Mitch Moxley came to Beijing in the spring of 2007 to take a job as a writer and editor for China Daily, the country's only English-language national newspaper. The Chinese economy was booming, the Olympics were on the horizon, and Beijing was being transformed into a world-class city overnight. Moxley planned to stay through the Olympics and then head back to Canada. That was five years ago. In that time Moxley has fed a goat to a tiger, watched a bear ride a bicycle while wearing lingerie (he has witnesses), and has eaten scorpions and silkworms. He also appeared as one of Cosmopolitan's 100 most eligible bachelors in China, acted in a state-funded Chinese movie, and was paid to pose as a fake businessman. These experiences, and many more, are chronicled in Apologies to My Censor, the comic adventures and misadventures of Moxley's time in China and his transformation into his alter ego-Mi Gao, or Tall Rice. The book spans the five years that Moxley has lived in China; five years that coincide with China's arrival on the world stage and its emergence as a global superpower. A funny and honest look at expat life, and the ways in which a country can touch and transform you.

Whether he's fighting fires, passing a kidney stone, hammering down I-80 in an 18-wheeler, or meditating on the relationship between cowboys and God, Michael Perry draws on his rural roots and footloose past to write from a perspective that merges the local with the global.

Ranging across subjects as diverse as lot lizards, Klan wizards, and small-town funerals, Perry's writing in this wise and witty collection of essays balances earthiness with poetry, kinetics with contemplation, and is regularly salted with his unique brand of humor.

Far away from the trendy cafes, designer boutiques, and political protests and crackdowns in Moscow, the real Russia exists. Midnight in Siberia chronicles David Greene's journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, a 6,000-mile cross-country trip from Moscow to the Pacific port of Vladivostok. In quadruple-bunked cabins and stopover towns sprinkled across the country's snowy landscape, Greene speaks with ordinary Russians about how their lives have changed in the post-Soviet years. These travels offer a glimpse of the new Russia-a nation that boasts open elections and newfound prosperity but continues to endure oppression, corruption, a dwindling population, and stark inequality. We follow Greene as he finds opportunity and hardship embodied in his fellow train travelers and in conversations with residents of towns throughout Siberia. We meet Nadezhda, an entrepreneur who runs a small hotel in Ishim, fighting through corrupt layers of bureaucracy every day. Greene spends a joyous evening with a group of babushkas who made international headlines as runners-up at the Eurovision singing competition. They sing Beatles covers, alongside their traditional songs, finding that music and companionship can heal wounds from the past. In Novosibirsk, Greene has tea with Alexei, who runs the carpet company his mother began after the Soviet collapse and has mixed feelings about a government in which his family has done quite well. And in Chelyabinsk, a hunt for space debris after a meteorite landing leads Greene to a young man orphaned as a teenager, forced into military service, and now figuring out if any of his dreams are possible. Midnight in Siberia is a lively travel narrative filled with humor, adventure, and insight. It opens a window onto that country's complicated relationship with democracy and offers a rare look into the soul of twenty-first-century Russia.

In the autumn of 1841, George French Angas (1822 86) abandoned his conventional career in the City of London for a life of art, travel and zoology. Inspired by a childhood fascination with natural history, his accounts blend detailed antiquarian descriptions of temples and palaces with picturesque notes on livestock and wildlife. Published in 1842, this work was the first of Angas' books to charm the British reading public, and its success launched his new career as a prolific chronicler and illustrator of foreign lands. Opening with the journey to Malta, Angas begins his tour in Valetta, taking in the forts of St Elmo and St Angelo and various tapestries and paintings en route. In Sicily, he continues to document Mediterranean culture, making also an ascent of Mount Etna. Illustrated with fourteen engravings, this book displays the charm and diversity that defines the best nineteenth-century travel writing.

Sir John Gardner Wilkinson (1797 1875) pioneered modern Egyptology and is best known for his Egyptian surveys with their detailed watercolours. His contributions to the subject earned him numerous honours as well as fellowship of the Royal Society. Wilkinson's passion for exploration led him to travel widely in Europe and the Mediterranean. In 1844, he toured Dalmatia and Montenegro, which were little-known regions in the nineteenth century. Dalmatia, a historical region of Croatia located on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, was then a province of Austria and torn by ethnic conflicts. During his trip, Wilkinson gathered a significant amount of information about regional customs, architecture, history and language. This illustrated two-volume account of his travels was first published in 1848. Volume 1 charts the physical features and cultural traditions of the area, with a substantial chapter devoted to Montenegro.

Author & stalwart husband Harry follow in the footsteps of the heroes of the Trojan War. They travel to Turkey, Mt. Ida & Troy, then to Greece to see the palaces of the major Greek heroes, and end on Mt. Olympus, the mountain of the Gods. It is humorous & informative with selected quotes from the Iliad & the Odyssey – intended to awaken interest in the non-academic reader.

Of Czech ancestry, Albert Henry Wratislaw (1821 92) was educated at Rugby and Cambridge, and later became a prominent English public-school headmaster. At Cambridge he became interested in the literature and history of Bohemia and in 1849 he travelled there for the first time, quickly becoming proficient in the language. Upon his return home he began a lifetime of immersion in Czech literature. Published in 1862, this book was the first translation into English of a major Czech prose work. It is the vivid true story of a Bohemian nobleman's journey to, imprisonment in, and return from Constantinople in the late sixteenth century. Wratislaw's translation and brief introduction to Bohemian history proved popular and helped bring Czech literature and history to a wider audience.

Mariana Starke (1762 1838) was an ideal travel guide: she lived and travelled in Italy for much of the 1790s and had a truly practical mind, predicting perfectly what a traveller might need to know about both the journey and the destination. Travels on the Continent, first published in 1820, was partly based on her earlier bestseller Travels in Italy (also reissued in this series) but featured completely updated information based on extensive research during the late 1810s. Noting the latest improvements in transport and accommodation, which had both become more comfortable in Europe during the previous thirty years, the guide covers most of mainland Europe. For each popular route Starke offers itineraries and journey times, as well as recommendations for sightseeing and the best inns. In particular, she offers advice to the many travellers of the time who sought to improve their health through a change of climate.

Grand Prize Winner, Banff Mountain Festival Book Competition The relationship between man and horse on the Eurasian steppe gave rise to a succession of rich nomadic cultures. Among them were the Mongols of the thirteenth century - a small tribe, which, under the charismatic leadership of Genghis Khan, created the largest contiguous land empire in history. Inspired by the extraordinary life nomads lead, Tim Cope embarked on a journey that hadn't been successfully completed since those times: to travel on horseback across the entire length of the Eurasian steppe, from Karakorum, the ancient capital of Mongolia, through Kazakhstan, Russia, Crimea and the Ukraine to the Danube River in Hungary.
From horse-riding novice to spending months in the saddle, he learnt to fend off wolves and would-be horse-thieves, and grapple with the haunting extremes of the steppe as he crossed sub-zero plateaux, the scorching deserts of Kazakhstan and the high-mountain passes of the Carpathians. As he travelled he formed a close bond with his horses and especially his dog Tigon, and encountered essential hospitality - the linchpin of human survival on the steppe - from those he met along the way.
Cope bears witness to how the traditional ways hang in the balance in the post-Soviet world - an era that has brought new-found freedom, but also the perils of corruption and alcoholism, and left a world bereft of both the Communist system upon which it once relied, and the traditional knowledge of the nomadic forefathers.
A journey of adventure, endurance and eventual triumph, "On the Trail of Genghis Khan" is at once a celebration of and an elegy for an ancient way of life.

ATTEMPTING 300KPH on an untested experimental motorcycle could be considered a perfect way to kill yourself, but Paul Carter is still, well, PAUL CARTER and danger at high speed is his second name. Whether discovering that being dyslexic means delivering your lines to camera back to front in the midst of filming a TV series, or starting a new business and travelling the world, or dealing with life's more sober moments like the birth of a son or the loss of a father, Paul Carter is still the funniest man in the bar and the nicest 'alpha male' you'll ever meet as he risks all for the sake of a cracking yarn. SO STRAP YOURSELF IN and HOLD ON TIGHT for his FOURTH BOOK - we just have to hope that he won't be institutionalised before completing his fifth!

It took Kinglake seven years before he had finished crafting this `lively, brilliant and rather insolent tale. The physical details of the journey, undertaken in 1834 across the Balkan frontiers of the Ottoman Empire, through Constantinople, Smyrna, Cyprus into the Near eastern cities of Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus, are never as significant as the conversations, chance encounters and attitudes of the author. Packed full of an infectious charm and a youthful delight at the world, it is above all things funny as it lampoons the pomposity of earnest, middle?aged travellers seeking to establish themselves as professional authorities.

Pointless, risky, absurd. Yes, that is the beauty of it - absurdly determined to metamorphose themselves into a glossy photograph seen in a glossy magazine that caused a spark of desire within the tinder-dry kindling of their imagination. They were consumed with all that the photograph promised until that reality could be made theirs: to achieve all of the experience, the life's journey implied within it, to redefine their already long lives, to change themselves, to fast-track to the achievement of the decades of experience exemplified by those young adventurers in that glossy photograph in that glossy magazine. What an absurd notion. For no other reason, it had to be: three quickly became five guys on heritage motorcycles, hooking up with an ex-Special Forces operative and a combat zone photographer to make it seven for a safari across the top of Africa. From Spain to Tangier, they traversed the Riff, navigated the Atlas Mountains, circled Cirque du Jaffar, and rode through the Gorges du Ziz. Rough-riding across Morocco has never been so much fun. Wild camping on the way under star-spattered sky, across unforgiving terrain where luxury is a warm sleeping bag. In places where if you don't guard it you lose it, and where changing co-ordinates on a fast and furious basis makes good sense. Through oft sudden lows where the warmth of a Moroccan welcome exceeds the heat from black coffee, honeyed mint teas, or a meal from a hot tajine. Until dusty boots touch down on the sands of the Sahara at Erg Chebbi to witness a new dawn rise.

In a ruined temple along the Nile, Anthony Sattin sees a woman praying to the gods of ancient Egypt to bless her with a child. Later that day, a policeman stops his taxi to ask to borrow a mobile phone to call his mother. The ancient rubs up against the modern just as dramatically as when Flaubert wrote, 'Egypt is a wonderful place for contrasts - splendid things gleam in the dust". Anthony Sattin has tracked down extraordinary examples of ancient survivals in the hurly-burly of modern Egypt.

Lady Isabel Burton (1831 96) was a distinguished nineteenth-century traveller, writer and critic. She and her husband Richard explored the Middle East, India, Africa and South America extensively during his diplomatic placements and for their own pleasure. Individually and collaboratively they produced several exquisitely detailed travelogues, recording custom, culture, politics and geography. This account of their travels, first published in 1879, details the Burtons' leisurely route to India through Europe before crossing the Mediterranean and continuing south through Egypt and the Arabian Peninsula. This skilful and humorous narrative brings the places and people to life through personal anecdotes, observations and colourful description. Burton's political and historical comments on the lands she travels through are reasoned, well-researched and afford valuable insight into public opinion and world affairs at this time.

Zeyneb Hanoum (who died c. 1923) and her sister Melek fled Turkey in 1906, at a time when women's freedom was severely restricted. This book, first published in 1913, is a collection of letters written by Zeyneb to her friend, feminist journalist Grace Ellison. As well as discussing the political situation in Turkey, Hanoum compares the life of Turkish women with their European counterparts and presents a more balanced view of real harem life. Witty and forthright, the author shares her opinions on strange Western phenomena such as tennis, snobbery and the poor quality of English food. She also offers views on the suffragette movement and muses on the freedoms enjoyed by women in the West. The author's outsider status provides fascinating insights into European culture and such diverse experiences as tea at the House of Commons and bullfighting. This remains an entertaining and touching travelogue from a unique viewpoint.

Henrietta Lovell is best known as 'The Rare Tea Lady'. She is on a mission to revolutionise the way we drink tea by replacing industrially produced teabags with the highest quality tea leaves. Her quest has seen her travel to the Shire Highlands of Malawi, across the foothills of the Himalayas, and to hidden gardens in the Wuyi-Shan to source the world's most extraordinary teas.

Infused invites us to discover these remarkable places, introducing us to the individual growers and household name chefs Lovell has met along the way - and reveals the true pleasures of tea. The result is a delicious infusion of travel writing, memoir, recipes, and glorious photography, all written with Lovell's unique charm and wit.

Little is known about Charles L. Money, who sailed in 1861 from Gravesend to New Zealand, where, as he recounts in this volume, he spent the next seven years, working as a gold prospector, a surveyor, a sheep hand, a baker's boy, and a log splitter. He also spent periods in the military, serving in McDonnell's campaign against the Maori in the second Taranaki war (1863-6), which was instrumental in establishing colonial control of the area, and participating in the notorious Pokaikai raid, an eyewitness account of which is included in the book. Money also, pragmatically, worked with, and occasionally for, the Maori. His narrative provides source material for social tensions in this formative period of New Zealand history, as well as giving a vivid picture of the hardships of emigrant life. It was published in 1871 by Samuel Mullen, the owner of the first literary library and bookshop in Australia.

Anthony Trollope (1815-82) was a prolific English Victorian writer, famous for work such as the 'Chronicles of Barsetshire', and his satirical masterpiece The Way We Live Now. He wrote forty-seven novels as well as several travel books and numerous short stories. After a poor and unhappy childhood, he spent much of his life working for the General Post Office, travelling extensively to carry out postal surveys and writing in his spare time. He became a senior civil servant in the organisation and was responsible for the introduction of pillar boxes to Britain. Published in 1862, this two-volume work is Trollope's first-hand account of North American culture during the American Civil War. Volume 2 focuses on Washington and the South. Trollope also describes several key American institutions, including the government and the legal system, and considers the causes of the war.

Augustus Earle (1793-1838) was a professional watercolour artist specialising in colonial themes. He exhibited at the Royal Academy from the age of thirteen and in 1815 travelled to the Mediterranean. He spent the next fifteen years touring the world and in 1832, when this book was published, was briefly employed by Darwin on H.M.S. Beagle, though he left that expedition in Montevideo owing to ill health. The first part of the book describes Earle's experiences in New Zealand, where he observed in detail the lifestyle of the pre-colonial Maori and the early European settlers. The second part tells how in 1824 Earle, travelling from Rio to Cape Town, found himself left behind on the Atlantic island of Tristan da Cunha and spent eight months sharing the simple life of the tiny British community there and tutoring their children until finally a rare passing ship took him on board.

David Douglas (1799-1834), the influential Scottish botanist and plant collector, trained as a gardener before attending Perth College and Glasgow University. His genius for botany flourished and his talents came to the attention of the Royal Horticultural Society. With the society's backing he went to North America in 1823, beginning his life-long fascination with the region's flora. He discovered thousands of new species and introduced 240 of them to Britain, including the Douglas fir. Douglas continued to explore and discover plant species until his death in the Sandwich Islands (present-day Hawaii) in 1834. This remarkable journal, which remained unpublished until 1914, describes his adventures in North America during 1823-7. It also includes extracts from his journal of his explorations of Hawaii during 1833-4. The appendices include a listing of the plants Douglas introduced to Britain, and contemporary accounts of investigations into the mysterious circumstances of his death.

Courland is an entity that no longer exists. With the Gulf of Riga to the north, the Baltic to the west and Lithuania at its southern border, and now part of modern Latvia, the region was occupied by Nazi Germany and returned to Soviet Russia after the war, remaining largely inaccessible until 1991. It is now a nowhere land of wide skies and forests, deserted beaches, ruined castles and ex-KGB prisons. For years Jean-Paul Kauffmann has been irresistibly drawn to this buffer between the Germanic and Slav worlds. His digressive travels at the wheel of a Skoda become an investigation into the whereabouts of a former lover, a search for an excavator of tombs, and a journey in the footsteps of Louis XVIII, for whom Courland was once a place of exile.