In the opening pages of Moby Dick, Herman Melville called New Bedford, Massachusetts, the dearest place to live in, in all of New England. But the old fishing port and manufacturing center once one of the richest cities in New England has withered in the modern economy. Its once-prosperous fishermen now struggle with government regulations and fished-out seas, while its empty factories now offer more work to the Fire Department than anyone else.
In Down at the Docks, Rory Nugent tells the riches to rags story of this iconic American town through beautifully told and...

In the heart of the Congo is rumored to live a dinosaur called Mokele-Mbembe, or the god-beast. A handful of scientific expeditions have searched for it over the years with little success, but Nugent relied less on science than a desire to document the obscure. He made his way by dugout canoe and foot to Lake Tele, reputed home of the brontosaurus-like creature. It's an environment little changed since the age of dinosaurs and he spent weeks paddling and trekking the area. He finally spotted a periscope-shaped object moving through the water. But when he tried to get closer, his guides...

Fifty-two years after the pink-headed duck was last seen in the wild, Rory Nugent set off for India in search of this exceptionally rare bird. In Calcutta he prowled the fowl market, where a few of the ducks used to appear during the Raj. Traveling on to Delhi, he was befriended by a Cambridge-educated smuggler, and he learned of remote regions to the north where the duck might be found. In Sikkim, following the trail of a Yeti, he became lost in the Valley of Bliss and nearly imprisoned inside a forest of rhododendrons, each the size of a ranch house. Making his way to Assam, he bought a...