In Another Quiet American, he takes you through the corridors of power and the living rooms of the poor in Laos. You'll meet his boss, a wealthy general whose power and reputation scares his countrymen; a prince with connections to the French colonial past; an American pilot who left home for Indochina during the war and never returned; and, rich Lao twenty-somethings who have all the money they could want, but no happiness. Dakin provides a sympathetic yet irreverent glimpse into life in one of the world's few remaining communist nations, questioning the US's influence on the country and embarking on the soul-searching identity quest of an American abroad.

    However, its troubles only served to increase the interest of Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher, who was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition — but travelling alone.Despite warnings Butcher spent years poring over colonial-era maps and wooing rebel leaders before making his will and venturing to the Congo’s eastern border. He passed through once thriving cities of this country and saw the marks left behind by years of abuse and misrule. Almost, 2,500 harrowing miles later, he reached the Atlantic Ocean, a thinner and a wiser man.Butcher’s journey was a remarkable feat. But the story of the Congo, vividly told in Blood River, is more remarkable still.From the Hardcover edition.

    Take a series of ships of different sizes and kinds, go where they lead and see what happens. Inspired by great sea writers like Jack London, Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad, Gavin Young decided he would port-hop to some far destination on the other side of the world. The end of the line would be China."With its magical evocation of the past and the present, of far-off lands and people, vivid skies and bizarre flora and fauna, SLOW BOATS TO CHINA is compulsively readable and a travel book of rare distinction." (Publisher's Source)

    Poring over a map of the world at home one quiet Saturday afternoon, Ewan McGregor - actor and self-confessed bike nut - noticed that it was possible to ride all the way round the world, with just one short hop across the Bering Strait from Russia to Alaska. It was a revelation he couldn't get out of his head. So he picked up the phone and called Charley Boorman, his best friend, fellow actor and bike enthusiast. 'Charley, ' he said. 'I think you ought to come over for dinner...'From London to New York, Ewan and Charley chased their shadows through Europe, the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mongolia and Russia, across the Pacific to Alaska, then down through Canada and America. But as the miles slipped beneath the tyres of their big BMWs, their troubles started. Exhaustion, injury and accidents tested their strength. Treacherous roads, unpredictable weather and turbulent politics challenged their stamina. They were chased by paparazzi in Kazakhstan, courted by men with very large guns in the Ukraine, hassled by the police, and given bulls' testicles for supper by Mongolian nomads.And yet despite all these obstacles they managed to ride over 20,000 miles in four months, changing their lives forever in the process. As they travelled they documented their trip, taking photographs, and writing diaries by the campfire. "Long Way Round" is the result of their adventures - a fascinating, frank and highly entertaining travel book about two friends riding round the world together and, against all the odds, realising their dream.

    Starting with a tour of Mediterranean pleasure dens, Waugh pushes on to Abyssinia (where he reports indelibly on the coronation of Haile Selassie), across the continent of South Africa, to the wilds of Brazil and British Guiana, and back to Abyssinia in the wake of the Italian invasion.

    Set against the dramatic scenery of the Himalaya, this beautiful memoir reveals hardships and happiness in a land almost untouched by the West. When Britta, a young physiotherapist, goes to work in a remote village hospital, her good intentions are put to the test amid monsoons, fleas and shocking conditions. But as she visits homes in the mountains and learns the mysteries of tantric Buddhism, the country casts its enduring spell. Gaining insights into the traditions of this mystical kingdom, she makes friends and falls in love. Bhutan will change her life forever.

    The Roads to Sata is his wry, witty, inimitable account of that prodigious trek.Although he was a city person--he was brought up in London and spent most of his adult life in Tokyo--Booth had an extraordinary ability to capture the feel of rural Japan in his writing. Throughout his long and arduous trek, he encountered a variety of people who inhabit the Japanese countryside--from fishermen and soldiers, to bar hostesses and school teachers, to hermits, drunks, and tramps. His wonderful and often hilarious descriptions of these encounters are the highlights of these pages, painting a multifaceted picture of Japan from the perspective of an outsider, but with the knowledge of an insider.The Roads to Sata is travel writing at its best, illuminating and disarming, poignant yet hilarious, critical but respectful. Traveling across Japan with Alan Booth, readers will enjoy the wit and insight of a uniquely perceptive guide, and more importantly, they will discover a new face of an often misunderstood nation.

    The following winter, her dismembered remains were found buried in a seaside cave. The seven months in between had seen a massive search for the missing girl, involving Japanese policemen; British private detectives; Australian dowsers; and Lucie's desperate, but bitterly divided, parents. As the case unfolded, it drew the attention of prime ministers and sado-masochists, ambassadors and con-men, and reporters from across the world. Had Lucie been abducted by a religious cult, or snatched by human traffickers? Who was the mysterious man she had gone to meet? And what did her work, as a "hostess" in the notorious Roppongi district of Tokyo, really involve?Richard Lloyd Parry, an award-winning foreign correspondent, followed the case since Lucie's disappearance. Over the course of a decade, he traveled to four continents to interview those caught up in the story, fought off a legal attack in the Japanese courts, and worked undercover as a bartender in a Roppongi strip club. He talked exhaustively with Lucie's friends and family and won unique access to the Japanese detectives who investigated the case. And he delved into the mind and background of the man accused of the crime--Joji Obara, described by the judge as "unprecedented and extremely evil." With the finesse of a novelist, he reveals the astonishing truth about Lucie and her fate. People Who Eat Darkness is, by turns, a non-fiction thriller, a courtroom drama, and the biography of both a victim and a killer. It is the story of a young woman who fell prey to unspeakable evil, and of a loving family torn apart by grief. And it is a fascinating insight into one of the world's most baffling and mysterious societies, a light shone into dark corners of Japan that the rest of the world has never glimpsed before.

    Since her father was a Church of England priest the family moved many times during her childhood. Bird traveled to Colorado when she heard the air was very healthy. She covered the 800 miles on horseback riding like a man and not sidesaddle. Among The Tibetans begins "The Vale of Kashmir is too well known to require description. It is the 'happy hunting-ground' of the Anglo-Indian sportsman and tourist, the resort of artists and invalids, the home of pashm shawls and exquisitely embroidered fabrics, and the land of Lalla Rookh. Its inhabitants, chiefly Moslems, infamously governed by Hindus, are a feeble race, attracting little interest, valuable to travellers as 'coolies' or porters, and repulsive to them from the mingled cunning and obsequiousness which have been fostered by ages of oppression. But even for them there is the dawn of hope, for the Church Missionary Society has a strong medical and educational mission at the capital, a hospital and dispensary under the charge of a lady M.D. have been opened for women, and a capable and upright 'settlement officer, ' lent by the Indian Government, is investigating the iniquitous land arrangements with a view to a just settlement."

    as soon as possible." With over 300 ethnic groups spread across over 13,500 islands, the world’s fourth most populous nation has been working on that "etc." ever since. Author Elizabeth Pisani traveled 26,000 miles in search of the links that bind this disparate nation.

    When she set out in 1991, Victoria, already a grandmother of two, had been kayaking for only a year and was still recovering from the second of two strokes.Her 7,500 km journey lasted four years. In the first year Fred dropped out due to an injury, and Victoria suffered serious internal bleeding ulcers. The second year Victoria and Don reached Gjoa Haven together, but Victoria was forced to drop out there, suffering from edema (muscle breakdown) caused by excessive fatigue. Don continued alone, and almost died from severe frostbite before being rescued by authorities just 46 miles short of Tuktoyaktuk.Not content with failure, Victoria returned to the North the following two years and completed her triumphant journey alone from west to east, paddling from Fort Providence on the Mackenzie River to Paulatuk in 1993, and from Paulatuk to Gjoa Haven in 1994.Among the Inuit people she became known as the Kabloona (the Inuktitut word for stranger) in the Yellow Kayak.

    Everest, Sherpa Tenzing Norgay was at his side. Indeed, for as long as Westerners have been climbing the Himalaya, Sherpas have been the unsung heroes in the background. In August 2008, when eleven climbers lost their lives on K2, the world’s most dangerous peak, two Sherpas survived. They had emerged from poverty and political turmoil to become two of the most skillful mountaineers on earth. Based on unprecedented access and interviews, Buried in the Sky reveals their astonishing story for the first time.Peter Zuckerman and Amanda Padoan explore the intersecting lives of Chhiring Dorje Sherpa and Pasang Lama, following them from their villages high in the Himalaya to the slums of Kathmandu, across the glaciers of Pakistan to K2 Base Camp. When disaster strikes in the Death Zone, Chhiring finds Pasang stranded on an ice wall, without an axe, waiting to die. The rescue that follows has become the stuff of mountaineering legend.At once a gripping, white-knuckled adventure and a rich exploration of Sherpa customs and culture, Buried in the Sky re-creates one of the most dramatic catastrophes in alpine history from a fascinating new perspective.

    The dogs were gone. Now Mawson himself plunged through a snow bridge, dangling over an abyss by the sledge harness. A line of poetry gave him the will to haul himself back to the surface.Mawson was sometimes reduced to crawling, and one night he discovered that the soles of his feet had completely detached from the flesh beneath. On February 8, when he staggered back to base, his features unrecognizably skeletal, the first teammate to reach him blurted out, “Which one are you?”This thrilling and almost unbelievable account establishes Mawson in his rightful place as one of the greatest polar explorers and expedition leaders. It is illustrated by a trove of Frank Hurley’s famous Antarctic photographs, many never before published in the United States.

    From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills" - sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history.Part memoir, part history, part detective story, The White Road chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls The Hare with Amber Eyes, de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.

    With warmth and candor, Bruce Feiler recounts the year he spent as a teacher in a small rural town. Beginning with a ritual outdoor bath and culminating in an all-night trek to the top of Mt. Fuji, Feiler teaches his students about American culture, while they teach him everything from how to properly address an envelope to how to date a Japanese girl.