Category Archives: Travel Guides
The Sisters Brothers
Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die. Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride – fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn`t an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he
The Journey of Anders Sparrman
`I have spent too long on plants and animals. Now it is time for human beings.` This haunting novel is based on the life of Anders Sparrman, the Swedish naturalist, who in the second half of the eighteenth century, became the last and youngest disciple of the scientist Carl Linnaeus. In his quest for new
May We be Forgiven
Harry is a Richard Nixon scholar who leads a quiet, regular life; his brother George is a high-flying TV producer, with a murderous temper.They have been uneasy rivals since childhood.Then one day George loses control so extravagantly that he precipitates Harry into an entirely new life. In May We Be Forgiven, Homes gives us a
Andes
Stretching for over 5,500 miles, and containing the highest active volcanoes in the world, the largest salt flat, the highest lake, and peaks rivalled in size only by the Himalayas, the Andes impress by statistics alone. But beyond the range`s sheer immensity, is its concentration of radically contrasting scenery and climates. In this remarkable book,
The Secret Twenties: British Intelligence, the Russians and the Jazz Age
In the 1920s, many in the British establishment became convinced that their way of life was being threatened by the new Soviet state. The British government launched vast spying operations in response, carrying out surveillance on not only suspect Russians, but British aristocrats, Bloomsbury artists, ordinary workers and even MPs. What they discovered had profound
On Extinction
The destruction of nature as a consequence of modern human lifestyles, industries and agriculture is leading to the Earth`s sixth great extinction of species. Current estimates suggest that the rate of extinction is now thousands of times that counted in the fossil record before the emergence of modern man. At the same time, human societies
Everything is Broken
On 2 May 2008, an enormous tropical cyclone made landfall in Burma. The cyclone wreaked untold havoc, but the regime, in an unfathomable decision of near-genocidal proportions, blocked international aid from entering the country, and provided little relief themselves. Emma Larkin, who has been travelling to and secretly reporting on Burma for years, managed to
In An Antique Land
“In an Antique Land” is a wonderfully subversive biography of Egypt from the Crusades to Operation Desert Storm.In the 1980s Amitav Ghosh moved into a converted chicken coop. It was on the roof of a house in Lataifa, a tiny village in Egypt. During the day he poured over medieval letters sent to India from
What I Saw
In 1920, Joseph Roth, the most renowned German correspondent of his age, arrived in Berlin, the capital of the Weimar Republic. He produced a series of impressionistic and political writings that influenced an entire generation of writers, including Thomas Mann and the young Christopher Isherwood. Roth, like no other German writer of his time, ventured
Exterminate All The Brutes
Over twenty years ago, Sven Lindqvist, one of the great pioneers of a new kind of experiential history writing, set out across Central Africa. Obsessed with a single line from Conrad`s The Heart of Darkness – Kurtz`s injunction to `Exterminate All the Brutes` – he braided an account of his experiences with a profound historical
Saharan Journey (Desert Divers & `Exterminate All the Brutes`)
Published for the first time in one volume, Sven Lindqvist`s uncategorizable, beautiful and angry books about the African continent and the legacy of colonialism. Exterminate All the Brutes takes us on an intellectual trip to `the heart of the darkness` of the European mind and its attitude towards Africa, tracing the legacy of European explorers,
Map of a Nation: A Biography of the Ordnance Survey
`Map of a Nation` tells the story of the creation of the Ordnance Survey map – the first complete, accurate, affordable map of the British Isles. The Ordnance Survey is a much beloved British institution, and `Map of a Nation` is, amazingly, the first popular history to tell the story of the map and the
The French Intifada: The Long War Between France and its Arabs
Beyond the affluent centre of Paris and other French cities, in the deprived banlieues, a war is going on. This is the French Intifada, a guerrilla war between the French state and the former subjects of its Empire, for whom the mantra of `liberty, equality, fraternity` conceals a bitter history of domination, oppression, and brutality.
Nickel and Dimed
Millions of Americans work full-time, year-round, for poverty level wages. Distinguished journalist Barbara Ehrenreich decided to join them, in order to find out how anyone survives on six to seven dollars an hour. Ehrenreich left home, took the cheapest lodgings she could find and accepted whatever job she was offered, from cleaning to care work,
Running with the Pack: Thoughts From the Road on Meaning and Mortality
`Most of the serious thinking I have done over the past twenty years has been done while running.` Mark Rowlands has run for most of his life. He has also been a professional philosopher. And for him the two – running and philosophising – are inextricably connected. In Running with the Pack he tells us
Voice of America
Set in Nigeria and America, Voice of America moves from boys and girls in villages and refugee camps, to the disillusionment and confusion of young married couples living in America, and then back to bustling Lagos. These are stories of two countries and of the frayed bonds that connect them. In `Waiting`, two young refugees
To the Island
He disappeared. That`s all she really knew. In search of her father Andreas, whom she has never met, Lena travels with her small son from Australia to Greece. On the island of Naxos she finds him, a wary, tormented man living in self-imposed exile and haunted by what happened to him under the rule of
Nothing To Envy: Real Lives In North Korea
North Korea is Orwell`s 1984 made reality: it is the only country in the world not connected to the internet; Gone with the Wind is a dangerous, banned book; during political rallies, spies study your expression to check your sincerity. After the death of the country`s great leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, famine descended:
Field Notes From a Hidden City: An Urban Nature Diary
Against the background of austere and beautiful Aberdeen, Woolfson observes the seasons, the streets and the quiet places of her city over the course of a year. She considers the geographic, atmospheric and environmental elements which bring diverse life forms together in close proximity, and in absorbing prose writes of the animals among us: the
The Case of the Constant Suicides: A Gideon Fell Mystery
Having lost all his money in hare-brained get-rich-quick schemes, old Angus Campbell has nothing to leave his heirs but the proceeds of his lifeinsurance policies. After he falls to his death from a locked bedchamber in the tower of Shira Castle in the Scottish Highlands, his family gather.They are joined by amateur sleuth Dr Gideon
