Great Journeys Can Cans Cats and Cities of Ash (Penguin Great Journeys)

One of the great derisive monuments to the imbecilities of the tourist experience, Mark Twain's (1835-1910) account of his tour with a group of fellow Americans around the sights of Europe is both hilarious and touching, Twain's exasperation and dismay at the phoney and exploitative being matched by his excitement and pleasure in the genuinely beautiful. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.

• Life on the Golden Horn (Penguin Great Journeys)
• The Congo and the Cameroons (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys Hunt for the Southern Continent (Penguin Great Journeys)
• To the Holy Shrines (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Fighting in Spain (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys Borneo Celebs Aru (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys From The Meadows Of Gold (Penguin Great Journeys)
• The Cobra's Heart (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Piracy, Turtles and Flying Foxes (Penguin Great Journeys)
• Great Journeys Snakes with Wings and Gold Digging Ants