A collection of 17 wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. The short stories are surprising, intelligent, heartwarming, and, for the millions and millions of Tom Hanks fans, an absolute must-have!

Drive Nacho Drive tells the hilarious and sometimes harrowing story of what happens when Brad and Sheena Van Orden trade in the American dream for a year on the roads of Central and South America aboard “Nacho”, their quirky and somewhat temperamental Volkswagen van. As a result of questionable decision-making skills and intermittent bad luck, Brad and Sheena repeatedly find themselves in over their heads.

From the beet fields of North Dakota to the wilderness campgrounds of California to an Amazon warehouse in Texas, people who once might have kicked back to enjoy their sunset years are hard at work. Underwater on mortgages or finding that Social Security comes up short, they're hitting the road in astonishing numbers, forming a new community of nomads: RV and van-dwelling migrant laborers, or "workampers".

Scott Jurek is one of the world's best known and most beloved ultrarunners. Renowned for his remarkable endurance and speed, accomplished on a vegan diet, he's finished first in nearly all of ultrarunning's elite events over the course of his career. But after two decades of racing, training, speaking, and touring, Jurek felt an urgent need to discover something new about himself. He embarked on a wholly unique challenge, one that would force him to grow as a person and as an athlete: breaking the speed record for the Appalachian Trail.

On the eve of turning 30, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent 16 months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living? In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure - the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world - as well as the internal journey that started it all.

In this beautifully written, vividly detailed memoir, a young woman chronicles her adventures traveling across the deserts of the American West in an orange van named Bertha and reflects on an unconventional approach to life

After a decade-long addiction to crack cocaine and alcohol, Charlie Engle hit bottom with a near-fatal six-day binge that ended in a hail of bullets. As Engle got sober, he turned to running, which became his lifeline, his pastime, and his salvation. He began with marathons, and when marathons weren't far enough he began to take on ultramarathons, races that went for 35, 50, and sometimes hundreds of miles, traveling to some of the most unforgiving places on earth to race.

Where's the Next Shelter? is the true story of three travelers on the Appalachian Trail, a 2,000-mile hike that stretches from Georgia to Maine, told from the perspective of Gary Sizer, a seasoned backpacker and former marine who quickly finds himself humbled by the endeavor. If you long for the horizon or to sleep under the stars, then come along for the hike of a lifetime. All you have to do is take the first step.

In 1968, Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, made the cross-country motorcycle trip that was the basis for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that has inspired generations with its searching personal and philosophical narrative. After rereading the book at the onset of middle age, reporter Mark Richardson tuned up his old Suzuki dirt bike and became a "Pirsig Pilgrim".

Stuck in a job he no longer found fulfilling, journalist Mike McIntyre felt his life was quickly passing him by. So one day he hit the road to trek from one end of the country to the other with little more than the clothes on his back and without a single penny in his pocket. Through his travels, he found varying degrees of kindness in strangers from all walks of life - and discovered more about people and values and life on the road in America than he'd ever thought possible.

This travelogue follows Rick and his travel companion Peter along 2,400 miles through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles as they discover the old Route 66. With surprising and obscure stories about Route 66 personalities like Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Cyrus Avery (the Father of Route 66), the Harvey Girls, Mickey Mantle, and Bobby Troup (songwriter of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”), Antonson’s fresh perspective reads like an easy drive down a forgotten road.

“Well, now I’m committed,” he thought to himself after telling a national TV game show audience that he wanted to ride a motorcycle to Mongolia with his winnings. He felt the fear that commitment always induced in him; he was hoping they might have edited that bit out. Commitments are something he tried to get as far away from as possible, the only other constants in his life being twenty-five years of financial prudence, travel and motorcycle obsession.So there he was, committed to going very, very far on a motorcycle with his meager prize money. Consequently, he spent a winter on eBay and a spring in the garage preparing his $1000 KLR 650 for an uncertain life on the road.

After purchasing one-way flights from New York City to Paris, Kyle James and his girlfriend Ashley quit their day jobs, planned futures, and daily paradigms to see as much of the world as they could. In 114 days, they trekked across 15 countries and 38 cities with nothing but their backpacks, their smartphones, and each other. Not Afraid of the Fall is the unvarnished story of their off-the-cuff journey: from cliff-jumping off Croatia's untouched coasts to bathing with rescued elephants in Thailand and far beyond.

Find out what it's really like to cross 1,400 miles of the Alaskan Highway and travel some of the loneliest and most spectacular parts of America and Canada, all without leaving the comfort of your easy chair. Join author Shawn Inmon and his 20-year-old Subaru Outback on his epic solo road trip through British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. Part personal odyssey, part travel memoir, take an expedition into one of North America’s last remaining wildernesses.

In this newly collected anthology of spiels-on-wheels, O'Rourke celebrates cars and berates car haters, and chronicles America's relationship with automobiles from love for a powerful chariot of freedom to tolerance of an oversized household appliance with an extra-long extension cord.

In 1968, Robert Pirsig and his son, Chris, made the cross-country motorcycle trip that was the basis for Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, a book that has inspired generations with its searching personal and philosophical narrative. After rereading the book at the onset of middle age, reporter Mark Richardson tuned up his old Suzuki dirt bike and became a "Pirsig Pilgrim".

On the eve of turning 30, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent 16 months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living? In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure - the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world - as well as the internal journey that started it all.

This travelogue follows Rick and his travel companion Peter along 2,400 miles through eight states from Chicago to Los Angeles as they discover the old Route 66. With surprising and obscure stories about Route 66 personalities like Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, Al Capone, Salvador Dali, Dorothea Lange, Cyrus Avery (the Father of Route 66), the Harvey Girls, Mickey Mantle, and Bobby Troup (songwriter of “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66”), Antonson’s fresh perspective reads like an easy drive down a forgotten road.

Philip Caputo, who had just turned 70, his wife, and their two English setters took off in a truck hauling an Airstream camper from Key West, Florida, en route via back roads and state routes to Deadhorse, Alaska. The journey took four months and covered 17,000 miles, during which Caputo interviewed more than 80 Americans from all walks of life to get a picture of what their lives and the life of the nation are really about in the 21st century.

After purchasing one-way flights from New York City to Paris, Kyle James and his girlfriend Ashley quit their day jobs, planned futures, and daily paradigms to see as much of the world as they could. In 114 days, they trekked across 15 countries and 38 cities with nothing but their backpacks, their smartphones, and each other. Not Afraid of the Fall is the unvarnished story of their off-the-cuff journey: from cliff-jumping off Croatia's untouched coasts to bathing with rescued elephants in Thailand and far beyond.

As Tsh Oxenreider, author of Notes from a Blue Bike, chronicles her family's adventure around the world. Seeing, smelling, and tasting the widely varying cultures along the way, she discovers what it truly means to be at home.

Riding the rails, Ted Conover tasted the life of a tramp with companions like Pistol Pete, BB, and Sheba Sheila Sheils. From them he learned survival skills - how to "read" a freight train, scavenge for food and clothing, avoid the railroad "bulls." He was initiated into the customs of their unique, shadowy society - men and women bound together by a mutual bond of failure, camaraderie, and distrust.

At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.

Big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara set the world record for the sport, surfing a 78-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal, in 2011, a record he smashed two years later at the same break. Propelled by the challenge and promise of bigger, more difficult waves, this adrenaline-fueled loner and polarizing figure travels the globe to ride the most dangerous swells the oceans have to offer, from calving glaciers to hurricane swells. But what motivates McNamara to go to such extremes - to risk everything for one thrilling ride?

For 30 years, drummer, author, and songwriter Neil Peart had wanted to write a book about "the biggest journey of all in my restless existence: the life of a touring musician." Finally, the right time, and the right tour. In the summer of 2004, after three decades, 20 gold albums, and thousands of performances, the band Rush embarked on a 30th Anniversary World Tour. The "R30" tour traveled to nine countries, where the band performed 57 shows for more than half a million fans. Uniquely, Peart chose to do his between-show traveling by motorcycle, riding 21,000 miles of back roads.

In 36 thrilling days, Melanie Radzicki McManus hiked 1,100 miles around Wisconsin, landing her in the elite group of Ice Age Trail thru-hikers known as the Thousand-Milers. In prose that's alternately harrowing and humorous, Thousand-Miler takes you with her through Wisconsin's forests, prairies, wetlands, and farms, past the geologic wonders carved by long-ago glaciers, and into the neighborhood bars and gathering places of far-flung small towns.

As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. "You are braver than you think," her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries - visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, could not visit herself - encountering some of the world's most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother.

Following in the tradition of Ghost Rider and Traveling Music, Rush drummer Neil Peart relates nearly four years of band tours, road trips, and personal discoveries in this introspective travelogue. From the ups and downs of a professional artist to the birth of a child, this revealing narrative recounts 22 adventures from rock's foremost drummer, biker enthusiast, husband, and father.

In his follow-up to the best-selling Ultra-Marathon Man, world-renowned ultra marathoner Dean Karnazes chronicles his unbelievable exploits and explorations in gripping detail; Karnazes runs for days on end without rest, across some of the most exotic and inhospitable places on earth, including the Australian Outback, Antarctica, and the back alleys of New Jersey.

When Ted Simon rode 64,000 miles round the world on his 500c Triumph Tiger, he inspired thousands of motorcyclists to begin their own adventures, including Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, who chronicled their travels in Long Way Round. Nearly 30 years later, Ted Simon took to the road again to retrace the epic journey he made in his 40s. He meets up with old friends and acquaintances, revisits old landmarks and locations, and rediscovers himself, as well as the world, along the way.