“We do not take a trip; a trip takes us,” John Steinbeck noted in his 1962 classic, Travels with Charley. In 2008, Bill Barich decided to explore the mood of the United States as Steinbeck had done almost a half century before. He set off on a 5,943 mile cross-country drive from New York to his old hometown of San Francisco on Route 50, a road twisting through the American heartland.Long Way Home is the stunning result of his pilgrimage. From the Eastern Shore of Maryland ...

After meeting an Irishwoman in London and moving to Dublin, Bill Barich?a “blow-in,” or stranger, in Irish parlance?found himself looking for a traditional Irish pub to be his local. There are nearly 12,000 pubs in Ireland, so he appeared to have plenty of choices. He wanted a pub like the one in John Ford's classic movie, The Quiet Man, offering talk and drink with no distractions, but such pubs are now scare as publicans increasingly rely on flat-screen televisions, rock music, ...

The land of opportunity, a golden Eden, the last frontier. What is this place that has given rise to countless metaphors but can still quicken the imagination? For Bill Barich, the question became a quest when he realized that home was no longer New York, where he had grown up, but California, to which he had been lured twenty years earlier. Now, in this account of his journey through California, he captures the true nature of the state behind the stereotypes.From the fogbound fish...

From one of California’s most celebrated writers comes a generous and deeply absorbing novel, as filled with warmth and the hope of second chances as the land it describes.Returning from New York to the vineyards of Northern California to be with her dying mother, Anna Torelli never expects that the trip will change her life. But when she meets Arthur Atwater, he father’s vineyard manager-a man as emotionally bruised and as fiercely independent as she is-Anna is pulled back into th...

In his first collection of short fiction, Bill Barich gives us cause to celebrate a prose stylist who can gracefully cross the boundaries of genre. As stated by Anne Tyler, Hard to Be Good is so large and complete that you tend to look up at the end and find yourself surprised that it’s still the same day.Set in the American West, as are three other of the seven stories in this book, it is about the unselfconscious struggle for wholeness in a divided family. Its adolescent...

Bill Barich burst onto the literary scene more than twenty-five years ago with this remarkable account of racetrack life. Holed up in a cheap motel in Albany, California, only a few miles from Golden Gate Fields, he looked to the track to help him make sense of his life during a dark peiod of loss and challenge. With rare sensitivity, he captured the gritty world of the backstretch, and also its poetry, as few other writers have done. Laughing in the Hills, which was first serialized in th...

An Angle on the World is a brilliant tribute to Bill Barich's extraordinary range as a writer. Gathering together more than thirty years of work, this book addresses such diverse subjects as a murder trial in the Caribbean, a visit to a juju doctor in Nigeria, and the author's youthful escapades in Italy and the Haight-Ashbury. As the New York Times put it, "An easy, fluid stylist, Barich writes entertainingly about anything."As a staff writer at the New Yorke...

Bill Barich’s widely praised work is at its peak in these intimate glimpses into the stories behind the stories, the real people behind the public façade of the athletic realm. In this collection, Barich takes readers behind the scenes of both participatory and spectator sports, whose wide variety include:Three different types of horse racing: down-and-dirty bush racing in Cajun country; an elegant steeplechase at Ascot, England; and a big-time Santa Anita thoroughbred heading for ...

Here is a travel book with a difference: ten chronological chapters from a year of wandering, from the Pacific Northwest to Tuscany and back again to the trout-laden streams of California. Join Bill Barich as he travels the globe, from the trout streams of Northern California to the auction ring at Saratoga, where millions of dollars may be gaveled away for a yearling thoroughbred; from seedy London pubs to a run-down Florentine palazzo during a glorious Italian spring. Learn the science o...

That autumn, I went a little crazy for rivers.”So writes Bill Barich, and this charming volume captures the essence of obsession. The hours he spent on various streams became a meditation on family, friends, and the natural world. To anyone who remembers the infinite patience of a grandfather on a lake, or the romance of a mountain getaway with a new girlfriend; to anyone who can recall each fish caught on days that were far too hot, or way too cold, or on rivers too crowded, or in...

Twenty-five years after his racetrack classic Laughing in the Hills, Bill Barich tells the story of how he fell in love and found a new life in Dublin, where he was soon caught up in the Irish obsession with horses and luck. Barich travels throughout his adopted country and meets the leading trainers and jockeys, the beleaguered bookies who work rain or shine, and a host of passionate, like-minded fans-from Father Sean Breen, the Racing Priest,” to T. P. Reilly, whose peculiar be...

The man-eating proclivities of Komodo dragons. The complicated art of being a cowgirl. A picaresque ramble with a merry band of tree-cleaners. The big-wave crusaders of the world's best surfers. For the past twenty years, Outside magazine has set the standard for original and engaging reports on travel, adventure, sports, and the environment.Along the way, many of America's best journalists and storytellers--including such writers as Jon Krakauer, Tim Cahill, E. Annie Proulx, Edwar...