Turystyka

From the author of The Ice Soldier, comes a real-life adventure among the fjords and icy mountains of Norway.

Certain geographies speak to people. We are awed by mountains, challenged by the ocean, haunted by the bleakness of deserts. The effect of landscape on human consciousness is at the heart of novelist Paul Watkins's exhilarating travel story. Long bewitched by the stark beauty of the Scandinavian Alps, Watkins sets off among the ice-clad peaks and dark fjords of the arctic with only a tent and rucksack. On the way, he stops at rustic inns, follows the paths of other...

Extremely Pale Rose follows Jamie Ivey's charming journey as he, his wife, Tanya, and their hilariously debauched friend, Peter, travel the south of France in search of the palest of roses. Far from the plonk he's used to, Jamie finds something fantastic about a cool, pale rose on a hot day. Due to a translation mishap, Jamie is taunted by a local vintner that there is no paler rose than hers and embarks on a quest to find one. Setting off on a ramshackle tour of France in search of the elusive bottle that meets the standards set, they visit main rose producing areas and through...

In these fourteen essays Andre Aciman, one of the most poignant stylists of his generation, dissects the experience of loss, moving from his forced departure from Alexandria as a teenager, though his brief stay in Europe and finally to the home he's made (and half invented) on Manhattan's Upper West Side.

The village of Nambonkaha in the Ivory Coast is a place where electricity hasn't yet arrived, where sorcerers still conjure magic, where the tok-tok sound of women pounding corn fills the morning air like a drumbeat. As Sarah Erdman enters the social fold of the village as a Peace Corps volunteer, she finds that Nambonkaha is also a place where AIDS threatens and poverty is constant, where women suffer the indignities of patriarchal customs, and where children work like adults while still managing to dream. Lyrical and topical, Erdman's beautiful debut captures the astonishing spirit of an...

Welcome to Ian Frazier's New York, where every block is an event, and where the denizens are larger than life. Meet landlord extraordinaire Zvi Hugo Segal, and the man who scaled the World Trade Center. Learn the location of Manhattan's antipodes, and meander the length of Route 3 to New Jersey. Like his literary forebears Joseph Mitchell and A. J. Liebling, Frazier makes us fall in love with America's greatest city all over again.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice

In Temptations of the West, Pankaj Mishra brings literary authority and political insight to bear on journeys through South Asia, and considers the pressures of Western-style modernity and prosperity on the region. Beginning in India, his examination takes him from the realities of Bollywood stardom, to the history of Jawaharlal Nehru's post-independence politics. In Kashmir, he reports on the brutal massacre of thirty-five Sikhs, and its intriguing local aftermath. And in Tibet, he exquisitely parses the situation...

A New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year

From the author of M and A Death in Brazil comes Midnight in Sicily.

South of mainland Italy lies the island of Sicily, home to an ancient culture that--with its stark landscapes, glorious coastlines, and extraordinary treasure troves of art and archeology--has seduced travelers for centuries. But at the heart of the island's rare beauty is a network of violence and corruption that reaches into every corner of Sicilian life: Cosa...

Filling a long-neglected gap in the travel writing of the region, Jason Elliot's Mirrors of the Unseen is a rare and timely portrait of the nation descended from the world's earliest superpower: Iran. Animated by the same spirit of exploration as its acclaimed predecessor, An Unexpected Light, and drawing on several years of independent travel and research, this thought-provoking work weaves together observations of life in contemporary Iran with history, politics, and a penetrating enquiry into the secrets of Islamic art. Generously illustrated with the author's own...

Tinling has written a book about the exploration and derring-do of 42 women who, individually or with another, ventured forth to parts unknown or little known in the 19th and 20th centuries. . . . The accomplishment of each is sketched in biographical form that will variously intrigue, interest, and fascinate readers of varied persuasions. Choice

Despite social restraints and limited financial resources, women have traveled in the past two centuries to virtually every unexplored region of the earth, sometimes with a male companion and often leading their own...

This biographical dictionary provides sketches of seventy- seven individuals--explorers, writers, and scholars--from Aristotle to David W. Harvey, who made significant contributions to the development of the discipline of geography. The work examines a cross section of geographers from a variety of subfields within the discipline, from ancient to modern.

Each entry examines the career and impact of the individual and then provides selected bibliographies of works by and about the person. The work contains internal cross-referencing, and the entire volume concludes with appendices...

Geography teachers and school library media specialists will find this resource indispensable for providing classroom lessons and activities in critical thinking for geography students in grades 7-12. It is filled with over 75 primary source Internet sites covering such topics as Places and Regions, Physical Systems, Human Systems, Environment and Society, and the Uses of Geography, and will be an invaluable tool in helping teachers and librarians meet the standards set forth in the 1994 publication Geography for Life: National Geography Standards.

Each site is...

The French are of perennial interest, for, among other things, their style, their cuisine and wine, and their cultural output. Culture and Customs of France is a thoroughly jam-packed narrative through the glories that France continues to offer the world. The volume is a boon for preparing country reports, a must-read for travelers, and perfect for culture studies. Chapters on the land, people, and history, religion, social customs, gender, family, and marriage, cinema and media, literature, food and fashion, architecture and art, and performing arts are current and pleasurable to...

"Ann Barry tells her tale directly and clearly, without cloying artifice or guile, so that it has the warmth, honesty, and force of a long letter from an old friend. She makes her reader a welcome house guest in her much-loved little cottage in the heart of France."
*Susan Allen Toth

Ann Barry was a single woman, working and living in New York, when she fell in love with a charming house in Carennac in southwestern France. Even though she knew it was the stuff of fantasy, even though she knew she would...

What follows is nothing less than gustatory madness, a wacky dash in a cherry-red 1965 Mustang across England, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and France through Europe's...