Back in the United States after two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson set out in the spring of 1996 to reacquaint himself with his native country on foot, by walking the Appalachian Trail — the roughly 2,100-mile footpath running from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine. His companion was Stephen Katz, an old friend in no condition for it, and between them they covered something close to two fifths of the distance.
A Walk in the Woods is the comic account of that attempt, and a good deal more besides. Between the blisters, the bears and the weather, Bryson turns aside to the trail's own history, the ecology of the eastern woods, the towns that have grown up and emptied out along it, and the question of how well the country is looking after it — so that a very funny travel book doubles as a plea for the conservation of one of America's last great stretches of wilderness. First published in Britain by Doubleday in 1997 and in the United States the following year, it became a long-running bestseller and was adapted for the screen in 2015.