Educated at Eton and Oxford, Thesiger was repulsed by the softness and rigidity of Western life-"the machines, the calling cards, the meticulously aligned streets." In the spirit of T. E. Lawrence, he set out to explore the deserts of Arabia, traveling among peoples who had never seen a European and considered it their duty to kill Christian infidels. His now-classic account is invaluable to understanding the modern Middle East.

    For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth.Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.

    For a generation of American climbers, The White Spider has been a formative book--yet it has long been out-of-print in America. This edition awaits discovery by Harrer's new legion of readers.

    We see its famous buildings, its beautiful gardens, the museums, the sidewalk cafes, and the people who live there -- artists, the concierges, the flower girls, and even the thousands of cats. Take a tour along the banks of the Seine, or through the galleries of the Louvre, or to the top of the Eiffel Tower. Elegant, vivid pictures of one of the most beautiful cities in the world, This is Paris!

    He brought me 'This is Paris' in 1958 when I when I was publishing in London, and we soon followed up with 'This is London'. Both books were enormously successful, and his simple vision grew to include more than a dozen books. Their amusing verse, coupled with bright and charming illustrations, made for a series unlike any other, and garnered Sasek (as we always called him) the international and popular acclaim he deserved.I was thrilled to learn that 'This is London' will once again find its rightful place on bookshelves. Sasek is no longer with us (and I have lost all contact with his family), but I am sure he would be delighted to know that a whole new generation of wide-eyed readers is being introduced to his whimsical, imaginative, and enchanting world.

    I felt a great lurch and heel, and a thunder of sound filled my ears. I was conscious, in a terrified moment, of being driven into the front and side of my bunk with tremendous force. At the same time there was a tearing cracking sound, as if Tzu Hang was being ripped apart, and water burst solidly, raging into the cabin. There was darkness, black boards, and I fought wildly to get out, thinking Tzu Hang had already gone. Then suddenly I was standing again, waist deep in water, and floorboards and cushions, mattresses and books were sloshing in wild confusion round me.’Miles Smeeton and his wife Beryl sailed their 46-ft Bermuda ketch, Tzu Hang, in the wild seas of Cape Horn, following the tracks of the old sailing clippers through the world’s most notorious waters. This is an exciting true story of survival against all odds, but it is also a thoughtful book which provides hard-learned lessons for other intrepid sailors.As Nevil Shute writes in his foreword: ‘It has been left to Miles Smeeton to tell us in clear and simple language just where the limits of safety lie.’

    Written in the language of the West, it is a complete and often humorous presentation of the method of packing horses into the wilderness. Amplified by the brilliant drawings of artist Joe Back, the book is for both the amateur and professional packer.

    It provides comprehensive coverage of local, regional and international news, entertainment and sports, and is one of the only papers in the United States with a regular column devoted to the architecture industry.The Kindle Edition of The San Francisco Chronicle contains most articles found in the print edition, but will not include some images and tables. Also, some features such as the crossword puzzle, box scores and classifieds are not currently available. For your convenience, issues are automatically delivered wirelessly to your Kindle starting at 5:00 AM San Francisco local time.

    The 1957 expedition to Haramosh Peak in the Karakoram range in Pakistan is a tale of an expedition that has gone terribly wrong. It tells of three days and three nights without food or water as the climbers try and extricate one another from an icy grave.

    This time he's been to Boston to see The Hub of the Universe through quiet and observant eyes: to look at the Common and the Athenaeum; to walk east and west on Beacon Street; to look at Boston noses, Boston ears, and even Boston ghosts.Chiang Yee, distinguished Chinese author, artist and poet combines his talents in this delightful new view of an old city, filed with unexpected and unsuspected pleasures. As in his previous books, The Silent traveller presents a city which is both fresh and familiar. The reader who knows all about Boston will discover new charms as he walks with Chiange Yee. The reader who knows all about Boston will discover new charms as he walks with Chiang Yee. The reader who knows only a little about Boston will find The Silent Traveller an urbane guide with a warm regard for the traditional and a refreshing interest in the human side of the city's past and present.Again Mr. Chiang achieves a remarkable fusion of text and illustration, symbolized by his twenty Chinese poems, which are themselves both text and illustration. The glory of the book, however, lies in its sixteen magnificent full color paintings, supplemented by sixty black and white drawings which further enhance the beauty of the book.

    The book is published by arrangement with Lutterworth Press, the original publishers of Zoo Quest for a Dragon. Book Two, Quest for the Paradise Birds, has been written especially for this Companion Book Club edition.

    From Raft to Raft tells the incredible, suspenseful drama of the dangerous voyage led by Eric de Bisschop from Tahiti to Chile and back to Polynesia--a foray twice as long as that undertaken by Kon-Tiki and one that encountered infinitely greater difficulties and dangers.Like Heyerdahl, de Bisschop undertook his voyage to prove an ethnological theory--but a theory completely contrary to that of his Norwegian forerunner. Heyerdahl believed that voyagers from South America had visited Polynesia in prehistoric times; de Bisschop was equally certain that Tahitian sea rovers had traveled as far as Chile and Peru.After suffering unbelievable hardships during the first half of the voyage, two members of the Tahiti Nui crew abandoned the project, but de Bisschop and Alain Brun, who narrated the story to Bengt Danielsson, continued on their journey, spending thirteen months aboard the most primitive rafts. But despite the inadequacy of their crafts--all of which had a frightening tendency to break up--coupled with the dangers of attacking sharks, mutiny by one of the crew, raging storms, and near-starvation, the Tahiti Nui voyage was completed in record time--but not before a series of dramatic events occurred that were to culminate in tragic death