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  The Old Men Who Row Boats and...

  David Joseph

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  A collection of touching stories of extraordinary moments within the confines of ordinary lives.In this collection on love and loss, hopes and dreams, and memory and regret, The Old Men Who Row Boats and Other Stories takes the reader on an insightful journey through Spain and Portugal. These fourteen stories convey real emotion through compelling, simple language and human interaction that resonates in the authentic beauty of small moments.

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  Small Craft Advisory - A Book...

  Louis D. Rubin

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  “Even readers who deem themselves confirmed landlubbers will warm to this charming memoir…[also] offers the fine local color of coastal North Carolina.”—Publishers Weekly 
   
  When Louis Rubin was thirteen, he built a leaky little boat and paddled it out to the edge of the ship channel in Charleston, South Carolina, where he felt the inexorable pull of the water. In his sixties, dozens of boats later—sailboats, powerboats, inboards and outboards—the pull is as strong as ever. 
   
  In the tradition established by Twain, Conrad, and Melville, Small Craft Advisory explores man’s longtime passion for boats. Louis Rubin examines the compulsion that has prompted him and countless other non-nautical persons to spend so much time, and no small portion of their incomes, on watercraft that they can use only infrequently. As his new boat (a cabin cruiser made of wood on a workboat hull) is being built, Rubin tells of his past boats and numerous boating disasters, and draws a poignant comparison between his two passions: watercraft and the craft of writing. 
   
  “A wistful meditation on risk-taking and a longing for a place where time never runs out.”—The Washington Post Book World 
   
   
  “If the point of reading a memoir is to meet a person who is truly good company, and maybe to have a little wisdom rub off at the same time, Small Craft Advisory is a book to read.”—The New York Times Book Review  
   
   
  “In describing the building of his boat he is describing the building of his life, reasserting the shaping value of memory and imagination. [A] gracefully written contemplation.”—Library Journal

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  Knickers in a Twist - A...

  Jonathan Bernstein

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  Don’t play the silly bugger in front of your mates! Take a deep dive into British language and culture with this “hilarious and entertaining” reference (Chicago Tribune).   Brits and Americans dress the same, eat at the same chain restaurants, and pass music back and forth across the Atlantic, and our national leaders are practically conjoined twins. But the second the Brits open their mouths, all bets are off. So don’t dream of visiting the United Kingdom, dating a Brit, or truly understanding what Jude Law is saying without this handy, hilarious, and informative guide to Britspeak.   With the cheekiness of Austin Powers and the tidbit quotient of Schott’s Miscellany, screenwriter Jonathan Bernstein’s collection of Cockney rhyming slang, insults culled from British television shows of yore, and regional and “high British” favorites provides hours of educational, enlightening, even life-saving hilarity. And if it doesn’t accomplish that, at least you’ll be aware that when a British citizen describes you as a “wally,” a “herbert,” a “spanner,” or a “bampot,” he’s not showering you with compliments. Knickers in a Twist is as indispensable as a London city guide, as spot-on funny as an episode of The Office, and as edifying as Born to Kvetch and Eats, Shoots and Leaves.   “Indispensable.” —Vanity Fair   “Will probably do more for revolutionizing the way you and your nearest and dearest address one another than any other book out this year . . . Often bring[s] an overt chuckle.” —Edge New York

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  A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf

  John Muir

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  Muir was a preservationist and naturalist.   His activism helped to preserve the Yosemite Valley, Sequoia National Park and other wilderness areas. The Sierra Club, which he founded, is now one of the most important conservation organizations in the United States. 
   
  In early March 1867, Muir was injured while working as a sawyer in a factory that made wagon wheels: a tool he was using slipped and struck him in the eye.  This accident changed the course of his life.  He was confined to a darkened room for six weeks, worried whether he’d ever regain his sight. When he did, "he saw the world-and his purpose-in a new light," writes Marquis. Muir later wrote, "This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons." From that point on, he determined to "be true to myself" and follow his dream of exploration and study of plants. 
   
  A Thousand Mile Walk to the Gulf recounts Muir's walk of about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from Indiana to Florida. He had no specific route chosen, except to go by the "wildest, leafiest, and least trodden way I could find."  This journal is the earliest of Muir's writings and autobiographically bridges the period between The Story of my Boyhood and Youth and My First Summer in the Sierra.  (Summary from Wikipedia and Introduction)

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  Walking the Nile

  Levison Wood

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  The explorer and author of Walking the Americas and Walking the Himalayas delivers “a bold travelogue, illuminating great swathes of modern Africa” (Kirkus Reviews). 
   
   
  Starting in November 2013 in a forest in Rwanda—where a modest spring spouts a trickle of clear, cold water—writer, photographer, and explorer Levison Wood set forth on foot, aiming to become the first person to walk the entire length of the fabled river. He followed the Nile for nine months, over 4,000 miles, through six nations—Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, the Republic of Sudan, and Egypt—to the Mediterranean coast. 
   
  Like his predecessors, Wood camped in the wild, foraged for food, and trudged through rainforest, swamp, savannah, and desert, enduring life-threatening conditions at every turn. He traversed sandstorms, flash floods, minefields, and more, becoming a local celebrity in Uganda, where a popular rap song was written about him, and a potential enemy of the state in South Sudan, where he found himself caught in a civil war and detained by the secret police. As well as recounting his triumphs, like escaping a charging hippo and staving off wild crocodiles, Wood’s gripping account recalls the loss of Matthew Power, a journalist who died suddenly from heat exhaustion during their trek. As Wood walks on, often joined by local guides who help him to navigate foreign languages and customs, Walking the Nile maps out African history and contemporary life. 
   
  “Woods emerges as a dutiful and brave guide.”—Los Angeles Times 
   
  “Many have attempted this holy grail of an expedition—so I admire Lev’s determination and courage to pull this off.”—Bear Grylls 
   
  “A brilliant book.”—Financial Times

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  Australia - Culture Smart!

  Barry Penney

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  Australia is different-a vast island-continent with distances so great that the capital of Western Australia is closer to Singapore than it is to Sydney. The landscape embraces magnificent tropical rainforests and deserts the size of several European states; temperate areas that sustain a flourishing wine industry, making Australia the world's fourth largest wine exporter; a sixteen-thousand-mile coastline of breathtaking beaches; and its unique fauna is testament to the country's down-underness. Culture Smart! Australia introduces you to a young nation with one of the world's highest standards of living, where people work to live in order to enjoy a lifestyle that many across the globe covet, and in which Australians take great pride (and don't mind telling you about).

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