Let's start with two classics:

"Book of Marvels," by Richard Haliburton. "I was given this book as a child and my parents read me to sleep nearly every night with the wonderful stories of exotic places and cultures in places I could only dream of. I'll never forget the image of Haliburton throwing himself into a Mayan sacrificial well to see what it must have felt like to be a sacrificial victim. Long out of print and probably somewhat ecologically incorrect, this book still contains some of the best examples of adventure travel writing that you'll ever find."

"Seven Pillars of Wisdom," by T.E. Lawrence. "Some wouldn't call it a travel book -- Lawrence of Arabia seems to transcend the status of tourist. But it is. After all, isn't the deepest desire of the traveler to participate in the world he visits, not simply to observe it? Don't we secretly wish to live out the fantasies inspired in us by the cultures we visit? Lawrence, who arrived in Arabia as an unknown British academic and left it as the greatest warlord of the desert Bedouins, surely fulfilled these desires as much as anyone ever has. Most travelogues are simply the record of a summer fling with some exotic land; Lawrence's encompasses all the stages of the classic tragic love affair -- discovery, seduction, conquest and betrayal. Lawrence was the last and greatest of the British imperial travelers ... men who sought to merge with the lands they visited."

Here are some more contemporary adventures:

"The Man Who Walked Through Time," by Colin Fletcher. "This book is a great combination of the story of an epic backpacking trip as well as an almost John McPhee-type narration of the natural history of the Grand Canyon. A really great read!"

"Shooting the Boh," by Tracy Johnston. "This is a wonderful book one cannot put down. When it came out, it was passed from friend to friend to friend in the same way that people passed around, say, 'The Right Stuff' by Tom Wolfe. If you haven't yet read it, you're in for a treat. Just don't start it late at night -- you'll be in Borneo until the wee hours."

"Tracks," by Robyn Davidson. "This is the great story of Davidson's trek across Australia with camels and a National Geographic photographer. She wanted to go with just camels, but lacked the funds, and National Geographic offered her cash. But there's always a catch with money -- she had to go with NG's photographer. The travel stuff is top-notch here, but there's also a fascinating story as she falls in love with the photographer."

"Riding the Iron Rooster," by Paul Theroux. "'The Great Railway Bazaar' is of course a great travel book, and one of my personal favorites. I'd be willing to bet, however, that 100 years from now people will prefer 'Riding the Iron Rooster' for the insights that it has to offer into how China got to be the economic, military and diplomatic superpower that it's going to be in the next century. (If you want a book that does something similar for the United States, read Twain's 'Life on the Mississippi.') One of the things that I like most about Theroux is the lack of sentimentality in his books. I find a lot of travel writing -- especially about Asia and especially about Western Buddhists in Asia -- both self-indulgent and self-pitying. In Theroux's descriptions of the individual personalities he meets in China -- especially the translator Cherry Blossom, and the irritating Han couple he shares a car with on a trip to Tibet -- [Theroux] somehow manages to throw light on China and the Chinese without stereotyping them or reducing his subjects to metaphors, which strikes me as a difficult trick to pull off."

And one offbeat nomination:

"The People's Guide to Mexico," by Carl Franz. "Unlike normal guidebooks, 'The People's Guide to Mexico' doesn't break the country up into regions and locations with lists of hotels and restaurants. Unlike traditional travel literature, it's not a linear narrative that one reads like a novel. You can open it anywhere (it's over 600 pages long) and immediately become engrossed in a discussion of the anatomy of a tortilla, or an illustration of common Mexican hand signals. Franz brackets the cultural information with stories from his own travels, all of which are hilarious and most of which contain further insights into Mexican society. In one episode, he walks into a restaurant for lunch and ends staying for a month, employed, and even adopted, by the family that owns it. An anthropologist would call this participant-observation, but to Franz it's just doing what comes naturally. Franz can break through a century of American preconceptions in a description of one bus ride or a primer on translating Mexican bumper stickers."

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