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The Edge of Extinction: Travels with Enduring People in Vanishing Lands
Par Jules Pretty. 2014
In The Edge of Extinction, Jules Pretty explores life and change in a dozen environments and cultures across the world,…
taking us on a series of remarkable journeys through deserts, coasts, mountains, steppes, snowscapes, marshes, and farms to show that there are many different ways to live in cooperation with nature. From these accounts of people living close to the land and close to the edge emerge a larger story about sustainability and the future of the planet. Pretty addresses not only current threats to natural and cultural diversity but also the unsustainability of modern lifestyles typical of industrialized countries. In a very real sense, Pretty discovers, what we manage to preserve now may well save us later. Jules Pretty's travels take him among the Maori people along the coasts of the Pacific, into the mountains of China, and across petroglyph-rich deserts of Australia. He treks with nomads over the continent-wide steppes of Tuva in southern Siberia, walks and boats in the wildlife-rich inland swamps of southern Africa, and experiences the Arctic with ice fishermen in Finland. He explores the coasts and inland marshes of eastern England and Northern Ireland and accompanies Innu people across the taiga’s snowy forests and the lakes of the Labrador interior. Pretty concludes his global journey immersed in the discrete cultures and landscapes embedded within the American landscape: the small farms of the Amish, the swamps of the Cajuns in the deep South, and the deserts of California. The diverse people Pretty meets in The Edge of Extinction display deep pride in their relationships with the land and are only willing to join with the modern world on their own terms. By the examples they set, they offer valuable lessons for anyone seeking to find harmony in a world cracking under the pressures of apparently insatiable consumption patterns of the affluent.The Wild Muir
Par Lee Stetson. 1994
Here is an entertaining collection of John Muir's most exciting adventures, representing some of his finest writing. From the famous…
avalanche ride off the rim of Yosemite Valley to his night spent weathering a windstorm at the top of a tree to death-defying falls on Alaskan glaciers, the renowned outdoorsman's exploits are related in passages that are by turns exhilarating, unnerving, dizzying, and outrageous.The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10
Par Sean O'Reilly, James O'Reilly, Larry Habegger. 1985
The Best Travel Writing, Volume 10 is the latest in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate…
the world's best travel writing - from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisines and cultures. Includes winners from the annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing.A Confederate Biography: The Cruise Of Css Shenandoah
Par Dwight Hughes. 2015
Based primarily on the words of those who lived it, A Confederate Biography is a comprehensive narrative of the cruise…
of the CSS Shenandoah. More than a thrilling sea story, the journey provides a window of historical perspective on the Civil War. From October 1864 to November 1865, the officers of the Shenandoah carried the Confederacy and the conflict around the globe and to the ends of the earth through every extreme of sea and storm. Their observations looking back from the most remote and alien surroundings imaginable, along with viewpoints of those they encountered, illuminate the hearts and minds of contestants North and South. These Americans stood together in defense of their country as they understood it, pursuing a difficult and dangerous mission in which they succeeded spectacularly after it no longer mattered. Through their eyes, the potentially decisive international arena of the war, governed by complex maritime and trade law, comes alive. The neutrality, or lack thereof, of major European powers was a central concern to both sides. Shenandoah was smack in the middle of this diplomatic maelstrom and contributed to it. And within the navy, a generational clash arose between antebellum orthodoxy and a professional officer corps emerging from the new Naval Academy, rapid technological advances, contemporary social reforms, and the crucible of war. This difference was manifest between the captain of Shenandoah and his young lieutenants. The men they led, however, were a polyglot assemblage of merchant sailors of nearly every nation and color--including several Yankees and African Americans--operating within its own rigidly authoritarian and cramped society. Shenandoah herself was a magnificent vessel, the epitome of rich and ancient maritime heritages, but also a paradigm of dramatic transitions from the small wooden sailing navy to the second largest, most powerful, and technologically advanced fleet in the world. Her commerce raiding mission was a watery form of asymmetric warfare in the spirit of John Mosby, Bedford Forrest, and W. T. Sherman. It was arguably the most successful military effort of the Confederacy in terms of cost versus mission accomplished, but the strategic effectiveness of the strategy remains questionable. Shenandoah fired the last gun of the Civil War, set the land of the midnight sun aglow with flaming Yankee whalers, and, seven months after Appomattox, lowered the last Confederate banner. This is a biography of a ship and a cruise, and a microcosm of the Confederate-American experience.Saudade: The Possibilities of Place
Par Anik See. 2008
The Portuguese word saudade has no direct English translation. In its simplest sense, it describes a feeling of longing for…
something that is now gone, and may yet return, but in all likelihood can never be recaptured.New York City's Best Dive Bars
Par Ben Westhoff. 2010
Sick of gentrification, $15 cosmopolitans, and clean bathrooms? Then this revised edition of the best-selling New York City's Best Dive…
Bars is the guide for you. Featuring all new reviews of one hundred of the best dive bars in the five boroughs of New York City and surrounding cities such as Jersey City and Hoboken, this book takes you where other bar guides fear to tread. Broken urinals and $2 PBRS? Yes!Meeting the Medicine Men: An Englishman's Travels Among the Navajo
Par Charles Langley. 2008
A chance meeting with a young Navajo Indian propels an English traveler out of his middle-class London life and into…
the world of the North American Indian Medicine Men, where people believe that witchcraft can bring ruin and even death. Only the Medicine Men have the knowledge to do battle with witches, lift curses and restore the sick to health. The larger-than-life Blue Horse is one of a dwindling band of Medicine Men traveling the vast Navajo reservation of New Mexico and Arizona, ministering to the victims of evil spirits. Charles Langley, former London newspaper editor, finds himself serving as Blue Horse's bag carrier and chauffeur, eventually becoming his apprentice. He sees Blue Horse perform incredible feats - predicting the future, uncovering the past, curing the sick and communicating with spirits. At first bemused by what he sees, Langley attributes Blue Horse's successes to luck or fraud. But logical explanations soon fall short. In Meeting the Medicine Men, Langley studies the accumulating evidence that Navajo Medicine Men really can cure the sick, change history and foretell the future and explores a culture that has endured since the Ice Age but is now cracking under the pressure of the modern world.Philadelphia's Best Dive Bars
Par Brian Mcmanus. 2011
Philadelphia's Best Dive Bars reviews the grittiest drinking establishments in the city of brotherly love. If you want to avoid…
the tourist traps listed in those other bar guides and find out where to get wasted after visiting the Liberty Bell, then this book is required reading.Brian McManus is the music editor and a contributing food writer at Philadelphia Weekly. He's written for Houston Press, San Francisco Weekly, Chicago Reader, Cleveland Scene, and Spin magazine.Portage
Par Sue Leaf. 2015
When as a child she first saw a canoe gliding on Lake Alexander in central Minnesota, Sue Leaf was mesmerized.…
The enchantment stayed with her and shimmers throughout this book as we join Leaf and her family in canoeing the waterways of North America, always on the lookout for the good life amid the splendors and surprises of the natural world.The journey begins with a trip to the border lakes of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, then wanders into the many beautiful little rivers of Minnesota and Wisconsin, the provincial parks of Canada, the Louisiana bayou, and the arid West. A biologist and birder, Leaf considers natural history and geology, noticing which plants are growing along the water and which birds are flitting among the branches. Traveling the routes of the Ojibwe, voyageurs, and map-making explorers, she reflects on the region's history, peopling her pages with Lewis and Clark, Jean Lafitte, Henry Schoolcraft, and Canada's Group of Seven artists. Part travelogue, part natural and cultural history, Portage is the memoir of one family's thirty-five-year venture into the watery expanse of the world. Through sunny days and stormy hours and a few hair-raising moments, Sue and her husband, Tom, celebrate anniversaries on the water; haul their four kids along on family adventures; and occasionally make the paddle a social outing with friends. Along the way they contend with their own human nature: they run rapids when it would have been wiser to portage, take portages and learn truths about aging, avoid portages and ponder risk-taking. Through it all, out in the open, in the wild, in the blue, exploring the river means encountering life--good decisions and missed chances, risks and surprises, and the inevitable changes that occur as a family canoes through time and learns what it means to be human in this natural world.Meeting the Medicine Men: An Englishman's Travels Among the Navajo
Par Charles Langley. 2008
A chance meeting with a young Navajo Indian propels an English traveler out of his middle-class London life and into…
the world of the North American Indian Medicine Men, where people believe that witchcraft can bring ruin and even death. Only the Medicine Men have the knowledge to do battle with witches, lift curses and restore the sick to health. The larger-than-life Blue Horse is one of a dwindling band of Medicine Men traveling the vast Navajo reservation of New Mexico and Arizona, ministering to the victims of evil spirits. Charles Langley, former London newspaper editor, finds himself serving as Blue Horse's bag carrier and chauffeur, eventually becoming his apprentice. He sees Blue Horse perform incredible feats - predicting the future, uncovering the past, curing the sick and communicating with spirits. At first bemused by what he sees, Langley attributes Blue Horse's successes to luck or fraud. But logical explanations soon fall short. In Meeting the Medicine Men, Langley studies the accumulating evidence that Navajo Medicine Men really can cure the sick, change history and foretell the future and explores a culture that has endured since the Ice Age but is now cracking under the pressure of the modern world.The Way of Wanderlust
Par Don George. 2015
As a professional travel writer and editor for the past 40 years, Don George has been paid to explore the…
world. Through the decades, his articles have been published in magazines, newspapers, and websites around the globe and have won more awards than almost any other travel writer alive, yet his pieces have never been collected into one volume. The Way of Wanderlust: The Best Travel Writing of Don George fills this void with a moving and inspiring collection of tales and reflections from one of America’s most acclaimed and beloved travel writers. From his high-spirited account of climbing Mount Kilimanjaro on a whim when he was 22 years old to his heart-plucking description of a home-stay in a muddy compound in Cambodia as a 61-year-old, this collection ranges widely. As renowned for his insightful observations as for his poetic prose, George always absorbs the essence of the places he’s visiting. Other stories here include a moving encounter with Australia’s sacred red rock monolith, Uluru; an immersion in country kindness on the Japanese island of Shikoku; the trials and triumphs of ascending Yosemite’s Half Dome with his wife and children; and a magical morning at Machu Picchu.My New Orleans
Par Rosemary James. 2006
From famous writers and personalities who call the city home, whether by birth or simply love, these pieces written in…
the wake of Hurricane Katrina serve as a timeless tribute to New Orleans. Sentimental, joyful, and witty, these essays by celebrated writers, entertainers, chefs, and fans honor the life of one of America's most beloved cities. Paul Prudhomme writes about the emotional highs New Orleans inspires, Wynton Marsalis exalts his native city as soul model for the nation, while Walter Isaacson shares his vision for preserving his hometown's pentimento magic. Stewart O'Nan recalls the fantasy haze that enshrouded his first trip to the Big Easy when he was thirty and bowed to Richard Ford to receive his first literary prize. Poppy Z. Brite thanks New Orleans for helping her discover the simple pleasure of Audubon Park's egrets, and Elizabeth Dewberry explores what it means to work Bourbon Street as a stripper. My New Orleans captures the spirit of the city that was -- and that will be again.A Matter of Rats: A Short Biography of Patna
Par Amitava Kumar. 2014
It is not only the past that lies in ruins in Patna, it is also the present. But that is…
not the only truth about the city that Amitava Kumar explores in this vivid, entertaining account of his hometown. We accompany him through many Patnas, the myriad cities locked within the city--the shabby reality of the present-day capital of Bihar; Pataliputra, the storied city of emperors; the dreamlike embodiment of the city in the minds and hearts of those who have escaped contemporary Patna's confines. Full of fascinating observations and impressions, A Matter of Rats reveals a challenging and enduring city that exerts a lasting pull on all those who drift into its orbit.Kumar's ruminations on one of the world's oldest cities, the capital of India's poorest province, are also a meditation on how to write about place. His memory is partial. All he has going for him is his attentiveness. He carefully observes everything that surrounds him in Patna: rats and poets, artists and politicians, a girl's picture in a historian's study, and a sheet of paper on his mother's desk. The result is this unique book, as cutting as it is honest.Singapore Dream and Other Adventures: Travel Writings from an Asian Journey
Par Hermann Hesse, Sherab Chodzin Kohn. 2018
Hermann Hesse's voyage to the East Indies, recorded in journal entries and other writings translated into English for the first…
time, describes the experiences that influenced his greatest works. “I knew but few of the trees and animals that I saw around me by name, I was unable to read the Chinese inscriptions, and could exchange only a few words with the children, but nowhere in foreign lands have I felt so little like a foreigner and so completely enfolded by the self-existing naturalness of life’s clear river as I did here.” In 1911, Hermann Hesse sailed through southeastern Asian waters on a trip that would define much of his later writing. Hesse brings his unique eye to scenes such as adventures in a rickshaw, watching foreign theater performances, exploring strange floating cities on stilts, and luxuriating in the simple beauty of the lush natural landscape. Even in the doldrums of travel, he records his experience with faithful humor, wit, and sharp observation, offering a broad vision of travel in the early 1900s. With a glimpse into the workings of his mind through the pages of his journals, poems, and a short story—all translated into English for the first time—these writings describe the real-life experiences that inspired Hesse to pen his most famous works.Tibet, Tibet
Par Patrick French. 2003
At different times in its history Tibet has been renowned for pacifism and martial prowess, enlightenment and cruelty. The Dalai…
Lama may be the only religious leader who can inspire the devotion of agnostics. Patrick French has been fascinated by Tibet since he was a teenager. He has read its history, agitated for its freedom, and risked arrest to travel through its remote interior. His love and knowledge inform every page of this learned, literate, and impassioned book.Talking with nomads and Buddhist nuns, exiles and collaborators, French portrays a nation demoralized by a half-century of Chinese occupation and forced to depend on the patronage of Western dilettantes. He demolishes many of the myths accruing to Tibet-including those centering around the radiant figure of the Dalai Lama. Combining the best of history, travel writing, and memoir, Tibet, Tibet is a work of extraordinary power and insight.From the Trade Paperback edition.Travel + Sketching = InspirationWhen we travel, we don't want to follow the same itinerary as everyone who's come before…
us. We want to feel like explorers, adventurers in undiscovered territory. And that's exactly what sketching can bring to the travel experience.An Illustrated Journey captures the world through the eyes of 40 talented artists, illustrators and designers. You'll experience the wonder of seeing familiar sights through a fresh lens but, more important, you'll be inspired to set pen to paper and capture your own vistas.The really wonderful thing about a sketchbook is that it can be totally private. You don't have to have an ounce of talent to enjoy learning how to really see what's in front of you. But lucky for us, the sketchbooks captured here are lovely, creative, intimate windows into each artist's mind.So, whether you're just returning to the art of drawing, abandoned by most of us after childhood, or you're looking for inspiration to take your illustration work in a new direction, An Illustrated Journey will take you on a wonderful trip of the imagination. All you need to pack are a pencil and a piece of paper.Mother Tongue: My Family's Globe-Trotting Quest to Dream in Mandarin, Laugh in Arabic, and Sing in Spanish
Par Christine Gilbert. 2016
One woman's quest to learn Mandarin in Beijing, Arabic in Beirut, and Spanish in Mexico, with her young family along…
for the ride. Imagine negotiating for a replacement carburetor in rural Mexico with words you're secretly pulling from a pocket dictionary. Imagine your two-year-old asking for more niunai at dinner--a Mandarin word for milk that even you don't know yet. Imagine finding out that you're unexpectedly pregnant while living in war-torn Beirut. With vivid and evocative language, Christine Gilbert takes us along with her into foreign lands, showing us what it's like to make a life in an unfamiliar world--and in an unfamiliar tongue. Gilbert was a young mother when she boldly uprooted her family to move around the world, studying Mandarin in China, Arabic in Lebanon, and Spanish in Mexico, with her toddler son and all-American husband along for the ride.Their story takes us from Beijing to Beirut, from Cyprus to Chiang Mai--and also explores recent breakthroughs in bilingual brain mapping and the controversial debates happening in linguistics right now. Gilbert's adventures abroad prove just how much language influences culture (and vice versa), and lead her to results she never expected. Mother Tongue is a fascinating and uplifting story about taking big risks for bigger rewards and trying to find meaning and happiness through tireless pursuit--no matter what hurdles may arise. It's a treat for language enthusiasts and armchair travelers alike.From the Hardcover edition.A Sense of Direction: Pilgrimage for the Restless and the Hopeful
Par Gideon Lewis-Kraus. 2012
In medieval times, a pilgrimage gave the average Joe his only break from the daily grind. For…
Gideon Lewis-Kraus, it promises a different kind of escape. Determined to avoid the kind of constraint that kept his father, a gay rabbi, closeted until midlife, he has moved to anything-goes Berlin. But the surfeit of freedom there has begun to paralyze him, and when a friend extends a drunken invitation to join him on an ancient pilgrimage route across Spain, he grabs his sneakers, glad of the chance to be committed to something and someone. Irreverent, moving, hilarious, and thought-provoking, A Sense of Direction is Lewis-Kraus's dazzling riff on the perpetual war between discipline and desire, and its attendant casualties. Across three pilgrimages and many hundreds of miles - the thousand-year-old Camino de Santiago, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and, together with his father and brother, an annual mass migration to the tomb of a famous Hasidic mystic in the Ukraine - he completes an idiosyncratic odyssey to the heart of a family mystery and a human dilemma: How do we come to terms with what has been and what is - and find a way forward, with purpose? .Jane Dolinger
Par Lawrence Abbott. 2010
For almost forty years, Jane Dolinger traveled the world and wrote about her adventures, from the Amazon jungle to the…
sands of the Sahara. She produced eight books and more than a thousand articles between 1955 and 1995, and she also earned a reputation as a glamorous celebrity and model. Jane Dolinger was an anomaly in her time, a dynamic and attractive woman with an impressive literary talent, a woman who lived and documented a most unconventional and inspirational life. Sometimes controversial but always outstanding, Jane was a pioneer among women and writers. Here for the first time, her life and work are studied in a thoroughly researched yet entertaining literary biography.The Olive Season
Par Carol Drinkwater. 2003
In The Olive Season, Carol Drinkwater’s much-anticipated follow-up to The Olive Farm, Carol and Michel prepare to exchange vows in,…
of all places, Polynesia—Michel's answer to Carol's challenging response to his marriage proposal (Only if the ceremony is Upon their return to the south of France as husband and wife, they find there is much hope—and work—to greet them. With a farm consisting of fifty trees producing some of the world’s finest olive oil, no longer is the challenge one of restoring the farm but in charting its development and growth. France’s rigorous agricultural standards are responsible for some of the world's best produce but also for one of its most infuriating bureaucracies. In order to obtain the coveted AOC rating, Carol and Michel are forced to both expand their farm and to negotiate a Byzantine world of forms, officials, and inspections, including the surveying of their land by a water diviner, who, via a power akin to extrasensory perception, can point out the existence of underground water sources on their property. Further complicating matters is the fact that Carol has become pregnant with the couple’s first child and has just accepted a demanding acting role. As the harvest season approaches, dramatic events, culminating in a heartbreaking miscarriage, cast shadows over the olive farm. With all the warmth and vibrancy of the Mediterranean sun, Carol Drinkwater tells her passionate, moving, and utterly uplifting story.