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Books > Sport & Leisure > Travel & holiday > Travel writing
In 2013, three friends set off on a journey that they had been told
was impossible: the north-south crossing of the Congo River Basin,
from Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Juba, in
South Sudan.Traversing two and a half thousand miles of the
toughest terrain on the planet in a twenty-five year old Land
Rover, they faced repeated challenges, from kleptocracy and fire
ants to non-existent roads and intense suspicion from local people.
Through imagination and teamwork - including building rafts and
bridges to cross rivers, conducting makeshift surgery in the jungle
and playing tribal politics - they got through. But the Congo is
raw, and the journey took an unexpected psychological toll on them
all.Crossing the Congo is a story of friendship, what it takes to
complete a great journey against tremendous odds, and an intimate
look into one of the world's least-developed and most fragile
states.
'Judah paints another Europe with tense and dramatic detail' -
Andrey Kurkov 'Will make you lurch between fascination, laughter
and tears' - Sophy Roberts _____ What does it now mean to call
yourself European? Who makes up this population of some 750
million, sprawled from Ireland to Ukraine, from Sweden to Turkey?
Who has always called it home, and who has newly arrived from
elsewhere? Who are the people who drive our long-distance lorries,
steward our criss-crossing planes, lovingly craft our legacy wines,
fish our depleted waters, and risk life itself in search of safety
and a new start? In a series of vivid, ambitious, darkly visceral
but always empathetic portraits of other people’s lives,
journalist Ben Judah invites us to meet them. Drawn from hours of
painstaking interviews, these vital stories reveal a frenetic and
vibrant continent which has been transformed by diversity,
migration, the internet, climate change, Covid, war and the quest
for freedom. Laid dramatically bare, it may not always be a Europe
we recognize – but this is Europe. _____ Praise for Ben Judah’s
This Is London: ‘An epic work of reportage’ -The Guardian
‘Eye-opening’ - The Sunday Times ‘Opens readers’ eyes to
the hardships experienced by many and ignored by most’ -
Independent ‘Shares Orwell’s appetite for documenting parts of
society that are easily overlooked’ - Spectator ‘Full of
nuggets of unexpected information about the lives of others’ -
Financial Times
"If you're looking for ideas, or planning a bucket-list adventure,
you'll find page after page of sepia-tinted inspiration in the
revised edition of teNeues' Nostalgic Journeys." - Irish
Independent The seaside or the mountains? Today's most important
vacation planning question never came up in days long past. Both
seemed unappealing and nearly inaccessible. It wasn't until the
invention of the railroad that previously sparsely visited and
overlooked areas opened up, and Thomas Cook, the tour operator and
founder of modern tourism, was born. Fishing villages became
sophisticated seaside resorts, remote mountain areas became
destinations for hiking and skiing enthusiasts, and inns became
grand hotels. Nostalgic Journeys takes you on a journey back in
time, through the last two centuries: Ride the Orient Express to
the East, cross the Atlantic on huge ocean liners, travel Route 66
through the United States, and break the sound barrier aboard the
Concorde. As you browse through the pages of this book, you will
get the idea that travelling was, and can be, more than just being
stuck in a traffic jam or passing through numerous security checks.
It can be a stylish and sometimes adventurous way to explore the
world and return home feeling transformed by your many and varied
experiences. Bon Voyage! Text in English and German.
Can a tiny vehicle provide the space to rebuild a life?
Thunderstone: a sculpted & fearless memoir from the
award-winning author of Fifty Words for Snow
A Muslim curator and archivist who preserves in his native Timbuktu
the memory of its rabbi. An evangelical Kenyan who is amazed to
meet a living ""Israelite."" Indian Ocean islanders who maintain
the Jewish cemetery of escapees from Nazi Germany. These are just a
few of the encounters the author shares from his sojourns and
fieldwork. An engaging read in which the author combines the rigors
of academic research with a ""you are there"" delivery. Conveys
thirty-five years of social science fieldwork and reverential
travel in Sub-Saharan Africa. A great choice for the
ecumenical-minded traveller.
A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's fascinating guide to Europe's
rail network. Bradshaw's descriptive railway handbook of Europe was
originally published in 1913 and was the inspiration behind Michael
Portillo's BBC television series 'Great Continental Railway
Journeys'. It is divided into three sections: timetables for
services covering the continent; short guides to the best places to
see and to stay in each city; and a wealth of advertisements and
ephemeral materials concerning hotels, restaurants and services
that might be required by the early twentieth century rail
traveller. This beautifully illustrated facsimile edition offers a
fascinating glimpse of Europe and of a transport network that was
shortly devastated by the greatest war the world had ever seen.
When author John Eyberg announced his plan to bicycle two
thousand miles across Texas and back, most people thought he was
crazy. But for Eyberg, it was a goal he'd dreamed about for
years--a feat only the supremely confident or utterly foolhardy
would attempt. In Dry'd, Fry'd, and Sky'd by Headwinds and Heat, he
provides a day-by-day journal of his travels beginning June 11,
2011, when he climbed on his tandem recumbent Doublevision and
pushed off from El Paso, Texas, in 101-degree heat for a planned
forty-three-day ride.
In this travel memoir, Eyberg narrates his odyssey--his battles
with the intense sun and the often strong headwinds, the route and
topography he covered from El Paso to Houston, the gracious and
generous people he met throughout his journey, the effects he felt
on his middle-age body, and the mechanical breakdowns he
experienced.
A detailed account of one man's personal biking adventure,
Dry'd, Fry'd, and Sky'd by Headwinds and Heat shows Eyberg's
commitment to his adage: you don't know until you go.
'Bracingly original' Kathryn Hughes, Guardian From Romney Marsh to
the Danube Delta, North Carolina to the Bay of Bengal, Tom Blass
explores swamps, marshes and wetlands - and the people who have
made these twilit worlds their homes. Oozing with bad airs,
boggarts and other spirits, the world's marshes and swamps are
often seen as sinister, permanently twilit - and only partly of
this earth. For centuries, they - and their inhabitants - have been
the object of our distrust. We have tried to drain away their
demons and tame them, destroying their fragile beauty, botany and
birdlife, along with the carefully calibrated lives of those who
have come to understand and thrive in them. In Swamp Songs, Tom
Blass journeys through a series of such watery landscapes, from
Romney Marsh to North Carolina, from Lapland to the Danube Delta
and on to the Bay of Bengal, encountering those whose very
existence has been shaped by wetlands, their myths and hidden
histories. Here are tales of shepherds, smugglers and
salt-gatherers; of mangroves and machismo, frogs and fishermen. And
of carp soup, tiger gods, flamingos and floods. A dazzling
exploration of lives lived on the fringes of civilisation, Swamp
Songs is a vital reappraisal and vibrant celebration of people and
environments closely intertwined.
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Mehreen Ahmed
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The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to
a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can
select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects:
Geography; Science / Earth Sciences / Geography; Travel / General;
Travel / Essays
This handbook offers a systematic exploration of current key topics
in travel writing studies. It addresses the history, impact, and
unique discursive variety of British travel writing by covering
some of the most celebrated and canonical authors of the genre as
well as lesser known ones in more than thirty close-reading
chapters. Combining theoretically informed, astute literary
criticism of single texts with the analysis of the circumstances of
their production and reception, these chapters offer excellent
possibilities for understanding the complexity and cultural
relevance of British travel writing.
A facsimile edition of Bradshaw's Handbook of 1863, the book that
inspired the BBC television series 'Great British Railway
Journeys'. When Michael Portillo began the series 'Great British
Railway Journeys', a well-thumbed 150-year-old book shot back to
fame. The original Bradshaw's guides had been well known to
Victorian travellers and were produced when the British railway
network was at its peak and as tourism by rail became essential. It
was the first national tourist guide specifically organized around
railway journeys, and this beautifully illustrated facsimile
edition offers a glimpse through the carriage window at a Britain
long past.
This book (hardcover) is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS. It
contains classical literature works from over two thousand years.
Most of these titles have been out of print and off the bookstore
shelves for decades. The book series is intended to preserve the
cultural legacy and to promote the timeless works of classical
literature. Readers of a TREDITION CLASSICS book support the
mission to save many of the amazing works of world literature from
oblivion. With this series, tredition intends to make thousands of
international literature classics available in printed format again
- worldwide.
'Jonathan Raban is simply one of the great writers of non-fiction
at work today. I hold his work in awe.' Robert Macfarlane
'Unfailingly witty and entertaining.' Salman Rushdie Following in
the footsteps of countless emigrants, Jonathan Raban takes ship for
New York from Liverpool, to explore how succeeding generations of
newcomers have fared in America. He finds a country of massive
contrasts, between the Street People and the Air People in New
York, between small town and big city, between thrusting immigrants
and down-at-heel native Americans. Having outgrown his minute
rented New York apartment, he heads for Guntersville, Alabama,
where he settles for a few months as a good ol' boy in a cabin on
the lake with a 'rented' elderly lab. From there he flies to the
promise of Seattle, discovering its thrusting but alienated Asian
community and thence to the watery lowlife of Key West. The result
is a breathtaking observation of the States - a travelogue, a
social history and a love letter in one.
- amp gt ., , quot i amp gt A OUR Jerusalem an American Family in
the Holy City, 1881-1949 Bertha Spafford Vester Introduction by
LOWELL THOMAS Doubleday Company, Inc. GARDEN CITY, N. Y. 1950
APPRECIATION LIFE in the American Colony of Jerusalem during the
last decade was tranquil although surrounded by political
turmoil-Our consuls were friendly. Religious leaders understood us
better. Perhaps we had become less of an enigma, and perhaps
Jerusalem had changed. Mod ern Jerusalem accepted us at our value.
The old stories cropped up now and then, but were turned aside with
oh-that-used-to-be looks, which hurt worse than accusations when
one thought of the robust Christianity of the Colony s founders
which allowed quot no room for self pity, as Mother expressed it,
at the most crucial moment of her life. It was during this time
that I began work on the record of my par ents experiences in
Jerusalem and elsewhere which would serve as a record for my
children and grandchildren. I have taken five years writing it,
part of which was done while we were under fire in the recent war
against the partition of Palestine. Preceding this I had worked for
fifteen years gathering material incorporated in its writ ing, and
for such contributed data, letters and memoirs, newspaper accounts
and testimonials, legal, ecclesiastical and historic, I am in
debted to more friends in the United States, the Holy Land, and
England than I have space to acknowledge, but whose kindness and
interest have contributed greatly to this account of our lives in
Amer ica and Jerusalem, I should like to express my public
appreciation to Mr, Lowell Thomas, author, lecturer, and radio
commentator, whose friendship over manyyears has meant much to the
American Colony in Jerusalem and to me, and who was the first to
suggest that I turn into a book my private family record by which
others might see the Holy City as it has seemed to us for nearly
seventy years. To Dr. Millar Burrows, Winkley Professor of Biblical
Theology at the Divinity School of Yale University and late
Director of the Ameri can School of Oriental Research in Jerusalem,
I am deeply grateful for whole-hearted encouragement and advice My
gratitude is also extended to the Rev, Charles T. Bridgeman, at
present connected with Trinity Church, New York, formerly Canon of
St. George s Cathedral in Jerusalem, who has given unstintedly of
his twenty years experience in Palestine, particularly in church
mat ters. I also wish to thank Miss Evelyn Wells for her help.
BERTHA SPAFFORD VESTER vii INTRODUCTION By Lowell Thomas FOR years
my wanderings took me to many parts of the world. In the course of
these travels I met a fair proportion of the unusual personalities
of our time statesmen, explorers, soldiers, scientists,
missionaries, writers, mining men, merchants, and artists. When a
traveler thinks of mountain ranges, certain peaks stand out in his
mind Kinchinjunga in the Himalayas Aconcagua in the Andes Saint
Elias and McKinley in Alaska Demavend in Persia Chomolari in Tibet
Rainier in the Puget Sound country Mount Washington in New England,
and a dozen more in various lands-Looking back on the people I have
met, a few are like the mountains I have mentioned. One of these is
the author of this book. Of all the remarkable personalities I have
known, Berfha Vester is one of the few that I have envied. To me
Jerusalem is the most dramatic of the citiesof this earth, more so
even than Athens, Rome or Paris. And Berfha Vester is lie only
outstanding person who has lived there, both as an observer and a
participant in events, under the Turkish sultans, through World War
I, the period of the Mandate, a second world war, and finally the
period of the return of the Children of Israel. What a panorama
Since the days when Dr. John Finley, famous editor of the New York
Times, and I, first met her in Jerusalem, I have been urging her to
write the story of her life...
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