"A Walk in the Woods" is a fantastically funny account of Bill Bryson's months walking the Appalachian Trail. Bryson is one of the best of our comic writers, and in this new audiobook his wit sparkles as never before as he takes on the most daunting and most beautiful walk in the world. From Springer Mountain in Georgia right up to Mount Katahdin in Maine, the Appalachian Trail has fascinated generations of walkers with its challenge and breathtaking beauty. Now, it has a writer to match its grandeur.

For reasons that even he doesn't understand, Bryson decided in 1996 to walk the trail on his return from a quarter century living on the "small island" of Great Britain. Starting out in Georgia, he and his infamous sidekick Katz (who appears in Neither Here Nor There; Bryson describes him as "single-handedly ensuring that Iowa has a thriving drug culture") attack the most beautiful and daunting trail, and in the process Bryson brings to life the great American outdoors. Spending damp nights in open shelters, feasting on noodles and candy bars, sweating up mountains and traipsing across swollen rivers, this is adventure and nature writing at its very best -- and funniest. One only has to read of Bryson's obsessive fear of bears, or his fight with a security guard who wants to impound his car (his crime was to try to look at a hill), or of Katz's encounter with Beulah and her fearsome husband "Bubba T. Flubba", to realize this is a comic writer at the height of his powers. And always in the background is the naturalworld, breathtaking and powerful, leading them on.

Along the way Bryson uses his dart-like wit to serious effect to reveal just what we are in danger of losing. As he says, "if the global temperature rises by 4degreeF over the next 50 years, as is evidently possible, then the whole of the Appalachian wilderness below New England could become Savanna". This is powerful and timely stuff, and Bryson misses no opportunity to highlight just how the Appalachian Trail needs committed and insightful guardianship if it is to survive and prosper into the next century.