Best Travel Books of All Time?

Reading in Lalibela, Ethiopia.

My new Kindle + rootless frugality = demand for free travel books.

Alas, there aren't as many copyright-expired travel books as I'd have thought.


But here are several lists of best travel books, regardless of vintage:

The 86 Greatest Travel Books of All Time  in Longitude Books' ("Recommended Reading for Travelers") list from a 2007 Conde Nast article.

Ultimate Travel Library: Around the World in 80+ Books in National Geographic Traveler

The 100 Most Celebrated Travel Books of All Time at Worldhum, with links to a number of related lists.


Below are some free books that I gleaned from these lists:

Mark Twain: Innocents Abroad
Mark Twain: Life on the Mississippi
Mark Twain: Roughing It
D.H. Lawrence: Sea and Sardinia
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton: South: The Story of Shackleton's 1914-1917 Expedition
Fridtjof Nansen: Farthest North Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship Fram 1893-1896, Vols I and II
Alexis de Toqueville: Democracy in America, Vols 1 and II
Meriwether Lewis and William Clark: Journals of Lewis and Clark
Tobias Smollet: Travels Through France and Italy
Herodutus: The History(ies), Vols I and II
Winston Churchill: The River War: An Account of the Reconquest of the Sudan
'Sir John Mandeville': The Travels of Sir John Mandeville
Alexander William Kinglake: Eothen, or Traces of Travel Brought Home From the East
Sir Richard Francis Burton: First Footsteps in East Africa (Harar)


Over here at Gutenberg.org, is a plethora of free books on travel to download.  So it appears there are more free books for my Kindle than I originally thought. 

Reading in Tbilisi, Georgia