Why he writes at 86

There were also novels and biographies of figures such as Jacqueline Onassis though she declined to be interviewed by him. In his most prolific period, from the late s into the s, Birmingham turned out nearly a book a year.

He relished anecdotes that showed the excesses and sometimes eccentricities of the wealthy. As an example, he told the Cincinnati paper of motoring up the gravel driveway of Anna Ingersoll, the daughter of a Philadelphia railroad magnate. But many admitted, even amid critical reviews, that his books were guilty pleasures.

But by the end of the book — a mystery tale concerning a family dynasty in the department store business — Kirsch admitted to being hooked. Birmingham was born May 28, , in Hartford, Conn.

When he was 2, his family moved to Andover, Conn. All you needed was reasonably good manners and a dinner jacket. He worked in advertising and wrote for magazines before trying his hand at books. In he moved to Cincinnati, far from the hub of the social whirl. As a tennis correspondent for The New York Times , Clarey has had unrivaled access to Federer and the game of tennis for over 25 years.

Having reported on sports and tennis since graduating, Clarey said that he has been able to see the career trajectories of many great players, including the Big Three of Federer, Rafael Nadal, and Novak Djokovic. When the travel-based world of tennis was interrupted by COVID last year ,Clarey said that he was finally able to find the time to work on the biography.

However, not everything was smooth sailing. One of the challenges he faced while writing was the question of how to structure it, Clarey said. How do you order that? That, to me, was the biggest challenge, frankly. But the ones that were fun were the ones that I was able to pick that were a little bit off the main track. The book closes in early with Match for Africa 6, the latest installment in a series of exhibition matches organized by Federer to fundraise for his charity, which works towards equitable education in low-income countries.

Djokovic almost completed a Grand Slam this year but was just shy of winning all four major tournaments when he lost to Daniil Medvedev in the US Open Finals.

Nadal and Federer have missed most of the second half of the season… Their time is ending. The departure of the Big Three may not be the only change for a game that has long emphasized tradition. Naomi Osaka made headlines when she withdrew from the French Open earlier this year due to her struggles with mental health, particularly in relation to pressure from the traditional press conference format. As a sports journalist who specializes in tennis coverage, Clarey expressed sympathy for Osaka and other athletes with similar struggles, as well as uncertainty about how the industry will move forward in a world where social media and public relations has changed the role of the press.

Stephen Elliott prefers this cantankerous account of an overland journey—from Cairo to Cape Town via canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, and more—to other Theroux books that tread more familiar ground. He wrote, 'What an admirable position of the New World, that man has yet no enemies but himself.

Written while Orwell struggled to survive in Paris , this is no Lost Generation reverie—which is what Adrienne Miller loves about it. The novelist's allusive account contrasts her lonely rowboat ride with the sumptuous Nile journeys made by Flaubert and Florence Nightingale. The book that launched a thousand solo trips and a movie starring Julia Roberts is no doubt one of the most influential travel books written in the first decade of the s.

Gilbert's tale of leaving her humdrum life to find herself in Italy , India , and Bali will make you want to book a trip and start re-thinking those New Year's resolutions all at once. As Haile Selassie's regime in Ethiopia collapsed in , the intrepid Polish journalist interviewed various functionaries and compiled a complete if composite picture of that mysterious kingdom, right down to the emperor's dog, which had a habit of peeing on the shoes of dignitaries. The Jon Krakauer of his day, Lansing gave shape and understated precision to the story of Ernest Shackleton's white-knuckle escape from Antarctica in after his boat had become locked in ice.

The writer whom Winston Churchill recommended for lessons in prose style gives a subtly self-mocking account of his travels in the Middle East. A Saharan travel diary tracing the routes of British colonial forces becomes a suspenseful meditation on atrocities and genocide, drawing a line from African imperialism to the Holocaust.

The author, a scientist who went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, was bold or crazy enough to try to reach the North Pole by getting his boat stuck in ice and drifting north.

It didn't work, and he was found a year later, alive and farther north than anyone had ever been. Thompson's exuberant, drug-fueled twist on New Journalism reaches its apotheosis in an account aptly subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream.

Hoping to recover from a failing marriage, Moorhouse sets out to cross the Sahara on foot and by camel, from west to east. The deadpan novelist's circuitous 25,mile drive through the heartland—with stops at the site of the Clutter mass murder and Sitting Bull's cabin—is a popular favorite. Some travel writers prefer to hoof it or take a boat.

But in this, his first travel book, Theroux proves himself a train man. As he goes from London to Tokyo—mostly by rail—his main subjects are the passengers he meets. The book has a wonderful sense of freedom—not at all the feel of a project undertaken to fulfill a book contract. Sometimes, the most memorable books come from our earliest literary endeavors. When I was finally able to make a real trip to Switzerland, I was not disappointed. It was as beautiful as it had been in my five-year-old imagination.

This history may well be the first. As ever after, it's written by the winners, the Greeks who have won a war with the Persians retold in the film But there is so much more, notes Robert D. Because of Herodotus, history is, in spirit, a verb: 'to find out for yourself. Among our list of travel memoirs written by some of the world's most adventurous women more on that here , Tabei's is one that will surely light a fire under anyone debating spending more time outdoors.

In , she became the first woman to climb Mount Everest. This book brings together stories from Tabei's multiple memoirs, giving readers an inside look at her daring life. One of the last American journalists allowed into Yugoslavia before its collapse, Hall captures its deterioration with intimate portraits of the people living there. The journey he makes is unique in that it describes places and ways of being that ceased to be almost the moment he left them behind. The writing is exquisite.

The David Sedaris of travel writing makes Australia, home to some of the oddest and most dangerous of earth's creatures, endlessly entertaining. It did the job. Journeying through Europe to the Holy Land with some hilariously insular fellow Americans, Twain mocks both tourist and local, sometimes subtly but always mercilessly.

Chatwin's meandering masterpiece about visiting the arid South American plains in search of a mythical brontosaurus relic—and finding instead a lonely haven of European refugees—scored nominations from six writers. It is about the unseen, the unknowable, about remoteness itself. This series of biographies of country musicians Merle Haggard, Doc Watson, Johnny Cash, and others becomes a travel memoir almost accidentally, as the writer hits America's back roads and small towns in search of the genre's origins as well as the roots he feels are being discarded in country's rush into the slick mainstream.

A common expat experience—teaching English abroad—becomes fodder for a book of unusual scope and point of view, capturing the confusion of a China transitioning from Maoist directives to capitalist imperatives. Before becoming a science-fiction writer The Last Unicorn , Beagle brought his strange perspective to a bizarre cross-country journey via scooter. It was the first travel book Luis Alberto Urrea ever picked up—back when he was a kid stuck in San Diego. You can really see it as a precursor to Ian Frazier's Great Plains.

The late Nobel Prize-winning novelist's early work doesn't take him far afield; instead, he digs deep, unearthing the bones of a country too often considered an afterthought.

His use of the third person remains a strange choice, but the book was an important guide for Monica Ali, who set her novel Alentejo Blue here. Traveling upriver, the future nurse wrote copious letters to family and friends—finally published more than a century later.

She was incredibly well-traveled and erudite, had a wicked sense of humor, and was a truly gifted writer. A very valuable look at Egypt at the dawn of tourism there. Other Stark adventure books are more popular like the Baghdad Sketches , but Colin Thubron prefers this slim, deliberative story about sailing off the coast of Turkey in the manner of the ancient traders. A collection of Berlin's best short stories, these essays take readers from small towns to big cities in places like Texas, Mexico, Chile, and beyond.

One essay culminates with Berlin and a stubborn date dining at Denny's. Denny's is where one ends up I think about that line all the time when traveling. Crappy airport sandwich for dinner? Hotel room with a twin size bed for two people?

That's where one ends up.