Just because we can’t travel doesn’t mean our minds have to stay put. Here are some books to satisfy your wanderlust from the comfort and safety of your own home.

A writer for whom the journey has always mattered reinvents the very form itself in this inviting collection of in-the-moment impressions of his journeys.

A writer of enormous erudition and wide-ranging travels, Claudio Magris selects for Journeying writings penned during trips and wanderings over the span of several decades. Taken together Magris’s essays share a clearly identified theme. They represent the motif of the journey in all its aspects—literary, metaphysical, spiritual, mythical, philosophical, historical—as well as the author’s comprehensive understanding of the subject or, one might say, of his own way of being in the world. Traveling from Spain to Germany to Poland, Norway, Vietnam, Iran, and Australia, he records particular moments and places through a highly personal lens.

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A stunning look at the profound impact of the jet plane on the mid-century aesthetic, from Disneyland to Life magazine.

Vanessa R. Schwartz engagingly presents the jet plane’s power to define a new age at a critical moment in the mid-20th century, arguing that the craft’s speed and smooth ride allowed people to imagine themselves living in the future. Exploring realms as diverse as airport architecture, theme park design, film, and photography, Jet Age Aesthetic argues that the jet created an aesthetic that circulated on the ground below. The jet age aesthetic laid the groundwork for our contemporary media culture, in which motion is so fluid that we can surf the internet while going nowhere at all.

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“A propulsive read.”—Holland Cotter, New York Times Book Review

This fascinating visual tour reveals the full extent of Gauguin’s travels and their influence on his unique style. Abundantly illustrated with hundreds of vibrant images, The Gauguin Atlas brings to life the places that Gauguin visited and lived. The book seamlessly integrates maps and other images with an accessible and engaging text that narrates Gauguin’s travels; what emerges is a vivid picture of an artist continually seeking new experience and inspiration for his art.

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A comprehensive look at Williamsburg’s evolution and important role in defining our understanding of eighteenth-century America.

Today best known as the world’s largest “living history” museum, Williamsburg was the capital of the colony of Virginia in the 1700s and the setting for key debates leading to the American Revolution. Restoring Williamsburg offers an updated and nuanced look at the continuing process of restoration that began in the 1920s.

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Nick Thorpe takes us on an unexpected journey up the Danube, where we encounter a remarkable and unfamiliar world.

The Danube is personal, conversational, funny, immediate, and uniquely observant—everything a reader expects in the best travel writing. Thorpe observes the river’s ecological conditions, some discouraging and others hopeful, and encounters archaeological remains that whisper of human communities sustained by the river over eight millennia. Most fascinating of all are the ordinary and extraordinary people along the way—the ferrymen and fishermen, workers in the fields, shopkeepers, beekeepers, waitresses, smugglers and border policemen, and legal and illegal immigrants.

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