Tourism History

This British funny fiction is the prequel in the Comical Vacations series that takes place the year of Kitty’s divorce and before the first Finch Family Holiday kicks off. We find Kitty Finch trying to get to grips with life without Mason after seeking a friend on-line to share her time and troubles with but he turns out to be more trouble than he is worth. When things get weird she tries to end their friendship, only he is not having it so she persuades her sister-in-law that she needs a short break. As Darcie suggests, Kitty accompanies the couple on their three-day trip. However, it ...

Americans have long been fascinated with the oddness of the British, but the English, says literary critic Terry Eagleton, find their transatlantic neighbors just as strange. Only an alien race would admiringly refer to a colleague as "aggressive," use superlatives to describe everything from one's pet dog to one's rock collection, or speak frequently of being "empowered."

Convencido de que quizá la Ciudad de México no sea el lugar más aconsejable para vivir, pero también de que es tan intrincada y apasionante que resulta imposible abandonarla, Villoro propone este libro escrito desde la devoción del urbanita recalcitrante y maravillado que se despliega como un rompecabezas infinito: los atajos viales, el cine de luchadores, los héroes nacionales, el comercio tepiteño, la tramitología gubernamental, el enigma de las vulcanizadoras, las incontables multitudes, la ingesta de chile, los templos ancestrales.

The Coloseum, Villa Borghese, the Piazza di Spagna, the Trevi Fountain, and the Capuchin Church of Santa Maria della Concezione whose macabre crypt had impressed the likes of Mark Twain and Marquis de Sade; these are just some of the landmarks William Murray points out on his walking tour of Rome. Having grown up in the city, Murray makes for an expert (and engaging) tour guide who captures Rome's sights, sounds, and flavors, while also revealing its mythologized history and folklore.

Jeff Shaara, America's premier Civil War novelist, gives a remarkable guided tour of one of the Civil War battlefields every American should visit. He captures the true meaning and magnitude of the conflict.

With blithe humor and bright style, Storace conjures up anarchic cities and idyllic towns and harbors where the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman empires continue to maintain a presence. This program includes an exclusive interview with the author who discusses her work and answers questions about her life in Greece.

Growing up in Tehran in the 1960s, Terence Ward and his brothers were watched over by Hassan, the family’s cook, housekeeper, and cultural guide. After an absence of 30 years and much turmoil in Iran, Ward embarks on a quixotic pilgrimage with his family in search of their lost friend. However, as they set out on this improbable quest with no address or phone number, their only hope lies in their mother’s small black and white photograph taken decades before.

The Oregon Trail chronicles the travels of Francis Parkman up the Oregon Trail as he records his observations of the Pawnee and Oglala Sioux. For 6 months he lived among the natives, and even accompanied them on buffalo hunts. Along the way he also recorded an authentic record of frontier life, including eyewitness accounts of the trappers, Mormons, outlaws, pioneers and various adventurers who tried to tame the Wild West.

A chronicle of life on the resplendent island. Adele Barker and her son, Noah, settled into the central highlands of Sri Lanka for an 18-month sojourn, immersing themselves in the customs, cultures, and landscapes of the island: its elephants, birds, and monkeys; its hot curries and sweet mangoes; the cacophony of its markets; the resonant evening chants from its temples. When, having returned home to Tucson, Barker awakes on December 26, 2004, to see televised images of the island's southern shore disappearing into the ocean, she decides she must go back.

Journeying alongside scholars, spies and saints, from western Europe to the Far East and the Antipodes, this is no ordinary travel guide. From profane pilgrim badges and Venetian laxatives to encounters with bandits and trysts with mysterious medieval witches, this book mixes fact and folklore to offer an entertaining encyclopaedia of wondrous stories and peoples. Offering a vivid and unforgettable insight into how medieval people understood their world, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages blurs the distinction between real and imagined places.

After a series of conflicts among feudal lords, the new city of Edo became and remained Japan's beating heart, and in the 17th century Edo gave birth to a vibrant, new urban culture marked by woodblock prints, the kabuki theater, and haiku poetry. By the 18th century, with its ranks swelled thanks to a flood of provincial daimyo, along with their households, clients, and retainers, Edo had become the most populous urban area in the world, a title Tokyo still can lay claim to today.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

Rosemary Mahoney tells the story of Braille Without Borders, the first school for the blind in Tibet, and of Sabriye Tenberken, the remarkable blind woman who founded the school. Fascinated and impressed by what she learned from the blind children of Tibet, Mahoney was moved to investigate further the cultural history of blindness. As part of her research, she spent three months teaching at Tenberken's international training center for blind adults in Kerala, India, an experience that reveals both the shocking oppression endured by the world's blind, as well as their great resilience.

Borobudur in Central Java has been described as the eighth wonder of the world. It is the world's largest Buddhist temple, built out of 1.6 million blocks of worked volcanic stone and containing three miles of relief carvings and 504 statues of Buddha. Yet for 1,000 years it lay deserted in the jungle until it was rediscovered by none other than the famous Englishman Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles.

Cider is the quintessential American beverage. Drank by early settlers and founding fathers, it was ubiquitous and pervasive, but following Prohibition when orchards were destroyed and neglected, cider all but disappeared. In The Cider Revival, Jason Wilson chronicles what is happening now, an extraordinary rebirth that is less than a decade old.

Considerada en algún momento la patria "más suiza de América", este bello país bañado por las aguas del Atlántico es el corolario de una fascinante historia de empuje, tesón y esfuerzo por sobresalir. Hoy, a casi 200 años de su fundación, la nación uruguaya inicia con esperanza un nuevo período económico que haga olvidar el caos y desastre al que de común incurrieron su sociedad y gobernantes sobre todo en la segunda mitad del siglo XX.

In 1921, Britain's most illustrious highway, the Great North Road, ceased to exist – on paper at least. Stretching from London to Edinburgh, the old road was largely replaced by the A1 as the era of the motor car took hold. A hundred years later, journalist and cyclist Steve Silk embraces the anniversary as the perfect excuse to set off on an adventure across 11 days and 400 miles. Travelling by bike at a stately 14 miles per hour, he heads north, searching out milestones and memories, coaching inns and coffee shops.

Jeff Shaara, America's premier Civil War novelist, gives a remarkable guided tour of one of the Civil War battlefields every American should visit. He captures the true meaning and magnitude of the conflict.

The landscape of the British Isles is filled with history, much of which we miss as it flashes past the car window. Do we even realise that we're following the same path as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, or that we're driving past the exact spot where King Harold was killed, shot through the eye with an arrow? As a lover of both history and the British countryside, Charlie Connelly decided to rectify this, and set out on a series of walks that recreate famous historical journeys. En route he retells the story of the original trip while discovering who and what now inhabit these iconic routes.

In 1995, at the age of 23, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversations, and, per a Communist dean's orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, and Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China's changes as he was.