For centuries, travelers have made Central Asia known to the wider world through their writings. In this volume, scholars employ these little-known texts in a wide range of Asian and European languages to trace how Central Asia was gradually absorbed into global affairs. The representations of the region brought home to China and Japan, India and Persia, Russia and Great Britain, provide valuable evidence that helps map earlier periods of globalization and cultural interaction.

This book considers how contemporary travelers from Latin America write their journeys at and about home. How do Latin American writers of the late twentieth-century negotiate the hybrid and volatile category of travel writing, which has been shaped in large part by myriad Euro-American travelers? How do they engage with the enduring myths about the region perpetuated by their imperial/ist predecessors? And, if not journeys of expansion or exploration, on precisely what kinds of travel do their own journeys rest? Drawing on ideas from many disciplines, including anthropology, philosophy, sociology, literary and cultural studies, this book considers contemporary journey narratives from Latin America through a series of case studies concerning four key sites of travel, each of which engenders particular forms of travel and travel narrative: Patagonia, the Andes, Mexico and the Mexico-US border. This book thus explores the complex practice and representation of journeys in the region by writers including Luis Sepulveda, Mempo Giardinelli, Andres Ruggeri, Ana Garcia Bergua, Silvia Molina, Maria Luisa Puga, Ruben Martinez and Luis Alberto Urrea. In doing so, it explores questions relating to mobility, representation, and globalization that are of widespread concern across the world today."

For centuries, travelers have made Central Asia known to the wider world through their writings. In this volume, scholars employ these little-known texts in a wide range of Asian and European languages to trace how Central Asia was gradually absorbed into global affairs. The representations of the region brought home to China and Japan, India and Persia, Russia and Great Britain, provide valuable evidence that helps map earlier periods of globalization and cultural interaction.

As spring and summer vacations beckon, this book invites and incites a whole new approach to travel. "Postmarks from a Political Traveler" is a series of travel recollections confronting the troubling topics of roots and racism, polar bears and climate change, anti-Americanism, and the war in Afghanistan. The book opens with the story of the author s experience growing up in the Jim Crow South, traveling in apartheid South Africa, and living in the post-apartheid South Africa of 2009 and 2010. It explores the not-so-dissimilar roots and racism of the United States and South Africa, as well as the cross-fertilization of ideas between the two countries. The next installment chronicles two trips to Churchill, Manitoba, where the planet s largest population of polar bears congregate each October. It recounts the dramatic changes that have occurred in both the human and the polar bear communities in just the last decade and shows how the bears have become an Arctic version of the proverbial canary in the coalmine. Then the book shifts to the author s journey back to the United States on a German freighter with a rabidly anti-American captain. Woven into this account of life aboard a long haul ship are threads of the author s travels and anti-American encounters over a decade of living in Africa and Asia. The book concludes with reflections on trips to Afghanistan in 2004 and in 2012, describing the effects of war and conflict zone politics on women, education, refugees, and aid workers. What ties these episodes together is the author s commitment to social justice and to changing the world through travel and writing that is, affirming travel as a political act."

In 1951, the Festival of Britain commissioned a series of short guides they dubbed 'handbooks for the explorer'. Their aim was to encourage readers to venture out beyond the capital and on to 'the roads and the by-roads' to see Britain as a 'living country'. Yet these thirteen guides did more than celebrate the rural splendour of this 'island nation': they also made much of Britain's industrial power and mid-century ambition - her thirst for new technologies, pride in manufacturing and passion for exciting new ways to travel by road, air and sea. Armed with these About Britain guides, historian Tim Cole takes to the roads to find out what has changed and what has remained the same over the 70 years since they were first published. From Oban to Torquay, Caernarvon to Cambridge, he explores the visible changes to our landscape, and the more subtle social and cultural shifts that lie beneath. In a starkly different era where travel has been transformed by the pandemic and many are journeying closer to home, About Britain is a warm and timely meditation on our changing relationship with the landscape, industry and transport. As he looks out on vineyards and apple orchards, power stations and slate mines, vast greenhouses and fulfilment centres for online goods, Cole provides an enchanting glimpse of twentieth and early twenty-first century Britain as seen from the driver's seat.

The little cottage stood out against a bleak skyline, forlorn, empty, neglected and overgrown. After a three-year search, could it be just what a retired English couple were looking for as a holiday home of their own? A magical holiday to rural France some years before had sowed the seeds of a daring plan for Brenda and Ray Barrington - to spend the early years of their retirement buying and restoring a cottage in the French countryside for use as a maison secondaire. Their budget and time were limited, but their enthusiasm and determination were boundless. The couple soon found themselves deeply engrossed in their dream project and discovering the full ramifications of owning a rural property deep in the land of wine and haute cuisine.

Vanishing Streets reveals an American writer's twenty-year love affair with London. Beguiling and idiosyncratic, obsessive and wry, it offers an illustrated travelogue of the peripheries, retracing some of London's most curious locations. As J. M. Tyree wanders deliriously in "the world's most visited city," he rediscovers and reinvents places that have changed drastically since he was a student at Cambridge in the 1990s. Tyree stumbles into the ghosts of Alfred Hitchcock, Graham Greene, and the pioneers of the British Free Cinema Movement. He offers a new way of seeing familiar landmarks through the lens of film history, and reveals strange nooks and tiny oddities in out-of-the-way places, from a lost film by John Ford supposedly shot in Wapping to the beehives hidden in Tower Hamlets Cemetery, an area haunted by a translation error in W. G. Sebald's Austerlitz. This book blends deeply personal writing with a foreigner's observations on a world capital experiencing an unsettling moment of transition. Vanishing Streets builds into an astonishing and innovative multi-layered project combining autobiography, movie madness, and postcard-like annotations on the magical properties of a great city. Tyree argues passionately for London as a cinematic dream city of perpetual fascinations and eccentricities, bridging the past and the present as well as the real and the imaginary.

"What's the strangest thing you've ever seen or experienced?" Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries, including many off-the-beaten-path places in Africa, South America, and Asia. Wherever they go, they ask this question. Everyone has a story, and some are truly extraordinary. Strange Tales of World Travel recounts 50 of these Bizarre, Mysterious, Horrible, Hilarious encounters, including: Daring Diplomat, who ate the flesh of the venomous cobra bird in the Sahara Desert Pearl Trader, who survived a fever through a harrowing "human" honey treatment in Oman Agent Ghost, who was shot and left to die in a garbage dump in Africa Death-Defying Instagrammer, who stepped on the tail of the world's sixth most venomous snake in Australia to take a better photo Human Pet, who became a prince's prisoner in Qatar Imperial CEO, who made a minion fly twelve hours to Paris from Abu Dhabi to buy clean underwear Gorilla Doll, who broke the rules of visiting Rwandan gorillas and got dragged up the side of a volcano Strange Tales of World Travel presents unforgettable stories that celebrate the unique character of countries around the globe-and the distinctive characters that make travel endlessly intriguing and exhilarating.

This is a lavish pictorial record produced in collaboration with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). It features 200 unique photographs taken by Isabella Bird that transport the reader to the China of the late 19th century. It includes supporting text by travel photography expert Debbie Ireland. Ammonite Press is proud to collaborate with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) in celebrating the achievements of Isabella Bird in this lavish pictorial record of her last great journey through China, in the closing years of the 19th century, with supporting text by travel photography expert Debbie Ireland. Bird was in her mid-sixties when she undertook her travels, to a land that was largely unknown and largely misunderstood in the West, where a woman travelling alone was greeted with incredulity and, occasionally, hostility. The highlight of her visit was journeying by boat and sedan chair to make a major tour of the valley of the Yangtze River and much beyond, right up to the border with Tibet.

"What a beautiful book. I knew it was going to be poetic, but I was knocked over twice by its compelling narrative drive and quiet sense of humor."--Sherman Alexie

Diane Thiel's "The White Horse: A Colombian Journey" takes us on a magically real journey into the Pacific coast rain forests of Colombia. Equal parts travel narrative, ecological essay, historical account, and memoir, this book allows us to experience a reality stranger than fiction.

Ibn Battuta, the greatest of all the medieval travellers, was in Tangier in 1304. At the age of nineteen he set out on his travels that were eventually to take him over 75,000 miles through all of the Muslim world. His book, in which he describes the cultural life and beauty of those times, remains one of the most famous of all travel narratives. The value of the work to historians and students is beyond question, but perhaps its true worth lies in the freshness of its narrative style. Throughout, we are aware of the author's own human and compassionate insights and, even after six centuries, it remains a delight and pleasure to read. This fine facsimile edition, originally published in 1929, is enhanced by the inclusion of several exquisite prints, with maps of the journeys undertaken during Ibn Battuta's remarkable life.

Undertaken for the purpose of promoting legitimate trade in Central Africa, the Richardson mission was a compound of philanthropic and diplomatic interests advocated by Richardson. His main targets were the Sahara, Bornu and the Sudan.

An important work for the nineteenth century history of East Africa. It contains a new introduction with a biographical sketch of Krapf.

Nancy Prince is an African American woman who writes about her personal and professional life, including her marriage and travels abroad to Russia and Jamaica. It's a vivid account of the events that would shape her business and legacy. Little is known about Nancy Prince's early years. She was born in Massachusetts to a seaman and mother who remarried multiple times. Despite an unstable homelife, Nancy helped to support the family any way she could. She worked as a servant before marrying Nero Prince, a foot soldier and cofounder of the Prince Hall Freemasons. They eventually moved overseas where Nero held multiple positions in the Russian Courts. Nancy became a successful businesswoman, establishing a boarding school, giving lecturers and working as a seamstress. A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince explores the author's unconventional path to success. She surpassed expectations to become a respected figure among her peers. As an entrepreneur, she provided a vital service and opportunities to those who needed them most. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of A Narrative of the Life and Travels of Mrs. Nancy Prince is both modern and readable.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

When Russell Nash was asked to move out to China to commission a mill in Shanghai, he had no idea that it would be the start of a whole new life in the Orient. After having worked for more than twenty years in the animal feed business and watching his children grow up, Russell found himself in a dull life and a stagnant marriage. It was time for a change and a business trip to China was to be the catalyst for Russell's personal revolution. Despite the noise, strange food and the lack of proper queuing etiquette, Russell slowly fell under China's spell and before long found himself returning to the great nation...for good! Entranced by the women, of whom he has plenty of stories to tell, and mesmerised by the unique culture, Russell's adventures abroad are certainly exotic and a world apart from the safe predictable life he'd known in Britain. Funny, cutting, vivid and often explicit, Yellow Fever is the story of Russell's first three years in China and the women who made him want to stay.

For those who believe that the best way to understand someone is to walk a mile in his or her shoes, Florida's rich history features those whose footwear ranged from Native American moccasins to astronauts' boots. And there are plenty of opportunities to "actually "walk in those shoes. You can join in all sorts of historical reenactments--in full costume if you like. You have the unique opportunity to relive a part of Florida's long and fascinating past.

You can also travel forward into the future. The Florida peninsula has been like a springboard from which human beings can rocket into space or dive beneath the surfaces of its nearly surrounding waters.

This unique guidebook offers you time travel. The day has arrived for this new kind of travelogue, which reveals not only places to visit but also time periods to experience. This is a book for today's explorers of place and space, past and future. This is "The Time Traveler's Guide to Florida."

A sample of the times you can visit:
12,000 B.C.: Stone Age and Primitive Arts Festival "Ochlockonee "
1565: The Menendez Landing Event "St. Augustine"
1586: Drake's Raid "St. Augustine"
1650-1725: The Pirates of Fort Taylor "Key West"
1690s: Military Muster at Castillo San Luis "Tallahassee"
Late 1700s: The Living Village of Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki "Big Cypress Seminole Reservation"
1835: The Dade Battle "Bushnell"
1864: The Battle of Olustee "Baker County"
1870: A Cane Boil at Morningside Farm "Gainesville"
1898: A Spanish-American War Event "Fernandina Beach"
1945: VE Day in Florida "The Villages"
2025: The Zero-G Flights "Cape Kennedy "
est. 2050: Jules Undersea Lodge "Key Largo"

Part political inquiry, part travel journal, part-self exploration, "Seek" is a collection of essays by an award-winning novelist out to explore himself and his life in the company of those who live on the edges of society. Denis Johnson travels between the extremes of human behaviour, from a hippy convention in the Achoco Natinal Forest, to war-ravaged Liberia, where he is witness to horrifying acts of torture. Along the way he joins a "Bikers for Jesus" rally in Texas, hangs out with a gun-crazed militia group, finds himself stranded in Somalia, and swaps stories with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

In April 2004, Barbara Egbert and Gary Chambers and their precocious 10-year-old daughter Mary embarked on a 2,650-mile hike from Mexico to Canada along the famed Pacific Crest Trail. This the well-told tale of their epic adventure, which required love, perseverance, and the careful rationing of toilet paper. Six months later, Mary would become the youngest person ever to successfully walk the entire trail.The trio weathered the heat of the Mojave, the jagged peaks of the Sierra, the rain of Oregon, and the final cold stretch through the Northern Cascades. They discovered which family values, from love and equality to thrift and cleanliness, could withstand a long, narrow trail and 137 nights together in a 6-by-8-foot tent. Filled with tidbits of wisdom, practical advice, and humor, this story will both entertain and inspire readers to dream about and plan their own epic journey.

Written when he was living in Sicily, Sea and Sardinia records Lawrence's journey to Sardinia in 1921. It reveals his delighted response to a new landscape and people and his uncanny ability to transmute the spirit of place into literary art. But, like his other travel writings, it is also a shrewd enquiry into the political and social values of an era that saw the rise of communism and fascism. This edition restores censored passages and corrupt readings to reveal the book Lawrence himself called "a marvel of veracity".

Canals of Britain is the most comprehensive and absorbing survey of Britain's canal network ever published. It provides a fascinating insight into the linked up waterways as well as the isolated cuts and quiet waters which may not be fully navigable by larger craft. Infinitely varied, it passes picturesque open countryside, wild moorland, coastal harbours, historic industrial buildings, modern city centres, canalside public houses and abundant wildlife. Stuart Fisher looks at every aspect of the canals - their construction, rich history, stunning scenery, heritage, incredible engineering, impressive architecture and even their associated folklore, wildlife and art. Enticing photographs give a flavour of each place and places of interest close to the canals are included. Each canal is intricately mapped. For those who are keen to explore that little bit further, the book goes to points beyond which others usually turn back, with information on little-known parts of the system, offering a new insight into this country's unique, surprising and beautiful canal network. Attractive, inspiring and also a practical guide, Canals of Britain has proved very popular with walkers, cyclists, narrowboaters, canoeists, kayakers and others wanting to get the most out of Britain's canals. This fourth edition has been thoroughly revised to reflect the ever-changing landscape of Britain's canals, and includes many new colour photographs to help bring them to life.

In the feverish, money-making age of railroad barons, political machines, and gold rushes, corruption was the rule, not the exception. Yet the Republican mogul 'Big Alex' McKenzie's audacity was remarkable. Charismatic and shameless, he arrived in the recently purchased Alaskan territory with a federal district judge in his pocket, intent on claiming stewardship over any ambiguously claimed gold mines and promptly draining them of all of their ore. Working-class miners who had rushed to the frozen tundra to strike gold were appalled at his open greed and disregard for maintaining even the pretense of good faith. A Most Wicked Conspiracy tells the story of McKenzie's misdeeds, the resistance of the wronged miners, and the way the scandal captured the national spotlight -- with the press eager to show how America's political and economic life was in the grip of domineering, self-dealing, seemingly-untouchable party bosses in cahoots with robber barons, Senators and even Presidents. These events resonate well into the 21st century. At the core is an eternal question: should the law be a tool of the rich and the powerful for the accomplishment of their nefarious schemes, or an impartial force for justice from which no person can escape?

Julian Sayarer grew up riding a bicycle. Working as a bike courier in London, he learned the world record for a circumnavigation by bike had been broken, and that cycling into the sunset had been bought by banks and big business. Determined to do things differently, Julian set out to take back the record for the people. Life Cycles is his story of that record, riding 110 miles every 24 hours for 6 months on only GBP8.84 a day - a route through jungles, snow and 20 different countries. He found himself stranded without money in the deserts of Kazakhstan, held up by insurrections in northwest China, and sleeping under motorway bridges in America's Deep South. Taken by life on the road and a spirit of adventure, he loved every minute of it. A tale of excitement and world politics by bicycle, travelling at 12mph, Julian found that the Tartars of Central Asia aren't so different to the trailer families of Louisiana. This book is a reminder that the world is out there - and it's waiting for us.