They told him, "You won't make it! They will kidnap and kill you!" Undeterred, he left his family and his job for a 1,000-plus mile trek along the Texas-Mexico Border. And on the banks of the Rio Grande, he began to realize just how wrong we are, about virtually every aspect of life and death along La Frontera.

In the wake of the EU referendum, the United Kingdom's border with Ireland has gained greater significance: it is set to become the frontier with the European Union. Over the past year, Garrett Carr has travelled this border, on foot and by canoe, to uncover a landscape with a troubled past and an uncertain future. Across this thinly populated line, travelling down hidden pathways and among ancient monuments, Carr encounters a variety of characters who have made this liminal space their home. He reveals the turbulent history of this landscape and changes the way we look at nationhood, land and power. The book incorporates Carr's own maps and photographs.

This travelogue about one man’s journey by foot along the border between Scotland and England blends nature, history, and politics. In this book, Ian Crofton travels on foot from Gretna Green in the southwest to Berwick in the northeast, following as close as possible the Anglo-Scottish Border as it has been fixed since the union of the crowns in 1603. Much of the line of the Border runs through a wild, overwhelmingly unvisited no man’s land—the sort of trackless waste perfect for keeping two belligerent peoples apart? During the course of his journey, Crofton considers a number of questions like how “natural” are borderlines? Sometimes they follow physical barriers, sometimes an arbitrary line on a map, the compromise made by some committee of distant diplomats… Praise for Walking the Border “There is a lot of excellent natural description in this book, alongside a number of comic encounters with humans and livestock.” —The Guardian (UK)

In 2013 Ian Crofton undertook a journey he had been pondering for years: a walk along the Border between Scotland and England. It would be an exploration both of his own identity - not quite Scottish, not quite English - and of a largely unexplored stretch of country. Apart from the line marked on the map, the route is not obvious. For much of its length the Border either follows the middle of various rivers, or traces the Southern Upland watershed, an area of bleak moorland and dense conifer plantations. During the course of his walk, Ian Crofton investigates the history, literature and legend of the Border. He talks to a range of people he comes across - farmers, landladies, bar staff, anglers, labourers, shepherds, shopkeepers - to find out what they make of the Border, if anything at all. Such conversations lead to a consideration of the very nature of borders. Do they provide a necessary defence of the nationstate? Or are they, in this day and age, an affront to global justice? Walking the Border is in the best traditions of travel writing, combining vivid description with human insight, the whole spiced with a wry sense of the absurdity and necessity of both inward and outward journeys.

In the summer after the Anglo-Irish Agreement, when tension was high in Northern Ireland, Colm Tóibín walked along the border from Derry to Newry. Bad Blood is a stark and evocative account of this journey through fear and hatred, and a report on ordinary life and the legacy of history in a bleak and desolate landscape. Tóibín describes the rituals – the marches, the funerals, the demonstrations – observed by both communities along the border, and listens to the stories which haunt both sides. With sympathy and insight Bad Blood captures the intimacy of life along one of the most contested strips of land in Western Europe.

Thoughtful investigative report about a central issue of the 2008 presidential race that examines the border in human terms through a cast of colorful characters. Asks and answers the core questions: Should we close the border? Is a fence or wall the answer? Is the U.S. government capable of fully securing the border? Reviews the political, economic, social, and cultural aspects and discusses NAFTA, immigration policy, border security, and other local, regional, national, and international issues.