Join Susan as she recounts her lighthearted ramble of discovery through the historical homes and gardens of art and literary heroes, along ancient footpaths, through wildflower meadows and fields of lambs, into tea rooms, pubs and antique stores. This lovely hard-cover book includes hundreds of photographs and a red ribbon sewn-in book mark. A Fine Romance is a work of art, part love story, part travel guide and all dream come true.

    Here you will find Shangri-La and El Dorado; Utopia and Middle Earth; Wonderland and Freedonia. Here too are Jurassic Park, Salman Rushdie's Sea of Stories, and the fabulous world of Harry Potter. The history and behavior of the inhabitants of these lands are described in loving detail, and are supplemented by more than 200 maps and illustrations that depict the lay of the land in a host of elsewheres. A must-have for the library of every dedicated reader, fantasy fan, or passionate browser, Dictionary is a witty and acute guide for any armchair traveler's journey into the landscape of the imagination.

    When Michael Crichton -- a Harvard-trained physician, bestselling novelist, and successful movie director -- began to feel isolated in his own life, he decided to widen his horizons. He tracked wild animals in the jungles of Rwanda. He climbed Kilimanjaro and Mayan pyramids. He trekked across a landslide in Pakistan. He swam amid sharks in Tahiti. Fueled by a powerful curiosity and the need to see, feel, and hear firsthand and close-up, Michael Crichton has experienced adventures as compelling as those he created in his books and films. These adventures -- both physical and spiritual -- are recorded here in Travels, Crichton's most astonishing and personal work.

    Your niece swears that no one expects thank-you letters anymore. Your father-in-law insists that married women have to take their husbands' names. Your guests plead that asking them to commit themselves to attending your party ruins the spontaneity. Who is right? Miss Manners, of course. With all those amateurs issuing unauthorized etiquette pronouncements, aren't you glad that there is a gold standard to consult about what has really changed and what has not? The freshly updated version of the classic bestseller includes the latest letters, essays, and illustrations, along with the laugh-out-loud wisdom of Miss Manners as she meets the new millennium of American misbehavior head-on. This wickedly witty guide rules on the challenges brought about by our ever-evolving society, once again proving that etiquette, far from being an optional extra, is the essential currency of a civilized world.

    Now, in his first Italian travelogue in a decade, he delivers a charming and funny portrait of Italian ways by riding its trains from Verona to Milan, Rome to Palermo, and right down to the heel of Italy.Parks begins as any traveler might: "A train is a train is a train, isn’t it?" But soon he turns his novelist’s eye to the details, and as he journeys through majestic Milano Centrale station or on the newest high-speed rail line, he delivers a uniquely insightful portrait of Italy. Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians—conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants—Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive: an obsession with speed but an acceptance of slower, older ways; a blind eye toward brutal architecture amid grand monuments; and an undying love of a good argument and the perfect cappuccino.Italian Ways also explores how trains helped build Italy and how their development reflects Italians’ sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond. Most of all, Italian Ways is an entertaining attempt to capture the essence of modern Italy. As Parks writes, "To see the country by train is to consider the crux of the essential Italian dilemma: Is Italy part of the modern world, or not?"

    Dozens of Top 10 lists provide vital information on each destination, as well as insider tips, from avoiding the crowds to finding out the freebies, The DK Top 10 Guides take the work out of planning any trip.

    Schott's Original Miscellany

    Driving the car is Michael Paterniti, a young journalist from Maine. Sitting next to him is an eighty-four-year-old pathologist named Thomas Harvey who performed the autopsy on Einstein in 1955--and simply removed the brain and took it home. And kept it for over forty years.On a cold February day, the two men and the brain leave New Jersey and light out on I-70 for sunny California, where Einstein's perplexed granddaughter, Evelyn, awaits. And riding along as the imaginary fourth passenger is Einstein himself, an id-driven genius, the original galactic slacker with his head in the stars.Part travelogue, part memoir, part history, part biography, and part meditation, Driving Mr. Albert is one of the most unique road trips in modern literature. With the brain as both cargo and talisman, Paterniti perceives every motel, truck-stop diner, and roadside attraction as a weigh station for the American dream in the wake of the scientist's mind-blowing legacy. Finally, inspired by the man who gave a skeptical world a glimpse of its cosmic origins, this extraordinary writer weaves his own unified field theory of time, love, and the power to believe, once again, in eternity.

    More than half the world's population now lives in cities, and for travelers they hold an endless fascination.

    Features: Over 900 new recipes -- 1,200 in all-reflect current eating habits and lifestyles; 500 new photographs -- over 700 in all-including 60 percent more of finished food than the last edition; Dozens of new recipes offer ethnic flavours, fresh ingredients, or vegetarian appeal; Many recipes feature make-ahead directions or quick-to-the-table meals; New chapter provides recipes for crockery cookers; Efficient, easy-to-read format, with recipes categorised into 21 chapters, each thoroughly indexed for easy reference; Expanded chapter on cooking basics includes advice on food safety, menu planning, table setting, and make-ahead cooking, plus a thorough glossary on ingredients and techniques; Appliance-friendly recipes help cooks save time and creatively use new kitchen tools; Nutrition information with each recipe, plus diabetic exchanges; Contemporary food photography attracts browsers and helps cooks discover new recipes to make; Icons identify low-fat, no-fat, fast, and best-loved recipes; Every recipe tested and perfected by the Better Homes and Gardens Test Kitchen; Revised and updated cooking charts, ingredient photos, emergency substitutions, and equivalents; Respected, reliable kitchen reference with hundreds of cooking terms, tips, and techniques.

    With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow. Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don’t leave home without it.

    Packed with the same reliable information and breathtaking color photography as our DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, DK Eyewitness Travel Top 10 Guides are fully illustrated, pocket-sized travel guides, with handy pull-out maps marking all the major sights.

    The brilliant and uproarious #15 bestseller (i.e., a runaway phenomenon in its own right-no, seriously) - a lavish compendium of handy reference tables, fascinating trivia, and sage wisdom - all of it completely unresearched, completely undocumented and (presumably) completely untrue, fabricated by the illuminating, prodigious imagination of John Hodgman, certifiable genius.

    As Bravo's style mentor and Chair of the Fashion Design Department at Parsons The New School for Design, Tim delivers advice in a frank, witty, and authoritative manner that delights audiences.Now readers can benefit from Tim's considerable fashion wisdom in Tim Gunn: A Guide to Quality, Taste & Style. He discusses every aspect of creating and maintaining your personal style: how to dress for various occasions, how to shop (from designer to chain to vintage stores), how to pick a fashion mentor, how to improve your posture, find the perfect fit, and more. He'll challenge every reader-whether a seasoned fashionista or a style neophyte-to "make it work!"

    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.