Other books that might interest you

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  The Folk Tales of the Chupacabra...

  Editors Charles River

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  People have always been fascinated with the hidden, the mysterious, and the unexplained. Every society has its tall tales and ghost stories, its odd legends, and heroes. Also, every society has its stories of strange beasts, dangerous or benign, that live in the twilight world between the everyday and the legendary. Through most of history, people have been closely tied to nature, hunting in forests and having an intimate knowledge of the animals in their regions.  Even as the world becomes more connected, the belief in strange creatures is as strong as ever. 
  In one sense it shouldn’t be surprising that people across the United States have reported seeing weird cryptids, including giant birds, sea serpents, wolfmen, and a creature so bizarre it defies any rational classification. The only thing these monsters have in common is that all have been seen regularly and reported by seemingly sober, rational witnesses in the United States, even as conventional science suggests these monsters cannot exist and that all the sightings are mistakes, misidentifications, or hoaxes.  
  For example, a very strange creature had a series of encounters with several witnesses in 1952 in West Virginia that may have been associated with a UFO, and it eventually became known as the Flatwoods Monster. Others have claimed to see a humanoid frog, a flying creature that seemed to be associated with an accident that killed almost 50 people, and one of the most famous folk legends across the Americas: the chupacabra. 
  Some of the sightings cannot be explained away easily, but at the same time, none of the creatures fit into a rational, conventional view of the world. Either those witnessing these creatures are completely wrong, deluded, or just plain crazy, or the outdoors is way weirder than people might think. 

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  When Echoes Speak - A Memoir

  Dag Scheer

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  Through atmospheric descriptions and vivid portraits, When Echoes Speak offers glimpses into exotic worlds, taking the reader from a drab displaced persons camp, to the throbbing rhythms of Rio’s frenzied Carnival, to heartrending encounters in Ethiopia. In looking back, Dag Scheer discovers intricate and rich patterns in her life and weaves together the connecting threads.A blend of memoir and cultural exploration, When Echoes Speak distills the defining moments of an unusual life. In August of 1944, when Dag was five, she and her family fled Latvia to escape Soviet occupation. After five harsh years in a displaced persons camp in Germany, the family settled in Cleveland, Ohio. Growing up, Dag was caught in a painful pull between her Latvian roots and her new life in America.Determined to find her own path, she left home to teach in Libya where she met Stuart Scheer, a young charismatic doctor. They explored Libya’s scorching desert terrain together, and their intense relationship deepened. After they married, Stuart’s work took them to eight different countries across the globe. In recounting the frustrations and delights of each new location and its unique culture, Dag probes her inner transformations. Ultimately, the shifting perspective of being perpetually out of place helped her find a sense of self.

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  Flowers of War

  Llŷr Gwyn Lewis

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  When the author is given a small package, containing letters and papers relating to his grandfather's brother, who was killed in Syria during the Second World War, it leads him on an extended personal journey. An exploration of history, imagination and the process of memory, shifting imperceptibly from autobiography to travelogue, from letters and diaries to official records, from text to visual image.
  
  In his first prose work Lewis reveals a rare and consummate literary talent. Deeply rooted in his Welsh identity, this young writer locates his own and his family's experience within the wider European world in a thoughtful, mature and highly original book.
  
  Flowers of War is a translation of Rhyw Flodau Rhyfel (Y Lolfa, 2014), which won the Creative Non-Fiction category in the 2015 Wales Book of the Year award.

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  Walking on Thin Air - A Life's...

  Geoff Nicholson

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  Geoff Nicholson has been walking his whole life. Wherever he is and wherever he goes in the world, he walks and writes about what he sees and feels. Here he reflects on the nature of walking, why we do it, how it benefits us and, in some cases, how it can damage and even destroy us. Geoff's recent diagnosis with a rare, incurable form of cancer has made him all too aware of his own mortality. Sooner or later there will be a last step, a last excursion, a final drift, for him just as there will be for all of us. Geoff vows to continue to walk for as long as he can.
  This moving, vital book describes his own walks and relates them to the walks of street photographers, artists and writers, such as Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Sophie Calle, Jorge Luis Borges and Virginia Woolf, among many others. Walking on Thin Air is a book about mortality and, above all, a celebration of being alive.

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  A Philosophy of Walking

  Frédéric Gros

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  This "passionate affirmation of the simple life, and joy in simple things" explores how walking influenced history's greatest thinkers—from Henry David Thoreau and Jack Kerouac to Gandhi and Nietzsche (Observer).In this French bestseller, leading thinker and philosopher Frédéric Gros charts the many different ways we get from A to B—the pilgrimage, the promenade, the protest march, the nature ramble—and reveals what they say about us.Gros draws attention to other thinkers who also saw walking as something central to their practice. On his travels he ponders Thoreau's eager seclusion in Walden Woods; the reason Rimbaud walked in a fury, while Nerval rambled to cure his melancholy. He shows us how Rousseau walked in order to think, while Nietzsche wandered the mountainside to write. In contrast, Kant marched through his hometown every day, exactly at the same hour, to escape the compulsion of thought. Brilliant and erudite, A Philosophy of Walking is an entertaining and insightful manifesto for putting one foot in front of the other.

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  The Last Overland - Singapore to...

  Alex Bescoby

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  "In 1955, a young TV producer named David Attenborough was approached by six recent graduates from Oxford and Cambridge universities determined to drive the entire length of Eurasia, as it was then known, from London to Singapore. Many tried this before, but none succeeded. Sensing this time might be different, Attenborough gave The Oxford and Cambridge Far Eastern Expedition enough film reels to cover their attempt. The 19,000-mile journey completed by Tim Slessor and the team was told in Attenborough's Travellers' Tales and captivated a nation emerging from postwar austerity. Tim's book, The First Overland, was published shortly after and soon became the Bible of the overlanding religion. Inspired by Attenborough's comment fifty years on that it was a journey ""that I don't think could be made again today,"" Alex made contact with now eighty-six-year-old Tim, and together they planned an epic recreation of the original trip, this time from Singapore to London. With their improbable team and the prospect of getting the original Oxford, their goal was to complete the heroic journey that started more than sixty years earlier. In awe of the unstoppable Tim, and haunted by his own grandfather's deterioration due to tragedy and then dementia, Alex soon finds himself on the defining trip of his life and discovers how the world has changed for better, and for worse, since the First Overland..."

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