All Aboard: The Complete North American Train Travel Guide


Jim Loomis - 1995
    Written both for veteran train travelers and those considering their first rail journey, it will make any trip smoother and more enjoyable with its insightful travel trips and information about how railroads operate. With trains attracting new riders in record numbers because of the economy, the price of gasoline, and the delays and crowding that are now the norm when traveling by air, the time is perfect for a new edition of All Aboard. Here you can learn how and why the first railroads came about, the building of America's trans-continental railroad, and how individual trains are operated. The author also offers advice that can only come from a veteran traveler: booking trips, finding the lowest fares, avoiding pitfalls, packing for an overnight trip, what to do on board, whom to tip and how much. All Aboard is the ultimate guide to American train travel and its unique history and culture.

New Orleans (DK Eyewitness Travel Guides)


Marilyn Wood - 2002
    DK's Eyewitness Travel Guides have increasingly become the most sought after guides by seasoned and novice travels alike. Featuring up-to-date information and spectacular 3-D aerial views -- all photographed in full-color -- each location is shown at its best. Recognized as the most unique and comprehensive travel guides on the market, Eyewitness Travel Guides create the new standard for travels. Every guide in the series is updated annually. 3-D aerial maps help you make the quickest journey from one place to the next. Red star sights help you get the most out of the shortest visit. Full-color photographs are taken specifically for each travel guide, and cut-away & floor plans present unique drawings of historic buildings and museums to show exactly where you are and what you see. All the sights in each area are described in depth with special keyed icons, and there's no need to buy an A-Z guide with our fully indexed street maps. Eat and shop with confidence with our reliable listings of hotels, restaurants, bars, and shops in all areas and at all prices. When it comes to entertainment, Eyewitness Travel Guides contains complete listings of theaters, music venues, cinemas, clubs, sports facilities, and activities for children. A special survival guide shows you how to use local currency, public transportation and telephones through pictures. Before your next trip, pick up one of our best-selling Eyewitness Travel Guides today!

Bess of Hardwick: First Lady of Chatsworth, 1527-1608


Mary S. Lovell - 2005
    Bess Hardwick, the fifth daughter of an impoverished Derbyshire nobleman, did not have an auspicious start in life. Widowed at sixteen, she nonetheless outlived four monarchs, married three more times, built the great house at Chatsworth, and died one of the wealthiest and most powerful women in English history.In 1527 England was in the throes of violent political upheaval as Henry VIII severed all links with Rome. His daughter, Queen Mary, was even more capricious and bloody, only to be followed by the indomitable and ruthless Gloriana, Elizabeth I. It could not have been more hazardous a period for an ambitious woman; by the time Bess's first child was six, three of her illustrious godparents had been beheaded.Using journals, letters, inventories, and account books, Mary S. Lovell tells the passionate, colorful story of an astonishingly accomplished woman, among whose descendants are counted the dukes of Devonshire, Rutland, and Portland, and, on the American side, Katharine Hepburn.

Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks


Keith Houston - 2013
    Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger (†)--which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible--or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (¶) and everyday (&).From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (‽) and as divisive as the dash (--). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life.

The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams


Philip Zaleski - 2015
    Tolkien and C. S. Lewis C.S. Lewis is the twentieth century’s most widely read Christian writer and J.R.R. Tolkien its most beloved mythmaker. For three decades, they and their closest associates formed a literary club known as the Inklings, which met weekly in Lewis’s Oxford rooms and in nearby pubs. They discussed literature, religion, and ideas; read aloud from works in progress; took philosophical rambles in woods and fields; gave one another companionship and criticism; and, in the process, rewrote the cultural history of modern times.In The Fellowship, Philip and Carol Zaleski offer the first complete rendering of the Inklings’ lives and works. C. S. Lewis accepts Jesus Christ while riding in the sidecar of his brother's motorcycle, maps the medieval and Renaissance mind, becomes a world-famous evangelist and moral satirist, and creates new forms of religiously attuned fiction while wrestling with personal crises. J.R.R. Tolkien transmutes an invented mythology into gripping story in The Lord of the Rings, while conducting groundbreaking Old English scholarship and elucidating, for family and friends, the Catholic teachings at the heart of his vision. Owen Barfield, a philosopher for whom language is the key to all mysteries, becomes Lewis's favorite sparring partner, and, for a time, Saul Bellow's chosen guru. And Charles Williams, poet, author of "supernatural shockers," and strange acolyte of romantic love, turns his everyday life into a mystical pageant.Romantics who scorned rebellion, fantasists who prized reality, wartime writers who believed in hope, Christians with cosmic reach, the Inklings sought to revitalize literature and faith in the twentieth century's darkest years--and did so in dazzling style.

The Trains Now Departed: Sixteen Excursions into the Lost Delights of Britain's Railways


Michael Williams - 2015
    Or a crumbling platform from some once-bustling junction buried under the buddleia. If you are lucky you might be able to follow some rusting tracks, or explore an old tunnel leading to…well, who knows where? Listen hard. Is that the wind in the undergrowth? Or the spectre of a train from a golden era of the past panting up the embankment?These are the ghosts of The Trains Now Departed. They are the railway lines, and services that ran on them that have disappeared and gone forever. Our lost legacy includes lines prematurely axed, often with a gripping and colourful tale of their own, as well as marvels of locomotive engineering sent to the scrapyard, and grand termini felled by the wrecker's ball. Then there are the lost delights of train travel, such as haute cuisine in the dining car, the grand expresses with their evocative names, and continental boat trains to romantic far-off places.The Trains Now Departed tells the stories of some of the most fascinating lost trains of Britain, vividly evoking the glories of a bygone age. In his personal odyssey around Britain Michael Williams tells the tales of the pioneers who built the tracks, the yarns of the men and women who operated them and the colourful trains that ran on them. It is a journey into the soul of our railways, summoning up a magic which, although mired in time, is fortunately not lost for ever.THIS EDITION REVISED AND UPDATED TO INCLUDE MAPS.

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science


Richard Holmes - 2008
    It has been inspired by the scientific ferment that swept through Britain at the end of the 18th century, and which Holmes now radically redefines as 'the revolution of Romantic Science'.

The End of America: The Role of Islam in the End Times and Biblical Warnings to Flee America


John Richard Price - 2009
    The book details 30 prophetic "mystery" clues identifying a rich, powerful and influential end times nation that will betray Israel and is therefore destroyed in one day/hour/moment. Radical Jihadists' plans to conquer the world for Allah by bringing "Death to America" are analyzed, comparing Muslim prophecies to Biblical last days verses. Prophecies warning God's people to flee from this "mystery" nation are studied in depth. WHEN should one flee? WHERE should God's people flee? THE END OF AMERICA lists nations that will be safe in the latter days, as Jihadists exert political and religious control across the globe. Also studied are the major world events that God's people should watch for, as Jesus advised. If you know in your spirit that America is in trouble, that national trends are just not right and that we are headed for a devastating future, this book may provide the answers from Biblical prophecy to confirm those leadings.

Eleven Minutes Late: A Train Journey to the Soul of Britain


Matthew Engel - 2009
    Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore—yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humor, capacity for suffering, and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has traveled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railway man, and—after a quest lasting decades—an individual pot of strawberry jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

America 24/7


Rick Smolan - 2003
    Showcasing the best photographs as documented by up to a million or more participants from across the United States, the publication of America 24/7 will coincide with network television specials, a DVD documentary, a traveling exhibition of photographs, and a compelling website. In addition to the 1,000+ top photojournalists being hired by the America 24/7 team, amateur photographers from across the country will be invited to submit their own digital photographs of American life via the project's website--america24-7.com. Participants across the United States will help to create a vivid panorama of modern American life capturing the myriad experiences that take place across the nation within a week. The creators of America 24/7 have several New York Times bestsellers to their credit, including A Day in the Life of America, A Day in the Life of the Soviet Union, and Christmas in America.

The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580


Eamon Duffy - 1992
    Eamon Duffy shows that late medieval Catholicism was neither decadent nor decayed, but was a strong and vigorous tradition, and that the Reformation represented a violent rupture from a popular and theologically respectable religious system. For this edition, Duffy has written a new Preface reflecting on recent developments in our understanding of the period.From reviews of the first edition:“A magnificent scholarly achievement [and] a compelling read.”—Patricia Morrison, Financial Times“Deeply imaginative, movingly written, and splendidly illustrated. . . . Duffy’s analysis . . . carries conviction.”—Maurice Keen, New York Review of Books“This book will afford enjoyment and enlightenment to layman and specialist alike.”—Peter Heath, Times Literary Supplement“[An] astonishing and magnificent piece of work.”—Edward T. Oakes, Commonweal

The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution


Christopher Hill - 1972
    Its success "might have established communal property, a far wider democracy in political and legal institutions, might have disestablished the state church and rejected the protestant ethic." In The World Turned Upside Down, Christopher Hill studies the beliefs of such radical groups as the Diggers, the Ranters, the Levellers and others, and the social and emotional impulses that gave rise to them. The relations between rich and poor classes, the part played by wandering 'masterless men,' the outbursts of sexual freedom and deliberate blasphemy, the great imaginative creations of Milton and Bunyan - these and many other elements build up into a marvellously detailed and coherent portrait of this strange, sudden effusion of revolutionary beliefs. It is a portrait not of the bourgeois revolution that actually took place, but of the impulse towards a far more fundamental overturning of society."Incorporates some of Dr. Hill's most profound statements yet about the 17th-century revolution as a whole." -- The Economist

Landmarks


Robert Macfarlane - 2015
    Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it.

Stories Behind the Best-Loved Songs of Christmas


Ace Collins - 2001
    Taking you inside the nativity of over thirty favorite songs and carols, Ace Collins introduces you to people you’ve never met, stories you’ve never heard, and meanings you’d never have imagined. The next time you and your family sing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," you’ll have a new understanding of its message and popular roots. You’ll discover how "Angels from the Realms of Glory," with its sublime lyrics and profound theology, helped usher in a quiet revolution in worship. You’ll learn the strange history of the haunting and powerful "O Holy Night," including the song’s surprising place in the history of modern communications. And you’ll step inside the life of Mark Lowry and find out how he came to pen the words to the contemporary classic "Mary, Did You Know?" Still other songs such as "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" trace back to mysterious origins--to ninth-century monks, nameless clergy, and unknown commoners of ages past. Joining hands with such modern favorites as "White Christmas" and "The Christmas Song," they are part of the legacy of inspiration, faith, tears, love, and spiritual joy that is Christmas. From the rollicking appeal of "Jingle Bells" to the tranquil beauty of "Silent Night," the great songs of Christmas contain messages of peace, hope, and truth. Each in its own way expresses a facet of God’s heart and celebrates the birth of his greatest gift to the world--Jesus, the most wonderful Christmas Song of all.

Nikon D3100: From Snapshots to Great Shots


Jeff Revell - 2010
    A guide to the Nikon D3100 camera provides information on the camera's scene modes, composition, focus, lighting, and composition to take successful portraits and sports and landscape photographs.