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Books > Travel > Travel writing > General
Amyr Klink, whose sailing exploits have made him a hero in Brazil, tells of his daring singlehanded circumnavigation below the Antarctic Convergence. Surfing the waves in his custom-built 50-foot "aluminum red truck," PARATII, Klink enjoys the quiet confidence that comes from proper planning, common-sense technology, and a lifelong fascination with the history of Southern Ocean sailing. A modern Moitessier, sailing before an Aerorig mast, Klink proves his seamanship handling tricky boat repairs while underway, navigating icebergs, negotiating gales and williwaws, and surfing gigantic waves.
What is a meaningful life? What does it mean to flourish? Antonia Case, the co-founder of New Philosopher and Womankind magazines, quits her corporate job in the city and, with her partner, travels across the world in search of meaning. In a quest to find answers, she turns off the soundtrack of the media, rids herself of technology, and with little more than books as carry-on luggage, she journeys from Buenos Aires to Paris, from Barcelona to Byron Bay, seeking guidance from ancient philosophers and modern-day psychologists on what is a good life, and what is a life worth living. Along the way she discovers why winning the lottery doesn't make you happy, why making is better than having, and how love and belonging are vital to our sense of selves. Packed with insight into life’s big questions, Flourish will take you on a riveting journey in search of what matters most.
When Jim Richards left home to make his fortune in a gold rush, he had no language skills, no money and no idea. But when he found diamond-filled pot holes in the remote rivers of Guyana, his problems really began. Chasing gold and diamond rushes around the world, Richards worked with local miners in some of the maddest, baddest and most dangerous places on earth. His dramatic journey ranges from the piranha-infested rivers of South America to the blazing deserts of Australia, from the world's biggest mining scam in Indonesia to the war-torn jungles of Laos. To find the gold, first Jim had to find himself. He learned to dig deep and discover the resilience and fortitude needed to overcome isolation, disease, equipment disasters and gun-toting criminals to come out on top.
Beyond Belief is a book about one of the more important and unsettling issues of our time. But it is not a book of opinion. It is, in the Naipaul way, a very rich and human book, full of people and their stories: stories of family, both broken and whole; of religion and nation; and of the constant struggle to create a world of virtue and prosperity in equal measure. Islam is an Arab religion, and it makes imperial Arabizing demands on its converts. In this way it is more than a private faith; and it can become a neurosis. What has this Arab Islam done to the histories of the non-Arab Islamic states: Indonesia, Iran, Pakistan, and Malaysia? How do the converted peoples view their past - and their future? In a follow-up to Among the Believers, his classic account of his travels through these countries, V. S. Naipaul returns, after a gap of seventeen years, to find out how and what the converted preach. 'Peerless . . . the human encounters are described minutely, superbly, picking up inconsistencies in people's tales, catching the uncertainties and the nuances . . . there is a candour to his writing, a constant precision at its heart' - Sunday Times
Over sixty years after Virginia Woolf drowned in the River Ouse, Olivia Laing set out one midsummer morning to walk its banks, from source to sea. Along the way, she explores the roles that rivers play in human lives, tracing their intricate flow through literature, mythology and folklore. Lyrical and stirring, To the River is a passionate investigation into how history resides in a landscape - and how ghosts never quite leave the places they love.
Despite personal tragedy, occupation and civil war, Powell s affair of the heart continued. She returned time and again through the `40s and `50s, and with each visit there was a reconciliation with her idyllic memories, despite the changing reality of Greece. Both with Hunfry and without, she explored remote mountains in the company of shepherds, isolated stretches of coast and island with local fishermen and olive-dotted hillsides with their subsistence farmers.
Readers familiar with Randy Wayne White's "Out There" column in Outside magazine will relish this first collection of his best work; those new to White's delectable blend of adventure, hilarity, and spirit can only be envied for the satisfaction of that first encounter. Whether it's `This Dog Is Legend," in which he tells of his cinder-block-retrieving Chesapeake Bay retriever named Gator, or "Coming To America," about the stirring-and sometimes terrifying-Mariel boat lift, White never fails to engross us in a life of sun, boats, work, and sport.
Shortlisted for the NSW Premier's History Awards - Australian History Prize 2021 How vast then is forgetting - of language, of places, of the dead? Are these even things that can be measured? They are not - but they can be described. Amnesia Road is a powerful literary consideration of historic violence in two different parts of the world, the seldom-visited mulga plains of south-west Queensland and the backroads of rural Andalusia. It is also an unashamed celebration of the landscapes where this violence - frontier conflict and civil war - has been carried out. Australian Hispanist Luke Stegemann uncovers neglected history and its victims and asks where such forgotten people can find a place in contemporary debates around history, nationality, guilt and identity. Stegemann writes powerfully about these landscapes, finding threads of forgotten history, particularly the brutal murderous Indigenous history that is so often deliberately ignored and the mass killings of civilians in the Spanish Civil War, in Andalusia and Cadiz in particular. Characterised by beautiful, lush writing that remains unflinching, this book prompts us to consider traumatic history and the places where it unfolded in new ways.
Laurie Charles finished her Ph.D., then took off to West Africa as a Peace Corps volunteer. Asked to create programs to help adolescent girls stay in school, she found herself enmeshed in the politics and cultural barriers that prevent these girls from creating a better life. But that was not all that was enmeshed. Charles found love, sexual fulfillment, sexual harassment, and gender discrimination, all of which further complexified her stated mission. Her candid assessment of life and work in Africa, the intimate relationships that gave hope to the possibility of change, the emotional and physical highs and lows that affected her ability to function, all become factors affecting her success in improving the lives of African girls. This eloquent narrative should be of interest both to those doing development work and to those interested in autoethnographic exploration of the self.
WINNER OF THE ORION BOOK AWARD Part travelogue, part manifesto for wildness as an essential character of life, Wild is a one-of-a-kind book from a one-of-a-kind author 'Undefinable, untameable, profound and extraordinary' Observer _________________________ 'I took seven years over this work, spent all I had, my time, money and energy. Part of the journey was a green riot and part a deathly bleakness. I got ill, I got well. I went to the freedom fighters of West Papua and sang my head off in their highlands. I met cannibals infinitely kinder and more trustworthy than the murderous missionaries who evangelize them. I found a paradox of wildness in the glinting softness of its charisma, for what is savage is in the deepest sense gentle and what is wild is kind. In the end - a strangely sweet result - I came back to a wild home.' Wild describes an extraordinary odyssey, courageous and sometimes dangerous. It is by turns funny, touching and harrowing, and offers a poetic consideration of the tender connection between human society and wildlands. _________________________ 'Easily the best travel book that I have read in the last ten years' Guardian 'Wild is like nothing else I've ever read: thrilling, troubling, frightening, exhilarating. This is a truly necessary book, and we are all lucky that the subject found a writer worthy of it' Philip Pullman 'Passionate, rigorous and utterly honest, Griffiths's remarkable book is written in a style as wild and exciting as its subject' Robert Macfarlane
'Beautiful . . . Justifies its place alongside nature writing classics such as H is for Hawk' NEW STATESMAN 'Wonderful ... both frank and fearless' TELEGRAPH BEST TRAVEL BOOKS OF THE YEAR 'Fascinating' GUARDIAN TOP TEN NATURE MEMOIRS From Mexico to the Arctic ice, grey whale mothers swim with their calves. Following them, by bus, train and ferry, are Doreen and her toddler Max, in pursuit of a wild hope. Doreen first visited Alaska as a young journalist reporting on climate change among indigenous whaling communities. There, drawn deeply into an Iñupiaq family, she joined the bowhead whale hunt, watching for polar bears under the never-ending light. Years later, now a single mother living in a hostel, Doreen embarks on this extraordinary journey: following the grey whale migration back to the Arctic, where greys and bowheads meet at the melting apex of our planet. 'Soundings got under my skin. I finished it in tears' AMY LIPTROT 'What a voice! What a book!' CHARLES FOSTER 'Soulful, honest, insightful, humane and propulsive' JINI REDDY 'Thrilling, passionate and tender-hearted' HELEN JUKES WINNER OF THE RSL GILES ST AUBYN AWARD ONE OF SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE'S TEN BEST BOOKS ABOUT TRAVEL OF 2022
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.
'Witty, polished, honest and insightful, The Epic City is likely to become for Calcutta what Suketu Mehta's classic Maximum City is for Mumbai' William Dalrymple, Observer When Kushanava Choudhury arrived in New Jersey at the age of twelve, he had already migrated halfway around the world four times. After graduating from Princeton, he moved back to Calcutta, the city which his immigrant parents had abandoned. Taking a job at a newspaper, he found the streets of his childhood unchanged. Shouting hawkers still overran the footpaths, fish sellers squatted on bazaar floors; and politics still meant barricades and bus burnings. The Epic City is a soulful, compelling and often hilarious account of this metropolis of fifteen million people that is truly a world unto itself.
An enchanting and fascinating insight into Japanese landscape, culture, history and future. Originally written in Japanese, this passionate, vividly personal book draws on the author's experiences in Japan over thirty years. Alex Kerr brings to life the ritualized world of Kabuki, retraces his initiation into Tokyo's boardrooms during the heady Bubble Years, and tells the story of the hidden valley that became his home. But the book is not just a love letter. Haunted throughout by nostalgia for the Japan of old, Kerr's book is part paean to that great country and culture, part epitaph in the face of contemporary Japan's environmental and cultural destruction. Winner of Japan's Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize, and now with a new preface. Alex Kerr is an American writer, antiques collector and Japanologist. Lost Japan is his most famous work. He was the first foreigner to be awarded the Shincho Gakugei Literature Prize for the best work of non-fiction published in Japan.
Fresh from her successful scoop reporting the first ascent of Everest in 1953, Jan Morris spent a year journeying across the United States, by car, train, ship and aeroplane. In herwords a "period piece," Coast to Coast describes an American identity markedly different from today. In her brilliant prose, Morris records with exuberence and curiosity a time of innocence in the US - when television was in its infancy, the Big Mac had not been invented and the popular song of the day was "Chattanooga Choo-Choo."
**THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER** 'An inspirational study in leadership and a powerful testament to the human spirit at its very best.' - Mail on Sunday 'The energy of the book gives it pace and you whip through, rather as Purja nips up verticals... Whether or not you are a lover of the mountains, you will marvel at his tenacity, his fearlessness. No one can fail to be inspired by what he achieved.' - The Times 'Not only does Nims have exceptional physical stamina, he's also a leader with great skills in financial management and logistics.' - Reinhold Messner, the first person to climb all fourteen highest mountains in the world 'The magnitude of his achievement is astonishing.' Soldier Magazine 'A Living Legend.' Trail Magazine *** Welcome to The Death Zone. Fourteen mountains on Earth tower over 8,000 metres above sea level, an altitude where the brain and body withers and dies. Until recently, the world record for climbing them all stood at nearly eight years. So I announced I was summiting them in under seven months. People laughed. They told me I was crazy, even though I'd sharpened my climbing skills on the brutal Himalayan peaks of Everest and Dhaulagiri. But I possessed more than enough belief, strength and resilience to nail the job, having taken down enemy gunmen and terrorist bomb makers while serving with the Gurkhas and the UK Special Forces. Throughout 2019, I came alive in the death zone. Soon after, I was showing the world a new truth: that with bravery and enough heart and drive, the impossible was possible...
Millstone Grit takes the form of a fifty mile walk through the West Riding and East Lancashire, exploring the industrial towns and moors. Glyn Hughes had grown up in the Cheshire countryside but on moving to the Pennines was deeply shocked by the impact of industry on the natural world; but over time he found beauty in its special landscapes and came to love the people who lived in them. In Millstone Grit the author investigates the specific culture of place - with chapters on Methodism and the Luddites, interviewing a millworker, examining the awakening of an urban working-class consciousness. Hughes is always observant, careful, poetic and no-nonsense, this new edition will find readers keen to rediscover his vision of the north.
"An uncensored road trip through gay American life in the early sixties "Jack Nichols is now known as a founding father of the gay and lesbian liberation movement, editor of GAY (the first gay weekly newspaper), co-founder of the Mattachine Societies of Washington, DC, and Florida, and a warrior who broke ground for gay equality. In his early twenties, however, he was dedicated to romance, ardor, and wanderlust-living the life of a gypsy and making love with abandon. "MORE EXCITING THAN THE WILDEST FICTION. . . . Jack takes his reader on the road with him (Jack often hitchhiking in only T-shirt and jeans) where he encounters, beds down (and sometimes hustles) dozens of attractive 'numbers' who come his way.""- Donn Teal, Author of The Gay Militants: 1971 & 1994""This might be called Jack Nichols' version of Kerouac's beat classic "On the Road." With a variety of companions, and with little money in his pocket, in the early 60s, he drove, hitchhiked, rode buses, and even walked for a couple of long stretches from Washington, DC, to New York and then through West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Illinois. He recalls in considerable detail a variety of individuals with whom he had erotic encounters. The title The Tomcat Chronicles is fully descriptive.""- Vern L. Bullough, PhD, RN, Editor of Before Stonewall: Activists for Gay and Lesbian Rights in Historical Context""Jack Nichols, the gay liberation pioneer, has been a lifelong friend who helped to illuminate my concept of homophobia. Oscar Wilde believed one's life should be a work of art. Jack's life, which has always combined courage, social awareness and sexual passion, is certainly such a work.""- George Weinberg, PhD, Author of Society and the Healthy Homosexual and 13 other books (the psychotherapist credited with coining the term homophobia)""THE VIVID DETAIL AND GRACEFUL PROSE THAT CHARACTERIZE THE WRITING OF JACK NICHOLS open a window into a time long before gay men appeared weekly on tv or before anti-sodomy laws had been banned.""- Rodger Streitmatter, PhD, Author of Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America""The Tomcat Chronicles is a gay pioneer's version of "City of Night."- James T. Sears, PhD, Author of Rebels, Rubyfruit, and Rhinestones: Queering Space in the Stonewall South; Editor of the Journal of Gay & Lesbian Issues in Education (from the Foreword)"
*A SCOTSMAN TRAVEL BOOK OF THE YEAR* Stranded at Schiphol airport, Ben Coates called up a friendly Dutch girl he'd met some months earlier. He stayed for dinner. Actually, he stayed for good. In the first book to consider the hidden heart and history of the Netherlands from a modern perspective, the author explores the length and breadth of his adopted homeland and discovers why one of the world's smallest countries is also so significant and so fascinating. It is a self-made country, the Dutch national character shaped by the ongoing battle to keep the water out from the love of dairy and beer to the attitude to nature and the famous tolerance. Ben Coates investigates what makes the Dutch the Dutch, why the Netherlands is much more than Holland and why the colour orange is so important. Along the way he reveals why they are the world's tallest people and have the best carnival outside Brazil. He learns why Amsterdam's brothels are going out of business, who really killed Anne Frank, and how the Dutch manage to be richer than almost everyone else despite working far less. He also discovers a country which is changing fast, with the Dutch now questioning many of the liberal policies which made their nation famous. A personal portrait of a fascinating people, a sideways history and an entertaining travelogue, Why the Dutch are Different is the story of an Englishman who went Dutch. And loved it.
In Patagonia is Bruce Chatwin’s exquisite account of his journey through “the uttermost part of the earth,” that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome and Charles Darwin formed part of his “survival of the fittest” theory. Chatwin’s evocative descriptions, notes on the odd history of the region, and enchanting anecdotes make
This collection will bring together a selection of works by travellers studying natural philosophy as well as natural history. The set will cover a wide geographical spread, including accounts from Australia, Asia, Africa and South America. The style of writing and subject matter are also diverse. Some offer more reflective writing, mingling scientific observation with romantic musing and high style, others have a more specific focus - such as Bates description of Mimicry in butterflies in Bali. The first volume includes a general introduction to the collection and each succeeding volume also includes a new introduction by the editor, which places each work in its historical and intellectual context.
Escape to Languedoc in this poignant and transportative true account of life in a beautifully restored house in the south of France 'This love affair between an English family and a very old French house is by turns turbulent, lyrical and tragic . . . Enriched by an insatiable, ever-eager curiosity, he takes us down many a side alley, adding another dimension to the timeless story of what it is that makes France irresistible' MICHAEL PALIN 'What a wonderful book. Exquisitely written, it is by turns laugh-out-loud funny then suddenly, unexpectedly and profoundly moving... an utter joy and a treat to read from the first to last pages' JAMES HOLLAND 'He writes with genuine emotion . . . He writes beautifully about life in a French village' DAILY MAIL ________ One day a Londoner and his wife went a little crazy and bought a crumbling house in deepest Languedoc. It was love at first sight. Over the years these Londoners gradually turn the house into a home. They navigate the language, floods and freezing winters. And eventually they find their place - their bar, their baker, their builder (ignore him at your peril). Slowly the family and the locals get to know one another and these busy English discover slower joys - the scent of thyme and lavender, the warmth of sun on stone walls, nights hung with stars, silence in the hills, the importance of history and memory, the liberation of laughter and the secrets of fig jam. One Place de l'Eglise is a love letter - to a house, a village, a country - from an outsider who discovers you can never be a stranger when you're made to feel so at home. Old houses never belong to people. People belong to them. ________ 'Wonderful. Exquisitely written, it is by turns laugh-out-loud funny then suddenly, unexpectedly and profoundly moving, wistful and touching: a homage to a place, to magical moments in time. An utter joy and a treat to read from the first to last pages' James Holland, author of Brothers in Arms |
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