For all you free spirits, vagabonds and non-conformists, here’s a trove of books to slip into your straw bag, stash under the seat of your junker and toss into your dug-out canoe. Then, throw caution to the air-conditioned winds! — Elissa Schappell, Contributing Editor and Hot Type columnist at Vanity Fair

Gypset Travel by Julia Chaplin

From the Aeolian Islands in Italy to Lamu, Kenya to José Ignacio in Uruguay, Julia Chaplin captures the exquisite beauty of the off-the-beaten-path enclaves favored by the Gypset: artists, surfers, designers, musicians and luxury-loving adventurers who combine a boho-gypsy free spiritedness with nouveau jet-set sophistication.

Great Yoga Retreats by Angelika Taschen

For those seeking a state of Zen relaxation while reclining in “sofa pose” or inspiration for a yoga-cation, meditate on Angelika Taschen’s enlightening and inspiring Great Yoga Retreats. From Parmarth Niketan ashram on the Ganges, where yoga was born and The Beatles met the Maharishi, to The New Age paradise, The Esalen Institute in Big Sur, to the resort Amansala’s Bikini Boot Camp in Tulum, Mexico.

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Considering chucking it all for your art and running away to Europe? A Moveable Feast is the essential guide to living the creative ex-pat life in Europe. Hemingway’s memoir of Paris in the 1920s as part of the “Lost Generation” of writers and artists calls out to all aspiring tortured artistes who long to run with the bulls, sip absinthe until dawn and fall madly and hopelessly in love.

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

You don’t have to hop a plane to escape, just get behind the wheel. The rebel spirit of the Beat generation blazes in Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road, the road-tripper’s bible where two friends cut a swath across America in search of others who burn like roman candles, the perfect cup of coffee and, oh yeah, enlightenment.

Blue Highways by William Least-Heat Moon

In 1983 William Least-Heat Moon published his mega-bestselling cult classic memoir Blue Highways. Moon, a Native American teacher who had just lost his job and his wife, sets off on a 13,000-mile, soul-searching journey into the heart of the country in a van named Ghost Dancing and, while keeping to the map’s back roads or “blue highways,” he discovers profound mystery in the ordinary.

In Patagonia by Bruce Chatwin

In Patagonia is widely hailed as a masterpiece of literary, historical and adventure travel writing. Bruce Chatwin’s lyrical, vividly reported tales of wanderlust, roaming the remote South American mountains and plains of Chile and Argentina in search of a mythological prehistoric beast, Butch Cassidy’s cabin and connections with an eclectic cast of characters manages to contain all the history, mystery and exoticism of Patagonia.