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Travel as a Political Act (Rick Steves)
By Rick Steves. 2018
Change the world one trip at a time. In this illuminating collection of stories and lessons from the road, acclaimed…
travel writer Rick Steves shares a powerful message that resonates now more than ever.With the world facing divisive and often frightening events, from Trump, Brexit, and Erdogan, to climate change, nativism, and populism, there's never been a more important time to travel.Rick believes the risks of travel are widely exaggerated, and that fear is for people who don't get out much. After years of living out of a suitcase, he still marvels at how different cultures find different truths to be self-evident. By sharing his experiences from Europe, Central America, Asia, and the Middle East, Rick shows how we can learn more about own country by viewing it from afar.With gripping stories from Rick's decades of exploration, this fully revised edition of Travel as a Political Act is an antidote to the current climate of xenophobia. When we travel thoughtfully, we bring back the most beautiful souvenir of all: a broader perspective on the world that we all call home.All royalties from the sale of Travel as a Political Act are donated to support the work of Bread for the World, a non-partisan organization working to end hunger at home and abroad.The Camper Book: A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream
By Dave Hoekstra, Jon Sall, Jeff Daniels. 2018
The Camper Book will captivate all those who dream of waving good-bye to the rat race from the window of…
their own moveable home, be it a camper, RV, travel trailer, camper van, or tiny camper. Not just for placid retirees anymore, camper culture has sprung up among simplicity-seeking millennials, retro-loving "glampers," sports and movie stars, aging hippies, contract workers, "road-schoolers," and others. Award-winning journalist Dave Hoekstra hit the road in his own custom camper van, named Bluebird, to explore the history, culture, subcultures, and future of camper life. Traveling and talking his way through US campsites, RV parks, landmarks, and communities, Hoekstra draws out revealing stories from all walks of life—from Americans who are downsizing material goods while upsizing spiritual pursuits to RV enthusiasts such as Grammy-winning singer-songwriter John Prine and Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon. A modern-day Studs Terkel, Hoekstra provides a delightful mix of oral history, in-depth reporting, and practical information, while photographer Jon Sall's beautiful color photographs illuminate the unique people, places, and rigs that typify camper life.Pawpaw
By Andrew Moore, Michael W. Twitty. 2015
The largest edible fruit native to the United States tastes like a cross between a banana and a mango. It…
grows wild in twenty-six states, gracing Eastern forests each fall with sweet-smelling, tropical-flavored abundance. Historically, it fed and sustained Native Americans and European explorers, presidents, and enslaved African Americans, inspiring folk songs, poetry, and scores of place names from Georgia to Illinois. Its trees are an organic grower's dream, requiring no pesticides or herbicides to thrive, and containing compounds that are among the most potent anticancer agents yet discovered. So why have so few people heard of the pawpaw, much less tasted one? In Pawpaw, author Andrew Moore explores the past, present, and future of this unique fruit, traveling from the Ozarks to Monticello; canoeing the lower Mississippi in search of wild fruit; drinking pawpaw beer in Durham, North Carolina; tracking down lost cultivars in Appalachian hollers; and helping out during harvest season in a Maryland orchard. Along the way, he gathers pawpaw lore and knowledge not only from the plant breeders and horticulturists working to bring pawpaws into the mainstream (including Neal Peterson, known in pawpaw circles as the fruit's own "Johnny Pawpawseed"), but also regular folks who remember eating them in the woods as kids, but haven't had one in over fifty years. As much as Pawpaw is a compendium of pawpaw knowledge, it also plumbs deeper questions about American foodways--how economic, biologic, and cultural forces combine, leading us to eat what we eat, and sometimes to ignore the incredible, delicious food growing all around us. If you haven't yet eaten a pawpaw, this book won't let you rest until you do.Riding Into the Heart of Patagonia
By Nancy Pfeiffer. 2018
Beside a rain-swollen river in Patagonia, a man approached on a horse. His mount, a rusty red beauty, sported the…
short-trimmed mane and neatly squared-off tail of a well-kept horse. The man wore goatskin chaps, a woolen poncho, and the jaunty black beret typical of the region. This pair belonged to this place in a way I could only dream of. The man stared at us. We were up to our knees in mud and dwarfed by huge backpacks. It was apparent we had money, but we had no horses. "Por qué no tienes caballos?" he asked as he rode into the river. At that moment I knew. I wanted to travel this country like the people who lived there. I wanted to know this place as only one on horseback could. As a novice horsewoman, Nancy Pfeiffer took off across Patagonia alone on horseback. Over the next two decades and three thousand kilometers of rugged horse trail, the hospitable people who live there took her in, and Patagonia slipped silently into her soul. As if watching a beloved child grow up, Nancy bore witness to the subtle, yet disturbing, changes barreling down on Patagonia.Iberia
By James A. Michener. 1968
"Massive, beautiful...Unquestionably some of the best writing on Spain...The best that Mr. Michener has ever done on any subject...Stunning...Memorable."THE WALL…
STREET JOURNAL Here, in the fresh, vivid prose that is James Michener's trademark, is the real Spain as he experiences it. He not only reveals the celebrated Spain of bullfights and warror kings, painters and processions, cathedrals and olive orchards; he also shares the intimate, often hidden Spain he has come to know, where toiling peasants and their honest food, the salt of the shores and the oranges of the inland fields, the congeniality of living souls and the dark weight of history conspire to create a wild, contradictory, passionately beautiful land, the mystery called Iberia.Nick Hunt sets off on an unlikely quest: to follow four of Europe's winds across the continent. His wind-walks begin…
on Cross Fell, the highest point of the Pennines, as he chases the roaring Helm - the only named wind in Britain. In southern Europe he follows the Bora - a bitter northerly that blows from Trieste through Slovenia and down the Croatian coast. His hunt for the 'snow-eating' Foehn becomes a meandering journey of exhilaration and despair through the Alpine valleys of Switzerland, and his final walk traces an ancient pilgrims' path in the south of France on the trail of the Mistral - the 'wind of madness' which animated and tormented Vincent Van Gogh. These are journeys into wild wind, but also into wild landscapes and the people who inhabit them - a cast of meteorologists, storm chasers, mountain men, eccentric wind enthusiasts, sailors and shepherds. Soon Nick finds himself borne along by the very forces he is pursuing, through rain, blizzards, howling gales, and back through time itself. For, where the wild winds are, there are also myths and legends, history and hearsay, science and superstition - and occasionally remote mountain cabins packed with pickles, cured meats and homemade alcohol. Where the Wild Winds Are is a beautiful, unconventional travelogue that makes the invisible visible.Once Upon a Yugoslavia
By Surya Green. 2015
It is 1968. Across America, citizens march for social reform and an end to the Vietnam War. Amid all this,…
Surya Green--a New York-born, self-absorbed, modern young woman--is a student at Stanford University, blithely pursuing a graduate degree in communication. Her view of life's purpose unexpectedly starts to expand when she says "Yes" when her Stanford film mentor selects her for a writing job at Zagreb Film in Yugoslavia. Family and friends marvel at her courage, or foolishness. The Zagreb studio may be the renowned producer of the first non-American animated film to win an Oscar, but it is in a country most Americans fear and reject as "communist." Green has no idea that her stay in Yugoslavia will ultimately take her beyond national borders to the outermost limits of her mind. Although penned in the first person against the backdrop of Tito's Yugoslavia in historic 1968, Once Upon a Yugoslavia is, paradoxically, most timely. The global economic crisis has compelled people to question excessive consumption and redefine success and the good life while embracing new lifestyle priorities--just as Yugoslavia required of Surya Green decades ago. Once Upon a Yugoslavia addresses this present-day longing while also offering a lively history lesson.History books have objectively described the former Yugoslavia, but Once Upon a Yugoslavia gives personalized look at the everyday lives of people in pre-1989 Eastern Europe that shows how the experience transformed one young woman's American Dream. Chronicling the sights, sounds, and ups and downs of the everyday Yugoslav existence, Green speaks to both the positive and negative aspects of the contemporary phenomenon known as "Yugo-nostalgia." The pros and cons of the American and Yugoslav societies fly to and fro during Surya's conversations with a host of colorful characters--some of whom she lodges with and travels the countryside with, others of whom she dates. In this strange Big Brotherish country of perplexing language, culture, and customs--which gives Surya an early experience of living a monitored life without privacy in a land where paranoia is contagious--more than once readers will hear her sobbing at night. Ultimately, the Yugoslav social experiment--its plus points, at least--were to give Surya Green a considerably altered view of the American values with which she was raised. And it is what led to that perspective--a personal transformation that started for her in explosive, memorable, life-changing 1968 in Tito's Yugoslavia, and continues to this day--which makes Once Upon a Yugoslavia such a unique and remarkable book.From the Trade Paperback edition."Norton is clearly a charmer, and Gethers tells his story with contagious affection....Will warm the heart of any confirmed cat-lover."THE…
WASHINGTON POST BOOK WORLDBefore Peter Gethers met Norton, the publisher, screenwriter, and author was a confirmed cat-hater. Then everything changed. Peter opened his heart to the Scottish Fold kitten and their adventures to Paris, Fire Island, and in the subways of Manhattan took on the color of legend and mutual love. THE CAT WHO WENT TO PARIS proves that sometimes all it takes is paws and personality to change a life.From the Trade Paperback edition.Real Life Rock
By Greil Marcus. 2015
For nearly thirty years, Greil Marcus has written a remarkable column called "Real Life Rock Top Ten. " It has…
been a laboratory where he has fearlessly explored and wittily dissected an enormous variety of cultural artifacts, from songs to books to movies to advertisements. Taken together, his musings, reflections, and sallies amount to a subtle and implicit theory of how cultural objects fall through time and circumstance and often deliver unintended consequences, both in the present and in the future. Real Life Rock reveals the critic in full: direct, erudite, funny, fierce, vivid, uninhibited, and possessing an unerring instinct for art and fraud. The result is an indispensable volume packed with startling arguments and casual brilliance.First Comes Love, then Comes Malaria
By Eve Brown-Waite. 2009
Eve Brown-Waite writes as she lives - with verve and humor and a fine sense of the absurd …
-- Martin Troost author of Lost on Planet China - Eve Brown s dream is to join the Peace Corps and maybe solve world hunger and win a Nobel Peace Prize along the way But she secretly fears she isn t tough enough to survive the bug-infested jungle much less life without toilet paper and decaf cappuccino Then she falls head-over-little-black-heels in love with John--a dashing Peace Corps recruiter whose do-gooder passions outshine her own She becomes more determined than ever to get into the Peace Corps - and to win John s heart in the process Assigned to Ecuador she yearns for warm showers and cold beers instead of the other way around And though she occasionally finds herself overwhelmed by her work reuniting homeless children with their families she learns to delight in small successes But a year into her service a tragedy befalls one of her fellow volunteers which unearths troubling memories from Eve s past and causes her to return rather unceremoniously to the US Back home Eve attempts to settle down with John and get reacquainted with the joys of sushi and supermarkets But faster than she can say pass the malaria pills John accepts a job with CARE in a remote corner of Africa and Eve gets a second chance to test her mettle in the Third World With uproarious wit and candor Eve Brown-Waite details the mis adventures that ensue From intestinal parasites and guerrilla warfare to culture clashes and unexpected friendships First Comes Love Then Comes Malaria captures the thrills and absurdities of global humanitarian life in a story any globetrotter - armchair or otherwise - will loveCourage Is Contagious: And Other Reasons to Be Grateful for Michelle Obama
By Lena Dunham, Nick Haramis, Jenni Konner, Joanna Avillez. 2017
A collection of essays celebrating the influential former first lady, by an array of acclaimed contributors and with a foreword…
by Lena Dunham Michelle Obama’s legacy transcends categorization. Mrs. Obama was not only our first black first lady; she was President Obama’s equal partner in marriage and parenthood and a tireless advocate for women’s rights, education, healthy eating, and exercise. Her genre-busting personal style encouraged others to speak, to engage, even to dress as they wished. In an extension of his popular T, The New York Times Style Magazine feature, Nick Haramis has assembled nineteen essays from prizewinning writers, Hollywood stars, and political leaders—all of whom have been moved and influenced by Mrs. Obama’s extraordinary example of grace in power.Here are original testimonials from Gloria Steinem, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Alice Waters, and Charlamagne tha God, among others. Presidential biographer Jon Meacham supplies historical perspective. Actress Tracee Ellis Ross suggests that Mrs. Obama “provided an antidote to all the false representations of black women that have inundated us for centuries.” Anna Wintour and designer Jason Wu celebrate the former first lady’s impact as an international fashion icon. Two ninth-grade girls—one in training to be a boxer—talk about how Mrs. Obama has emboldened them to be themselves.Here are some of the many facets of Michelle Obama as she continues to inspire us, a stirring reminder that the best of America once lived in the White House, embodied in one authentic, inclusive, and courageous woman.Advance praise for Courage Is Contagious“Courage Is Contagious reminds us of the fortitude, brilliance, grace, humility, compassion, and humor of a woman we were so crazy lucky to have serve as first lady. This is an exceptional celebration of a most exceptional American.”—J.J. Abrams “The first lady planted a powerful new knowledge inside of each of us. When you read this book you realize it’s still in there and always will be.”—Miranda July, author of The First Bad Man and No One Belongs Here More Than You“The diversity of the voices in Courage Is Contagious captures perfectly why Michelle Obama is so remarkable. If we can all see our best selves in her so vividly, how can we really be that different from each other? This glorious little book will give you goosebumps as it takes you on a journey celebrating one of the most important people alive.”—iO Tillett Wright, author of Darling DaysVertigo
By Michael Hulse, W. G. Sebald. 2001
The beguiling first novel by W. G. Sebald, one of the most enormously acclaimed European writers of our time. Vertigo,…
W. G. Sebald's first novel, never before translated into English, is perhaps his most amazing and certainly his most alarming. Sebald--the acknowledged master of memory's uncanniness--takes the painful pleasures of unknowability to new intensities in Vertigo. Here in their first flowering are the signature elements of Sebald's hugely acclaimed novels The Emigrants and The Rings of Saturn. An unnamed narrator, beset by nervous ailments, is again our guide on a hair-raising journey through the past and across Europe, amid restless literary ghosts--Kafka, Stendhal, Casanova. In four dizzying sections, the narrator plunges the reader into vertigo, into that "swimming of the head," as Webster's defines it: in other words, into that state so unsettling, so fascinating, and so "stunning and strange," as The New York Times Book Review declared about The Emigrants, that it is "like a dream you want to last forever."Preserving Petersburg: History, Memory, Nostalgia
By Stephen M. Norris, Helena Goscilo. 2008
For more than three centuries, St. Petersburg, founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as Russia's westward-oriented capital and as…
a visually stunning showcase of Russia's imperial ambitions, has been the country's most mythologized city. Like a museum piece, it has functioned as a site for preservation, a literal and imaginative place where Russians can commune with idealized pasts. Preserving Petersburg represents a significant departure from traditional representations. By moving beyond the "Petersburg text" created by canonized writers and artists, the contributors to this engrossing volume trace the ways in which St. Petersburg has become a "museum piece," embodying history, nostalgia, and recourse to memories of the past. The essays in this attractively illustrated volume trace a process of preservation that stretches back nearly three centuries, as manifest in the works of noted historians, poets, novelists, artists, architects, filmmakers, and dramatists.The Olive Farm
By Carol Drinkwater. 2001
"All my life, I have dreamed of acquiring a crumbling, shabby-chic house overlooking the sea. In my mind's eye, I…
have pictured a corner of paradise where friends can gather to swim, relax, debate, eat fresh fruits picked directly from the garden and great steaming plates of food served from an al fresco kitchen and dished up on to a candlelit table the length of a railway sleeper. . . " When Carol Drinkwater and her partner Michel have the opportunity to buy 10 acres of disused olive farm in Provence, the idea seems absurd. After all, they don't have a lot of money, and they've only been together a little while. THE OLIVE FARM is the story of the highs and lows of purchasing the farm and life in Provence: the local customs and cuisine; the threats of fire and adoption of a menagerie of animals; the potential financial ruin and the thrill of harvesting their own olives - especially when they are discovered to produce the finest extra-virgin olive oil. . .Italian Ways: On and Off the Rails from Milan to Palermo
By Tim Parks. 2013
"So inviting you might find yourself tempted to give the experience a whirl and ride the Italian trains yourself, book…
in hand."--Liesl Schillinger, New York Times Book Review Tim Parks's books on Italy have been hailed as "so vivid, so packed with delectable details, [they] serve as a more than decent substitute for the real thing" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy. Parks begins as any traveler might: "A train is a train is a train, isn't it?" But soon he turns his novelist's eye to the details, and as he journeys through majestic Milano Centrale station or on the newest high-speed rail line, he delivers a uniquely insightful portrait of Italy. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians--conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants--Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive: an obsession with speed but an acceptance of slower, older ways; a blind eye toward brutal architecture amid grand monuments; and an undying love of a good argument and the perfect cappuccino. Italian Ways also explores how trains helped build Italy and how their development reflects Italians' sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond. Most of all, Italian Ways is an entertaining attempt to capture the essence of modern Italy. As Parks writes, "To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?"The Best Creative Nonfiction (Vol #3)
By Lee Gutkind. 2009
"Intelligent but accessible, and often poignant . . . [by] the biggest talents on the essay and blog beat." --Publishers…
Weekly (on Vol. 2) Anyone still asking, "What is creative nonfiction?" will find the answer in this collection of artfully crafted, true stories. Selected by Lee Gutkind, the "godfather behind creative nonfiction," and the staff of Creative Nonfiction, these stories--ranging from immersion journalism to intensely personal essays--illustrate the genre's power and potential. Edwidge Danticat recalls her Uncle Moise's love of a certain four-letter word and finds in his abandonment of the word near the end of his life the true meaning of exile. In "Literary Murder," Julianna Baggott traces her roots as a novelist to her family's "strange, desperate (sometimes conniving and glorious) past" and writes about her decision, in The Madam, to kill off a character based on her grandfather. And Sean Rowe explains why, if you must get arrested, Selma, Alabama, is the place to do it. This exciting and expansive array of works and voices is sure to impress and delight.A Country Between: Making a Home Where Both Sides of Jerusalem Collide
By Stephanie Saldaña. 2017
"Behind every dark moment, there is another hidden world. The trick is to hold out long enough to make it…
there."When American writer Stephanie Saldaña finds herself in an empty house at the beginning of Nablus Road, the dividing line between East and West Jerusalem, she is a new wife trying to navigate a fragile terrain, both within her marriage and throughout the country in which she has chosen to live.Pregnant with her first child, Stephanie struggles to protect her family, their faith, and herself from the cracks of Middle Eastern conflict that threaten to shatter the world around her. But as her due date approaches, she must reconcile herself with her choice to bring a child into a dangerous world. Determined to piece together life from the brokenness, she sets out to uncover small instances of beauty to balance the delicate coexistence between love, motherhood, and a country so often at war.In an urban valley in Jerusalem, A Country Between captures the fragile ecosystem of the Middle East and the difficult first years of motherhood in the midst of a conflict-torn city. What unfolds is a celebration of faith, language, family, and love that fills the space between what was shattered, leaving us whole once more.Islands Apart: A Year on the Edge of Civilization
By Ken Mcalpine. 2009
Author Ken McAlpine stands in his front yard one night in Ventura, California, trying to see the stars. His view…
is diminished by light pollution, making it hard to see much of anything in the sky. Our fast-paced, technologically advanced society, he concludes, is not conducive to stargazing or soul-searching. Taking a page from Thoreau's Walden, he decides to get away from the clamor of everyday life, journeying alone through California's Channel Islands National Park. There, he imagines, he might be able to "breathe slowly and think clearly, to examine how we live and what we live for."In between his week-long solo trips through these pristine islands, McAlpine reaches out to try to better understand his fellow man: he eats lunch with the homeless in Beverly Hills, sits in the desert with a 98-year-old Benedictine monk, and befriends a sidewalk celebrity impersonator in Hollywood. What he discovers about himself and the world we live in will inspire anyone who wishes they had the time to slow down and notice the wonders of nature and humanity.To learn more about the author, visit his website at www.kenmcalpine.com.Mango Elephants in the Sun: How Life in an African Village Let Me Be in My Skin
By Susana Herrera. 1999
When the Peace Corps sends Susana Herrera to teach English in northern Cameroon, she yearns to embrace her adopted village…
and its people, to drink deep from the spirit of Mother Africa--and to forget a bitter childhood and painful past. To the villagers, however, she's a rich American tourist, a nasara (white person) who has never known pain or want. They stare at her in silence. The children giggle and run away. At first her only confidant is a miraculously communicative lizard. Susana fights back with every ounce of heart and humor she possesses, and slowly begins to make a difference. She ventures out to the village well and learns to carry water on her head. In a classroom crowded to suffocation she finds a way to discipline her students without resorting to the beatings they are used to. She makes ice cream in the scorching heat, and learns how to plant millet and kill chickens. She laughs with the villagers, cries with them, works and prays with them, heals and is helped by them. Village life is hard but magical. Poverty is rampant--yet people sing and share what little they have. The termites that chew up her bed like morning cereal are fried and eaten in their turn ("bite-sized and crunchy like Doritos"). Nobody knows what tomorrow may bring, but even the morning greetings impart a purer sense of being in the moment. Gradually, Susana and the village become part of each other. They will never be the same again.Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul
By Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Raymond Aaron, Janet Matthews. 2012
Wearing poppies on your lapel during the month of November. Enjoying local fiddlers playing music on Cape Breton Island. Cheering…
your favorite team on during Hockey Night. Swatting mosquitoes in Muskoka on the first long weekend in May. Driving the Trans-Canada Highway. Questioning why the ABC song ends in "z" and not "zed." All these things are distinctly Canadian and now there's another one more: Chicken Soup for the Canadian Soul. Written by fellow Canadians from Cape Breton Island to Prince Edward Island, from Montreal to Vancouver, this book reveals the people, the history and the special moments that give Canada such a distinctive charm and character. With chapters including: On Being Canadian, Living Your Dream, Overcoming Obstacles, On Love, On Kindness, and Making a Difference, these stories weave a rich tapestry of life from the people who call Canada home. Notable stories include: hockey player Paul Henderson's "Goal of the Century," Chief Dan George's recounting of his great land, Marilyn Bell DiLascio's historic 1954 Lake Ontario swim, cartoonist Lynn Johnston's delightful story of an encounter with Wayne Gretzky, and journalist Sally Armstrong's details of Princess Diana's first trip to Canada. Like hearing a heartfelt version of "O, Canada!" this book will instill renewed pride and patriotism in a well-deserving country and its people.