-fingered guitar picker Bobby Lee Crenshaw and gains glory but gets the boot at the Opry. And Calvin Klein's true ancestry is revealed at last.
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The Big Easy's steamy streets, jazzy jive and inimitable oysters are celebrated in Feet on the Street: Rambles Around New Orleans. A witty and irreverent tour guide, humorist Roy Blount Jr.
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San Francisco, though a city where cable cars climb hills halfway to the stars, is also eminently walk-able.
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<b>Makes you wanna Scream'</b> Edward Dolnick's <b>The Rescue Artist: A True Story of Art, Thieves, and the Hunt for a Missing Masterpiece</b> is a romp of a read: it's as f
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From 1863 to 1874, Room M, the infamous gallery in the annual, government-sponsored Paris Salon (the Exhibition of Living Artists ), was a testing ground.
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Do you lead your life, or does your life lead you, asks professional organizer (and InStyle and Real Simple contributor) Meryl Starr.
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The second-worst thing that gonzo chef, writer and intrepid traveler Anthony Bourdain has ever eaten, he claims, was the notoriously stinky fermented shark served to him in Iceland.
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If you adore Wookiees and droids, long for a lightsaber of your own, or are eager to explore faraway galaxies, then The Star Wars Vault: Thirty Years of Treasures from the Lucasfilm Archives,
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, a cultural icon of a different sort and one of the most beloved stories of our time, is lovingly and thoroughly celebrated in Laurence Maslon's The Sound of Music Companion.
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Journalist Ethan Brown delves straight into the heart of darkness with Shake the Devil Off. Billed by the publisher as a true crime story, it is that—and more.
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One of the most recognizable paintings on the planet, Grant Wood's American Gothic has elicited considerable shares of angst, intrigue and amusement over the years.
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Charles J. Shields, a journalist and author of nonfiction for young readers, blends techniques of fiction and creative investigative reporting in Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee.
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<b>Now that's a great idea</b> A nifty, chunky, pocket-sized guide, <b>The Smart Traveler's Passport: 399 Tips from Seasoned Travelers</b>, edited by Erik Torkells, off
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Two-year-old James Leininger was a happy, contented toddler with doting parents.
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Daniel Stashower previously explored Arthur Conan Doyle's life and writings in the Edgar Award-winning A Teller of Tales.
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Expedition photographer Gordon Wiltsie, whose award-winning pictures grace National Geographic, has crisscrossed the earth on foot, by dogsled and on skis all while toting a camera.
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Galen Rowell: A Retrospective is a loving tribute compiled by Sierra Club editors a grand collection of Rowell's exquisite images, accompanied by nine thoughtful essays and short remembrances
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The power of a personal story is wielded to strong effect in Barbara Demick’s Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea, a largely oral history “based upon seven years
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Wisdom is now so cheap and abundant that it floods over us from calendar pages, tea bags, bottle caps, and mass e-mail messages asserts social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in The Happiness Hy
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Michelangelo in Ravensbruck: One Woman's War Against the Nazis is a detailed record of Hitler's command, written between 1945 and 1946 by Countess Karolina Lanckoronska, a Polish-Catholic a
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Artist Henri Matisse once observed that creativity requires courage.
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Ah, the frothy fun and occasional heartbreak of a slightly snarky, narcissistic sob story. Who doesn't like that?
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Author and gospel lyricist Gloria Gaither captures the sublime and sacred joys of the Christmas season in He Started the Whole World Singing, a heartwarming compendium of her original prayers,
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Your New Year's resolutions are set: You're ready to lose those extra pounds, but you need help.
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The impetus to travel usually springs from a pleasurable sense of physical restlessness.
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Lots of ladies these days seem to be waxing not exactly poetic about their lives as wives and mothers.
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England has seen a good share of kings and queens; however, there have been only six queens regnant those who were ruling, or reigning queens, and not merely female consorts.
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Organizational guru Peter Walsh, the star of TLC's hit show, Clean Sweep, takes a hard line on clutter in It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff.
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If you're going to San Francisco, you'll definitely want to take along a copy of the sleekly hip RealCity/San Francisco by Kristine Carber et al.
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You'll never be bored or totally broke in Boston with humor columnist Kris Frieswick's cagey travel guide, The Cheap Bastard's Guide to Boston: Secrets of Living the Good Life for Free!, i
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It can be captivating to wander leisurely, temporarily lost, in an unfamiliar place.
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Traveling can be downright uncomfortable. Long waits in lines, cramped airplane seats and obnoxious fellow travelers can take their toll.
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Does stress send you straight to the cookie jar? Is a dinner just not complete without a slice or two of sourdough bread nestled alongside your linguine?
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Cute British girl snags nice British boy. Girl's not sure she wants boy; she yearns to be a Big City Journalist.
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As the 2010 Affordable Care Act marks its second anniversary this spring, the arguments about so-called Obamacare continue.
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London can be a budget-bursting destination, but Frommer's family-friendly London with Kids can take you to Buckingham Palace without breaking the bank.
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Melanie Rehak's Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her is a witty, tell-all narrative that unmasks the origins of the popular young detective.
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Nancy G. Brinker, founder of Susan G. Komen for the Cure (SGK), says she is often asked why her world-famous foundation doesn’t have a grand, dedicated facility.
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In November 2004, 36-year-old Iris Chang, the brilliant and beautiful author of the controversial bestseller about the 1937 Japanese war atrocities, The Rape of Nanking, took her own life.
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Andalusia, a region of southern Spain, is a land of contrasts. Its dusty summer days seethe with intense heat and gradually fade into balmy, scented, star-filled nights.
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When Andre Dubus III was 11 years old, his parents parted ways.
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In 1969, Anthony Bourke and John Rendall, two Aussies new to London, wandered into Harrods. There in the second-floor “zoo” were two caged lion cubs.
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An angelic stunner, Lizzie Siddal one-time shop girl, celebrated artists' model and opium addict graces many 19th-century masterworks by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, John Millais and other pre-Rapha
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After you treat yourself to horticulture writer Amy Stewart's latest exposŽ, Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers, you'll never see a rose or a
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Allure, tragedy and mystery surround Carl Faberge's fabulous Easter eggs, the subject of Toby Faber's Faberg
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Now that best-selling journalist Mark Pendergrast has investigated the facts and intrigue that lurk behind a commonplace cup of java and that other universal caffeinated beverage, Coca-Cola (the subj
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I blame the minivan, says journalist Christopher Noxon, referring insouciantly to the brainstorm behind Rejuvenile: Kickball, Cartoons, Cupcakes, and the Reinvention of the American Grown-up
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Bonnie Parker, gun-toting girlfriend of trigger-happy Clyde Barrow, didn't smoke cigars; she wrote poetry.
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Tired of your regular, humdrum summer getaway and ready to try something completely different?
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The New Year is here it's time for a fresh start! How about a fitter, happier you in 2004?
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The New Year is here it's time for a fresh start! How about a fitter, happier you in 2004?
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The New Year is here it's time for a fresh start! How about a fitter, happier you in 2004?
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The New Year is here it's time for a fresh start! How about a fitter, happier you in 2004?
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The New Year is here it's time for a fresh start! How about a fitter, happier you in 2004?
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The Age of Discovery, the 15th through the 18th centuries, gave rise to magnificent exploits and explorations of art, science and ideas.
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For motivational speaker and self-help guru Judith Wright, creating a luxuriant life depends on something far more important than conspicuous material consumption.
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Knowledge is power especially when beginning any new fitness regimen.
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Hot sun, hype, mobsters and money: it's Las Vegas, baby.
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If the idea of going home for the holidays sends a chill down your spine, you might find relief in bringing along The Dysfunctional Family Christmas Songbook by John Boswell, best-selling auth
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Our identity if we're not verifying it, we're worried about someone stealing it. But what is this mysterious and elusive It ?
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<b>Writers' night</b> <b>The Monsters: Mary Shelley and the Curse of Frankenstein</b> opens in June 1816, as a spooky summer storm rages around the Swiss villa of Lord Byron
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The notebooks and artwork of Holocaust victim Petr Ginz lay undiscovered in an old house in Prague for 60 years.
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