Turystyka

An extraordinary, passionate and personal journey into Africa's past. 'The most enthralling account out of Africa for years.' Daily Mail.

'"Livingstone's Tribe" is excellent...Taylor is an intelligent and stimulating companion.' Financial Times

'At the book's heart is a riveting examination of Livingstone's tribe...the whites of post-independence Africa.' Independent on Sunday

'Taylor's expedition into the interior of the continent's colonial past has got everything that such a book should have.' Guardian

'Stephen Taylor, a third-generation emigre of British...

Pete McCarthy established one cardinal rule of travel in hisbestselling debut, McCarthy's Bar "Never pass a bar withyour name on it." In this equally wry and insightful follow-up, his characteristic good humor, curiosity, and thirst for adventuretake him on a fantastic jaunt around the world in search of hisIrish roots -- from Morocco, where he tracks down the unlikelychief of the McCarthy clan, to New York, and finally to remote Mc-Carthy, Alaska. The Road to McCarthy is a quixotic and anything-but-typical Irish odyssey that confirms Pete McCarthy's...

G. Franco Romagnoli was a mere youth when he left Rome for America, where he made a name for himself as a cookbook author, television personality, and restaurateur. But the love of his native city brought him back to Rome for an extended stay, allowing him to rediscover the sights, smells, and sounds of this urban paradise.

In A Thousand Bells at Noon, Romagnoli shares with readers his visceral and emotional experiences in Rome: its ancient streets and modern shops; it parks; cafes, and hidden gardens; its grand public squares and sacred spaces. As he relives moments from...

Award-winning travel writer and illustrator, David Yeadon embarks with his wife, Anne on an exploration of the -lost word- of Basilicata, in the arch of Italy's boot. What is intended as a brief sojourn turns into an intriguing residency in the ancient hill village of Aliano, where Carlo Levi, author of the world-renowned memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, was imprisoned by Mussolini for anti-Fascist activities. As the Yeadons become immersed in Aliano's rich tapestry of people, traditions, and festivals, reveling in the rituals and rhythms of the grape and olive harvests, the culinary...

In the first decades of the nineteenth century, no place burned more brightly in the imagination of European geographers--and fortune hunters--than the lost city of Timbuktu. Africa's legendary City of Gold, not visited by Europeans since the Middle Ages, held the promise of wealth and fame for the first explorer to make it there. In 1824, the French Geographical Society offered a cash prize to the first expedition from any nation to visit Timbuktu and return to tell the tale.

One of the contenders was Major Alexander Gordon Laing, a thirty-year-old army officer. Handsome and...

Simon Winchester, struck by a sudden need to discover exactly what was left of the British Empire, set out across the globe to visit the far-flung islands that are all that remain of what once made Britain great. He traveled 100,000 miles back and forth, from Antarctica to the Caribbean, from the Mediterranean to the Far East, to capture a last glint of imperial glory.

His adventures in these distant and forgotten ends of the earth make compelling, often funny reading and tell a story most of us had thought was over: a tale of the last outposts in Britain's imperial career and those...

The Outer Hebrides of Scotland epitomize the evocative beauty and remoteness of island life. The most dramatic of all the Hebrides is Harris, a tiny island formed from the oldest rocks on earth, a breathtaking landscape of soaring mountains, wild lunarlike moors, and vast Caribbean-hued beaches. This is where local crofters weave the legendary Harris Tweed--a hardy cloth reflecting the strength, durability, and integrity of the life there.

In Seasons on Harris, David Yeadon, -one of our best travel writers- (The Bloomsbury Review), captures, through elegant words...

In the late 1980s, New York Times bestselling author Simon Winchester set out on foot to discover the Republic of Korea -- from its southern tip to the North Korean border -- in order to set the record straight about this enigmatic and elusive land.

Fascinating for its vivid presentation of historical and geographic detail, Korea is that rare book that actually defines a nation and its people. Winchester's gift for capturing engaging characters in true, compelling stories provides us with a treasury of enchanting and informed insight on the culture, language, history, and...

Whether he's fighting fires, passing a kidney stone, hammering down I-80 in an 18-wheeler, or meditating on the relationship between cowboys and God, Michael Perry draws on his rural roots and footloose past to write from a perspective that merges the local with the global.

On October 12, 1972, an Uruguayan Air Force plane carrying a teamof rugby players crashed in the remote snowy peaks of the Andes. Ten weeks later, only sixteen of the forty-five passengers were found alive. This is the story of those ten weeks spent in the shelter of the plane's fuselage without food and with scarcely any hope of a rescue. The survivors protected and helped one another, and came to the difficult conclusion that to live meant doing the unimaginable. Confronting nature at its most furious, two brave young men risked their lives to hike through the mountains looking for help...

Buddhism, Booze, and the Four Noble Truths

A New York Times Notable Book

Winner of the Kiriyama Book Prize

In the heart of China's Sichuan province, amid the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, lies the remote town of Fuling. Like many other small cities in this ever-evolving country, Fuling is heading down a new path of change and growth, which came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. Hessler taught English and American literature at the local college, but it was his...

On the northwest coast of France, just around the corner from the English Channel, is the little town of Locmariaquer (pronounced "loc-maria-care"). The inhabitants of this town have a special relationship to the world, for it is their efforts that maintain the supply of the famous Belon oysters, called les plates ("the flat ones"). A vivid account of the cultivation of Belon oysters and an excursion into the myths, legends, and rich, vibrant history of Brittany and its extraordinary people, The Oysters of Locmariaquer is also an unforgettable journey to the heart of a...

An unsparing and hilarious account of one man's rediscovery of America and his search for the perfect small town.

Here is a book filled with the sights and sounds of a people steeped in a background of fine old traditions. It is a charming account of Swedish customs that goes beyond their democratic monarchy, their progressive social-welfare programs, their avant-garde movies, and their excellence of design.

For Swedish-Americans this book will have special meaning: the joy of reminiscing about those traditions (some possibly forgotten) that enriched and helped shape their lives. For their children it is a journey to a world they may not know of first hand. And for the tourist it affords a...

Of all the romantic obsessions in novelist Lisa St Aubin de Teran's life, the search for a castle occupied her the longest--until she saw the magnificent Villa Orsola deep in the Umbrian hills. Only after eagerly signing the ownership papers did she and her husband, painter Robbie Duff-Scott, discover they were the owners of a vast ruin lacking windowpanes, parts of the roof, and other essentials. A Valley in Italy recounts its restoration in the grand style of impossible house and the charms of bohemian family life. It also offers a rare portrait of the life of a. Italian...

Part political disquisition, part travel journal, part self-exploration, Seek is a collection of essays and articles in which Denis Johnson essentially takes on the world. And not an obliging, easygoing world either; but rather one in which horror and beauty exist in such proximity that they might well be interchangeable. Where violence and poverty and moral transgression go unchecked, even unnoticed. A world of such wild, rocketing energy that, grasping it, anything at all is possible.

Whether traveling through war-ravaged Liberia, mingling with the crowds at a Christian...

A celebration of the character and style of one of the world's most spectacular cities This vibrant insider's view of the most mature city on earth is the perfect companion for anyone who loves anything Italian. In 1995, after a twenty-year love affair with Italy, Alan Epstein fulfilled his dream to live in Rome. In As the Romans Do, he celebrates the spirit of this stylish, dramatic, ancient city that formed the hub of a far-flung empire and introduced the Mediterranean culture to the rest of the world. He also reveals today's Roman men and women in all their appealing...

As mysterious as its beautiful, as forbidding as it is populated with warm-hearted people, Syberia is a land few Westerners know, and even fewer will ever visit. Traveling alone, by train, boat, car, and on foot, Colin Thubron traversed this vast territory, talking to everyone he encountered about the state of the beauty, whose natural resources have been savagely exploited for decades; a terrain tainted by nuclear waste but filled with citizens who both welcomed him and fed him--despite their own tragic poverty. From Mongoloia to the Artic Circle, from Rasputin's village in the west...

Crossing class and color lines, and spanning the nation (Montana has its huckleberry, Pennsylvania its shoofly, and Mississippi its sweet potato), pie -- real, homemade pie -- has meaning for all of us. But in today's treadmill, take-out world -- our fast-food nation -- does pie still have a place?

As she traveled across the United States in an old Volvo named Betty, Pascale Le Draoulec discovered how merely mentioning homemade pie to strangers made faces soften, shoulders relax, and memories come wafting back. Rambling from town to town with Le Draoulec, you'll meet the famous, and...