By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals, and listened to their stories of the recent and ancient past. Along the way Stewart met heroes and rogues, tribal elders and teenage soldiers, Taliban commanders and foreign-aid workers. He was also adopted by an unexpected companion-a retired fighting mastiff he named Babur in honor of Afghanistan's first Mughal emperor, in whose footsteps the pair was following. Through these encounters--by turns touching, confounding, surprising, and funny--Stewart makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.

     Readers all over the US and Europe have discovered the joys of retiring and living full time in an RV after reading Jerry Minchey's Amazon #1 best-selling book in Senior Travel Guides, Motorhome, and RV Retirement Living: The Most Enjoyable and Least Expensive Way to Retire. Now in this new epic book, Secrets of RVing on Social Security, he shows you step-by-step how to enjoy the RVing lifestyle while traveling and living on just your Social Security income. Imagine leaping out of bed every morning ready to cherish every day of your new adventurous life. On top of the adventure, you'll experience the unsurpassed freedom to live where you want to. At every fork in the road, you will be free to go wherever whim and chance might take you. You will also discover how other retirees are supplementing their retirement income while living full-time in their motorhome. Many people are actually adding to their savings while having the time of their lives living the RV lifestyle. In this book, you will grasp how they are doing it, and how you can do it too. You'll comprehend the brutally honest pros and cons of the RV lifestyle. There are some downsides to the lifestyle you need to be prepared for. My guess is that you will adore your new RVing lifestyle, but you'll never know if it's the right lifestyle for you if you don't read this book. The book is designed to keep you on the path to accomplishing your goal of living an exciting retirement lifestyle while staying well within your budget. This book should be required reading for anyone who is retired or getting ready to retire. It provides never-before-answered questions about living the attractive RVing lifestyle on a budget.

    And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How?As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, whether caused by nature or by human interference.It’s a frightening prospect, as each of the Earth’s past major disasters—from meteor strikes to bombardment by cosmic radiation—resulted in a mass extinction, where more than 75 percent of the planet’s species died out. But in Scatter, Adapt, and Remember, Annalee Newitz, science journalist and editor of the science Web site io9.com explains that although global disaster is all but inevitable, our chances of long-term species survival are better than ever. Life on Earth has come close to annihilation—humans have, more than once, narrowly avoided extinction just during the last million years—but every single time a few creatures survived, evolving to adapt to the harshest of conditions.      This brilliantly speculative work of popular science focuses on humanity’s long history of dodging the bullet, as well as on new threats that we may face in years to come. Most important, it explores how scientific breakthroughs today will help us avoid disasters tomorrow. From simulating tsunamis to studying central Turkey’s ancient underground cities; from cultivating cyanobacteria for “living cities” to designing space elevators to make space colonies cost-effective; from using math to stop pandemics to studying the remarkable survival strategies of gray whales, scientists and researchers the world over are discovering the keys to long-term resilience and learning how humans can choose life over death.     Newitz’s remarkable and fascinating journey through the science of mass extinctions is a powerful argument about human ingenuity and our ability to change. In a world populated by doomsday preppers and media commentators obsessively forecasting our demise, Scatter, Adapt, and Remember is a compelling voice of hope. It leads us away from apocalyptic thinking into a future where we live to build a better world—on this planet and perhaps on others. Readers of this book will be equipped scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally to face whatever the future holds.

    This one tells you exactly what you need to know to prepare for and complete a long-distance hike on the A.T. From determining a budget, preparing an itinerary, and packing gear to resupplying, using bounce boxes, and staying on schedule, this book will help any hiker make certain their long-distance trek is a success.You can hear an interview with Michelle Ray on how to prepare for your thru-hike if you click here.

    A snake-handling preacher by the name of Glendel Buford Summerford has just tried to murder his wife, Darlene, by snakebite. At gunpoint, he forces her to stick her arm in a box of rattlesnakes. She is bitten twice and nearly dies. The trial, which becomes a sensation throughout southern Appalachia, echoes familiar themes from a troubled secular world - marital infidelity, spouse abuse, and alcoholism - but it also raises questions about faith, forgiveness, redemption, and, of course, snakes. Glenn Summerford is convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison. When Dennis Covington covered the trial of Glenn Summerford for The New York Times, a world far beyond the trial opened up to him. Salvation on Sand Mountain begins with a crime and a trial and then becomes an extraordinary exploration of a place, a people, and an author's descent into himself. The place is southern Appalachia - a country deep and unsettled, where the past and its culture collide with the economic and social realities of the present, leaving a residue of rootlessness, anxiety, and lawlessness. All-night video stores and tanning salons stand next to collapsed chicken farms and fundamentalist churches. The people are poor southern whites. Peculiar and insular, they are hill people of Scotch-Irish descent: religious mystics who cast out demons, speak in tongues, drink strychnine, run blowtorches up their arms, and drape themselves with rattlesnakes. There is Charles McGlocklin, the End-Time Evangelist; Cecil Esslinder, the red headed guitar player with the perpetual grin; Aunt Daisy, the prophetess; Brother Carl Porter; Elvis Presley Saylor;Gracie McAllister; Dewey Chafin; and the legendary Punkin Brown, all of whose faith illuminates these pages. And then there is Dennis Covington, himself Scotch-Irish, whose own family came down off of Sand Mountain two generations ago to work in the steel mills of Birmingham, and

    Traces the history of sugar production and consumption, examines its relationship with slavery, class ambitions, and industrialization, and describes sugar's impact on modern diet and eating habits.

    We are being brainwashed. We are being brainwashed completely, ceaselessly and cynically... So just who is doing the brainwashing? How are they doing it and for what purposes? David Sedgwick’s latest book takes the reader on a disturbing journey deep into the realms of mistruth and deception to reveal, for the very first time, the many tricks and subterfuges used by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Every time we engage with BBC content, the author argues, we are exposing ourselves to a very dark art: the art of brainwashing. Wilful, deceitful and incessant, Orwellian parallels define the modern corporation and should chill the soul of all who cherish freedom and liberty. Mind control is here. This is not fiction. BBC: Brainwashing Britain? is a shocking expose of mass propaganda, its components, and aims. You may never look at Auntie in the same way ever again.

    Casey's technical virtuosity, his user-friendly explanations, and Peter Compton's diesel engine expertise make even the more complicated repairs and improvements easy to understand. This must-have guide saves you time, money, and grief as you learn the fastest, easiest, most effective ways to:Evaluate the condition of your boat or one you're about to purchaseRepair structural damage to your fiberglass sailboatImprove or repair your sailboat's electrical systemTroubleshoot, maintain, and repair your boat's diesel enginePut a professional-looking finish on your boat's hull, deck, spars, wood, and trimMake and repair sails, sail covers, dodgers, awnings, sailbags, and bimini tops

    As the source of this oil, the Ecuadorian Amazon has borne the far-reaching social and environmental consequences of a growing U.S. demand for petroleum and the dynamics of economic globalization it necessitates. Crude Chronicles traces the emergence during the 1990s of a highly organized indigenous movement and its struggles against a U.S. oil company and Ecuadorian neoliberal policies. Against the backdrop of mounting government attempts to privatize and liberalize the national economy, Suzana Sawyer shows how neoliberal reforms in Ecuador led to a crisis of governance, accountability, and representation that spurred one of twentieth-century Latin America’s strongest indigenous movements.Through her rich ethnography of indigenous marches, demonstrations, occupations, and negotiations, Sawyer tracks the growing sophistication of indigenous politics as Indians subverted, re-deployed, and, at times, capitulated to the dictates and desires of a transnational neoliberal logic. At the same time, she follows the multiple maneuvers and discourses that the multinational corporation and the Ecuadorian state used to circumscribe and contain indigenous opposition. Ultimately, Sawyer reveals that indigenous struggles over land and oil operations in Ecuador were as much about reconfiguring national and transnational inequality—that is, rupturing the silence around racial injustice, exacting spaces of accountability, and rewriting narratives of national belonging—as they were about the material use and extraction of rain-forest resources.

    A 750-mile walk through Japan. A life that will never be the same.Todd Wassel fled a normal life just after graduation. Over half a decade later he’s lost in Japan, unable go home but unwilling to give up. Convinced there was more to life, he risks everything to return to the one place he found answers years before: the ancient Shikoku Henro pilgrimage. Walking the 750-mile henro path, sleeping outside each night, Todd is armed with only a Japanese map. Between the 88 Buddhist temples he finds help from a wandering ascetic hiding from the Freemasons; naked Yakuza trying to shake him down; a scam artist pilgrim; and a vengeful monk. Can he find what he’s looking for before the path, or his new friends, break him? Walking in Circles is an addictive, fun, inspirational travel memoir set in a Japan few outsiders ever get to see. Award-winning writer Todd Wassel draws on over twenty years in Japan to retell his epic journey through the contradictions of contemporary Japan while overcoming the forces that keep us from living a truly happy life. Buy the book today to join Todd Wassel on his unforgettable Japanese adventure!

    Modern cartography tells the hidden stories of Portland in these fascinating and colorful infographic maps. When mapmaking takes on nontraditional topics like patterns of graffiti,  locations of strip clubs, or even which neighborhoods favor which house colors, finding your way around the city takes on a whole new meaning. Each map starts with the gathering of at least one data set about a given topic, then translating that to a visual format that blends traditional cartographic skills with modern graphic design.

    The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself immersed in those of his modern Egyptian neighbors.Combining shrewd observations with painstaking historical research, Ghosh serves up skeptics and holy men, merchants and sorcerers. Some of these figures are real, some only imagined, but all emerge as vividly as the characters in a great novel. In an Antique Land is an inspired work that transcends genres as deftly as it does eras, weaving an entrancing and intoxicating spell.

    Repeatedly. In this humorous and honest memoir, Ted Kluck—father, writer, and sports fan—details his adoption of his two sons from Ukraine. While not always self-flattering, his complaints and struggles will provoke laughter, some fear, and self-examination.In the first part of his memoir, Ted reveals the chaos the Kluck’s first international adoption, the adoption of his son Tristan. He includes stories of:Loads of paperwork, inspections, and prayer in the United StatesTraveling to Ukraine with tens of thousands of dollars in cash tucked in his beltUnexpected waitsConsuming uncountable numbers of Snickers bars and sodaSickness while still in UkraineLetters written to his soon-to-be sonGod’s unending faithfulness and reflections on His adoption of believersIn the second part of his memoir—the story of Kluck’s second international adoption—new struggles arise, causing Ted to process with his readers:Infertility—in a church full of pregnant women and large familiesStruggling in silenceTravel, againMissing the comfort of the United StatesA small amount of electrocution—the result of foreign electrical engineeringSpiritual depression and struggle to provide for his familyComplaint and trusting that God’s provision is sufficientThe blessing of the body of ChristIn each section of Ted’s memoir, you will feel deeply, laugh out loud, and learn. Whether you’re an adoptive parent, seeking to be an adoptive parent, or unmarried, you will enjoy and appreciate Ted’s humorous and honest stories of his adventures in adoptive fatherhood.“While Hello, I Love You is about the stories of two adoptions,in reality, the stories serve to show the trustworthiness of God despite impossible circumstances and the need to find contentment in his providential care.”-Book review by John Starke on The Gospel Coalition An Excerpt from the Book’s Introduction:            This book began as a journal—some spiral-bound notebooks that came with me to Ukraine the first time, and which contained letters that I wrote to Tristan during the experience. In the first half of the book, it reads like I’m addressing Tristan directly, while the second half is a more straightforward narrative of Dima’s adoption. They’re both love letters to my boys, and the whole thing is a love letter to Kristin, my wife.            You’ll also notice lots of frank, often sarcastic prose about cultural differences—usually with the author as the punch line, as it was my inability to deal with these differences that provided a lot of humor (in retrospect) and anger (at the time).            There’s also some tough content regarding infertility. If this is something you’ve struggled with in your marriage, I hope this chapter encourages you, and I hope you feel less alone in your struggle. If you’ve been blessed with biological children, please don’t feel guilty for having them, or in any way judged or made fun of by the observations in that chapter (see also: It not being you, but me).            Finally, the book contains lots of stories of God’s faithfulness—stories that we thought were too meaningful not to be told. Little “piles of stones” along the way that remind us of God’s goodness, love, and faithfulness. We hope that you’ll read them and not only be entertained, but be motivated to think of Christ and our adoption as His sons and daughters. It is only the love of Christ, and our hope in Him, that got us through the first, the most difficult adoption in the history of our agency’s work with Ukraine, then infertility, and finally a second adoption. And it was these adoptions, more than any other events or events in our lives, that truly taught us to find our peace, comfort, and identity in Christ.

    He arrived knowing that you can’t study a language without understanding the daily lives of the people who speak it: how they talk to their children, how they argue, how they gossip, how they joke. Over the course of thirty years, he returned again and again to document Tayap before it disappeared entirely, and he found himself inexorably drawn into their world, and implicated in their destiny. Kulick wanted to tell the story of Gapuners—one that went beyond the particulars and uses of their language—that took full stock of their vanishing culture. This book takes us inside the village as he came to know it, revealing what it is like to live in a difficult-to-get-to village of two hundred people, carved out like a cleft in the middle of a tropical rainforest. But A Death in the Rainforest is also an illuminating look at the impact of white society on the farthest reaches of the globe—and the story of why this anthropologist realized finally that he had to give up his study of this language and this village. An engaging, deeply perceptive, and brilliant interrogation of what it means to study a culture, A Death in the Rainforest takes readers into a world that endures in the face of massive changes, one that is on the verge of disappearing forever.

    Ed Bolian’s memoir recounts his path from a conversation in high school with Cannonball Run founder, Brock Yates to setting the fastest time ever for driving from New York to Los Angeles. The journey explores goal setting, criminal psychology, and spirituality in the pursuit of finding your true purpose and using what makes you unique to achieve something extraordinary.