Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Power of One
First with your head and then with your heart …So says Hoppie Groenewald, boxing champion, to a seven-year-old boy who dreams of being the welterweight champion of the world. For the young Peekay, its a piece of advice he will carry with him throughout his life. Born in a South Africa divided by racism and
Around the World in Seventy-Two Days: And Other Writings
Born Elizabeth Jane Cochran, Nellie Bly was renowned as America`s first `girl stunt reporter`. She was a pioneer of investigative journalism, including an expose of patient treatment at a mental asylum and a travelogue from her record-breaking race around the world in emulation of Phileas Fogg. This volume, the only printed and edited collection of
First Pass Under Heaven
The Great Wall of China is the largest man-made structure ever built, stretching for over 4,000 kilometres from central Asia, across the Gobi Desert, through the remote, cold mountains of northern China to end on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Nathan Gray, a young New Zealand lawyer, wanted to be the first person in
The Dhama Bums
Published just one year after “On The Road”, this is the story of two men engaged in a passionate search for Dharma or truth. Their major adventure is the pursuit of the Zen Way, which takes them climbing into the High Sierras to seek the lesson of solitude.
Rashomon
Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is one of Japan`s foremost stylists – a modernist master whose short stories are marked by highly original imagery, cynicism, beauty and wild humour. `Rashomon` and `In a Bamboo Grove` inspired Kurosawa`s magnificent film and depict a past in which morality is turned upside down, while tales such as `The Nose`, `O-Gin`
This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook
Extinction Rebellion are inspiring a whole generation to take action on climate breakdown.Now you can become part of the movement – and together, we can make history.It`s time. This is our last chance to do anything about the global climate and ecological emergency. Our last chance to save the world as we know it.Now or
The Collected Schizophrenias
`Dazzling … in her kaleidoscopic essays, memoir has been shattered into sliding and overlapping pieces … mind-expanding` The New York Times Book ReviewEsmรฉ Weijun Wang was officially diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder in 2013, although the hallucinations and psychotic episodes had started years before that. In the midst of a high functioning life at Yale, Stanford
An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions
UPDATED WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION`Magnificent … a major work by two of the world`s most perceptive and intelligent India-watchers writing today` William Dalrymple, New StatesmanFrom two of India`s leading economists, Jean Drรจze and Nobel Prize-winner Amartya Sen, An Uncertain Glory is a passionate, considered argument for the need for a greater understanding of inequalities in
No One Is Too Small to Make a Difference Expanded Editon
In a brand-new expanded edition, the little book of history-making speeches by an extraordinary young woman who has taken the world by storm and become the voice of a generation”Everything needs to change. And it has to start today”In August 2018 a fifteen-year-old Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, decided not to go to school one day.
The Roads to Sata: A 2000 mile walk through Japan
`A memorable, oddly beautiful book` Wall Street Journal`A marvellous glimpse of the Japan that rarely peeks through the country`s public image` Washington PostOne sunny spring morning in the 1970s, an unlikely Englishman set out on a pilgrimage that would take him across the entire length of Japan. Travelling only along small back roads, Alan Booth
Uncanny and Improbable Events
In this personal and wide-ranging exploration of how our collective imaginations fail to grasp the scale of environmental destruction, Amitav Ghosh summons writers and novelists to confront the most urgent story of our times.Amitav Ghosh (b. 1956) is an award-winning novelist and critic whose works have illuminated the shortcomings of prevailing cultural narratives about the
Food Rules
`Food Rules`, Michael Pollan`s wise and witty critique of the western industrialised diet, distils the wisdom of history and traditional cultures to three simple rules: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.Michael Pollan (b.1955) is a bestselling author and journalist whose writing examines the places where the human and natural worlds intersect, from psychedelic drugs
The Last Tree on Easter Island
This is Jared Diamond`s haunting account of visiting the mysterious stone statues of Easter Island, showing how a remote civilization destroyed itself by exploiting its own natural resources – and why we must heed this warning.Jared Diamond (b.1937) is Professor of Geography at UCLA and a noted polymath whose books about human societies blend biology,
Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation
A radically new understanding of and practical approach to climate change by noted environmentalist Paul Hawken, creator of the New York Times bestseller `Drawdown`The dangers of climate change and a warming world have been in the public eye for fifty years. For three decades, scientists and the United Nations have urged us to address future
The Grassling
“A subtle, moving celebration of place and connectedness… brings the sounds, smells and sights of the countryside alive like few other books” GuardianWhat fills my lungs is wider than breath could be. It is a place and a language torn, matted and melded; flowered and chiming with bones. That breath is that place and until
American Colonies: The Settlement of North America to 1800
“American Colonies” starts with the earliest years of human colonization of the American continent and environs with the Siberian migrations across the Bering Strait 15,000 years ago. It ends in around 1800 when the rough outline of the contemporary North America could be perceived. Dropping the usual Anglo centric description of North America`s fate, Taylor
Bending Adversity: Japan and the Art of Survival
The second edition of the definitive book on how modern Japan works, now fully updated up to include the new `Reiwa` Era and the year of the Olympics`A superb book that, better than any other I have read, manages to get the reader inside the skin of Japanese society … astutely observed … a great
Strange Maps
Spanning many centuries, all continents and the realms of outer space and the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-colour illustrations with quirky statistics and smart social commentary. The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world. Brimming with trivia, deadpan humour and idiosyncratic lore, Strange Maps is a fascinating tour
Promise Me You`ll Shoot Yourself: The Downfall of Ordinary Germans, 1945
The extraordinary German bestseller on the final days of the Third ReichOne of the least understood stories of the Third Reich is that of the extraordinary wave of suicides, carried out not just by much of the Nazi leadership, but also by thousands of ordinary Germans, during in the war`s closing period. Some of these
Trans-Europe Express: Tours of a Lost Continent
Over the past twenty years European cities have become the envy of the world: a Kraftwerk Utopia of historic centres, supermodernist concert halls, imaginative public spaces and futuristic egalitarian housing estates which, interconnected by high-speed trains traversing open borders, have a combination of order and pleasure which is exceptionally unusual elsewhere.In `Trans-Europe Express`, Owen Hatherley
