Other books that might interest you

• 

  Texas in 1837 - An Anonymous...

  Andrew Forest Muir

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  The earliest known eyewitness account of the first year of the Republic of Texas.   Written anonymously in 1838–39 by a “Citizen of Ohio,” Texas in 1837 is the earliest known account of the first year of the Texas republic. Providing information nowhere else available, the still-unknown author describes a land rich in potential but at the time “a more suitable arena for those who have everything to make and nothing to lose than [for] the man of capital or family.”   The author arrived at Galveston Island on March 22, 1837, before the city of Galveston was founded, and spent the next six months in the republic. His travels took him to Houston, then little more than a camp made up of brush shelters and jerry-built houses, and as far west as San Antonio. He observed and was generally unimpressed by governmental and social structures just beginning to take shape. He attended the first anniversary celebration of the Battle of San Jacinto and has left a memorable account of Texas’ first Independence Day. His inquiring mind and objective, acute observations of early Texas give us a way of returning to the past, and revisiting landmarks that have vanished forever.

  Show book

• 

  Interrupting Cow and Other Itchy...

  Sam Letchworth

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  Have you ever wondered where horse milk vodka comes from? Or how to fight off a mob of Malaysian monkeys? Is it bad luck to wash cow poop off of your shoe? Travel vicariously with Sam across the Orient to find the funny but true answers. 
  Sam savors every local culture he encounters much like Conan O’Brian and the late Anthony Bourdain—embracing the people, their food, and especially their curiosities. His humor and infatuation with humanity’s diversity fuel each story. 
  Teaching in Korea and Vietnam since 2015, Sam uses his time out of the classroom to explore the rest of Asia. His five-book series, Itchy Feet Travel Tales in Asia, covers his adventures (and misadventures) in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. 
  These stories of the sublime and the surreal will have you giggling and gawking as you follow Sam through the weird and wonderful world of the East.

  Show book

• 

  Palm Springs Paradise

  Peter Moruzzi

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This book collects more than two hundred fascinating and rarely seen historical photographs of Palm Springs, newly digitized from the Palm Springs Historical Society's expansive archive. Featured are many Hollywood celebrities, including Sinatra and the Rat Pack, who vacationed there, the early days of the desert paradise, various architectural masterworks, such as the fabulous El Mirador Hotel and the extraordinary, outrageous, and irreverent people of Palm Springs.

  Show book

• 

  And Then There Were Nuns

  Jane Christmas

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  “The best kind of memoir, revealing, refreshing, and reflective enough to make readers turn many of the questions on themselves.” —Booklist (starred review)   With humor and opinions aplenty, a woman embarks on an unconventional quest to see if she is meant to be a nun.   Just as Jane Christmas decides to enter a convent in mid-life to find out whether she is “nun material,” her long-term partner Colin, suddenly springs a marriage proposal on her. Determined not to let her monastic dreams be sidelined, Christmas puts her engagement on hold and embarks on an extraordinary year-long adventure to four convents—one in Canada and three in the UK.   In these communities of cloistered nuns and monks, she shares—and at times chafes and rails against—the silent, simple existence she has sought all of her life. Christmas takes this spiritual quest seriously, but her story is full of the candid insights, humorous social faux pas, profane outbursts, and epiphanies that make her books so relatable and popular. And Then There Were Nuns offers a seldom-seen look inside modern cloistered life, and it is sure to ruffle more than a few starched collars among the ecclesiastical set.   “A lovely, heartfelt tale. Get thee to a bookstore and buy it.” —A. J. Jacobs, New York Times bestselling author of The Year of Living Biblically   “In fluid and often playful prose, she introduces women and men (she spent a week at a monastery on the Isle of Wight) who have devoted their lives to prayer, including a skydiving 90-year-old nun.” —Maclean’s

  Show book

• 

  Latin America - Culture Smart! -...

  Culture Smart!

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  This collection of Culture Smart guidebooks introduces listeners to Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Chile. Each guidebook includes concise chapters on the local customs, traditions, and values of the country's inhabitants and, crucially, the key historical and cultural events that have shaped them. There are sections on social and business etiquette, tips on communication, both verbal and non-verbal, and advice on how to be a good guest. The guidebooks on Cuba, Mexico, and Ecuador are written by Russell Maddicks. The guidebook on the Dominican Republic is written by Ginnie Bedggood and Ilana Benady. The guidebook on Chile is written by Caterina Perrone.

  Show book

• 

  Lands of Lost Borders - A...

  Kat Harris

  • 0
  • 0
  • 0

  A brilliant, fierce writer makes her debut with this enthralling travelogue and memoir of her journey by bicycle along the Silk Road—an illuminating and thought-provoking fusion of The Places in Between, Lab Girl, and Wild that dares us to challenge the limits we place on ourselves and the natural world. 
  As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she craved—to be an explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and metaphysician—had gone extinct. From what she could tell of the world from small-town Ontario, the likes of Marco Polo and Magellan had mapped the whole earth; there was nothing left to be discovered. Looking beyond this planet, she decided to become a scientist and go to Mars. 
  In between studying at Oxford and MIT, Harris set off by bicycle down the fabled Silk Road with her childhood friend Mel. Pedaling mile upon mile in some of the remotest places on earth, she realized that an explorer, in any day and age, is the kind of person who refuses to live between the lines. Forget charting maps, naming peaks: what she yearned for was the feeling of soaring completely out of bounds. The farther she traveled, the closer she came to a world as wild as she felt within. 
  Lands of Lost Borders is the chronicle of Harris's odyssey and an exploration of the importance of breaking the boundaries we set ourselves; an examination of the stories borders tell, and the restrictions they place on nature and humanity; and a meditation on the existential need to explore—the essential longing to discover what in the universe we are doing here. 
  Like Rebecca Solnit and Pico Iyer, Kate Harris offers a travel account at once exuberant and reflective, wry and rapturous. Lands of Lost Borders explores the nature of limits and the wildness of the self that can never fully be mapped. Weaving adventure and philosophy with the history of science and exploration, Lands of Lost Borders celebrates our connection as humans to the natural world, and ultimately to each other—a belonging that transcends any fences or stories that may divide us.

  Show book