When Charles Darwin, then age 22, first saw the HMS Beagle, he thought it looked "more like a wreck than a vessel commissioned to go round the world." But travel around the world it did, taking Darwin to South America, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and of course the Galapagos Islands, in a journey of discovery that lasted almost five years. Now, in Fossils, Finches and Fuegians, Richard Keynes, Darwin's great grandson, offers the first modern full-length account of Darwin's epoch-making expedition.

This was the great adventure of Charles Darwin's life. Indeed, it would have been a great adventure for anyone--tracking condor in Chile, surviving the great earthquake of 1835, riding across country on horseback in the company of gauchos, watching whales leaping skyward off Tierra del Fuego, hunting ostriches with a bolo, discovering prehistoric fossils and previously unknown species, and meeting primitive peoples such as the Fuegians. Keynes captures many of the natural wonders that Darwin witnessed, including an incredible swarm of butterflies a mile wide and ten miles long. Keynes also illuminates Darwin's scientific work--his important findings in geology and biology--and traces the slow revolution in Darwin's thought about species and how they might evolve. Numerous illustrations--mostly by artists who traveled with Darwin on the Beagle--grace the pages, including finely rendered drawings of many points of interest discussed in the book.

There has probably been no greater or more important scientific expedition than Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. Packed with colorful details of life aboard ship and in the wild, here is a fascinating portrait of Charles Darwin and of 19th century science.

In this sequel to the wildly successful Hey Ranger: True Tales of Humor and Misadventure from America's National Parks, former ranger Jim Burnett casts his net globally in search of the most outrageous and humorous stories of man in his eternal quest to experience the natural world. Burnett tells of campers being belted by mysterious objects falling from the sky, like potatoes and ice cream; wildlife photos that went awry, including a ground squirrel that outwits a photographer; dumb crooks in parks, such as the drunk driver who mistakenly knocked on a judge's door to report an accident; and drivers who went over the hill and into the woods instead of to Grandma's house. Burnett also assembles contenders for the strangest questions ever asked of a park ranger, lessons on how not to pick a campsite, life lessons you can learn from a canoe trip, as well as some classic bear stories. As always, Burnett's stories are meant to inform as well as entertain, and serve as cautionary tales on how not to become "a victim of your vacation." Told in Burnett's classic, conversational style, Hey Ranger 2 will not disappoint.

In a life full of momentous episodes, Theodore Roosevelt's fifteen-month post-presidential odyssey to Africa and Europe has never been given its due place. In 1909 and 1910, fresh from the presidency, Rooosvelt embarked on a grand expedition that fulfilled a long-held dream for the hunter-naturalist. Moving from Egypt to British East Africa to the Belgian Congo, Roosevelt hunted elephants and rhinos, parlayed with mercenaries and tribal kings, and observed the changes wrought by European colonialism. Along with his big game rifles, Roosevelt also brought his bully pulpit and accompanying ideals, lecturing diplomats and politicians on both continents on the exertions required to maintain the burden of empire.

In this engaging narrative, J. Lee Thompson traces the exhilarating adventures Roosevelt undertook as well as periods of doubt and disillusionment. Even as TR realized one dream of nature on safari, he came to believe another, more vital to his heart and legacy, was being undermined at home by President William Howard Taft. Having initially assumed that the new president would continue his predecessor's cherished conservation policies, Roosevelt came to realize that Taft, left alone in the political jungles of Washington, was directly undermining his legacy. This led to an acrimonious split between the two old friends, Roosevelt's explosive return to the American political stage, and ultimately the election of Woodrow Wilson.

A tale of daring adventure, international celebrity, a friendship lost, and a political legacy transformed, "Theodore Roosevelt Abroad "is the first full account of a critical episode in the life of an American icon.

HMS Queen Elizabeth 2 is the most celebrated craft afloat and one of the greatest technical achievements of the 20th century. In her construction and maintenance are involved almost every science, profession, and trade known to civilization. On her bridge stand officers, who besides being the pick of the Royal Navy, have passed rigid examinations in all studies pertaining to winds, tides, currents, navigation, and the geography of the sea.
For 91 days, author Bernard M. Patten, M.D., sailed around the world on this ultimate cruise ship. What was it like onboard this most luxurious of luxury liners? "Marvelous, simply marvelous," he assures the reader with obvious enthusiasm that spills off every page.
Determined to give the reader the complete QE2 experience, Patten and his wife, Ethel, roomed in progressively better accommodations, moving level by level from the least expensive class ("Mauritania 5") to the Penthouse Suite, which included their own butlers, Geoffrey and Paul. Along with the Pattens, readers will experience every deck, every restaurant, and every level of luxury that this incredible ocean liner has to offer.
Whether you're a cruise buff, or planning your own stay aboard this fabulous ship, or just want to take a trip in your imagination on a cold rainy night, Cruising on the Queen Elizabeth 2 will provide you with interesting information, entertaining stories, and ample pleasures.

Various unique facts and oddities observed by the author during his employment in Saudi Arabia by Aramco (Arabian American Oil Company) in 1954 are presented, and these are contrasted to changes observed later in 1982 when he returned as a contractor. All photographs were made by the author. The style of the author is similar to that of James Burke in his TV Series "Connections" in which various topics connect to other seemingly unrelated subjects. Thus, a chapter on The Holy Land and one on the origins of the New Testament are included. Many of the topics discussed in this book-customs, contracting and government in particular-give background and insight into today's situation in the Middle East.

This exciting scholarly work examines Dutch maritime violence in the seventeenth-century. With its flourishing maritime trade and lucrative colonial possessions, the young Dutch Republic enjoyed a cultural and economic pre-eminence, becoming the leading commercial power in the world. Dutch seamen plied the world's waters, trading, exploring, and colonizing. Many also took up pillaging, terrorizing their victims on the high seas and on European waterways. Surprisingly, this story of Dutch freebooters and their depredations remains almost entirely untold until now. Piracy and Privateering in the Golden Age Netherlands presents new data and understandings of early modern piracy generally, and also sheds important new light on Dutch and European history as well, such as the history of national identity and state formation, and the history of crime and criminality

Innocents Abroad began as a series of travel letters written by Mark Twain mainly for the Alta California, a San Francisco paper that sponsored his participation in the trip to Europe and the Holy Land in 1867 aboard the steamship Quaker City. On the excursion from New York to Palestine they traveled a distance of over 20,000 miles by land and sea through France, Spain, Italy, Morocco, Russia, Turkey and Egypt.

Travel and Representation is a timely volume of essays that explores and re-examines the various convergences between literature, art, photography, television, cinema and travel. The essays do so in a way that appreciates the entanglement of representations and travel at a juncture in theoretical work that recognizes the limits of representation, things that lie outside of representation and the continuing power of representation. The emphasis is on the myriad ways travelers/scholars employ representation in their writing/analyses as they re-think the intersections between travelers, fields of representation, imagination, emotions and corporeal experiences in the past, the present and the future.

The 'Neverland Valley-Welcome" sign depicts a little boy, bending over to talk to a troll. Opera wafted on the air. Bronze statues of boys and girls dotted the gardens and falls, and an ornate gazebo offered a shady spot to enjoy the stunning tableau. Two trains carried visitors about. Five pink flamingos on an island in the stream coolly eyed onlookers. Unescorted pre-teen boys scampered everywhere.

"Peter Pan" was playing at the packed, eighty-seat, seven-thousand-square-foot theatre. Popcorn and drinks were dished up gratis to mobs at the concession stand in the entry. On the screen, Captain Hook had ten wide-eyed children bound and gagged, about to be fed to the crocodile. Nearby, amid the rides, two sound stages stood ready to rock. A band was taking a break. "Beat It" was thumping loudly from hidden speakers. A circus-like tent houses the bumper cars, where jubilant lads, faces flushed with excitement, rammed each other's cars with enthusiasm.

I freely admitted, there was no doubt that allegations of child molestation had hurt Jackson in this community. Where wouldn't such charges resonate? Sodom and Gomorrah?

Virginia Thorndike, Maine's own version of Studs Terkel, traveled to all the Maine coast islands that still maintain a year-round population and persuaded the islanders to talk openly about their lives. The result is a compulsively readable, unvarnished, and appealing portrait, much of it in the islanders? own words. The 15 islands not accessible by bridge that still have year-round populations are: Isle au Haut, Islesboro, the Cranberry Isles (near Mt. Desert Island), Eagle Island, Long Island (Frenchboro), Long Island (Casco Bay), Matinicus, Monhegan, North Haven, Swans Island, Vinalhaven, Peaks, Chebeague, Great Diamond, and Cliff.

Over the past several years, "the American in Tuscany" has become a literary subgenre. Launched by the phenomenal success of Frances Mayes's Under the Tuscan Sun, bookstores now burgeon with nimble, witty accounts of this clash in cultures-Americans trying to do American things in Italy and bumping against a brick wall of tradition. Before this subgenre exhausts itself, it's only fair that we hear the other side of the story-that of a native Tuscan and of dozens of Americans who have stormed through his life and homeland, determined to find in it whatever they are looking for, whether quaintness or wisdom, submission or direction. There is no one better to provide this view than Dario Castagno. A Tuscan guide whose client base is predominantly American, Dario has spent more than a decade taking individuals and small groups on customized tours through the Chianti region of Tuscany. Reared in Britain through early childhood, he speaks English fluently and is therefore capable of fully engaging his American clients and getting to know them. Too Much Tuscan Sun is Dario's account of some of his more remarkable customers, from the obsessive and the oblivious to the downright lunatic. It is also a primer on Tuscany--its charms and its culture. Structured around a typical Tuscan year, Dario takes us through the sights, smells, and sounds of Chianti during each of the twelve months, including the festivities and pageantry that accord with the season, most notable the Palio-the bareback horse race that consumes the social energies of the people of Siena for all of July and August. Dario also intersperses an account of his own life and times-that of a transplanted British "little lord" who learns to love the wilds of Chianti; of his discovery and adoption of abandoned peasant farmhouses; of his apprenticeship in the wine industry; and of his arduous transformation from bohemian layabout to thriving Tuscan guide. But the bulk of the book is devoted, with humor and affection, to the Americans he has met-the vain, the silly, the ignorant, the ambitious, the horny, the condescending, the charming, and the outright pathological. Some of them have made his life hell and live in his nightmares; others became lifelong friends.

A stunningly illustrated history of Venice, from its beginnings as 'La Serenissima' – 'the Most Serene Republic' – to the Italian city that continues to enchant visitors today. 'Everything about Venice,' observed Lord Byron, 'is, or was, extraordinary – her aspect is like a dream, and her history is like a romance.' Dream and romance have conditioned myriad encounters with Venice across the centuries, but the city's story embodies another kind of experience altogether – the hard reality of an independent state built on conquest, profit and entitlement and on the toughness and resilience of a free people. Masters of the sea, the Venetians raised an empire through an ethos of service and loyalty to a republic that lasted a thousand years. In this new and beautifully illustrated study of key moments in Venice's history, from its half-legendary founding amid the collapse of the Roman empire to its modern survival as a fragile city of the arts menaced by saturation tourism and rising sea levels, Jonathan Keates shows us just how much this remarkable place has contributed to world culture and explains how it endures as an object of desire and inspiration for so many.

Education expert Raphael Wilkins, author of Accidental Traveller, recounts his travels around the world as a visiting expert, where he set up and advised on several educational projects, all very different from each other, and all providing challenges in working across languages and cultures. He battles with unenthusiastic school principals in Dammam, a volatile project manager in Mexico and awkward hosts in Lucknow. Among other adventures, he visits a navy school in Karachi, completes a fulfilling project in Jeddah, secures a valuable contract with the Colombian government in Bogota, and enjoys a tender reunion in Cyprus. Combining informative and thought-provoking insights on education with personal reflections from a lifetime of travel, An Educational Journey is an inspirational book about the importance of broadening horizons, both physical and personal.

Whether he's looking for wild orangutans on Borneo or diving off the coast of South Africa, Randy Wayne White is one of America's most adventurous travelers. In Last Flight Out, White challenges and charms us with tales of his excursions into the dangerous, into the ludicrous, and - especially - into the heart of humanity.
Randy White is a "mover" and has no time for people who can't keep up. Join him as he dives in the infamous lake called the Bad Blue Hole on the desolate Cat Island in the Bahamas. Search for the perfect hot pepper in Colombia, and closer to home; go raccoon hunting in Pioneer, Ohio, where the hunted almost always outsmart the hunters. Get in the ring with Shine Forbes, an eighty-year-old fighter in prime condition and Ernest Hemingway's former sparring partner, and go on a secret mission to steal back General Manuel Noriega's bar stools. Though he rarely finds what he's looking for - such as the half-human, half-alligator creature known as "Gatorman" - he cultivates his unique ability to revel in the unique and comical situations of each exotic trip.
From a jungle survival school in Panama to a week at a professional wrestler's training camp, White leaves the reader mesmerized by the potential of undiscovered places and the promise of endless adventure in unfamiliar territory. An icon of the new breed of thick-skinned, high endurance travelers, Randy White is the real deal.

For more than ten years, Elizabeth Peavey has been traveling around the state of Maine, and writing about her wide-ranging experiences and discoveries in Down East magazine. This book collects her very best columns and essays. In a light and entertaining style laced with lots of entertaining humor, she weaves a wide-ranging tapestry that will give readers a vivid and fresh view of the state.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the rise of the "Home Tour," with travelers drawn to Scotland, the less explored regions of England and North Wales, and, increasingly, to Ireland. Although an integral part of the United Kingdom from 1800, Ireland represented for many travellers a worryingly unknown entity, politically intractable and unstable, devoutly Catholic, and economically deprived. This book examines British responses to the "Sister Isle" throughout a period of significant cultural and historical change, and examines the varied means through which Ireland was represented for a predominantly British audience.

Throughout history, intrepid men and women have related their experiences and perceptions of the world's great cities to bring them alive to those at home. The thirty-eight cities covered in this entertaining anthology of travellers' tales are spread over six continents, ranging from Beijing to Berlin, Cairo to Chicago, Lhasa to London, St Petersburg to Sydney and Rio to Rome. This volume features commentators across the millennia, including the great travellers of ancient times, such as Strabo and Pausanias; those who undertook extensive journeys in the medieval world, not least Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta; courageous women such as Isabella Bird and Freya Stark; and enterprising writers and journalists including Mark Twain and Norman Lewis. We see the world's great cities through the eyes of traders, explorers, soldiers, diplomats, pilgrims and tourists; the experiences of emperors and monarchs sit alongside those of revolutionaries and artists, but also those of ordinary people who found themselves in remarkable situations, like the medieval Chinese abbot who was shown round the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris by the King of France himself. Some of the writers seek to provide a straightforward, accurate description of all they have seen, while others concentrate on their subjective experiences of the city and encounters with the inhabitants. Introduced and contextualized by bestselling historian Peter Furtado, each account provides both a vivid portrait of a distant place and time and an insight into those who journeyed there. The result is a book that delves into the splendours and stories that exist beyond conventional guidebooks and websites.

What types of holidays do Japanese people celebrate? What is the educational system like in Japan? What are Japanese festivals like? What are some of the customs and traditions of the Japanese people? Professor Todd Jay Leonard, writing from the perspective of living and working in Japan, provides in this fascinating book the answers to these and many other questions. Letters Home: Musings of an American Expatriate Living in Japan delivers a firsthand account of daily Japanese life through the eyes and personal experiences of Professor Leonard who has enjoyed an ongoing relationship with Japan and the Japanese people for nearly twenty-five years. This anecdotal book of essays, written in the style of personal letters, offers commentary on a wide range of topics and issues including culture, history, education, language, society, and religion of modern Japan from the point-of-view of an American expatriate who has made Japan his home. The author's friendly, down-to-earth, yet authoritative, style of writing will transport you to modern Japan, where you will learn about the customs and traditions of this most fascinating country. Japan and its people.

Over the course of twenty years of delivering sailboats to far-flung quaysides, John Kretschmer has had innumerable adventures, both humorous and terrifying. in Flirting with Mermaids, he recounts the most memorable of them. He crosses the Western Caribbean with a crew of eccentric Swedes researching ancient Mayan mariners, lands in Aden at the outbreak of civil war, and endures a North Atlantic crossing during which he disocvers the existence of Force 13 winds. Approaching Japan at the end of a particularly trying delivery, he finds himself sailing in "a high impact debris zone," but his resolve is unshaken. "If a piece of rocketship jetsam fell out of the sky and sank [me] after encounters with Hurricane Floyd, General Noriega,a tsunami, an erupting volcano, and Typhoon Roy, then it was meant to be."

Alexander von Humboldt, sometimes called 'the last man who knew everything', was an extraordinary polymath of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1798 he received unprecedented permission from the Spanish Crown to explore its American and Caribbean colonies, which he did from 1799-1804. This is the journal of those explorations, in which he extensively covers the region's topography, geology, fauna and flora, anthropology and comparative linguistics. Volume III sees him recording more information on Venezuela, visiting Cuba where he also writes about local politics and speaks out fervently against the slave trade; he then sails for Colombia. The volume ends with a comprehensive geognostic description of the northern part of South America.

Jon McConal, longtime columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, takes readers on a trip back through 20 years of writing about Texasits history, people, and unusual places. The native Texan writes about a wide variety of subjects including ghosts, cemetaries, celebrations, pets, veterans, and personal stories.

"God bless the United States and God bless New York City" proclaimed a sign as the bus rolled through a small Indiana town. In October 2001, author Bill Markley was traveling by public bus from Pierre, South Dakota, to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, for a Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity celebration. The day Markley left South Dakota began simply enough, but soon tragedy unfolded when a deranged man of Croatian descent slit the throat of a Greyhound bus driver causing an accident and throwing the nation's bus system into disarray. "American Pilgrim" is an honest account of life on the bus, the characters on the bus, bus culture, and the mood of the American people-reflective, patriotic, and upbeat.In those challenging days after the attacks on 9/11, everyone struggled to make sense of the world; as Markley worked on this story; it grew beyond the story of a simple 3,000-mile bus trip. He recalls many of his life's detours, recounting past events at locations the bus traveled through and people associated with those locations-a rambling personal history of people, places, and things. The trip took on new meaning and became a spiritual journey into the country's past and Markley's past.

Two Arabic Travel Books combines two exceptional exemplars of Arabic travel writing, penned in the same era but chronicling wildly divergent experiences. Accounts of China and India is a compilation of reports and anecdotes on the lands and peoples of the Indian Ocean, from the Somali headlands to China and Korea. The early centuries of the Abbasid era witnessed a substantial network of maritime trade-the real-life background to the Sindbad tales. In this account, we first travel east to discover a vivid human landscape, including descriptions of Chinese society and government, Hindu religious practices, and natural life from flying fish to Tibetan musk-deer and Sri Lankan gems. The juxtaposed accounts create a jigsaw picture of a world not unlike our own, a world on the road to globalization. In its ports, we find a priceless cargo of information; here are the first foreign descriptions of tea and porcelain, a panorama of unusual social practices, cannibal islands, and Indian holy men-a marvelous, mundane world, contained in the compass of a novella. In Mission to the Volga, we move north on a diplomatic mission from Baghdad to the upper reaches of the Volga River in what is now central Russia. This colorful documentary by Ibn Fadlan relates the trials and tribulations of an embassy of diplomats and missionaries sent by caliph al-Muqtadir to deliver political and religious instruction to the recently-converted King of the Bulghars. During eleven months of grueling travel, Ibn Fadlan records the marvels he witnesses on his journey, including an aurora borealis and the white nights of the North. Crucially, he offers a description of the Viking Rus, including their customs, clothing, tattoos, and a striking account of a ship funeral. Mission to the Volga is also the earliest surviving instance of sustained first-person travel narrative in Arabic-a pioneering text of peerless historical and literary value. Together, the stories in Two Arabic Travel Books illuminate a vibrant world of diversity during the heyday of the Abbasid empire, narrated with as much curiosity and zeal as they were perceived by their observant beholders. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.

Alexander von Humboldt, sometimes called 'the last man who knew everything', was an extraordinary polymath of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In 1798 he received unprecedented permission from the Spanish Crown to explore its American and Caribbean colonies, which he did from 1799-1804. This is the journal of those explorations, in which he extensively covers the region's topography, geology, fauna and flora, anthropology and comparative linguistics. Volume II covers the period in which he undertake a major exploration of the River Orinoco, as far as the borders of Brazil, finishing in Angostura, then the capital of Spanish Guiana.