Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman

"I was a self-reliant woman in many respects," Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Alice Steinbach says. "I'd paid my own bills, made my own decisions, and shoveled my own snow for years." However, she had acquired a different kind of dependence. "I had developed the bad habit of defining myself in terms of what other people thought of me and who I was to them." Without the people and things that shaped her identity, however, who was she? In this magnificent book, Steinbach travels to some of the world's most stunning and fascinating locations in pursuit of the answer to this query: Paris, where she discovers her soul mate; Oxford, where she enrolls in a course on the English hamlet; Milan, where she makes the acquaintance of a young lady getting married.

This insightful and humorous book, which is beautifully illustrated with postcards from Steinbach's travels, takes you on an amazing adventure of discovery that is both inner and outer-focused.