Whatever you choose to do, planning a trip to Italy has never been this much fun, or this easy!LOOK INSIDE FOR AN INNOVATIVE, NEW TRAVEL GUIDE!Comprehensive, up-to-date, and easy to use, Fodor’s Italy 2007 remains the best resource for organizing your trip to Italia. Our 2007 edition also flaunts exclusive, new features including indispensable, customized tools for planning your trip, in addition to rich photography that illustrates the distinctive culture of the country. Plus, not only will you read the expert advice of our professional travel writers, but you’ll also review recommendations from everyday travelers like yourself, in our new “Word of Mouth” features throughout the book. Fodor's Italy 2007 is designed so that you spend less time researching and more time relishing what lies ahead on your dream vacation. Plan a perfect vacation, with these new features:Experience Italy like a local:Fodor's Italy 2007 now features insights from prominent locals to give you an authentic taste of the country! From one of Florence's most distinguished restaurateurs explaining the elements of a perfect Tuscan meal to the director of the American Academy in Rome identifying her favorite works in the Vatican Museums.“Word of Mouth” from Fodors.com:Read what fellow travelers are saying about their favorite places to explore and unwind, featured throughout the book. Then, when you return from your trip, share your opinions on Fodors.com and they may get published in our 2008 edition!Make the most of your trip:Tip boxes throughout help save money, bypass lines, and avoid common travel pitfalls. "Eating Well" boxes in every chapter identify the pleasures of regional Italian cuisine. And the is brand new edition provides cultural background on Palladian villas, Mt. Etna, wine in the Piedmont Region, and even an emperor cheat sheet. Photos and Maps:Photographs, drawings, and interactive maps illustrate Italy's most popular attractions, from Venice's Grand Canal to Rome's Forum. Always Up-to-date:Fodor’s Italy guide is updated EVERY year–it’s the most accurate book available!Visit Fodors.com for travel bargains, information on local festivals, maps, vacation planning tips, more reviews and much more! And, to view more insider secrets, visit “Travel Talk” and “Rants and Raves” at Fodors.com/forums for more recommendations from travelers like yourself.

    It is the most exciting, authoritative and accessible work on world history available today. Its exciting visual narrative of the history of the world — from the origins of mankind to the 21st century — is an unrivalled accomplishment, and its over 600 maps and 300,000 words of text are now accompanied by internet links to allow further research.HUMAN ORIGINSFrom the hunters of the Stone Age to the spread of agriculture.THE FIRST CIVILIZATIONS 2500 BC TO 1000 BCMesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and the Aegean: the earliest cities and empires.THE CLASSICAL CIVILIZATIONS OF EURASIA 1000 BC TO AD 500The civilizations of Greece and Persia, India and China, the Roman empire; the collapse of the Ancient World.THEWORLD OF DIVIDED REGIONS AD 500 TO 1500The rise and expansion of Islam and the formation of modern Europe; the early civilizations of America.THEWORLD OF THE EMERGINGWEST 1500 TO 1815The European voyages of discovery; Mughal India, Ming China and the African empires; the apogee of Iran and Central Asia; the American and French revolutions.THE AGE OF EUROPEAN DOMINANCE 1815 TO 1914The rise of the great European empires; the expansion of Russia and Japan; the making of the United States; the First World War.THE AGE OF GLOBAL CIVILIZATIONFrom the Russian and Chinese revolutions to the Great Depression and the Second World War; superpower rivalry and the Cold War; the collapse of the Soviet Union.Professor Richard Overy is Professor of Modern European History at King's College London and one of Britain's foremost modern historians. He is a scholar of outstanding quality and renown. Richard Overy has written a number of critically acclaimed books. Russia's War (1998) examined the impact of the Second World War on the Soviet Union. He is also the author of the best-selling Battle (2000) an incisive study of the Battle of Britain and Interrogations: the Nazi elite in Allied Hands which brilliantly covers the Nuremberg trials and dissects the internal logic of the Nazi regime. He was consultant editor on The Times Atlas of the Second World War (1989) and general editor of The Times History of the 20th Century (1996). Richard Overy has acted as a consultant to the BBC, particularly on the German-Soviet War and on the Allied bombing of Germany, and is the co-author of The Road to Warr, which accompanied a BBC television series. He is a winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Prize by the Society for Military History for a lifetime's contribution to military history.

    Inside, scrolls were piled from floor to ceiling, undisturbed for a thousand years. The gem within was the Diamond Sutra of AD 868. This key Buddhist teaching, made 500 years before Gutenberg inked his press, is the world’s oldest printed book. The Silk Road once linked China with the Mediterranean. It conveyed merchants, pilgrims and ideas. But its cultures and oases were swallowed by shifting sands. Central to the Silk Road’s rediscovery was a man named Aurel Stein, a Hungarian-born scholar and archaeologist employed by the British service. Undaunted by the vast Gobi Desert, Stein crossed thousands of desolate miles with his fox terrier Dash. Stein met the Chinese monk and secured the Diamond Sutra and much more. The scroll’s journey—by camel through arid desert, by boat to London’s curious scholars, by train to evade the bombs of World War II—merges an explorer’s adventures, political intrigue, and continued controversy. The Diamond Sutra has inspired Jack Kerouac and the Dalai Lama. Its journey has coincided with the growing appeal of Buddhism in the West. As the Gutenberg Age cedes to the Google Age, the survival of the Silk Road’s greatest treasure is testament to the endurance of the written word.

    A reporter with a beautiful wife and talented son, Richey couldn’t imagine how it could be any better....Then his marriage falls apart and he can’t imagine how it could be any worse.The divorce leaves Richey questioning everything, while struggling to find a way forward. To get his bearings, he enters the first Ultimate Florida Challenge, an all-out twelve-hundred-mile kayak race around Florida.The UFC is less of a race than it is a dare or a threat. The thirty-day deadline sets a grueling, twenty-four-hour-a-day pace through shark- , alligator- , and even python-infested waters. But those twelve hundred miles are only a fraction of a journey that pulls Richey back to when he was embedded with troops in Iraq, reporting on missing children, and hiking the mountains of Montana with his son, and shows him where he went wrong, where he went right, and how to do it better the second time around.Warren Richey’s memoir Without a Paddle is a remarkable physical and emotional journey that cuts to the heart of what it means to be a man, a husband, and a father.

    As ordinary boomers, they simply wanted to experience “The Dream” – to live in Italy. They settled down in traditional Umbria, just east of Tuscany.Constrained by a strict budget, their experience took on challenges as diverse as getting accustomed to the vagaries of Italian appliances to gathering their own wood. Transportation was by train, bus, bicycle or footpath. What neither of them knew when they began was how the adventure would challenge their habits, upbringing, and outlook on life. Most surprising of all was how the experience would challenge their relationship to each other.A Footpath in Umbria is a celebration of the joys and revelations to be found by changing venues, whether it’s living in another country or simply venturing cross town.

    At nineteen, Jake Adelstein went to Japan in search of peace and tranquility. What he got was a life of crime . . . crime reporting, that is, at the prestigious Yomiuri Shinbun. For twelve years of eighty-hour workweeks, he covered the seedy side of Japan, where extortion, murder, human trafficking, and corruption are as familiar as ramen noodles and sake. But when his final scoop brought him face to face with Japan’s most infamous yakuza boss—and the threat of death for him and his family—Adelstein decided to step down . . . momentarily. Then, he fought back.In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein tells the riveting, often humorous tale of his journey from an inexperienced cub reporter—who made rookie mistakes like getting into a martial-arts battle with a senior editor—to a daring, investigative journalist with a price on his head. With its vivid, visceral descriptions of crime in Japan and an exploration of the world of modern-day yakuza that even few Japanese ever see, Tokyo Vice is a fascination, and an education, from first to last.

    The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout, The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.

    Kodikian freely admitted that he had stabbed Coughlin twice in the heart. Had there been a darker motive than mercy? And how could anyone, under any circumstances, kill his best friend?Armed with the journal Kodikian and Coughlin carried into Rattle- snake Canyon, Jason Kersten re-creates in riveting detail those fateful days that led to the killing in an infamously unforgiving wilderness.