In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News) . In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.
Publisher: n/a
|
618446877
|
Paperback
Four Seasons in Rome
By Doerr, Anthony
Anthony Doerr, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, reads his 2007 memoir, Four Seasons in Rome - available on audio for the very first time!On the day Tony Doerr and his wife returned from the hospital with their newborn twins, he received a letter from the Academy of Arts and Letters informing him that he had won the prestigious Rome Prize, which provides a stipend, an apartment, and a writing studio at the beautiful American Academy for a year. Six months and a few Italian lessons later, they arrived in Rome. Insatiably curious, an avid reader, and an extraordinary eloquent observer of nature, Doerr sets out to discover Rome. He reads Pliny, Dante, Shelley and visits the churches and piazzas and ancient cisterns they describe. He reads the history of the papacy and attends the vigil as Pope John Paul II lies dying. He takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. And he and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers in their little neighborhood on a Roman hill. For anyone who loves Rome - or wants to know it - this is a gorgeous, informative audiobook. It is also an illuminating account of how a writer transforms experience into sentences, how this writer sees and captures the world.
Publisher: n/a
|
1416540016
|
Book
The Ride of Our Lives
By Leonard, Mike
The Ride of Our Lives is an inspiring narrative of self-discovery and self-fulfillment - and how one unique family found blessings and simple pleasures on the road called life.
Publisher: n/a
|
1863255265
|
The Logic and Historical Significance of the Haitian Revolution and the Cosmological Roots of Haitian Freedom
By Hutton, Clinton A
"Fire Season both evokes and honors the great hermit celebrants of nature, from Dillard to Kerouac to Thoreau - and I loved it." - J.R. Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar"[Connors's] adventures in radical solitude make for profoundly absorbing, restorative reading." - Walter Kirn, author of Up in the AirPhillip Connors is a major new voice in American nonfiction, and his remarkable debut, Fire Season, is destined to become a modern classic. An absorbing chronicle of the days and nights of one of the last fire lookouts in the American West, Fire Season is a marvel of a book, as rugged and soulful as Matthew Crawford's bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, and it immediately places Connors in the august company of Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, and others in the respected fraternity of hard-boiled nature writers.
Publisher: n/a
|
61859362
|
Book
Radio Shangri-la
By Napoli, Lisa
Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan - said to be one of the happiest places on earth. Long isolated from industrialization and just beginning to open its doors to the modern world, Bhutan is a deeply spiritual place, devoted to environmental conservation and committed to the happiness of its people - in fact, Bhutan measures its success in Gross National Happiness rather than in GNP. In a country without a single traffic light, its citizens are believed to be among the most content in the world. To Lisa, it seemed to be a place that offered the opposite of her fast-paced life in the United States, where the noisy din of sound-bite news and cell phones dominate our days, and meaningful conversation is a rare commodity; where everyone is plugged in digitally, yet rarely connects with the people around them. Thousands of miles away from everything and everyone she knows, Lisa creates a new community for herself. As she helps to start Bhutan's first youth-oriented radio station, Kuzoo FM, she must come to terms with her conflicting feelings about the impact of the medium on a country that had been shielded from its effects. Immersing herself in Bhutan's rapidly changing culture, Lisa realizes that her own perspective on life is changing as well - and that she is discovering the sense of purpose and joy that she has been yearning for. In this smart, heartfelt, and beautifully written book, sure to please fans of transporting travel narratives and personal memoirs alike, Lisa Napoli discovers that the world is a beautiful and complicated place - and comes to appreciate her life for the adventure it is.
Publisher: n/a
|
307453022
|
Book
Nothing Daunted
By Wickenden, Dorothy
This exhilarating saga about two intrepid young women who leave the affluence of their New York home to teach school on the Western frontier in 1916 is authentically created using actual letters home and interviews with descendants.Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood attended grade school and Smith College together, spent nine months on a grand tour of Europe in 1910, and then, bored with society luncheons and chaperoned balls and not yet ready for marriage, they went off to teach the children of homesteaders in a remote schoolhouse on the Western Slope of Colorado. They traveled on the new railroad over the Continental Divide and by wagon to Elkhead, a tiny settlement far from the nearest town. Their students came to school from miles away in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with string. Dorothy Woodruff was the grandmother of New Yorker executive editor Dorothy Wickenden. Nearly one hundred years later, Wickenden found the buoyant, detailed, colorful letters the two women wrote to their families. Through them, she has chronicled their trials in the classroom, the cowboys and pioneering women they met, and the violent kidnapping of a close friend. Central to their narrative is Ferry Carpenter, the witty, idealistic, and occasionally outrageous young lawyer and cattle rancher who hired them, in part because he thought they would make attractive and cultivated brides. None of them imagined the transforming effect the year would have - on the children, the families, and the teachers.Wickenden set out on her own journey to discover what two intrepid Eastern women found when they went West, and what America was like at that uncertain moment, with the country poised for the First World War, but going through its own period of self-discovery. Drawing upon the letters, interviews with descendants, research about these vanished communities, and trips to the region, Wickenden creates a compelling, original saga about the two intrepid young women and the "settling up" of the West.
Publisher: n/a
|
1439176582
|
Print book
The Great Northern Express
By Mosher, Howard Frank
From bestselling, nationally celebrated author Howard Frank Mosher, a wildly funny and deeply personal account of his three-month, 20,000-mile sojourn to discover what he loved enough to live for. Several months before novelist Howard Frank Mosher turned sixty-five, he learned that he had prostate cancer. Following forty-six intensive radiation treatments, Mosher set out alone in his twenty-year-old Chevy Celebrity on a monumental road trip and book tour across twenty-first-century America. From a chance meeting with an angry moose in northern New England to late-night walks on the wildest sides of America's largest cities, The Great Northern Express chronicles Mosher's escapades with an astonishing array of erudite bibliophiles, homeless hitchhikers, country crooners and strippers, and aspiring writers of all circumstances. Full of high and low comedy and rollicking adventures, this is part travel memoir, part autobiography, and pure, anarchic fun. From coast to coast and border to border, this unforgettable adventure of a top-notch American writer demonstrates that, sometimes, in order to know who we truly are, we must turn the wheel towards home.
Publisher: n/a
|
307450694
|
Book
Pirate Hunters
By Kurson, Robert
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE * A thrilling adventure of danger and deep-sea diving, historic mystery and suspense, by the author of Shadow Divers Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men - John Chatterton and John Mattera - are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. At large during the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth century, Bannister should have been immortalized in the lore of the sea - his exploits more notorious than Blackbeard's, more daring than Kidd's. But his story, and his ship, have been lost to time. If Chatterton and Mattera succeed, they will make history - it will be just the second time ever that a pirate ship has been discovered and positively identified. Soon, however, they realize that cutting-edge technology and a willingness to lose everything aren't enough to track down Bannister's ship. They must travel the globe in search of historic documents and accounts of the great pirate's exploits, face down dangerous rivals, battle the tides of nations and governments and experts. But it's only when they learn to think and act like pirates - like Bannister - that they become able to go where no pirate hunters have gone before. Fast-paced and filled with suspense, fascinating characters, history, and adventure, Pirate Hunters is an unputdownable story that goes deep to discover truths and souls long believed lost.Praise for Pirate Hunters"You won't want to put [it] down." - Los Angeles Times "An exceptional adventure . . . Highly recommended to readers who delight in adventure, suspense, and the thrill of discovering history at their fingertips." - Library Journal (starred review) "A terrific read . . . The book gallops along at a blistering pace, shifting us deftly between the seventeenth century and the present day." - Diver "Nonfiction with the trademarks of a novel: the plots and subplots, the tension and suspense . . . [Kurson has] found gold." - The Dallas Morning News "Rollicking . . . a fascinating [story] about the world of pirates, piracy, and priceless treasures." - The Boston Globe "[Kurson's] narration is just as engrossing as the subject." - The Christian Science Monitor "A wild ride [and an] extraordinary adventure . . . Kurson's own enthusiasm, combined with his copious research and an eye for detail, makes for one of the most mind-blowing pirate stories of recent memory, one that even the staunchest landlubber will have a hard time putting down." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The two contemporary pirate-ship seekers of Mr. Kurson's narrative are as daring, intrepid, tough and talented as Blood and Sparrow - and Bannister. . . . As depicted by the author, they are real-life Hemingway heroes." - The Wall Street Journal "[Kurson] takes his knowledge of the underwater world and applies it to the 'Golden Age of Piracy' . . . thrillingly detailing the highs and lows of chasing not just gold and silver but also history." - BOOKLIST "A great thriller full of tough guys and long odds . . . and: It's all true." - Lee Child
Publisher: n/a
|
1400063361
|
Print book
The Road to Little Dribbling
By Bryson, Bill
Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed -- and what hasn't. Following a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, by way of places few travelers ever get to at all, Bryson rediscovers the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly singular country that he both celebrates and, when called for, twits. With his instinct for the funny and quirky, and his eye for the idiotic, the bewildering, the appealing, and the ridiculous, he offers insights into all that is best and worst about Britain today.
Dark Star Safari
By Theroux, Paul
In Dark Star Safari the wittily observant and endearingly irascible Paul Theroux takes readers the length of Africa by rattletrap bus, dugout canoe, cattle truck, armed convoy, ferry, and train. In the course of his epic and enlightening journey, he endures danger, delay, and dismaying circumstances.Gauging the state of affairs, he talks to Africans, aid workers, missionaries, and tourists. What results is an insightful meditation on the history, politics, and beauty of Africa and its people, and "a vivid portrayal of the secret sweetness, the hidden vitality, and the long-patient hope that lies just beneath the surface" (Rocky Mountain News) . In a new postscript, Theroux recounts the dramatic events of a return to Africa to visit Zimbabwe.
Four Seasons in Rome
By Doerr, Anthony
Anthony Doerr, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, reads his 2007 memoir, Four Seasons in Rome - available on audio for the very first time!On the day Tony Doerr and his wife returned from the hospital with their newborn twins, he received a letter from the Academy of Arts and Letters informing him that he had won the prestigious Rome Prize, which provides a stipend, an apartment, and a writing studio at the beautiful American Academy for a year. Six months and a few Italian lessons later, they arrived in Rome. Insatiably curious, an avid reader, and an extraordinary eloquent observer of nature, Doerr sets out to discover Rome. He reads Pliny, Dante, Shelley and visits the churches and piazzas and ancient cisterns they describe. He reads the history of the papacy and attends the vigil as Pope John Paul II lies dying. He takes his twins to the Pantheon in December to wait for snow to fall through the oculus. And he and his family are embraced by the butchers, grocers, and bakers in their little neighborhood on a Roman hill. For anyone who loves Rome - or wants to know it - this is a gorgeous, informative audiobook. It is also an illuminating account of how a writer transforms experience into sentences, how this writer sees and captures the world.
The Ride of Our Lives
By Leonard, Mike
The Ride of Our Lives is an inspiring narrative of self-discovery and self-fulfillment - and how one unique family found blessings and simple pleasures on the road called life.
The Logic and Historical Significance of the Haitian Revolution and the Cosmological Roots of Haitian Freedom
By Hutton, Clinton A
"Fire Season both evokes and honors the great hermit celebrants of nature, from Dillard to Kerouac to Thoreau - and I loved it." - J.R. Moehringer, author of The Tender Bar"[Connors's] adventures in radical solitude make for profoundly absorbing, restorative reading." - Walter Kirn, author of Up in the AirPhillip Connors is a major new voice in American nonfiction, and his remarkable debut, Fire Season, is destined to become a modern classic. An absorbing chronicle of the days and nights of one of the last fire lookouts in the American West, Fire Season is a marvel of a book, as rugged and soulful as Matthew Crawford's bestselling Shop Class as Soulcraft, and it immediately places Connors in the august company of Edward Abbey, Annie Dillard, Aldo Leopold, Barry Lopez, and others in the respected fraternity of hard-boiled nature writers.
Radio Shangri-la
By Napoli, Lisa
Lisa Napoli was in the grip of a crisis, dissatisfied with her life and her work as a radio journalist. When a chance encounter with a handsome stranger presented her with an opportunity to move halfway around the world, Lisa left behind cosmopolitan Los Angeles for a new adventure in the ancient Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan - said to be one of the happiest places on earth. Long isolated from industrialization and just beginning to open its doors to the modern world, Bhutan is a deeply spiritual place, devoted to environmental conservation and committed to the happiness of its people - in fact, Bhutan measures its success in Gross National Happiness rather than in GNP. In a country without a single traffic light, its citizens are believed to be among the most content in the world. To Lisa, it seemed to be a place that offered the opposite of her fast-paced life in the United States, where the noisy din of sound-bite news and cell phones dominate our days, and meaningful conversation is a rare commodity; where everyone is plugged in digitally, yet rarely connects with the people around them. Thousands of miles away from everything and everyone she knows, Lisa creates a new community for herself. As she helps to start Bhutan's first youth-oriented radio station, Kuzoo FM, she must come to terms with her conflicting feelings about the impact of the medium on a country that had been shielded from its effects. Immersing herself in Bhutan's rapidly changing culture, Lisa realizes that her own perspective on life is changing as well - and that she is discovering the sense of purpose and joy that she has been yearning for. In this smart, heartfelt, and beautifully written book, sure to please fans of transporting travel narratives and personal memoirs alike, Lisa Napoli discovers that the world is a beautiful and complicated place - and comes to appreciate her life for the adventure it is.
Nothing Daunted
By Wickenden, Dorothy
This exhilarating saga about two intrepid young women who leave the affluence of their New York home to teach school on the Western frontier in 1916 is authentically created using actual letters home and interviews with descendants.Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood attended grade school and Smith College together, spent nine months on a grand tour of Europe in 1910, and then, bored with society luncheons and chaperoned balls and not yet ready for marriage, they went off to teach the children of homesteaders in a remote schoolhouse on the Western Slope of Colorado. They traveled on the new railroad over the Continental Divide and by wagon to Elkhead, a tiny settlement far from the nearest town. Their students came to school from miles away in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with string. Dorothy Woodruff was the grandmother of New Yorker executive editor Dorothy Wickenden. Nearly one hundred years later, Wickenden found the buoyant, detailed, colorful letters the two women wrote to their families. Through them, she has chronicled their trials in the classroom, the cowboys and pioneering women they met, and the violent kidnapping of a close friend. Central to their narrative is Ferry Carpenter, the witty, idealistic, and occasionally outrageous young lawyer and cattle rancher who hired them, in part because he thought they would make attractive and cultivated brides. None of them imagined the transforming effect the year would have - on the children, the families, and the teachers.Wickenden set out on her own journey to discover what two intrepid Eastern women found when they went West, and what America was like at that uncertain moment, with the country poised for the First World War, but going through its own period of self-discovery. Drawing upon the letters, interviews with descendants, research about these vanished communities, and trips to the region, Wickenden creates a compelling, original saga about the two intrepid young women and the "settling up" of the West.
The Great Northern Express
By Mosher, Howard Frank
From bestselling, nationally celebrated author Howard Frank Mosher, a wildly funny and deeply personal account of his three-month, 20,000-mile sojourn to discover what he loved enough to live for. Several months before novelist Howard Frank Mosher turned sixty-five, he learned that he had prostate cancer. Following forty-six intensive radiation treatments, Mosher set out alone in his twenty-year-old Chevy Celebrity on a monumental road trip and book tour across twenty-first-century America. From a chance meeting with an angry moose in northern New England to late-night walks on the wildest sides of America's largest cities, The Great Northern Express chronicles Mosher's escapades with an astonishing array of erudite bibliophiles, homeless hitchhikers, country crooners and strippers, and aspiring writers of all circumstances. Full of high and low comedy and rollicking adventures, this is part travel memoir, part autobiography, and pure, anarchic fun. From coast to coast and border to border, this unforgettable adventure of a top-notch American writer demonstrates that, sometimes, in order to know who we truly are, we must turn the wheel towards home.
Pirate Hunters
By Kurson, Robert
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY CHICAGO TRIBUNE * A thrilling adventure of danger and deep-sea diving, historic mystery and suspense, by the author of Shadow Divers Finding and identifying a pirate ship is the hardest thing to do under the sea. But two men - John Chatterton and John Mattera - are willing to risk everything to find the Golden Fleece, the ship of the infamous pirate Joseph Bannister. At large during the Golden Age of Piracy in the seventeenth century, Bannister should have been immortalized in the lore of the sea - his exploits more notorious than Blackbeard's, more daring than Kidd's. But his story, and his ship, have been lost to time. If Chatterton and Mattera succeed, they will make history - it will be just the second time ever that a pirate ship has been discovered and positively identified. Soon, however, they realize that cutting-edge technology and a willingness to lose everything aren't enough to track down Bannister's ship. They must travel the globe in search of historic documents and accounts of the great pirate's exploits, face down dangerous rivals, battle the tides of nations and governments and experts. But it's only when they learn to think and act like pirates - like Bannister - that they become able to go where no pirate hunters have gone before. Fast-paced and filled with suspense, fascinating characters, history, and adventure, Pirate Hunters is an unputdownable story that goes deep to discover truths and souls long believed lost.Praise for Pirate Hunters"You won't want to put [it] down." - Los Angeles Times "An exceptional adventure . . . Highly recommended to readers who delight in adventure, suspense, and the thrill of discovering history at their fingertips." - Library Journal (starred review) "A terrific read . . . The book gallops along at a blistering pace, shifting us deftly between the seventeenth century and the present day." - Diver "Nonfiction with the trademarks of a novel: the plots and subplots, the tension and suspense . . . [Kurson has] found gold." - The Dallas Morning News "Rollicking . . . a fascinating [story] about the world of pirates, piracy, and priceless treasures." - The Boston Globe "[Kurson's] narration is just as engrossing as the subject." - The Christian Science Monitor "A wild ride [and an] extraordinary adventure . . . Kurson's own enthusiasm, combined with his copious research and an eye for detail, makes for one of the most mind-blowing pirate stories of recent memory, one that even the staunchest landlubber will have a hard time putting down." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "The two contemporary pirate-ship seekers of Mr. Kurson's narrative are as daring, intrepid, tough and talented as Blood and Sparrow - and Bannister. . . . As depicted by the author, they are real-life Hemingway heroes." - The Wall Street Journal "[Kurson] takes his knowledge of the underwater world and applies it to the 'Golden Age of Piracy' . . . thrillingly detailing the highs and lows of chasing not just gold and silver but also history." - BOOKLIST "A great thriller full of tough guys and long odds . . . and: It's all true." - Lee Child
The Road to Little Dribbling
By Bryson, Bill
Twenty years ago, Bill Bryson went on a trip around Britain to discover and celebrate that green and pleasant land. The result was Notes from a Small Island, one of the bestselling travel books ever written. Now he has traveled about Britain again, by bus and train and rental car and on foot, to see what has changed -- and what hasn't. Following a route he dubs the Bryson Line, from Bognor Regis in the south to Cape Wrath in the north, by way of places few travelers ever get to at all, Bryson rediscovers the wondrously beautiful, magnificently eccentric, endearingly singular country that he both celebrates and, when called for, twits. With his instinct for the funny and quirky, and his eye for the idiotic, the bewildering, the appealing, and the ridiculous, he offers insights into all that is best and worst about Britain today.