Akron Public Library

Isabella Bird's 1878 expedition through Japan, chronicled in 'Unbeaten Tracks in Japan,' immerses readers in an extraordinary odyssey across the seldom-explored territories of Japan's remote northern and central regions. Breaking away from conventional travel narratives, Bird adopts an unconventional prose style, crafting a captivating tale of her off-the-beaten-path escapades. Rather than confining herself to the urban bustle, Bird ventures deep...

At a time when a woman's world wasn't much wider than her own home, Isabella Bird (1831-1904) earned a reputation as one of the Victorian era's most intrepid explorers and writers. Among the Tibetans recounts her rugged passage through the Himalayas by horseback and her four-month sojourn amid "the pleasantest of people." Bird's evocative accounts of Tibetan ceremonies, decorations, costumes, and music, along with her vivid descriptions of palaces,...

Robert Root describes his experiences retracing Isabella Bird's three-month journey in the Colorado Territory in 1873, shares information about her life and work, local history, and nature writing, and reflects on the thoughts of other writers, as well as his response to them.

"The watershed year of Isabella Lucy Bird's life was 1873. In autumn of that year, the forty-one-year-old English gentlewoman embarked by rail from San Francisco's east bay, bound for the Colorado Rockies. A challenging journey, it drove Bird to the utmost physical effort and initiated her life-long career in what today is called adventure travel. More than one hundred twenty years after their first publication, Isabella Bird's letters to her sister...

For most people, the death of Rocky Mountain Jim Nugent is solved. In June of 1874, while out riding through Estes Park, Colorado, with a friend, Nugent was shot and killed by Griff Evans. Case closed. Professor David McIntyre is not most people. When McIntyre finds evidence that Nugent wrote a manuscript soon before his death, he starts to wonder about what it contained. And if it still exists. Convinced the manuscript will shed light on the murder,...