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Showing 1341 - 1360 of 1914 items
By Hugh Miles. 2011
PLAYING CARDS IN CAIRO is a fly-on-the-wall account - like THE BOOKSELLER OF KABUL - of life (for western readers)…
in a strange and exotic environment. Hugh Miles lives in Cairo and is engaged to an Egyptian woman. Twice a week he plays cards with a small group of Arab, Muslim women and through this medium he explores their lives in modern Cairo, the greatest of Arab cities. It is a secretive, romantic, often deprived but always soulful existence for the women as they struggle with abusive husbands and philandering boyfriends. The book is a window onto a city - and a way of life - which is at a crucial juncture in its history. Hugh Miles, who knows the Arab world intimately, is the perfect guide.By Cees Nooteboom. 2012
It is said that during his abortive campaign to invade Britannia, the infamous Roman emperor Caligula ordered his legions into…
the surf to attack Poseidon and claim seashells as trophies of war. Cees Nooteboom is considerably more thoughtful in his relationship with the god of the sea. As autumn falls each year, Nooteboom writes Poseidon a letter requesting permission to return to his home in Minorca the following spring.Of course, it would be the height of discourtesy if Nooteboom's letters were no more than a series of demands. So Cees takes the opportunity to seek the wisdom of the trident-wielding deity, and to offer the god updates about his own life and thoughts.At once playful and poignant, beautiful and at times slightly bizarre, this masterful exploration of humankind's relationship with the sea uses the minutiae of everyday life to illuminate the broadest questions of human existence, all couched in the lapidary prose of one of Europe's outstanding stylists.By Laura Watkinson, Cees Nooteboom. 2012
Roads to Berlin maps the changing landscape of post-World-War-II Germany, from the period before the fall of the Berlin Wall…
to the present. Written and updated over the course of several decades, an eyewitness account of the pivotal events of 1989 gives way to a perceptive appreciation of its difficult passage to reunification.Nooteboom's writings on politics, people, architecture, and culture are as digressive as they are eloquent; his innate curiosity takes him through the landscapes of Heine and Goethe, steeped in Romanticism and mythology, and to Germany's baroque cities. With an outsider's objectivity he has crafted an intimate portrait of the country to its present day.From the Hardcover edition.By Victoriah Arsenian. 2016
This full-color guidebook includes easy-to-use maps to keep you oriented on and off the highway. Hit the road! California, Oregon,…
and Washington: explore the top destinations along the West Coast with this book as your guide. Our detailed driving routes give you all you need, including mileage from place to place, driving times, and advice on the best places to stop along the way to eat, sleep, and explore. Get the most out of your trip with the definitive Two-Week Pacific Coast Highway Road Trip, along with suggestions for spending two days in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego, and tips for finding the "Best Views" and "Best Beaches" along this gorgeous coastline.By Rick Steves. 2014
Travel connects people with people. It helps us fit more comfortably and compatibly into a shrinking world, and it inspires…
creative new solutions to persistent problems facing our nation. We can't understand our world without experiencing it. Rick Steves Travel as a Political Act helps us take that first step.There's more to travel than good-value hotels, great art, and tasty cuisine. Americans who "travel as a political act" can have the time of their lives and come home smarter-with a better understanding of the interconnectedness of today's world and just how our nation fits in.In the second edition of this award-winning book, acclaimed travel writer Rick Steves explains how to travel more thoughtfully-to any destination. With updated information on Europe, Central America, and Asia; an expanded discussion of the Middle East; and a brand-new chapter on the Holy Land that covers Israelis and Palestinians today, Rick shows readers how his travels have shaped his politics and broadened his perspective.The royalties from the sale of this edition will be donated by Rick Steves to Bread for the World, a Christian organization working to end hunger around the world.By Sari Botton. 2013
In 1967, Joan Didion wrote an essay called Goodbye to All That, a work of such candid and penetrating prose…
that it soon became the gold standard for personal essays. Like no other story before it, Didion's tale of loving and leaving New York captured the mesmerizing allure Manhattan has always had for writers, poets, and wandering spirits.In this captivating collection, 28 writers take up Didion's literary legacy by sharing their own New York stories. Their essays often begin as love stories do, with the passion of something newly discovered-the crush of subway crowds, the streets filled with manic energy, and the sudden, unblinking certainty that this is the only place on Earth where one can become exactly who she is meant to be.They also share the grief that comes like a gut-punch, when the metropolis loses its magic and the pressures of New York's frenetic life wear thin on even the most fervent dwellers. As friends move away, rents soar, and love-still- remains just out of reach, each writer's goodbye to New York is singular and universal, like New York itself.With Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro, Emma Straub, Ann Hood, and more.By Charley Boorman, Ewan McGregor. 2004
From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across…
the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads. And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride more than twenty thousand miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. Long Way Round is the result of their adventures - a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream.By Charley Boorman, Ewan McGregor. 2008
After their fantastic trip round the world in 2004, fellow actors and bike fanatics Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman couldn't…
shake the travel bug. And after an inspirational UNICEF visit to Africa, they knew they had to go back and experience this extraordinary continent in more depth. And so they set off on their 15,000-mile journey with two new BMWs loaded up for the trip. Joining up with producer/directors Russ Malkin and David Alexanian and the Long Way Round team, their route took them from John O'Groats at the northernmost tip of Scotland to Cape Agulhas on the southernmost tip of South Africa. Riding through spectacular scenery, often in extreme temperatures, Ewan and Charley faced their hardest challenges yet. With their trademark humour and honesty they tell their story - the drama, the dangers and the sheer exhilaration of riding together again, through a continent filled with magic and wonder.By Paul Burston. 1998
The gay community'. For years Paul Burston has heard talk of this fabled people, whose votes are wooed by politicians,…
whose pink pounds are courted by advertising executives and whose alternative lifestyle is derided by defenders of family values. But he's never been quite sure who they were. So he decided to set off and try to find them for himself. His travels around gay Britain take in a wide cross-section of people and places, from his own childhood in South Wales to middle-aged gay men enjoying a beach party in Bromley, from the gay couple running their own massage parlour in Bristol to gay Young Conservatives in Derbyshire.Along the way, he comments on the hotly debated gay issues of the day; cappuccino-culture consumerism and community politics; the age of consent and the narcissistic preoccupation with youth; backrooms in bars and gay loft conversions. Witty, irreverent and fiercely intelligent, QUEENS' COUNTRY presents the rich diversity - and occasional cultural poverty - of the forces shaping gay life in modern Britain.By Simon Mawer. 1992
'You can't go and live there,' a despairing friend remarked, 'it's not even in Rome.' And it certainly wasn't, but…
still the author and his wife went to Avea, tucked away amongst the woods and gorges of the Lazio countryside.There they found no Colosseum, or Pantheon; there were no Ferraris racing around the Palazzi Navona, Venezia or Farnese. Instead they discovered the true agony and beauty of Italy: the instinctive warmth of the Avea villagers, the camorra, Little Tony - Italy's answer to Elvis - the elegant and sophisticated Colasanti family and a landlord like no other, Pippo, the self-styled Duca di Avea. This is not a story of the high culture of Italy's big cities, instead of how two foreigners learned to eat the Italian way, drive the Italian way, survive the Italian way - even to have a child the Italian way - and how in doing it they came to love this hidden corner of the most visited and least understood country in Europe.By Stephen Smith. 2005
For a growing number of British holidaymakers, Cuba is a Caribbean paradise, but it is also a land of cutbacks…
and economic instability. Stephen Smith comes to live on the island, and his search for the real Cuba inevitably becomes a search for Fidel Castro too. Before meeting his quarry, Smith travels extensively through the 'land of miracles' in an old American automobile. His highly-personalised account features a bloody initiation into a voodoo-like cult, dining on giant rat, and checking into the Love Hotel. And he goes on manoeuvres in the Everglades with armed, but not especially competent, Cuban exiles dreaming of a second Bay of Pigs. With disarming wit and considerable insight, Stephen Smith investigates a country where communism and voodoo coexist, and where the influence of its leader of forty years continues to throw a long shadow.By Ted Simon. 2011
From the bestselling author of Jupiter's Travels and Dreaming of Jupiter comes an entertaining and inspiring new journey round Britain.Having…
crisscrossed the globe twice, Ted returns to the British Isles to rediscover the country of his youth. The result is a revealing portrait of modern Britain and a witty and affectionate journey back to the past, when Ted would hitchhike across the country visiting friends (and girlfriends).He returns to the site of his old school with its astonishing war time history and visits familiar haunts where he did his National Service and got his first job in newspapers. He also visits less-familiar places. Some inspire him (Winchester Cathedral). Others defeat him (a tax office in Nottingham). As he rolls through the Isles, he discovers that a great deal has changed: busier roads, bureaucracy and, worst of all, the dreaded 'Sat Nav'. But there is also much to celebrate and enjoy along the way.Packed with fascinating stories, extraordinary encounters and glorious depictions of the British countryside, Rolling through the Isles takes the reader on an unforgettable trip with a celebrated adventurer and writer.By Douglas Kennedy. 1999
Though much has been written about the political implications of the religious revival which has engulfed America in recent years,…
a question remains unanswered: what pushes its people into 'declaring for Jesus'?Douglas Kennedy spent a long hot summer cruising through that expanse of the American South known as 'The Bible Belt' exploring that question. In a remarkable journey into one of the strangest corners of the United States, Kennedy finds himself spending time in Miami with a one-time member of the Mafia turned charismatic preacher, discovering Christian heavy metal music in Nashville, and visiting Death Row in South Carolina with an evangelist who ministers to the condemned.Repeatedly discovering the extraordinary within the ordinary, IN GOD'S COUNTRY is a profound, yet brilliantly entertaining exploration of life in late twentieth century America.By Douglas Kennedy. 1995
BEYOND THE PYRAMIDS is a delightfully wry chronicle of travels through a country of incongruity - an Egypt encompassing a…
diversity of cultural influences which often belies its image of 'archaeological theme park'.With an acute eye for the unusual, the interesting or the plain absurd, Douglas Kennedy takes us on a continually surprising tour beyond the pyramids, to a place where Bedouin watch American television in an oasis; where monks in the desert are computer-literate; and where an entire community of Cairo's poor have set up home in a cemetary.'BEYOND THE PYRAMIDS seems to me to have the satisfying insights of a Paul Theroux' Maeve BinchyBy Josie Dew. 2004
As a young girl, Josie Dew developed an overpowering urge to travel. She also fell out of a fast-moving vehicle…
and, rather inconveniently, developed a lifelong aversion to cars. Along came her first bicycle, and she has never looked back. Four continents, thirty-six countries and eighty thousand miles worth of astounding adventures, eccentric characters, varied cultures and ever-enduring optimism are the result of her travels.From Saharan locust invasions to tree-climbing goats, and a customs official who wouldn't let her leave India because 'You are making me a very fine wife', her encounters are described with honesty, wit and perception. Strange incidents and bizarre circumstances punctuate her journeys: in Nepal she met a team of Frenchmen running from Paris to China, and a cyclist on his way from one Olympic Games to the next. In Udaipur she was greeted by everyone with the refrain 'Hello Mr. Jamie Bond Octopussy filmed here', whilst her view of post-Ceausescu Romania, a nation suffering and starving, affected her both physically and mentally.THE WIND IN MY WHEELS is informative, illuminating, and ceaselessly amusing.By Stephen Smith. 1999
One of the most violent countries on earth, where the cause of death is regularly 'massacre', drink drivers play chicken…
and kidnap stories pass for dinner party conversation; nine times more dangerous than the United States, Columbia is no place for the nervous traveller. So it is much against his better judgement that, in the summer of 1998, coinciding with a World Cup and a general election, journalist Stephen Smith finds himself boarding the Cocaine Train out of Cali, home of Columbia's infamous drugs cartel.Its passengers prey to theives, extortionists and a dozen different varieties of paramilitary, the Cocaine Train is one of the last remnants of a once great railway system, and Smith is riding in it in search of a grandfather he barely knew: Fred Leslie Frost, pioneering railwayman, upright citizen and diplomat, with a Columbian mistress and an illegitimate son. As remote from his suburban British origins as it is possible to imagine.By Robert Twigger. 1999
Robert Twigger goes to the Far East in search of the world's longest snake - 'echoes of Gerald Durrell's trips…
crossed with Redmond O'Hanlon's foray into the heart of Borneo . . . a fantastic book' DAILY MAILAbout to be married, Robert Twigger decides on his last great adventure as a bachelor. Surfing the net, he discovers the Roosevelt Prize - worth $50,000 - for the capture of a live 30 foot python. Armed only with a tin of High Toast Snuff (deadly if sniffed by a snake), Twigger sets off into the remote jungles of Indonesia in search of his prey.Along the way, he investigates the legendarily beautiful women of Sulawesi, treads in Nabokov's footsteps, looks for giant snakes beneath the sewers of Kuala Lumpur, and spends time with a variety of snake catchers and cults. After being caught up in anti-Chinese riots and surviving on greasy civet cat in the jungle, Twigger finally comes face to face with the big one; but the final capture is not quite what he had in mind.By Robert Twigger. 2006
Best-selling author of Angry White Pyjamas travels across the Rocky Mountains by canoeFifteen years before Lewis and Clark, Scotsman Alexander…
Mackenzie, looking to open up a trade route, set out from Lake Athabasca in central Northern Canada in search of the Pacific Ocean. Mackenzie travelled by bark canoe and had a cache of rum and a crew of Canadian voyageurs, hard-living backwoodsmen, for company. Two centuries later, Robert Twigger decides to follow in Mackenzie's wake. He too travels the traditional way, having painstakingly built a canoe from birchbark sewn together with pine roots, and assembled a crew made up of fellow travelers, ex-tree-planters and a former sailor from the US Navy. Several had tried before them but they were the first people to successfully complete Mackenzie's diabolical route over the Rockies in a birchbark canoe since 1793. Their journey takes them to the remotest parts of the wilderness, through Native American reservations, over mountains, through rapids and across lakes, meeting descendants of Mackenzie and unhinged Canadian trappers, running out of food, getting lost and miraculously found again, disfigured for life (the ex-sailor loses his thumb), bears brown and black, docile and grizzly.By Robert Twigger. 2007
Bestselling author of ANGRY WHITE PYJAMAS, BIG SNAKE and VOYAGEUR enters into the desert in search of a lost oasis'Last…
night my son wanted to appease me because of some annoyance he had caused. "Show me your desert things," he said, "show me your crystals and stones." However tired and grumpy I might be, he knew how to revive me. I unwrapped everything from its newspaper roll. The chipped flint knives, the silica glass arrowheads, ancient porous pottery shards I'd found in the Gilf, fossils, the jawbone of a gazelle, palm nuts so desiccated they were like stone . . .'Robert Twigger's latest journey is in search of paradise: a desert adventure in the footsteps of seasoned explorers such as Theodore Almasy (the Inspiration for THE ENGLISH PATIENT) who tried to locate the lost oasis of Zezura, reportedly home to hoards of treasure, flocks of birds and a lush, verdant valley.The Egyptian Sahara is one of the most arid and hostile environments on earth. But it is also a wonder of desolate beauty, where in the ultra-clear light of the desert you can see for miles.Armed with plenty of water and a homemade wooden trolley (his Lada being too heavy for the sand), Twigger embarks on a desert trip ilke no other . . .By Michael Palin. 2008
Michael Palin tackles the full length of the Himalaya in this terrific number one bestseller.Having risen to the challenge of…
seas, poles, dhows and deserts, the highest mountains in the world were a natural target for Michael Palin. In a journey rarely, if ever, attempted before, in 6 months of hard travelling Palin takes on the full length of the Himalaya including the Khyber Pass, the hidden valleys of the Hindu Kush, ancient cities like Peshawar and Lahore, the mighty peaks of K2, Annapurna and Everest, the gorges of the Yangtze, the tribal lands of the Indo-Burmese border and the vast Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh.Facing altitudes as high as 17,500 feet as well as some of the world's deepest gorges, Palin also passed through political flashpoints like Pakistan's remote north-west frontier, terrorist-torn Kashmir and the mountains of Nagaland, only recently open to visitors.