Other books that might interest you

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  Chasing Neotropical Birds

  Bob Thornton, Vera Thornton

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  “This book is for anyone who loves nature photography or birding . . . A fine introduction to the beauty and diversity of this region.” —Southeastern Naturalist   From Belize to Brazil, the forests of the American neotropics are home to an astonishing array of birds—over 3,700 different species, or nearly forty percent of all the birds on earth. Birding enthusiasts Vera and Bob Thornton have spent fifteen years photographing these special and exotic birds in the rainforests of eleven different countries of Central and South America. In this book, you’ll find more than a hundred spectacular color photographs they took during their travels, along with a highly entertaining account of their adventures—and misadventures—in chasing these exotic neotropicals.   The birds pictured here are among the Thorntons’ personal favorites—birds that, in their words, “either dazzled us with their beauty, or charmed us by their behavior, or, in a few cases, simply challenged us by the mystique of their rarity.” This latter category includes such elusive and sought-after birds as the Black-crowned Antpitta, the Zigzag Heron, the Rufous-vented Ground-Cuckoo, the Bare-necked Umbrellabird, and the monkey-eating Harpy Eagle. In the accompanying text, Bob Thornton engagingly describes the challenges as well as the magic of negotiating the neotropical rainforests in search of colorful birds to photograph. For those who would like to follow in the Thorntons’ footsteps, there are also helpful tips about photographic gear and techniques, preferred places to see the birds, lodging, and guides. For everyone who enjoys excellent nature photography, Chasing Neotropical Birds is a must-have volume.

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  Adventureholic - Extraordinary...

  Neil Laughton

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  More than fifty expeditions across all seven continents – by land, sea and air – have led adventurer Neil Laughton to some of the most remote places in the world. 
  Adventureholic tells the stories of Neil’s most unforgettable and daring adventures yet. From summiting Mount Everest with Bear Grylls and playing cricket at the Geographic South Pole to piloting the world’s first road-legal flying car on a 10,000km journey across the Sahara Desert to Timbuktu, running with bulls, and train-surfing in Myanmar, Neil really has seen and done it all. 
  Readers are invited to join Neil on a roller-coaster ride around the world, gaining the necessary insight, confidence and inspiration to add a little more adventure to their own lives.

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  A History Lover's Guide to Denver

  Mark A. Barnhouse

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  Colorado’s Mile High City sits atop a mountain of Old West history—from stories of fortune seekers to captains of industry, immigrants to activist women.  
   
  Founded in an unlikely spot where dry prairies meet formidable mountains, Denver overcame its doubtful beginning to become the largest and most important city within a thousand miles. This tour of the Queen City of the Plains goes beyond travel guidebooks to explore its fascinating historical sites in detail. Tour the grand Victorian home where the unsinkable Molly Brown lived prior to her Titanic voyage. Visit the Brown Palace Hotel suite that President Dwight and First Lady Mamie Eisenhower used as the “Summer White House.” Pay respects at the mountaintop grave of the greatest showman of the nineteenth century, Colonel William F. “Buffalo Bill” Cody. From the jazzy Rossonian lounge where Ella scatted and Basie swung to gleaming twenty-first-century art museums, author Mark A. Barnhouse traces the Mile High City’s story through its historical legacy.

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  China - Culture Smart!: The...

  Kathy Flower, Indre...

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  For thousands of years, the Chinese believed that they had created a perfect social system based on Confucian values and tempered by the Mandate of Heaven. Dynasties came and went, but the essence of being Chinese remained essentially unchanged until the twentieth century. Since then, change has taken place in Chinese society at an unprecedented speed: the country experienced the turmoil of civil war and revolution and then emerged on to the world stage as a global superpower. This book aims to put these changes into a historical context, explain deep-seated cultural attitudes, and guide listeners through a maze of unfamiliar social situations, in order to help them discover the pragmatism, genius, warmth, and humanity of this extraordinary people.

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  Bliss(ters) - How I walked from...

  Gail M. Francis

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  Just before her 40th birthday, Gail Francis quit her perfectly good job and set out to hike one of the great trails of the world. Carrying everything she needed on her back, Francis spent five months walking from Mexico to Canada along the Pacific Crest Trail. Along the way, she lost her pack scrambling over scree in the desert, struggled to navigate high mountain passes, and wore the soles off her boots trekking across lava fields — all within some of the most pristine wilderness in the nation.Though she set out alone, her story includes an eclectic cast of characters. From the man walking the entire 2,700 miles in a series of 26 wedding dresses, to the woman making the journey in the company of her pet mouse, Francis learned to count on her fellow hikers for entertainment as well as a few important life lessons.

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  Signal Failure

  Tom Jeffreys

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  One November morning, Tom Jeffreys set off from Euston Station with a gnarled old walking stick in his hand and an overloaded rucksack. His aim was to walk the 119 miles from London to Birmingham along the proposed route of HS2. Needless to say, he failed.
  Over the course of ten days of walking, Jeffreys meets conservationists and museum directors, fiery farmers and suicidal retirees. From a rapidly changing London, through interminable suburbia, and out into the English countryside, Jeffreys goes wild camping in Perivale, flees murderous horses in Oxfordshire, and gets lost in a landfill site in Buckinghamshire. Signal Failure weaves together poetry and politics, history, philosophy and personal observation to form an extended exploration of people and place, nature, society, and the future.
  In part, Signal Failure is the story of the author's multiple shortcomings – his inability to understand the city he lives in, to forge a meaningful relationship with his home-county hometown, to emulate those great nature writers he admires so much, to put up a tent or read a map.
  It is also a wide-ranging critique of humanity's most urgent failures: of capitalism, of community, of the city and the suburbs, of architecture and agriculture, of bureaucratic democracy, and, in the end, of our age-old failure to find our place in the world we live in.

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