Oliver Sacks, the bestselling author of Awakenings and The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, is most famous for his studies of the human mind: insightful and beautifully characterized portraits of those experiencing complex neurological conditions. However, he has another scientific passion: the fern . . . Since childhood Oliver has been fascinated by the ability of these primitive plants to survive and adapt in many climates. Oaxaca Journal is the enthralling account of his trip, alongside a group of fellow fern enthusiasts, to the beautiful province of Oaxaca, Mexico. Bringing together Oliver's endless curiosity about natural history and the richness of human culture with his sharp eye for detail, this book is a captivating evocation of a place, its plants, its people, and its myriad wonders. 'Light and fast-moving, unburdened by library research but filled with erudition' - New Yorker

"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)"

There are only a handful of destinations left in the world that have retained their ability to shock the traveller with their unique perspective. These places still awaken a sense of deep wonder as they offer the rare opportunity to observe the world from a different angle. Ethiopia is one of those rare countries. This book is the perfect companion to any exploration of Ethiopia, be it in the precarious saddle of an Abyssinian pony, or from the folds of an armchair. A compendium of all things Ethiopian, the book throws wide open precious windows of understanding, allowing you to gaze deeper into the landscape and people with additional wonder. As well as peopling the land with its own caste of priest kings descended from Solomon and Sheba, Ethiopia has long attracted the attentions of eccentric adventurers, Jesuit explorers, foolish would-be conquerors, as well as saints and sinners in equal measure ...and the keen interest of writers of all stripes. What you have here is quite literally the best bits from whole libraries of past travel accounts, hand-picked by Yves-Marie Stranger, a long time Ethiopia resident, trilingual interpreter and writer.

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.

Bill Bryson has the rare knack of being out of his depth wherever he goes - even (perhaps especially) in the land of his birth. This became all too apparent when, after nearly two decades in England, the world's best-loved travel writer upped sticks with Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al. and returned to live in the country he had left as a youth. Of course there were things Bryson missed about Blighty but any sense of loss was countered by the joy of rediscovering some of the forgotten treasures of his childhood: the glories of a New England autumn; the pleasingly comical sight of oneself in shorts; and motel rooms where you can generally count on being awakened in the night by a piercing shriek and the sound of a female voice pleading, 'Put the gun down, Vinnie, I'll do anything you say.' Whether discussing the strange appeal of breakfast pizza or the jaw-slackening direness of American TV, Bill Bryson brings his inimitable brand of bemused wit to bear on that strangest of phenomena - the American way of life.

It was Rachel Signer's dream to be that girl: the one smoking hand-rolled cigarettes out the windows of her 19th-century Parisian studio apartment, wearing second-hand Isabel Marant jeans and sipping a glass of Beaujolais redolent of crushed roses with a touch of horse mane. Instead she was an under-appreciated freelance journalist and waitress in New York City, frustrated at always being broke and completely miserable in love. When she tastes her first petillant-naturel (pet-nat for short), a type of natural wine made with no additives or chemicals, it sets her on a journey of self-discovery, both deeply personal and professional, that leads her to Paris, Italy, Spain, Georgia, and finally deep into the wilds of South Australia and which forces her, in the face of her "Wildman," to ask herself the hard question: can she really handle the unconventional life she claims she wants? Have you ever been sidetracked by something that turned into a career path? Did you ever think you were looking for a certain kind of romantic partner, but fell in love with someone wild, passionate and with a completely different life? For Signer, the discovery of natural wine became an introduction to a larger ethos and philosophy that she had long craved: one rooted in egalitarianism, diversity, organics, environmental concerns, and ancient traditions. In You Had Me at Pet-Nat, as Signer begins to truly understand these revolutionary wine producers upending the industry, their deep commitment to making their wine with integrity and with as little intervention as possible, she is smacked with the realization that unless she faces, head-on, her own issues with commitment, she will not be able to live a life that is as freewheeling, unpredictable, and singular as the wine she loves.

Translating Italy in the Eighteenth Century offers a historical analysis of the role played by translation in that complex redefinition of women's writing that was taking place in Britain in the second half of the eighteenth century. It investigates the ways in which women writers managed to appropriate images of Italy and adapt them to their own purposes in a period which covers the 'moral turn' in women's writing in the 1740s and foreshadows the Romantic interest in Italy at the end of the century. A brief survey of translations produced by women in the period 1730-1799 provides an overview of the genres favoured by women translators, such as the moral novel, sentimental play and a type of conduct literature of a distinctively 'proto-feminist' character. Elizabeth Carter's translation of Francesco Algarotti's II Newtonianesimo per le Dame (1739) is one of the best examples of the latter kind of texts. A close reading of the English translation indicates a 'proto-feminist' exploitation of the myth of Italian women's cultural prestige. Another genre increasingly accessible to women, namely travel writing, confirms this female interest in Italy. Female travellers who visited Italy in the second half of the century, such as Hester Piozzi, observed the state of women's education through the lenses provided by Carter. Piozzi's image of Italy, a paradoxical mixture of imagination and realistic observation, became a powerful symbolic source, which enabled the fictional image of a modern, relatively egalitarian British society to take shape.

Adventure, memoir, storytelling and celebration of all things maritime meet in Waypoints, a beautifully written account of sea journeys from Scotland's west coast. In the book Ian Stephen reveals a lifetime's love affair with sailing; each voyage honours a seagoing vessel, and each adventure is accompanied by a spell-binding retelling of a traditional tale about the sea. His writing is enchanting and lyrical, gentle but searching, and is accompanied by beautiful illustrations of each vessel, drawn by his wife, artist Christine Morrison. Ian Stephen is a Scottish writer, artist and storyteller from the remote and bewitching Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. He fell in love with boats and sailing as a boy, pairing this love affair with a passion for the beautiful but merciless Scottish coastline, an inspiration and motivating force behind his poems, stories, plays, radio broadcasts and visual arts projects for many years. This book will be a delightful and absorbing read for anyone with a passion for sailing and the seas, Scotland's landscape and coastlines, stories and the origins of language and literature.

**LONGLISTED FOR THE POLARI FIRST BOOK PRIZE** 'You've never read a travel memoir like this before' The Sunday Times, 'Pride Culture Guide' 'Sweet and fun, with real emotional depth and a rousing, feisty spirit' Matt Cain *** In the spring of 2012, Calum finds himself single again after his relationship of six years comes to an end. Heartbroken, unhappy and unsure of what to do next, he leaves the hometown he has been in all his life to embark on a journey that takes him all around the world, from teaching in a school on the outskirts of Rome to exploring the sex clubs of Berlin, to raising tigers in an animal sanctuary deep in the jungles of Thailand. Along the way, he meets LGBT+ people from all walks of life and every part of the rainbow - from an Italian teenager struggling with a homophobic father to a kathoey navigating life as a trans person in Thailand, to a young HIV-positive man living on the streets of London. Their individual stories, not only of hardship and sorrow but also of profound strength and hope, show the breadth and depth of queer life and experience, shedding light on themes such as homophobia, sexual violence, marriage equality and gender identity. Through these meetings and friendships, Calum not only finds the encouragement to embrace life after heartbreak, but also discovers a beautiful, loving global community who support and uplift him through the best and worst moments of his time on the road. A travel memoir with a difference, Eat, Gay, Love is a celebration of the power of community and a personal tribute to the extraordinary lives of LGBT+ people everywhere in the world.

Translating Travel examines the relationship between travel writing and translation, asking what happens when books travel beyond the narrow confines of one genre, one literary system and one culture. The volume takes as its starting point the marginal position of contemporary Italian travel writing in the Italian literary system, and proposes a comparative reading of originals and translations designed to highlight the varying reception of texts in different cultures. Two main themes in the book are the affinity between the representations produced by travel and the practices of translation, and the complex links between travel writing and genres such as ethnography, journalism, autobiography and fiction. Individual chapters are devoted to Italian travellers' accounts of Tibet and their English translations; the hybridization of journalism and travel writing in the works of Oriana Fallaci; Italo Calvino's sublimation of travel writing in the stylized fiction of Le cittA invisibili; and the complex network of literary references which marked the reception of Claudio Magris's Danubio in different cultures.

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

At the height of the financial crisis in 2009, Sarah Moss and her husband moved with their two small children to Iceland. From their makeshift home among the half-finished skyscrapers of Reykjavik, Moss travels to hillsides of boiling mud and volcanic craters, and the remote farms and fishing villages of the far north. She watches the northern lights and the comings and goings of migratory birds, and as the weeks and months go by, she and her family find new ways to live.

Lonely Planet: The world's leading travel guide publisher* Life-changing food adventures around the world. From bat on the island of Fais to chicken on a Russian train to barbecue in the American heartland, from mutton in Mongolia to couscous in Morocco to tacos in Tijuana - on the road, food nourishes us not only physically, but intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually too. It can be a gift that enables a traveller to survive, a doorway into the heart of a tribe, or a thread that weaves an indelible tie; it can be awful or ambrosial - and sometimes both at the same time. Celebrate the riches and revelations of food with this 38-course feast of true tales set around the world. Features stories by Anthony Bourdain, Andrew Zimmern, Mark Kurlansky, Matt Preston, Simon Winchester, Stefan Gates, David Lebovitz, Matthew Fort, Tim Cahill, Jan Morris and Pico Iyer. Edited by Don George. About Lonely Planet: Started in 1973, Lonely Planet has become the world's leading travel guide publisher with guidebooks to every destination on the planet, as well as an award-winning website, a suite of mobile and digital travel products, and a dedicated traveller community. Lonely Planet's mission is to enable curious travellers to experience the world and to truly get to the heart of the places where they travel. TripAdvisor Travellers' Choice Awards 2012 and 2013 winner in Favorite Travel Guide category 'Lonely Planet guides are, quite simply, like no other.' - New York Times 'Lonely Planet. It's on everyone's bookshelves, it's in every traveller's hands. It's on mobile phones. It's on the Internet. It's everywhere, and it's telling entire generations of people how to travel the world.' - Fairfax Media (Australia) *#1 in the world market share - source: Nielsen Bookscan. Australia, UK and USA. March 2012-January 2013

Fired by a passion for running dogs, award-winning author Gary Paulsen entered the Iditarod, a gruelling 1180-mile race across Alaska, in dangerous ignorance and with fierce determination. After a spectacularly inept period of training and an even more spectacularly inept start to the race, Paulsen and his team of 15 dogs ran for 17 days through the beautiful, treacherous arctic terrain. They crossed the barren moon-like landscape of the Alaskan interior and witnessed sunrises that cast a golden blaze over the vast waters of the Bering Sea. Enduring blinding wind, snowstorms, dogfights, frostbite, moose attacks, sleep deprivation and hallucinations, he pushed on. This book recounts his adventure.

'Full of smugglers tales, childhood memories and the real-life struggles of living on a remote island.' - Touring Tales *** 'In the January dark, a young man walks slowly into the sea. He can't see where he is going, but he knows the island is calling...' Mary and Patrick's dream was to live in London, have 2.4 children, the nice house, the successful jobs. But life had other plans, and in one traumatic year that all came crashing down. Bruised and battered, Mary finds herself pulled towards Cornwall and dreams of St George's Island, where she spent halcyon childhood summers. So, when an opportunity arises to become tenants if they renovate the old Island House, they grab it with both hands. Life on the island is hard, especially in winter, the sea and weather, unforgiving. But the rugged natural beauty, the friendly ghosts of previous inhabitants, and the beautiful isolation of island life bring hope and purpose, as they discover a resilience they never knew they had.

A top-class team has formed to honour the Spanish Riding School in Vienna and the Piber Federal Stud with a sumptuous volume on the occasion of their anniversary: Elisabeth Gurtler, Director of the Spanish Riding School, presents the excellence and the unique character of this institution and its rich tradition. The internationally renowned photographer Rene van Bakel has captured the Lipizzaners through the years from birth to their demanding training and the glamorous performances. Sports journalist and horse enthusiast Arnim Basche interweaves expert knowledge and emotion in his texts. And multi-award-winning publisher Edition Lammerhuber - elected Photography Book Publisher of the Year 2014 - provides the elegant design for the book to match both the theme and the occasion.

Richard Eden's Decades has long been recognised as a landmark in the translation and circulation of information concerning the Americas in England. What is often overlooked in Eden's book is the presence of the first two Tudor voyage accounts to have been committed to print, assembled in haste and added late in the printing process. Both concern English commercial ventures to the West African coast, undertaken despite vehement Portuguese protests and in the midst of the profound alteration of the Marian succession. Both are complex, contradictory, and innovative experiments in generic form and content. This Element closely examines Eden's assembly and framing of these accounts, engaging with issues of material culture, travel writing, new knowledge, race, and the negotiation of political and religious change. In the process it repositions West Africa and Eden at the heart of a lost history of early English expansionism.

LONGLISTED FOR THE HIGHLAND BOOK PRIZE In frantic flight from the Vietnam War, Jay Parini leaves the United States for Scotland. There, through unlikely circumstances, he meets famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges. The pair embark on a trip to the Scottish Highlands, and on the way the charmingly garrulous Borges takes Parini on a grand tour of western literature and ideas while promising to teach him about love and poetry. Borges and Me is a classic road novel, based on true events. It's also a magical tour of an era - like our own - in which uncertainties abound, and when - as ever - it's the young and the old who hear voices and dream dreams.

The acclaimed travel writer's youthful journey - as an 18-year-old - across 1930s Europe by foot began in A Time of Gifts, which covered the author's exacting journey from the Lowlands as far as Hungary. Picking up from the very spot on a bridge across the Danube where his readers last saw him, we travel on with him across the great Hungarian Plain on horseback, and over the Romanian border to Transylvania. The trip was an exploration of a continent which was already showing signs of the holocaust which was to come. Although frequently praised for his lyrical writing, Fermor's account also provides a coherent understanding of the dramatic events then unfolding in Middle Europe. But the delight remains in travelling with him in his picaresque journey past remote castles, mountain villages, monasteries and towering ranges. The concluding part of the trilogy was published in September 2013 as The Broken Road.

On a motorcycle trip from Manitoba to southern Chile, Cameron Dueck seeks out isolated enclaves of Mennonites-and himself. "An engrossing account of an unusual adventure, beautifully written and full of much insight about the nature of identity in our ever-changing world, but also the constants that hold us together."-Adam Shoalts, national best-seller author of Beyond the Trees: A Journey Alone Across Canada's Arctic and A History of Canada in 10 Maps Across Latin America, from the plains of Mexico to the jungles of Paraguay, live a cloistered Germanic people. For nearly a century, they have kept their doors and their minds closed, separating their communities from a secular world they view as sinful. The story of their search for religious and social independence began generations ago in Europe and led them, in the late 1800s, to Canada, where they enjoyed the freedoms they sought under the protection of a nascent government. Yet in the 1920s, when the country many still consider their motherland began to take shape as a nation and their separatism came under scrutiny, groups of Mennonites left for the promises of Latin America: unbroken land and new guarantees of freedom to create autonomous, ethnically pure colonies. There they live as if time stands still-an isolation with dark consequences. In this memoir of an eight-month, 45,000 kilometre motorcycle journey across the Americas, Mennonite writer Cameron Dueck searches for common ground within his cultural diaspora. From skirmishes with secular neighbours over water rights in Mexico, to a mass-rape scandal in Bolivia, to the Green Hell of Paraguay and the wheat fields of Argentina, Dueck follows his ancestors south, finding reasons to both love and loathe his culture-and, in the process, finding himself.

'A beautiful and profound meditation on the way landscape shapes art and life. I was entranced by The White Birch, a book that comes close to encapsulating the vast enigma of Russia in the form of a single tree' Alex Preston, author of Winchelsea and As Kingfishers Catch Fire The birch. Genus Betula. One of the northern hemisphere's most widespread and easily recognisable trees, and Russia's unofficial national emblem. From Catherine the Great's garden follies and Tolstoy's favourite chair to the Chernobyl exclusion zone and drunken nights in Moscow, art critic Tom Jeffreys leads us across Russia's diverse land to understand its dramatically shifting identity. As we walk through lost landscapes, discover historic artworks, explore the secret online world of Russian brides, and relive encounters between some of Russia's greatest artists and writers, we uncover a myriad of overlapping meanings surrounding the humble birch tree. Curious, resonant and idiosyncratic, The White Birch is a unique collection of journeys that grapples with the riddle of Russianness.

This volume offers a reasoned critical account of a wide range of travel writing about rural Ireland. The focus is on work by English travellers who visited Ireland for pleasure, from the 'scenic tourists' of the post-Romantic period to Eric Newby in the 1980s. Ryle also discusses accounts by American and English anthropologists, as well as writing by Irish authors including J.M. Synge, George Moore, Sean O'Faolain and Colm TA(3)ibA n. The materials reviewed and discussed here, including many books which are now difficult to find, offer illuminating and sometimes entertaining evidence about the development of tourism. Ryle also shows how the discourses and practices of pleasurable travel have intersected with and been marked by the dimensions of power and proprietorship, hegemony, and resistance, which have characterised Anglo-Irish and Hiberno-English cultural relations over the last two centuries. Journeys in Ireland will interest all those concerned with the literature and history of those relations, and will be an invaluable resource for scholars, teachers and students concerned with travel writing and tourism with and beyond these islands.