Hitting The Road Without A Map

The story of a trip with a goal - but virtually no plan There was a time way back in their past when the two intrepid travelers may well have walked out of a bar and commenced upon an unscripted journey, with or without the permission of the RV owner. Those adventures, fueled by the inhibition lowering properties of alcohol and mind-altering substances, plus the character defects of selfishness and self-centeredness, typically ended in shame and remorse, or in the worst cases, tragically. That is no longer the sort of life either one of them lives today. The whole trip was blessed by God, and that I truly believe. Who I traveled with, where we found ourselves on the journey, and which roads we took, reached far beyond the mere fortuitous. Nothing besides the destination had been planned. Everything else was just made up as we went, and at the end of each day we felt as if there had been some guiding hand in it all. A travel memoir and a photo essay of a journey from Ohio to Oregon as well as a personal meditation on the nature of relationships, facing fears, and becoming mindful of living in the moment.

From the Art Deco graphics of the '30s to '50s family-oriented images, our love affair with the automobile.

In an unnamed country at the end of a world war, Paul Miller escapes from a labor camp, collapsing after a few hundred feet. Taken in by a young woman he learns to love, Paul decides to stay where he is, and, as the war ends, he marries, starts a family, and helps to rebuild the village. But Paul is inescapably haunted by his life before the war, by his time in the camp, and by the fact that the people who are now his friends ignored for years the horrors in their midst. So when the camp’s commander suddenly returns to the village, Paul finds himself forced to choose between vengeance and forgiveness. The Game of Opposites is a universal tale of good and evil, and a stunning evocation of the capability for both within us all.

“For more than forty years Roger Cohen has ventured to every corner of the earth to chronicle the great upheavals of our age, but he’s never lost sight of what really matters: love, hope, and all the mysteries of the human heart. Here, in this collection of columns that will take you from the streets of Kyiv to an execution chamber in Alabama, you can read him at his best.”—Dexter Filkins, best-selling author of The Forever War A collection of the finest New York Times columns written by Roger Cohen over more than a decade, accompanied by an original, twenty-thousand-word essay on the state of the world The countless readers who followed Roger Cohen’s column and mourned its end responded above all to what they saw as the marriage in his writing of head and heart. That tenor permeates An Affirming Flame. During his twelve years as a columnist, Cohen aimed to hold power to account at home and abroad, in the name of freedom, decency, pluralism, and the importance of truth and dissent in open societies. He watched with alarm as the outside threat of 9/11 morphed into the internal threat of January 6. This time, the assailants were not jihadi terrorists; they were American white supremacists and seditionists convinced of American decadence but unable to see that they personified it. The threat to American democracy is clear. Cohen dissects this ominous American fracture. He explores themes of displacement, belonging, and his own imperiled craft of journalism. His examination of the rising tide of authoritarian rule takes him to China, and in Kyiv he sees the devastating impact of Vladimir Putin's Russian nationalism. With its trenchant consideration of the plight of refugees, COVID-19, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the war in Afghanistan, Cohen's writing reflects his belief in the unquenchable human quest for dignity. He captures the fight to defend America’s openness, democratic institutions, and ideals against the rising tide of retrogression, division, and assault on truth. This struggle, as Cohen writes, is also the world’s. It is inseparable from the battle to save humanity from the creeping autocracy of the twenty-first century. As he writes, “On lies is tyranny built.”

Revealing the road as an icon of American culture - always under construction.

Travel back in time to the vibrant 1960s, and join Bridget and her friends, students at the Hereford College of Education, as they dare to defy convention and hitchhike their way through an era of change.

A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence. Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found. In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain. They're all yearning for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin. From the beloved author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass and Trouble the Water comes this generous story of family, war, loss, and longing . . . of the ways we hide from those we love, and the ways that love finds us anyway.