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  Oranges

  John McPhee

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  A classic of reportage, Oranges was first conceived as a magazine article, but John McPhee kept encountering so much irresistible information that he wrote a book. It is perhaps the last word on the subject (the first came in 500 BC and is attributed to Confucius). McPhee writes about the botany, history, and industry of oranges, from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida, who may be the last of the individual orange barons.Oranges developed in Southeast Asia, and they spread through the world with a timing closely parallel to the spread of Western civilization. It was Columbus himself who brought the first orange seeds to the New World. Botanically, they are spectacularly complicated. They can be completely unripe when they are a brilliant orange and deliciously ripe when they are green as emeralds. Citrus is so genetically perverse that oranges can grow from lime seeds. Most Florida oranges grow on lemon roots. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too—with elements in it that range from the customs of French kings to those of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

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  Blue Pastures

  Mary Oliver

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  ""A gathering of gorgeous short pieces"" (Library Journal), Blue Pastures collects fifteen of Pulitzer Prize– and National Book Award–winning poet Mary Oliver's prose works about nature, writing, and herself. 
  ""This transcendent collection is Oliver's joyful sharing of her love of her craft.""—Library Journal 
  With consummate craftsmanship, Mary Oliver has fashioned fifteen luminous prose pieces: on nature, writing, and herself and those around her. She praises Whitman, denounces cuteness, notes where to find the extraordinary, and extols solitude. Nature speaks to her and she speaks to nature. 
  ""This book is biased, opinionated; also it is also joyful, and probably there is despair here too...But the reader will find the pleasures more certain, and more constant, than the rills of despond. Thus it has turned out in my life thus far, influenced by the sustaining passions: love of the wild world, love of literature, love for and from another person."" –Mary Oliver

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  Lost Worlds - What Have We Lost...

  Michael Bywater

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  A “funny, erudite, and fascinating” miscellany of things lost, large and small—from cultures to candies, species to sports gear—by the acclaimed columnist (A.C. Grayling).   They go. They vanish. People. Civilizations. Languages. Philosophies. Works of art disappear, species are extinguished, books are lost. Dunwich is drowned, Pompeii buried, Athena’s statue gone from the Parthenon, Suetonius’s Lives of the Great Whores gone the way of the Roman Empire. Whole libraries of knowledge, galleries of secrets. Gone. Little things, too. Train compartments. Snuff, galoshes, smog. Your mother’s perfume.   Michael Bywater argues that we are not defined by what we have but by what we have lost along the way. In Lost Worlds, he offers a witty, eclectic, and endlessly fascinating glossary of the missing, a cabinet of absent curiosities, weaving a web of everything we no longer have.

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  Brussels Noir

  Michel Dufranne

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  “Brussels, Belgium’s cosmopolitan, multilingual capital, has it[s] criminal underside, as shown in the 13 dark—and sometimes darkly humorous—stories” (Publishers Weekly).   From the historic city center to the Palais de Justice to the pubs, this collection contains crime fiction tales, often with a touch of the surreal and the dystopian, that reveal the stranger and seamier side of the city known as the “capital of Europe.”   Includes brand-new stories by Barbara Abel, Ayerdhal, Paul Colize, Jean-Luc Cornette, Patrick Delperdange, Sara Doke, Kenan Görgün, Edgar Kosma, Katia Lanero Zamora, Nadine Monfils, Alfredo Noriega, Bob Van Laerhoven, and Émilie de Béco.   “A perfect choice for those who love noir or those who love armchair traveling, this assortment of short stories gives the reader a glimpse into what life in the Belgian capital is like. An excellent entry in Akashic Books’ noir series, which began with Brooklyn Noir more than a decade ago, Brussels Noir takes readers through the underbelly of yet another fascinating locale.” —Shelf Awareness for Readers   “Akashic Books deserves kudos for their fine service to noir . . . If these volumes are designed to give crime writers a nifty forum and also capture the local flair and flavor, Brussels Noir is a fine come-hither.” —New York Journal of Books

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  The Turkish Embasy Letters

  Mary Wortley Montagu

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  In 1716, Mary Wortley Montagu travelled across Europe to take up residence in Istanbul as the wife of the British ambassador. For two years she lovingly observed the Ottoman society around her with an astonishing lack of prejudice. Her wide-ranging letters – about the life of Turkish women behind the veil, Arabic poetry, contemporary medical practices such as inoculation – remain as fresh as the day they were penned. A self-educated intellectual, a free spirit, a radical and a feminist as well as an aristocrat, she was one of the first modern travel writers, studying and recording the culture around her on its own terms and through its own language.

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  Don't Know Much About Geography...

  Kenneth C. Davis

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  An “entertaining [and] eminently readable” exploration of our home planet from the New York Times–bestselling author of Don’t Know Much About History(Publishers Weekly). 
   
  Geography is much more than naming countries on a map or memorizing state capitals. It’s the hub from which other disciplines radiate: meteorology, ecology, geology, oceanography, demographics, cartography, agricultural studies, economics, and political science. Yet many of us don’t know much about it. This fun and fascinating guide can change that! 
   
  In addition to presenting plenty of geographical trivia to impress your friends, Kenneth C. Davis explores 21st-century topics of global concern, including the role of the Internet and technology in transforming the lives of people around the world, how so-called developing nations develop, sustainability, and debates over climate change and evolutionary science. This completely revised and updated version of Don't Know Much About Geography is an illuminating grand tour of planet Earth. 
   
  “Reading [Kenneth C. Davis] is like returning to the classroom of the best teacher you ever had.” —People 
   
  A School Library Journal “Must-Read”

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