I Wouldn't Start From Here is his random history of the 21st century so far, and all its attendant absurdities, intermittent horrors and occasional glimmers of hope. It features gunfights, car chases and gaol cells, any number of exotic locations, and a cast which includes revolutionaries, rock stars, politicians, hitmen, warmongers and peacemakers.Whether ducking for cover in Gaza, running roadblocks in Iraq, attempting to have fun in Luxembourg, or trying to buy Colonel Gadaffi T-shirts in Tripoli, Mueller is a man in search of an answer to perhaps the crucial question of our time: "What is it with these people?""Mueller's prose is as spectacular as a Taliban attack on Lollapalooza" (PJ O'Rourke)

    Part of the Weird US series, this title talks about the strange things to see in California, from the Pitch Monster of La Brea to the ghost of Elvis (yes, he really is dead), and from the biggest pineapple in the world to the smallest museum in America.

    In the seventeenth century, what is now America's most beguiling metropolis was nothing more than a swamp: prone to flooding, infested with snakes, battered by hurricanes. But through the intense imperial rivalries of Spain, France, and England, and the ambitious, entrepreneurial merchants and settlers from four continents who risked their lives to succeed in colonial America, this unpromising site became a crossroads for the whole Atlantic world.Lawrence N. Powell, a decades-long resident and observer of New Orleans, gives us the full sweep of the city's history from its founding through Louisiana statehood in 1812. We see the Crescent City evolve from a French village, to an African market town, to a Spanish fortress, and finally to an Anglo-American center of trade and commerce. We hear and feel the mix of peoples, religions, and languages from four continents that make the place electric-and always on the verge of unraveling. The Accidental City is the story of land-jobbing schemes, stock market crashes, and nonstop squabbles over status, power, and position, with enough rogues, smugglers, and self-fashioners to fill a picaresque novel.Powell's tale underscores the fluidity and contingency of the past, revealing a place where people made their own history. This is a city, and a history, marked by challenges and perpetual shifts in shape and direction, like the sinuous river on which it is perched.

    But for Wylie, the gentle, cropped eared ball of fur, miracles seemed to happen quite regularly. Beaten and abused at the hands of uncaring humans, Wylie suffered terrible injuries that needed urgent treatment. Rescued close to death, with hacked off ears and a severed tail, he was attended to by soldiers who feared he would not last the night. Astonishingly he did, only to return days later with new injuries. However a lifeline came when he was handed over to animal welfare Charity Nowzad and flown to Britain in the hope of finding a new life. But would anyone take a chance on a seemingly undomesticated stray? Luckily for Wylie his biggest adventure yet was about to begin...

    Food is scarce, so when the boy's father brings home a map instead of bread for supper, at first the boy is furious. But when the map is hung on the wall, it floods their cheerless room with color. As the boy studies its every detail, he is transported to exotic places without ever leaving the room, and he eventually comes to realize that the map feeds him in a way that bread never could.The award-winning artist's most personal work to date is based on his childhood memories of World War II and features stunning illustrations that celebrate the power of imagination. An author's note includes a brief description of his family's experience, two of his early drawings, and the only surviving photograph of himself from that time.How I Learned Geography is a 2009 Caldecott Honor Book and a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.

    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

    But for all the words and pictures, the real story was not told until Peter Collier and David Horowitz spent years researching archives and interviewing both family members and hundreds of people close to the Kennedys. An immediate classic, "The Kennedys" combines intimate knowledge with a perspective free of obligations to family loyalties and myths, bringing the story of four generations of "America's family" fully into view. Collier and Horowitz capture the strain of ambition; the dynastic ebb and flow; the invention of a mythic identity; the corrosive underside of the dream of Camelot--developed over four generations--that led one young Kennedy to say, "We broke the rules and in turn we were broken by them." "The Kennedys: An American Drama" is a fascinating and brilliantly comprehensive history that brings together, for the first time, all the complex strains of the story of the Kennedys' rise and fall. The authors have added new material showing the effect of the death of John F. Kennedy Jr., and the other family tragedies of the last few years, on the Kennedys and their mythic role in American life.

    Taken from his earliest journals, this book records Muir's walk in 1867 from Indiana across Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to the Gulf Coast. In his distinct and wonderful style, Muir shows us the wilderness, as well as the towns and people, of the South immediately after the Civil War.

    When the Romans conquered Egypt, it was really Egypt that conquered the Romans. Cleopatra captivated both Caesar and Marc Antony and soon Roman ladies were worshipping Isis and wearing vials of Nile water around their necks. What is it about ancient Egypt that breeds such obsession and imitation? Egyptomania explores the burning fascination with all things Egyptian and the events that fanned the flames--from ancient times, to Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign, to the Discovery of Tutankhamen’s tomb by Howard Carter in the 1920s. For forty years, Bob Brier, one of the world’s foremost Egyptologists, has been amassing one of the largest collections of Egyptian memorabilia and seeking to understand the pull of Ancient Egypt on our world today. In this original and groundbreaking book, with twenty-four pages of color photos from the author's collection, he explores our three-thousand-year-old fixation with recovering Egyptian culture and its meaning. He traces our enthrallment with the mummies that seem to have cheated death and the pyramids that as if they will last forever. Drawing on his personal collection--from Napoleon's twenty volume Egypt encyclopedia to Howard Carter’s letters to an actual mummy--this is an inventive and mesmerizing tour of how an ancient civilization endures in ours today.

    It brings together leading avant-garde composers of the early postwar period such as Elliot Carter, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen; pioneers of electroacoustic music such as Francois Bayle, Pauline Oliveros, Iannis Xenakis and Peter Zinovieff; minimalist and Fluxus-inspired artist-musicians such as Tony Conrad, Henry Flynt, Phil Niblock, Yoko Ono, Steve Reich and Terry Riley; and figures that have moved between classical/experimental realms and more pop terrain, such as Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, Howie B., Arto Lindsay and Caetano Veloso. Obrist's interviews map the evolution of the new music in Europe and America across all of its genres, from musique concrete to the recent hybridizations between pop and avant-garde, as techniques from both realms cross-pollinate. A Brief History of New Music is an ideal introduction to the experimental and new classical music of the past half-century.

    That collaboration would mark the dawn of modern science . . . and end in murder.Johannes Kepler changed forever our understanding of the universe with his three laws of planetary motion. He demolished the ancient model of planets moving in circular orbits and laid the foundation for the universal law of gravitation, setting physics on the course of revelation it follows to this day. Kepler was one of the greatest astronomers of all time. Yet if it hadn't been for the now lesser-known Tycho Brahe, the man for whom Kepler apprenticed, Kepler would be a mere footnote in today's science books. Brahe was the Imperial Mathematician at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor in Prague and the most famous astronomer of his era. He was one of the first great systematic empirical scientists and one of the earliest founders of the modern scientific method. His forty years of planetary observations—an unparalleled treasure of empirical data—contained the key to Kepler's historic breakthrough. But those observations would become available to Kepler only after Brahe's death. This groundbreaking history portrays the turbulent collaboration between these two astronomers at the turn of the seventeenth century and their shattering discoveries that would mark the transition from medieval to modern science. But that is only half the story. Based on recent forensic evidence (analyzed here for the first time) and original research into medieval and Renaissance alchemy—all buttressed by in-depth interviews with leading historians, scientists, and medical specialists—the authors have put together shocking and compelling evidence that Tycho Brahe did not die of natural causes, as has been believed for four hundred years. He was systematically poisoned—most likely by his assistant, Johannes Kepler. An epic tale of murder and scientific discovery, Heavenly Intrigue reveals the dark side of one of history’s most brilliant minds and tells the story of court politics, personal intrigue, and superstition that surrounded the protean invention of two great astronomers and their quest to find truth and beauty in the heavens above.

    The orthodox view is that the author of the works of Shakespeare was, of course, the actor and businessman of Statford-upon-Avon. But the known facts about this man are surprisingly meager and contrast puzzlingly with the learned, courtly philosopher revealed in the sonnets and plays--the universal genius and supreme stylist. John Michell's witty investigation of the theories and claims reads like a series of detective stories. By the end of the book even the most faithful disciples of the Bard will find themselves asking, "Who Wrote Shakespeare?"

    Understanding its origin and development through the experiences of Wilford Woodruff will answer questions posed by individuals inside and outside of the Church. What is the relationship of temple ordinances and Old Testament rituals? Why have some ordinances been discontinued? Why did married women choose to be sealed to Joseph Smith? What is priesthood adoption? When were proxy ordinances introduced?Many books and articles address a specific temple ordinance or a period of time in Mormon history, but the development of all temple ordinances has never been included in a single volume - until now.Jennifer Mackley's meticulously researched biographical narrative chronicles the development of temple doctrine through the examination of Wilford Woodruff's personal life. The account unfolds in Woodruff's own words, drawn from primary sources including journals, discourses, and letters. Mackley elucidates the doctrine's sixty-year progression from Old Testament practices of washings and anointings in the 1830s, to the endowment, sealings, and priesthood adoptions in the 1840s, through all of the vicarious ordinances for the dead in the 1870s, to the sealing of multigenerational families in the 1890s. Her narrative is enhanced by 120 archival images (some previously unpublished), as well as extensive footnotes and citations for the reader's further study. More information can be found at www.wilfordwoodruff.info.

    Contains more than 400 letters and poems written to family, creditors, debtors, and bankers.

    In 1612, Mogul emperor Shah Jahan married Mumtaz Mahal. It had been love at first sight and for nineteen years they were so inseparable that Mumtaz even accompanied Shah Jahan to battlefields. When she died suddenly giving birth to their fourteenth child, the emperor set about building a magnificent memorial to his wife. Everything about the Taj was perfectly planned, from the white marble walls that shimmer in the sunlight and sparkle by moonlight, to the countless decorative flowers made from precious gems that still astound visitors today. Recent discoveries at the site make this a timely account of a timeless monument.