My Father's Island: A Galapagos Quest (Pelican Press)


Johanna Angermeyer - 1990
    Like her father, she came to love the Galapagos and to dream of having a life there. Her experience was filled with the perils and incomparable pleasures of living on the Galapagos.

Derelict London


Paul Talling - 2008
    The Victorian Concrete House in East Dulwich, for example - a once magnificent example of an early concrete-built house but now a shell. Palmers in Camden Town, formerly the most famous pet shop in London, where Ken Livingstone bought his newts. Strand Tube Station, which featured in films as diverse as Battle of Britain, Superman IV and An American Werewolf in Paris. To mention only a few of the myriad houses, pubs, cinemas, bomb shelters, cemeteries and shops meticulously recorded and celebrated here.If you've ever peeped curiously through a gap in a boarded-up window or wondered why the building you pass every day is looking distinctly the worse for wear, this is very definitely the book for you.

Kauai Trailblazer: Where to Hike, Snorkel, Bike, Paddle, Surf (


Jerry Sprout - 2006
    Find out where to go with Kauai Trailblazer, a comprehensive guide to everything the island offers. For family travelers and independent adventurers, this completely revised new edition offers hundreds of top spots to hike, snorkel, kayak, surf, and mountain bike, plus four historic and scenic driving tours. A directory lists restaurants, campgrounds, accommodations, and local outfitters, free hula shows and farmers' markets. You'll also find information about local flora, weather, and a glossary of Hawaiian words and place names. Maps and photos illustrate the text.

Bicycling the Pacific Coast: A Complete Route Guide, Canada to Mexico


Vicky Spring - 1984
    Tom Kirkendall and Vicky Spring guide you turn by turn along the length of Pacific Coast Bicycle Route -- all 1816.5 miles. These forty-two suggested daily itineraries (averaging 53 miles each) begin and end at campsites.Everything you need to know about each day's ride is included: from tunnel-riding strategies to where to buy a new derailer, from one-of-a-kind museums along the way to side trips to lonely lighthouses and towering sand dunes. Cyclists will find a quick-glance Table of Essentials for each daily itinerary, listing availability of bike shops, beach access, hiking trails, youth hostels, and activities while touring through California, Washington, and Oregon.

Trans-Siberian Handbook: Seventh Edition of the Guide to the World's Longest Railway Journey (Includes Guides to 25 Cities)


Bryn Thomas - 1988
    A trip across Siberia on the longest continuous railway track in the world is undoubtedly the journey of a lifetime. It's also a convenient way to reach China, Mongolia, or Japan. Tickets are not expensive or difficult to arrange. Readers can now travel almost anywhere they want in Siberia: we tell them how to organize a trip, where to get tickets, and where to go.>Kilometer-by-kilometer route guide -- covering the entire routes of the Trans-Siberian, Trans-Manchurian, and Trans-Mongolian railways with thirty-eight strip maps in English, Russian, and Chinese: readers can see where they are as they travel>Siberia and the railway -- the detailed history of Siberia, the construction of the railway and the running of the Trans-Siberian today are of great interest not only to visitors but also to armchair travelers>City guides with maps -- the best sights, places to stay, and restaurants for all budgets: Moscow, St Petersburg, Ulan Bator, Beijing, and twenty-three towns in Siberia>Nutshell information on Minsk, Berlin, Baltic Republics, Helsinki, Hong Kong, and Tokyo>Rail fares and timetables>Seventh edition includes seventy maps>Plus Russian and Chinese phrases

The Catskills: Its History and How It Changed America


Stephen M. Silverman - 2015
    . . refuge and home to poets and gangsters, tycoons and politicians, preachers and outlaws, musicians and spiritualists, outcasts and rebels . . . Stephen Silverman and Raphael Silver tell of the turning points that made the Catskills so vital to the development of America: Henry Hudson’s first spotting the distant blue mountains in 1609; the New York State constitutional convention, resulting in New York’s own Declaration of Independence from Great Britain and its own constitution, causing the ire of the invading British army . . . the Catskills as a popular attraction in the 1800s, with the construction of the Catskill Mountain House and its rugged imitators that offered WASP guests “one-hundred percent restricted” accommodations (“Hebrews will knock vainly for admission”), a policy that remained until the Catskills became the curative for tubercular patients, sending real-estate prices plummeting and the WASP enclave on to richer pastures . . . Here are the gangsters (Jack “Legs” Diamond and Dutch Schultz, among them) who sought refuge in the Catskill Mountains, and the resorts that after World War II catered to upwardly mobile Jewish families, giving rise to hundreds of hotels inspired by Grossinger’s, the original “Disneyland with knishes”—the Concord, Brown’s Hotel, Kutsher’s Hotel, and others—in what became known as the Borscht Belt and Sour Cream Alps, with their headliners from movies and radio (Phil Silvers, Eddie Cantor, Milton Berle, et al.), and others who learned their trade there, among them Moss Hart (who got his start organizing summer theatricals), Sid Caesar, Lenny Bruce, Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, and Joan Rivers. Here is a nineteenth-century America turning away from England for its literary and artistic inspiration, finding it instead in Washington Irving’s “Rip Van Winkle” and his childhood recollections (set in the Catskills) . . . in James Fenimore Cooper’s adventure-romances, which provided a pastoral history, describing the shift from a colonial to a nationalist mentality . . . and in the canvases of Thomas Cole, Asher B. Durand, Frederick Church, and others that caught the grandeur of the wilderness and that gave texture, color, and form to Irving’s and Cooper’s imaginings. Here are the entrepreneurs and financiers who saw the Catskills as a way to strike it rich, plundering the resources that had been likened to “creation,” the Catskills’ tanneries that supplied the boots and saddles for Union troops in the Civil War . . . and the bluestone quarries whose excavated rock became the curbs and streets of the fast-growing Eastern Seaboard.  Here are the Catskills brought fully to life in all of their intensity, beauty, vastness, and lunacy.

This Other London: Adventures in the Overlooked City


John Rogers - 2013
    Nursing two reluctant knees and a can of Stella, he perambulates through the seasons seeking adventure in our city’s remote and forgotten reaches.When John Rogers packed away his rucksack to start a family in London he didn’t stop travelling. But instead of canoeing up the Rejang River to find retired headhunters in Sarawak, he caught the ferry to Woolwich in search of the edge of the city at Crayford Marshes.This Other London recounts that journey and many others – all on foot and epic in their own cartilage-crunching way. Clutching a samosa and a handful of out-of-date A-Zs, he heads out into the wilderness of isolated luxury apartment blocks in Brentford, the ruins of Lesnes Abbey near Thamesmead, and the ancient Lammas Lands in Leyton.Denounced by his young sons as a ‘hippy wizard’, Rogers delves into some of the overlooked stories rumbling beneath the tarmac of the city suburbs. Holy wells in Lewisham; wassailing in Clapton; a heretical fresco in West Ham. He encounters the Highwaymen of Hounslow Heath, Viet Cong vets still fighting Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket in Beckton, Dutch sailors marooned at Erith pier; and cyclists – without Bradley Wiggins’ sideburns – at Herne Hill Velodrome. He heads out to Uxendon Hill to witness the end of the world, Horsenden Hill to learn its legend, and Tulse Hill to the observatory of the Victorian Brian Cox.This Other London will take you into the hinterland of the city. The London that is lived in; the London where workaday dormitory suburbs sit atop a rich history that could rival Westminster and Tower Bridge. In an age when no corner of the globe has been left untrampled-upon by hordes of tourists, it is time to discover the wonders on our doorstep.This Other London is your gateway through the underexplored nooks of London. As Pathfinder wrote in 1911, ‘Adventure begins at home’.

Tales from the Workhouse


Mary Higgs - 2013
    This book contains first hand accounts of life in the workhouse, enabling you to see the workhouse through the eyes of people who experienced it.CONTENTSFOODI am fond of gruelSaltless gruel and dry breadSweetened gruel and diarrhoeaSour gruelSICKNESSRaw, festering soresThe tramp with diarrhoeaAsking for the doctorBATHING, UNDRESSING AND DRESSINGDirty looking bathsOur clothes were taken from us“Hurry up, women”Wet clothesThe condition of the clothesCONDITIONS AND PEOPLEDo I look like a prostitute?We were “only tramps”Coming into contact with other men’s fleshThirst“Your neighbour breathed right into your face”Being woken up throughout the nightPunished for being cheekyBEDS AND BEDDINGThe wire mattressThe wire pillow – a cruel inventionDirty blankets and hard bedsLABOURPicking oakumStone-breaking in Paddington work houseA NIGHT IN A WORKHOUSEYou’ve missed your gruelA stain of blood bigger than a man's handFilthy anecdotesThe swearing clubChecking for liceThree fourths of a pint of gruel in a yellow basinMilling with the crank-handleTHE CRAWLERS: THE WOMAN UNABLE TO GET ADMISSION TO THE WORKHOUSEA CHILD'S MEMORIES OF BEING PUT IN THE WORKHOUSE

The Mammoth Book of Losers


Karl Shaw - 2014
    It rejoices in men and women made of the Wrong Stuff: writers who believed in the power of words, but could never quite find the rights ones; artists and performers who indulged their creative impulse with a passion, if not a sense of the ridiculous, an eye for perspective or the ability to hold down a tune; scientists and businessmen who never quite managed to quit while they were ahead; and sportsmen who seemed to manage always to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Like Walter Oudney, one of three men chosen to find the source of the River Niger in Africa, who could not ride a horse, nor speak any foreign languages and who had never travelled more than 30 miles beyond his native Edinburgh; or the explorer-priest Michel Alexandre de Baize, who set off to explore the African continent from east to west equipped with 24 umbrellas, some fireworks, two suits of armor, and a portable organ; or the Scottish army which decided to invade England in 1349 - during the Black Death. Entries include: briefest career in dentistry; least successful bonding exercise; most futile attempt to find a lost tribe; most pointless lines of research by someone who should have known better; least successful celebrity endorsement; least convincing excuse for a war; worst poetic tribute to a root vegetable; least successful display of impartiality by a juror; Devon Loch - sporting metaphor for blowing un unblowable lead; least dignified exit from office by a French president; and least successful expedition by camel.

Weird Colorado: Your Travel Guide to Colorado's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets


Charmaine Ortega Getz - 2010
    Colorado is blessed with all three! From the Frozen Dead Guy Days festival in tiny Nederland, to Fruitas annual commemoration of Mike (the rooster that lost its head but not its will to live), theres no shortage of bizarre happenings in this Rocky Mountain locale.

Introducing Windows Azure for IT Professionals


Mitch Tulloch - 2013
    It is offered for sale in print format as a convenience.Get a head start evaluating Windows Azure - with technical insights from a Microsoft MVP Mitch Tulloch. This guide introduces the latest features and capabilities, with scenario-based advice on how the platform can meet the needs of your business. Get the high-level overview you need to begin preparing your deployment now.Topics include: Understanding Windows Azure Windows Azure Compute Services Windows Azure Network Services Windows Azure Data Services Windows Azure App Services Getting Started with Windows Azure

The Rise And Fall Of The Roman Empire: Life, Liberty, And The Death Of The Republic


Barry Linton - 2015
    The posthumous influence of the Roman Republic and Empire have no equal in all of history. Their varied culture, stunning art, brilliant philosophy, and towering architecture is embedded in our modern world. Roman innovation has left behind a legacy that has remained admired and emulated for over a thousand years. They built massive networks of roads before the birth of Christ. They constructed elaborate public sewer systems over 1,500 years before the United States became a Nation, and had networks of aqueducts bringing running water. Their tactics in battle are still studied by historians and military leaders of today. Their history is filled with great conflicts, compelling love stories, and the most treacherous of leaders. Hollywood has explored their culture time and again on the silver screen. Larger than life commanders like Julius Caesar would help shape their ultimate destiny. In his book entitled The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire: Life, Liberty, and the Death of the Republic author Barry Linton highlights and explains the significant struggles and contributions that have made Rome so well known. Join us as we explore the meteoric rise, monumental life, inevitable death, and eventual rebirth of Rome.

Cocaine + Surfing: A Sordid History of Surfing's Greatest Love Affair


Chas Smith - 2018
    The 1960–70s image, bolstered by Tom Wolfe and Big Wednesday, was one of mild outlaws―tanned boys refusing to grow up, spending their days drinking beer and smoking joints on the beach in between mindless hours in the water.But in the 1980s, as surf brands morphed into multibillion-dollar companies, the derelict portrait began to harm business. The external surf image became Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton, beacons of health, vitality, bravery, and clean-living.Internally, though, surfing had moved on from booze and weed to its heart’s true home, its soul’s twin flame: cocaine. The rise of cocaine in American popular culture as the choice of rich, white elites was matched, then quadrupled, within surf culture. The parties got wilder, the nights stretched longer, the stories became more ridiculously unbelievable. And there has been no stopping, no dip in passion.It is a forbidden love, and few, if any, outside the surf world know about this particular rhapsody. Drug use is kept very well-hidden, even from insiders, but evidence of its psychosis rears its head from time to time in the form of overdoses, bar fights, surf contests, murders, and cover-ups.Cocaine + Surfing draws back the curtain on a hopped-up, sometimes-sexy, sometimes-deadly relationship and uses cocaine as the vehicle to expose and explain the utterly absurd surf industry to outsiders.

Pakistan: Courting the Abyss


Tilak Devasher - 2016
    He also dwells at length on the Pakistan movement, where the seeds of many current problems were sown the opportunistic use of religion being the most lethal of these. With data-driven precision, Devasher takes apart the flawed prescriptions and responses of successive governments, especially during military rule, to the many critical challenges the country has encountered over the years. These, as much as the particular trajectory of its creation and growth, he contends, have brought Pakistan to an abyss where it risks multi-organ failure unless things change dramatically in the near future.

Easy Spanish Phrase Book: Over 700 Phrases for Everyday Use


Pablo García Loaeza - 2012
    The perfect companion for tourists and business travelers in Spain and Latin America, it features words, phrases, and sentences that cover everything from asking directions to ordering dinner.Over 700 conveniently organized expressions include terms for modern telecommunications as well as phrases related to transportation, shopping, medical and emergency situations, and other common circumstances. A phonetic pronunciation accompanies each phrase.