IN FINDING THEM GONE, the translator Red Pine, a.k.a. travel writer Bill Porter, calls on more than 40 ancient Chinese poets in 30 days. With three small porcelain cups and a flask of expensive bourbon, he crosses the country ...

SOME WRITERS LIVE in optimal habitats that generate their best work. For Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey, that place was the vast, dry American West. In 2012, with a box full of books riding shotgun, David Gessner drove from North Carolina ...

A wilderness guide to grief....