Connecting China's heartland cities with the volatile coastal giant, Shanghai, it has also historically connected China to the outside world through its nearly one thousand miles of navigable waters. To travel those waters is to travel back in history, to sense the soul of China, and Simon Winchester takes us along with him as he encounters the essence of China--its history and politics, its geography and climate as well as engage in its culture, and its people in remote and almost inaccessible places. This is travel writing at its best: lively, informative, and thoroughly enchanting.

    With the help of Luigi, his guide and companion, he travels through Italy--Rome, Gamberale, Matera, Miglionico, Alessandria, even Mussolini's hometown of Predappio--and discovers the tragic legacy of the Second World War that is still affecting the Old Country. He visits ancient castles and village churches, samples superb Italian cuisine, haggles at the open air market at Porta Portese, enjoys and Alessandria siesta, and frequents "coffee bars", where beggars discuss politics with affluent Italian locals. He finds lost-lost cousins during the day and performs with an amateur jazz group during the night. Along the way, he discovers deeply moving stories about his family's past and learns answers to question that have plagued him since childhood.More that just a spiritual account of one man's ancestral search, Dances With Luigi is also a stunning portrait of la bella Italia--both old and new--that is painted beautifully in all of its glamour, history, and contradiction.

    . . Both melancholy and gay and worldly, I think of it now as among the best books on Venice; indeed as the best modern book about a city that I have ever read.' Geoffrey Grigson'One of the most diverse and diverting books ever written about Venice . . . A taut and personal report, wholly absorbing, quickened by vivid prose and astringent humour.' Sunday Times'For those of whom Venice is a memory, a treat in store, or even a dream, the broad canvas of this book covering a thousand years in the life of one of the most complex, original, and active communities the world has ever seen, is a work of lasting interest.' Guardian

    Now they were taking another audacious leap, unstitching their ties with exquisite Venice to live in a roughly renovated stable in Tuscany.Once again, it was love at first sight. Love for the timeless countryside and the ancient village of San Casciano dei Bagni, for the local vintage and the magnificent cooking, for the Tuscan sky and the friendly church bells. Love especially for old Barlozzo, the village mago, who escorts the newcomers to Tuscany’s seasonal festivals; gives them roasted country bread drizzled with just-pressed olive oil; invites them to gather chestnuts, harvest grapes, hunt truffles; and teaches them to caress the simple pleasures of each precious day. It’s Barlozzo who guides them across the minefields of village history and into the warm and fiercely beating heart of love itself. A Thousand Days in Tuscany is set in one of the most beautiful places on earth–and tucked into its fragrant corners are luscious recipes (including one for the only true bruschetta) directly from the author’s private collection.

    In Origo's case, she managed to add light and color to everything she touched and left for posterity a legacy of work, biography, autobiography, and literary criticism, that have become recognized as classics of their kind.She was born into a wealthy and long-established Long Island family, the Cuttings, but her talented and beloved father (who resembled, more than a little, a character right out of Henry James) died of consumption when she was only nine. She spent the following years traveling the world with her mother and an extensive entourage, settling finally at the Villa Medici at Fiesole and entering into the privileged world of wealthy Anglo-Florentine expatriates whose likes included the Berensons, Harold Acton, Janet Ross, and Edith Wharton, and whose petty bickering, and pettier politics, had a profound influence on how she spent her life.Her marriage to Antonio Origo, a wealthy landowner and sportsman, was as much a reaction to this insular world as it was a surprise to her family and friends. Together they purchased, and single-handedly revived, an extensive, arid valley in Tuscany called Val d'Orcia, rebuilding the farmsteads and the manor house. Although clearly sympathetic to Mussolini's land use policies, they sided firmly with the Allies during World War II, taking considerable risks in protecting children, sheltering partisans, and repatriating Allied prisoners-of-war to their units.Caroline Moorehead has made extensive use of unpublished letters, diaries, and papers to write what will surely be considered the definitive biography of this remarkable woman. She has limned a figure who was brave, industrious, and fiercely independent, but hardly saintly. What emerges is a portrait of one of the more intriguing, attractive, and intelligent women of the last century.

    Everywhere hailed for its quirkiness, its hilarity, its charm, Pasquale's Nose tells the story of a New York City lawyer who runs away to a small Etruscan village with his wife and new baby, and discovers a community of true eccentrics -- warring bean growers, vanishing philosophers, a blind bootmaker, a porcupine hunter -- among whom he feels unexpectedly at home.

    Her acceptance into this close-knit community was a hard-won thing and has inspired Isabella to capture the true spirit of Montalcino. Vanilla Beans & Brodo tells of the violent history of this medieval village, which has lefts its mark on the character traits of the Montalcinese, and also offers a rare insight into the anxiety, joy, fun, and pressure of daily life as it unfolds with the seasons. An evocative story of the rivalry between village neighborhoods, of football fever and festival pageantry, Isabella Dusi destroys the myth that Tuscan villages are tranquil places, and instead reveals a life infinitely rich and full of dramas.

    Brian Lamb has visited the gravesites of every American president, living and dead, in order to put together this book, with assistance from the staff of C-SPAN. Heavily illustrated and with contributions from historians Richard Norton Smith and Douglas Brinkley, Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? is about the presidents' lives as much as it is about their final resting places. The book's collection of the presidents' last words, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "I have a terrific headache" to John Adams's "Thomas Jefferson still survives" offers a poignant and sometimes humorous look at the last moments of the great men. This is a great way to encounter the presidents, from the great ones to the near-forgottens. Who's Buried in Grant's Tomb? belongs in the glove box of every traveler and the bedside table of every fan of the American presidency and American history.

    Jerre Mangione's autobiographical chronicle of his youth in a Sicilian community in Rochester is one of the truly enduring books about the immigrant experience in this country. Family squabbles, soul-nourishing food, and the casting of evil eyes are only some of the ingredients of this richly textured book, although they must all take second place to its unforgettable characters. As Eugene Paul Nassar writes in the book's Foreword, Mount Allegro . . . gave a literary visibility and identity, amiable and appealing, to a poorly understood ethnic group in America, and did so at a very high level of artistry.

    Packed with detailed information, maps, and beautiful cutaways and floor plans of all of Sicily's major sites, this guide explores every facet of the sun-baked island. Whether you desire to taste the varied and exotic flavors of rich Sicilian cuisine or explore the gorgeous Mediterranean beaches, this guide is packed with essential information to guide your travels. This fully updated and expanded Sicily guide provides comprehensive guidance on the best things to do in Sicily, from exploring the imposing ancient temples and fortresses left by waves of occupiers to the colorful markets of the chaotic Sicilian cities. This guide caters to any budget, with dozens of reviews and recommendations for Sicilian hotels, restaurants and entertainment, and even tips for shopping. The DK Eyewitness Travel Guide: Sicily provides all the insider tips every visitor to Sicily needs.Don't miss a thing on your vacation with the DK Eyewitness Travel guidebook to Sicily.HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE: Packed with photographs, illustrations, and maps Cutaways and floor plans of all the major sights 3D aerial views of the city's most interesting districts Huge selection of hotels, restaurants, stores, and entertainment venues

    The sheer number and proximity of works of painting, sculpture, and architecture in Florence can be so overwhelming that Florentine hospitals treat hundreds of visitors each year for symptoms brought on by trying to see them all, an illness famously identified with the French author Stendhal.While most guidebooks offer only brief descriptions of a large number of works, with little discussion of the historical background, Judith Testa gives a fresh perspective on the rich and brilliant art of the Florentine Renaissance in An Art Lover’s Guide to Florence. Concentrating on a number of the greatest works, by such masters as Botticelli and Michelangelo, Testa explains each piece in terms of what it meant to the people who produced it and for whom they made it, deftly treating the complex interplay of politics, sex, and religion that were involved in the creation of those works. With Testa as a guide, armchair travelers and tourists alike will delight in the fascinating world of Florentine art and history.

    He found it on Blackfish Sound ("Blackfish" is the Kwakiutl Indian word for the killer whale) in the Inside Passage, the rugged coastline between Seattle and Alaska. Leaving his home in Aspen, which had become a false Shangri-La for him, Modzelewski settled on a desolate island in the Inside Passage, a place which "after seducing you with beauty would shake you with fear. An unpredictable place that kept you always prepared, honed to the keen edge of life." Here he lived alone for months on end. Inside Passage describes his experiences in this unspoiled setting, where the sky is his ceiling, mountains are his walls, and physical challenges test him down to the marrow. He also forms unusual friendships with passing yachters, salmon fishermen, Kwakiutl Indians, loners, and the owner of the house he is staying at, Will Malloff, a man of oversized personality -- a healer, builder, woodsman, and thinker. Modzelewski writes with a love for nature and gentle humor about his interactions with the native animals (eagles, whales, wolves), local animals (cats, dogs, "tame" wild boars), and other settlers. Inside Passage is the powerful story of one man learning the ways of self-reliance in a soul-filled search through the northern wilderness.

    On this tiny island in the South Seas republic of Vanuatu, his grandfather, a Presbyterian missionary from Scotland, converted the inhabitants, his father ran the hospital and his mother built its first schoolhouse in their front garden. And it was on Iririki where, on the eve of his sixth birthday, Frater fell victim to “le coup de bamboo . . . a mild form of tropical madness for which, luckily, there is no cure,” and which has compelled him, again and again, to return to the “seeding, breeding, buzzing, barking, fluttering, squawking, germinating, growing” deep tropics. His travels take him to nearly all of the eighty-eight countries encompassed by this remarkable, steamy swath of the world. He delves deeply into the history and politics of each nation he visits, and into the lives of the inhabitants, and of the flora and fauna. He is, at once, tourist, explorer and adventurer, as fascinated with—and fascinating about—the quotidian as he is with the extraordinary. But certainly, he does not lack for the extraordinary: dining with the Queen of Tonga in a leper colony; making his way across tropical Africa—and two civil wars—in a forty-four-year-old flying boat; delivering a new church bell to a remote Oceanian island. From Fiji to Laos, Mexico to Peru, Senegal to Uganda, Taiwan to Indonesia, Frater gives us a richly described, wonderfully anecdotal, endlessly surprising picture of this diverse, feverish, languorously beautiful world—as much a state of mind as it is a geographical phenomenon.

    Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.

    An American woman residing in Sicily for the past twenty years portrays the Sicilian landscape and customs - both rural and urban - from the perspectives of both a "foreigner" and a resident.