The fear of the unknown bothers most of us, even if it comes at the cost of chasing our dreams. How many of us want to drop everything that we are doing and travel the world? How many of us do? Neeraj Narayanan just did that, quitting his job one day and flying to Barcelona. Join him on his journey as he takes you rollicking across some countries in Europe and South East Asia, motoring up high mountain passes, hiding in jungles and being part of crazy festivals, hoping to find pretty girls in pursuit but only ending up with furious bulls, bears, and gypsies on his tail. At some point, he has almost no money left but his resolve to build a life out of travel doesn’t ebb. This is a witty yet heart-warming tale of one man’s solo journey for a year. While he goes to find beautiful places, he ends up finding trust, compassion, and a universe conspiring to make all his dreams come true. This guy’s really on his own trip and promises to take you on one too!

A compelling portrait of rock's greatest guitarist at the moment of his ascendance, Stone Free is the first book to focus exclusively on the happiest and most productive period of Jimi Hendrix's life. As it begins in the fall of 1966, he's an under-sung, under-accomplished sideman struggling to survive in New York City. Nine months later, he's the toast of Swinging London, a fashion icon, and the brightest star to step off the stage at the Monterey International Pop Festival. This momentum-building, day-by-day account of this extraordinary transformation offers new details into Jimi's personality, relationships, songwriting, guitar innovations, studio sessions, and record releases. It explores the social changes sweeping the U.K., Hendrix's role in the dawning of "flower power," and the prejudice he faced while fronting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. In addition to featuring the voices of Jimi, his bandmates, and other eyewitnesses, Stone Free draws extensively from contemporary accounts published in English- and foreign-language newspapers and music magazines. This celebratory account is a must-read for Hendrix fans.

The Milton Hershey School is the richest and wealthiest K-12 residential school in the world. Its $12 billion trust fund, financed by sales of the iconic Hershey candy, eclipse that of Cornell, Dartmouth, and Johns Hopkins combined. Even more stunning is that the school for orphans owns The Hershey Company and not the other way around. As the twentieth-century drew to a close, the School’s Board of Managers creatively interpreted the Founder’s mission and tried to turn the refuge for extremely needy children into more of a middle-class boarding school. The alumni “Homeguys” challenged the Board and, after a decade of legal struggle and national publicity, won the battle to reclaim the soul of the school. Johnny O’Brien, an orphan who lived at the school growing up, helped to lead the successful alumni protest. In a shocking turn of events, he was then selected to become Milton Hershey School’s eighth president and tasked with restoring the mission, morale, and character-building culture of “the Home.” He would need all his orphan resilience, Princeton and Johns Hopkins wisdom, and his good friends, to transform this unusual and remarkable school. In a riveting and haunting account, O’Brien tells a universal story about the vulnerability of needy children, describes the madness that consumed his beloved brother, explores the cruelty of bullies—both young and old, exposes the corrupting influence of money, and shows how the Milton Hershey School continues its sacred mission of saving thousands of America’s neediest children. See the website for the book at semisweetbook.com.

A cheeky tale of campus folly! Things aren’t going well for James Duffy. The beleaguered communications director of Sir Richard Middling University is struggling to do the right thing while navigating the quirks and minefields of campus politics. The odds are against him and the challenges keep piling up: an ambitious polytechnical college is scheming to take over Sir Middling U; a furore erupts over a bigoted guest speaker; and activists want to tear down a statue of the university’s controversial namesake. While striving to defuse the various crises, Duffy encounters a cast of eccentric characters: a scholarly burlesque queen; an author of dreadful poetry; a hobby-horse-riding free-speech advocate; and a diaper-wearing basset hound. As things go from bad to worse, Duffy's flagging spirits are lifted—and his moral compass righted—by the girl of his dreams, the wise and loyal Sophie Munn.

Flowers in their Hair follows the evolution and misadventures of Zane, the main character, as he negotiates the carnivals and combat zones of the sixties. He is just an average hippie, evading the Vietnam War, taking part in student uprisings, seeking spiritual enlightenment through psychedelic drugs, getting incarcerated, living in communes, having intense, but for the most part short, relationships with girls and women, alternating between ecstasy and depression, traveling the western United States and Mexico but always returning to San Francisco. His quest for spirituality and love comes to some fruition by the end of the decade.

A riveting journey down Theodore Roosevelt's "river of doubt" with a diverse crew of adventurers, scientists, and Indigenous leaders who shine light on the past, present, and future of a natural wonder. Sam Moses took part in the adventure of a lifetime when he, along with seventeen men and two women, embarked on the Rio Roosevelt Expedition. They would follow the former president's wake down five-hundred miles of extreme whitewater into the dark heart of the Amazon. The party was guided by two chiefs from the Cinta Larga tribe—the same tribe that stalked Roosevelt’s expedition in 1914—who, between rapids, tell the story of the tribe’s own Trail of Tears. After the wildest whitewater is past, Moses travels with the chiefs to their village to witness the massive illegal mahogany logging from their forest, the Roosevelt Indigenous Territory. River Without a Cause puts us in the raft during those heart pounding rapid descents, as we experience the drama, dynamics and disputes between the Bull Moose and his co-leader, Brazil’s most famous explorer, the rigid Colonel Candido Rondon. As the Amazon stands on the precipiece of hope with the election of a new Brazillian president, River Without a Cause is a moving and galvanzing tale of adventure that is a fitting tribute to this world wonder.