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Showing 1 - 20 of 2305 items
By Chris Broad. 2023
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER'Chris Broad explores Japan in all its quirky glory..Endlessly fascinating!'Will Ferguson, author of Hokkaido Highway Blues'Carves a…
unique path across Japan bringing him into contact with far too many cats, heartening renewal in Tohoku, and even pizza with Ken Watanabe.'Iain Maloney, author of The Only Gaijin in the Village'Fascinating, fact-packed and very funny..An excellent and enjoyable read for the Japan-curious. I loved it and learned a lot.'Sam Baldwin, author of For Fukui's Sake: Two years in rural JapanWhen Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history?Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that came with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most complex cultures.Spanning ten years and all forty-seven prefectures, Chris takes us from the lush rice fields of the countryside to the frenetic neon-lit streets of Tokyo. With blockbuster moments such as a terrifying North Korean missile incident, a mortifying experience at a love hotel and a week spent with Japan's biggest movie star, Abroad in Japan is an extraordinary and informative journey through the Land of the Rising Sun.Number one Sunday Times bestseller, August 2023By Alan C. Greenberg, Mark Singer. 2010
Former CEO of Bear Stearns, Alan Greenberg, sheds light on his life as one of Wall Street&’s most respected figures…
in this candid and fascinating account of a storied career and its stunning conclusion. On March 16, 2008, Alan Greenberg, former CEO and current chairman of the executive committee of Bear Stearns, found himself in the company&’s offices on a Sunday. More remarkable by far than the fact that he was in the office on a Sunday is what he was doing: participating in a meeting of the board of directors to discuss selling the company he had worked decades to build for a fraction of what it had been worth as little as ten days earlier. In less than a week the value of Bear Stearns had diminished by tens of billions of dollars.As Greenberg recalls, "our most unassailable assumption—that Bear Stearns, an independent investment firm with a proud eighty-five-year history, would be in business tomorrow—had been extinguished. . . . What was it, exactly, that had happened, and how, and why?" This book provides answers to those questions from one of Wall Street&’s most respected figures, the man most closely identified with Bear Stearns&’ decades of success.The Rise and Fall of Bear Stearns is Alan Greenberg&’s remarkable story of ascending to the top of one of Wall Street&’s venerable powerhouse financial institutions. After joining Bear Stearns in 1949, Greenberg rose to become formally head of the firm in 1978.No one knows the history of Bear Stearns as he does; no one participated in more key decisions, right into the company&’s final days. Greenberg offers an honest, clear-eyed assessment of how the collapse of the company surprised him and other top executives, and he explains who he thinks was responsible.Bigger, Fancier, and more cutthorat than ever!When Freeman Hall left The Big Fancy to pursue his screenwriting dreams, he thought…
the horrors of working in a handbag department were finally over. But instead of fame and fortune, he found himself stuck behind a wall of script-killing rewrites, unable to make a living.In Return to the Big Fancy, Freeman shares his wildly entertaining journey back through the fiery gates of Retail Hell. He thought he had seen it all in his day, but with the bar set higher than ever before, employees are now graciously bowing before Corporate as they climb over fellow salespeople, and even friends, to earn enough transactions and commissions to actually survive. As he learns more of the wretchedness that has befallen the sales floor, he realizes that The Big Fancy has its customers and its employees on a short leash. But leave it to Freeman and the threat of disappearing commissions to rally the retail slaves and show Corporate who's really in charge!By Florence S. Boos. 2021
William Morris (1834–96) was an English poet, decorative artist, translator, romance writer, book designer, preservationist, socialist theorist, and political activist,…
whose admirers have been drawn to the sheer intensity of his artistic endeavors and efforts to live up to radical ideals of social justice. This Companion draws together historical and critical responses to the impressive range of Morris’s multi-faceted life and activities: his homes, travels, family, business practices, decorative artwork, poetry, fantasy romances, translations, political activism, eco-socialism, and book collecting and design. Each chapter provides valuable historical and literary background information, reviews relevant opinions on its subject from the late-nineteenth century to the present, and offers new approaches to important aspects of its topic. Morris’s eclectic methodology and the perennial relevance of his insights and practice make this an essential handbook for those interested in art history, poetry, translation, literature, book design, environmentalism, political activism, and Victorian and utopian studies.By Luke Russert. 2023
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERIn Look for Me There, Luke Russert traverses terrain both physical and deeply personal. On his journey…
to some of the world&’s most stunning destinations, he visits the internal places of grief, family, faith, ambition, and purpose—with intense self-reflection, honesty, and courage."—Savannah Guthrie, coanchor of Today&“Look for me there,&” news legend Tim Russert would tell his son, Luke, when confirming a pickup spot at an airport, sporting event, or rock concert. After Tim died unexpectedly, Luke kept looking for his father, following in Tim&’s footsteps and carving out a highly successful career at NBC News. After eight years covering politics on television, Luke realized he had no good answer as to why he was chasing his father&’s legacy. As the son of two accomplished parents—his mother is journalist Maureen Orth of Vanity Fair—Luke felt the pressure of high expectations but suddenly decided to leave the familiar path behind.Instead, Luke set out on his own to find answers. What began as several open-ended months of travel to decompress and reassess morphed into a three-plus-year odyssey across six continents to discover the world and, ultimately, to find himself.Chronicling the important lessons and historical understandings Luke discovered from his travels, Look for Me There is both the vivid narrative of that journey and the emotional story of a young man taking charge of his life, reexamining his relationship with his parents, and finally grieving his larger-than-life father, who died too young. For anyone uncertain about the direction of their life or unsure of how to move forward after a loss, Look for Me There is a poignant reflection that offers encouragement to examine our choices, take risks, and discover our truest selves.By Pete Dunne. 2009
A grasslands nature trek that &“weaves together spiritual insight, plant biology, geology lessons and American history—and a plethora of bird…
sightings&” (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A nature writer and avid birder offers a portrait of a season in the heartland of North America as he and his wife travel through the country and share stories of all that they encounter: people putting their lives back in place after a tornado, volunteers giving their time to conservation efforts, and the drive of all species to move their genes to the next generation, which manifests itself so abundantly in spring. &“Their journey begins in New Jersey and continues to Nebraska, their arrival timed to witness the annual migration of half a million northbound sandhill cranes. Next come Colorado and a primer on how homesteading sodbusters transformed an ocean of vibrant prairie grasses into a devastating dustbowl; New Mexico and the Sixth Annual High Plains Lesser Prairie-Chicken Festival; back through Colorado and the Pawnee National Grasslands for a glimpse of the threatened prairie dog, once (along with bison) among the environmental engineers of the 19th century Western plains; and into South Dakota, home to between 800 and 1,400 free-ranging bison. Dunne&’s melodic prose and rhapsodic connection with the natural world brilliantly entice an estranged audience to explore a . . . now alien environment.&” —Publishers Weekly, starred review &“Although a theme of humanity&’s effects on the prairie runs as an undercurrent throughout the narrative, it never overwhelms the sense of awe and wonder at the natural beauty of the grasslands and their inhabitants.&” —BooklistBy William Least Heat-Moon. 1999
New York Times bestseller: &“A coast-to-coast journey by way of great rivers, conducted by a contemporary master of travel writing&”…
(Kirkus Reviews). In this memoir brimming with history, humor, and wisdom, the author of Blue Highways and PrairyErth &“voyages across the country, from Atlantic to Pacific, almost entirely by its rivers, lakes and canals in a small outboard-powered boat&” (San Francisco Chronicle). Setting off from New York Harbor aboard the boat he named Nikawa (&“river horse&” in Osage), in hopes of entering the Pacific near Astoria, Oregon, William Least Heat-Moon and his companion, Pilotis, struggle to cover some five thousand watery miles—more than any other cross-country river traveler has ever managed—often following in the wakes of our most famous explorers, from Henry Hudson to Lewis and Clark. En route, the voyagers confront massive floods, submerged rocks, dangerous weather, and their own doubts about whether they can complete the trip. But the hard days yield incomparable pleasures: strangers generous with help and eccentric tales, landscapes unchanged since Sacagawea saw them, riverscapes flowing with a lively past, and the growing belief that efforts to protect our lands and waters are beginning to pay off. &“Fizzes with intelligence and high spirits.&” —Outside &“Propels the reader with historical vignettes, ecological and geological detail, and often hilarious encounters with local eccentrics.&” —TimeBy Mark Greenside. 2009
This memoir of moving to a tiny Breton village is “a charming story about growing wiser, humbler and more human…
through home owning in a foreign land” (Publishers Weekly).When Mark Greenside—a native New Yorker living in California, political lefty, writer, and lifelong skeptic—is dragged by his girlfriend to a tiny Celtic village in Brittany at the westernmost edge of France in Finistère, or what he describes as “the end of the world,” his life begins to change.In a playful, headlong style, and with enormous affection for the Bretons, Greenside shares how he makes a life for himself in a country where he doesn’t speak the language or understand the culture. He gradually places his trust in the villagers he encounters—neighbors, workers, acquaintances—and he’s consistently won over and surprised as he manages to survive day-to-day trials. From opening a bank account and buying a house to removing a beehive from the chimney, he begins to learn the cultural ropes, live among his neighbors, and make new friends.Until he came to this town, Greenside was lost, moving through life without a plan, already in his forties with little money and no house. He lived as a skeptic who seldom trusted others and had an inclination to be alone. So when he settles into the rhythm of this new culture—against the backdrop of Brittany’s gorgeous architecture and breathtaking landscapes—not only does he find a home and meaningful relationships in this French countryside, he finds himself.I’ll Never Be French (no matter what I do) is both a new beginning and a homecoming for Greenside. It is a memoir about fitting in, not standing out; being part of something larger, not being separate from it; following, not leading. He has never regretted his journey and, as he advises those searching for their next adventure, neither will you.“Funny, insightful, and winningly self-deprecatory.” —Lydia Davis, author of the National Book Award finalist Varieties of Disturbance“Heartwarming.” —San Francisco Chronicle“One of the nicest of the trillions of books about France.” —Diane Johnson, New York Times–bestselling author of Lorna Mott Comes Home“A funny, funny book.” —Detroit Free PressBy Robin Bayley. 2011
As a child, Robin Bayley was enchanted by his grandmother's stories of Mexican adventures: of bandits, wild jungle journeys, hidden…
bags of silver and a narrow escape from the bloody Mexican Revolution. But Robin sensed there was more to these stories than anyone knew, and so he set out to follow in the footsteps of his great-grandfather. The Mango Orchard is the story of parallel journeys, a hundred years apart, into the heart of Latin America. Undaunted by the passage of time and a paucity of information, Robin seeks out the places where his great-grandfather Arthur 'Arturo' Greenhalgh travelled and lived, determined to uncover his legacy. Along the road Robin encounters witches, drug dealers, a gun-toting Tasmanian Devil and an ex-Nazi diamond trader. He is threatened with deportation, offered the protection of Colombian guerrilla fighters and is comforted by the blessings of los santos. He falls in love with a beautiful Guatemalan girl with mystical powers and almost gives up his quest, until a sense of destiny drives him on to western Mexico and the discovery of much, much more than he had bargained for.By Michael Simkins. 2011
Michael Simkins is the ultimate Sunday cricketer - passionate, obsessive, technically inept, and hopelessly deluded. When an injury rules him…
out of an entire season, not only might it spell the end of his long career, he is faced more immediately with a summer aimlessly wandering garden centres and listening to The Archers. He decides instead to set off on an odyssey across the counties of England in search of that golden time in his youth when his passion for the game was first kindled. It's a journey that begins in May in light drizzle at the birthplace of cricket, takes in the burial site of his favourite ground (now a Marks & Spencer) and even stops along the way to flirt with the love child of WG Grace and Kerry Katona that is Twenty20. It ends with the ultimate cricketing zenith - returning to the field of play to bowl an over to Freddie Flintoff in fading light in front of a capacity crowd. So can cricket still bring comfort and meaning to his life or is Old Father Time about to call for Michael's bails?By Phra Peter Pannapadipo. 2001
The real-life stories of the novice monks in Little Angels reflect the lives of many youths in rural Thailand who…
are trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty, broken homes, illiteracy and drug abuse. When all else fails, Buddhism becomes their last resort: providing them with physical shelter and spiritual refuge. It heals their childhood traumas and gives them a moral framework for living and a better outlook on life. Each individual story, heartrending as it may be, subtly shows what Phra Peter sees and hopes to show to others: the 'human face' of Thai Buddhism.By Mark Beaumont. 2011
In 2008, Mark Beaumont smashed the world record for cycling around the world, by an astonishing 81 days. His race…
against the clock took him through the toughest terrain and the most demanding of conditions. In 2009, Mark set out on his second ultra-endurance challenge. And this one would involve some very big mountains.The Man Who Cycled the Americas tells the story of a 15,000 mile expedition that once again broke the barriers of human achievement. To pedal the longest mountain range on the planet, solo and unsupported, presented its own unique difficulties. But no man had ever previously summited the continents' two highest peaks, Mt McKinley in Alaska and Aconcagua in Argentina, in the same climbing season, let alone cycling between them. Oh, and Mark had never even been up Ben Nevis before.Full of his trademark charm, warmth and fascination with seeing the world at the pace of a bicycle, Mark Beaumont's second book is a testament to his love of adventure, his joy of taking on tough mental and physical feats, and offers a thrilling trip through the diverse cultures of the Americas.By Lionel Barber. 2013
Lunch with the FT has been a permanent fixture in the Financial Times for almost 30 years, featuring presidents, film…
stars, musical icons and business leaders from around the world.The column is now a well-established institution, which has reinvigorated the art of conversation in the convivial, intimate environment of a long and boozy lunch.This new and updated edition includes lunches with:Elon MuskDonald TrumpHilary MantelRichard BransonZadie SmithNigel FarageRussell BrandDavid GuettaYanis VaroufakisJean-Claude JunckerGwyneth PaltrowRebecca SolnitJordan PetersonChimamanda Ngozi AdichieAnd more...By Alfred Russel Wallace. 2014
Of all the extraordinary Victorian travelogues, The Malay Archipelago has a fair claim to be the greatest - both as…
a beautiful, alarming, vivid and gripping account of some eight years' travel across the entire Malay world - from Singapore to the western edges of New Guinea - and as the record of a great mind. As Wallace, often under conditions of terrible hardship and sickness, battles through jungles, lives with headhunters, and collects beetles, butterflies and birds-of-paradise, he makes discoveries about the workings of biology that have shaped our view of the world ever since.By Robert Macfarlane. 2015
SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZEFrom the bestselling author of UNDERLAND, THE OLD WAYS and THE…
LOST WORDS'Few books give such a sense of enchantment; it is a book to give to many, and to return to repeatedly' Independent 'Enormously pleasurable, deeply moving. A bid to save our rich hoard of landscape language, and a blow struck for the power of a deep creative relationship to place' Financial Times'A book that ought to be read by policymakers, educators, armchair environmentalists and active conservationists the world over' Guardian 'Gorgeous, thoughtful and lyrical' Independent on Sunday'Feels as if [it] somehow grew out of the land itself. A delight' Sunday TimesDiscover Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two.Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather.Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.By Alexander Armstrong. 2015
In an adventure of a lifetime, Alexander Armstrong wraps up warm and heads ever north to explore the hostile Arctic…
winter – the glittering landscape of Scandinavia, the isolated islands of Iceland and Greenland, and the final frontier of Canada and Alaska. Along the way he learns from the Marines how to survive sub-zero temperatures by eating for England, takes a white-knuckle drive along a treacherous 800-mile road that's a river in summer and, with great reluctance, strips off for a dip in the freezing Arctic waters - and that’s all before wrestling Viking-style with a sporting legend called Eva as part of an Icelandic winter festival. Sharing the wonder of the Arctic in his inimitable style, Land of the Midnight Sun is a brilliantly entertaining travelogue that takes readers on an exhilarating and hilarious journey to the farthest reaches of the globe. Through his witty exploration of the region's remarkable landscape and lifestyle, and its even more remarkable people, Armstrong proves himself the ideal travel companion.By Patricia Atkinson. 2005
How often have you eaten a mushroom that you picked yourself that morning? Or sat on a boat opening and…
eating oysters as you lift them from the sea? Or partaken of a seven course feast of game to celebrate the success of the chasse? When Patricia Atkinson - bestselling author of The Ripening Sun - first moved to France, her intention was simply to establish a vineyard. Over the years, however, she found herself becoming integrated into a way of life that, had she stayed in England, she would hardly have believed existed. Grounded in the rhythms of the land and the seasons, daily life in Patricia's south-western corner of France is dictated by a series of rituals and celebrations that we have long lost in our supermarket age.La Belle Saison is Patricia's eulogy to this way of life: a testament to the timelessness of the beautiful French countryside, the bounty of the land, and the generous-hearted French neighbours who showed Patricia that a simple life has many rewards. In France, every season is 'la belle saison', offering up its gifts to those willing to appreciate and look after the land.By Mary Wortley Montagu. 2007
Travelling through the wartorn Balkans with her husband on what proved to be a wholly useless diplomatic mission to Constantinople,…
Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) left a vivid, informative, clever account of her adventures in the mysterious, sophisticated culture of Ottoman palaces, bathing places and courts which - even as her husband's career was falling apart - she could not have enjoyed more.Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.By Rosemary Bailey. 2002
'I wake to the sun striking gold on a stone wall. If I lean out of the window I can…
see Mount Canigou newly iced with snow. It is wonderful to live in a building with windows all around, to see both sunrise and sunset, to be constantly aware of the passage of the sun and moon.' In 1988, Rosemary Bailey and her husband were travelling in the French Pyrenees when they fell in love with, and subsequently bought, a ruined medieval monastery, surrounded by peach orchards and snow-capped peaks. Traces of the monks were everywhere, in the frescoed 13th century chapel, the buried crypt, the stone arches of the cloister. For the next few years the couple visited Corbiac whenever they could, until in 1997, they took the plunge and moved from central London to rural France with their six-year-old son. Entirely reliant on their earnings as freelance writers, they put their Apple Macs in the room with the fewest leaks and sent Theo to the village school. With vision and determination they have restored the monastery to its former glory, testing their relationship and resolve to the limit, and finding unexpected inspiration in the place.Life in a Postcard is not just Rosemary Bailey's enthralling account of the challenges of life in a small mountain community, but also a celebration of the rugged beauty of French Catalonia, the pleasures of Catalan cooking, and an exploration of an alternative, often magical world.By Michael Wood. 2004
Michael Wood retraces Alexander the Greats amazing journey from Greece to India, searching for the truth behind the legend and…
experiencing the tremendous scale of his achievements. Using the ancient historians as his guides, Wood follows Alexanders journey as closely as possible, crossing deserts and rivers, from Turkey to war-torn Afghanistan. As the journey progresses, he recreates the drama of Alexanders epic marches and bloody battles. All along the way he finds proof of the survival of the legends surrounding Alexander, a leader whose life has excited the worlds imagination for the 2,000 years. 'Wood tells a glorious story with some very dark shadows.' New York Times 'Wood is a perceptive, entertaining and enthusiastic companion.' Sunday Times 'Wood is a lively storyteller.' The Washington Post