Book picks similar to
The Back of Beyond: Travels to the Wild Places of the Earth by David Yeadon
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Cold Case Confession: Unravelling the Betty Ketani Murder
Alex Eliseev - 2016
The chilling words are followed by a confession to a murder committed nearly 13 years earlier. The chance discovery of the letter on 31 March 2012 reawakens a case long considered to have run cold, and a hunt begins for the men who kidnapped and killed Betty Ketani – and were convinced they had gotten away with it. The investigation spans five countries, with a world-renowned DNA laboratory called in to help solve the forensic puzzle. The author of the confession letter might have feared death, but he is very much alive, as are others implicated in the crime.Betty Ketani, a mother of three, came to Johannesburg in search of better prospects for her family. She found work cooking at one of the city’s most popular restaurants, and then one day she mysteriously disappeared. Those out to avenge her death want to bring closure to Betty’s family, still agonising over her fate all these years later.The storyline would not be out of place as a Hollywood movie – and it’s all completely true. Written by the reporter who broke the story, Cold Case Confession goes behind the headlines to share exclusive material gathered in four years of investigations, including the most elusive piece of the puzzle: who would want Betty Ketani dead, and why?‘Wonderful, evocative and vivid writing. Eliseev is a very exciting new talent.’ – Peter James‘This case is like an Agatha Christie whodunnit: abduction, murder and a confession.’ – Carte Blanche‘A relentless search for truth and justice. Cold Case Confession is a story that inspires confidence in the system and affirms that, indeed, we are all equal before the law.’ – Thuli Madonsela
INDIA ADVENTURE STORIES VOLUME ONE
Patrick Griffith - 2013
This does not include scavenging. Although human beings can be attacked by many kinds of animals, man-eaters are those that have incorporated human flesh into their usual diet. Most reported cases of man-eaters have involved tigers, leopards, lions and crocodiles. However, they are by no means the only predators that will attack humans if given the chance; a wide variety of species have also been known to take humans as prey. ATTACKED BY A KING COBRA.ALADDIN'S CAVE.THE TERROR OF HUNSUR.THE TERROR OF HUNSUR II.AN ADVENTURE WITH A BOA.THE ONE EYED MAN EATER.A MAN EATING WOLF BOY.SEEALL, THE WOLF BOY.THE WHITE TIGER.THE FATE OF THE AHNAY PAYEE.THE BANDYPORE MAN EATER.THE KODERMA MAN EATER.TRAPPING A MAN EATER.THE MAN EATER OF BELKHERA.A NOTORIOUS MAN EATER.TUG OF-WAR WITH A LEOPARD.MISSED BY AN INCH.A FIGHTING TIGER.A NIGHT FRIGHT.CARRIED OFF BY A TIGER.
What Now, Lieutenant?
Robert Babcock - 2011
Such is this work by Bob Babcock. What makes this work unique is that it is based upon his wartime writing as it occurred, without the softening of time and the refining of modern memory applied to past experience. In it you will find the thinking of a young officer as he struggles to take in all that he is responsible for while experiencing everything himself for the first time. It is an honest, unvarnished look at Soldiering in 1966-1967 and is as fine an example of the early American experience in Vietnam that one is likely to come across...” The personal account of Bob Babcock’s experiences as a platoon leader and executive officer with Bravo Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Infantry Regiment, 4th Infantry Division in Vietnam in 1966 and 1967.
Old Maine Woman: Stories from the Coast to the County
Glenna Johnson Smith - 2010
The book also includes some of her best fiction pieces.
Twenty Chickens for a Saddle
Robyn Scott - 2008
At first she thinks her parents don't have the best ideas, but soon she begins to realize the importance of her father's work. Botswana has the highest rate of HIV infection in the world, but still no one wants to talk about it and, for once, Scott is proud that her parents are willing to be unconventional.
Warriors: Life and Death Among the Somalis
Gerald Hanley - 1993
A grueling description of a little-known aspect of WWII, Warriors describes a group of British Army soldiers charged with preventing bloodshed between feuding tribes at a remote outstation in Somalia. Hanley turns this period of his life, a difficult time that drove seven officers to suicide, into a devastating critique of imperialism.
A Wild Idea: The True Story of Douglas Tompkins—The Greatest Conservationist (You've Never Heard Of)
Jonathan Franklin - 2021
Over the next twenty-five years, Tompkins built these modest shops into 2 of the world’s most beloved brands. Esprit became the envy of retail, upending the way fashion apparel is produced, marketed, and sold. Breaking from traditional corporate leadership, Tompkins practiced what he called, “management by absence,” calling into the office four to six months a year from Tibet, the Swiss Alps, Siberia, and other remote locations where he could kayak, ski, trek across a glacier, or climb mountains. Successfully summiting the peaks of capitalism, Tompkins realized he had climbed the wrong mountain. Determined to make a change, he sold his company and flew 6,400 miles south to Patagonia to live amid the wild beauty in a shack he dubbed “The Hobbit House.” From there Tompkins launched an unprecedented conservation campaign to create a National Parks system—a 12-million-acre swath of protected land stretching from Patagonia to Tierra del Fuego—and prevent the destruction of South American ecosystems. But the battle wasn’t easy. Opposed by anti-environmental forces, including the Chilean military and Catholic Church, Tompkins waged a multi-million-dollar Monkey Wrench-style guerrilla campaign targeting national and international companies devastating the environment for profit. Though Tompkins died in a kayaking accident in 2015, his legacy endures. In addition to his conservation victories, Tompkins also inspired a new generation of environmentalists and conservationists who continue the fight. A tale of determination, innovation, and triumph, illustrated with black-and-white photographs throughout, A Wild Idea is a celebration of a complicated and often contradictory man, a stern taskmaster who obsessed over detail yet often ignored his children; a multi-millionaire who preferred to sleep on a couch; an environmentalist who drove a red Ferrari; and a visionary who pursued his dreams, abandoned them, then chased new ones, becoming among most notable conservationists of his time.
Three Men In A Raft: An Improbable Journey Down The Amazon
Ben Kozel - 2002
It was a journey that would take him from the ultimate source of the Amazon high in the Andes to its mouth on the Atlantic coast of South America - a distance of over 7000 kilometres along the length of the world's wildest river.The journey from source to sea had only ever been completed by two expeditions, both of them assisted by first-class training, state-of-the-art equipment and major budgets. Ben, the Australian on the team, Colin Angus from Canada and Scott Borthwick from South Africa - all in their mid-twenties - were attempting the epic journey with fifteen thousand Australian dollars between them, some second-hand camping gear, a grand total of five afternoons' training in whitewater rafting and a large dose of blind optimism.Five months later they arrived at the Atlantic Ocean, having survived some of the planet's most dangerous whitewater, wild storms, disgusting tropical diseases, several hundred species of venomous insects and reptiles, not to mention being pursued and shot at by guerrillas from Peru's murderous Shining Path rebel movement and mistaken by paramilitary police for drug smugglers.Three Men in a Raft is the account of their extraordinary journey. It's both a travel book and an adventure story, laced with humour, danger and vivid description - unlikely, endearing and enthralling.
In Search Of Robinson Crusoe
Tim Severin - 2001
In this book, Tim Severin adds this enterprising hero to the roster of legendary figures whose adventures he's replicated and whose origins he's explored. With the signature approach to literary and historical sleuthing that has led the New York Times to describe him as "original, audacious, and exuberant," Severin uncovers the seaman's world that captured Daniel Defoe's imagination, recounting dramatic survival stories of sailors, pirates, castaways, and native Americans and replicating their journeys to experience for himself the adventures that inspired Robinson Crusoe. He camps on islands that famous castaways once survived on, undertakes a perilous sea voyage, and searches Nicaragua and Honduras for the Miskutu Indians, the tribe that the model for Crusoe's companion, Friday, belonged to. Tim Severin has once again demonstrated a superb ability to bring together literature, history and adventure in an engrossing narrative.
Walking with Abel: Journeys with the Nomads of the African Savannah
Anna Badkhen - 2015
Brooklyn, BBC.com, and Mental FlossAn intrepid journalist joins the planet’s largest group of nomads on an annual migration that, like them, has endured for centuries. Anna Badkhen has forged a career chronicling life in extremis around the world, from war-torn Afghanistan to the border regions of the American Southwest. In Walking with Abel, she embeds herself with a family of Fulani cowboys—nomadic herders in Mali’s Sahel grasslands—as they embark on their annual migration across the savanna. It’s a cycle that connects the Fulani to their past even as their present is increasingly under threat—from Islamic militants, climate change, and the ever-encroaching urbanization that lures away their young. The Fulani, though, are no strangers to uncertainty—brilliantly resourceful and resilient, they’ve contended with famines, droughts, and wars for centuries. Dubbed “Anna Ba” by the nomads, who embrace her as one of theirs, Badkhen narrates the Fulani’s journeys and her own with compassion and keen observation, transporting us from the Neolithic Sahara crisscrossed by rivers and abundant with wildlife to obelisk forests where the Fulani’s Stone Age ancestors painted tributes to cattle. As they cross the Sahel, the savanna belt that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, they accompany themselves with Fulani music they download to their cell phones and tales of herders and hustlers, griots and holy men, infused with the myths the Fulani tell themselves to ground their past, make sense of their identity, and safeguard their—our—future.
Princess Alice: Countess of Athlone
Theo Aronson - 1981
Princess Alice was the daughter of Queen Victoria's youngest son Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany. She grew up under the watchful eye of Queen Victoria and in 1904 married Prince Alexander of Teck, afterwards known as the Earl of Athlone, Queen Mary's brother. Renowned for her beauty, elegance and vivacity, she was for the remainder of her long life one of the most popular and energetic members of the Royal Family. In 1923 Lord Athlone was appointed Governor General of South Africa and his wife was at his side through some of that country's most turbulent years. When he was appointed Governor General of Canada during the Second World War, Princess Alice won the hearts of Canadians as well. For many years she was Chancellor of the University of the West Indies and until her death in 1981 at the age of 97 she remained lively and interested in a great variety of social and cultural events.
Sundays Will Never Be the Same: Racing, Tragedy, and Redemption--My Life in America's Fastest Sport
Darrell Waltrip - 2012
died.THREE-TIME NASCAR CHAMPION DARRELL WALTRIP knew that big changes were in the wind on the morning of February 18, 2001. For the first time in his long and storied career, Darrell would be watching the race from the broadcast booth high above the track, explaining its complexities to a television audience of millions. His younger brother Michael Waltrip would be among the starting drivers. Michael, who had competed in 462 NASCAR races without a win, would be piloting one of two cars owned by legendary driver Dale Earnhardt. Earnhardt would be racing too, as would Dale Earnhardt Jr., the 2000 runner-up for Rookie of the Year. Sundays Will Never Be the Same opens with a heart-stopping account of that dramatic race. By the time the sun set on that day, Michael Waltrip would have captured his first checkered flag in NASCAR’s biggest race, Dale Earnhardt Jr. would have placed second, and Dale Earnhardt, the sport’s brightest star, would have passed into eternity. The sudden death of Dale Earnhardt on the final lap of the 2001 Daytona 500 was a traumatic loss for the entire NASCAR family, and few were affected more deeply than Darrell Waltrip. During the course of their tumultuous thirty-year association, Dale and Darrell had been friends, then “frenemies,” and finally friends again. Darrell regales the reader with his earliest memories of the fiercely competitive kid from Kannapolis, and he describes the highs and lows of their relationship through the twin arcs of their overlapping careers. Along the way, Waltrip provides a fascinating history of racing in Daytona and offers glimpses of some of the sport’s most colorful characters, including Bill France, Junior Johnson, Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, and Richard Petty. He weaves the story of his own unlikely journey from the small-town ovals and rural roads of Kentucky (where his talents were largely devoted to running from the cops) to the grandest tracks and richest purses in motor racing. With his customary candor, Darrell gives us an insider’s view of some of NASCAR’s greatest battles and most memorable moments. This is an epic that only a storyteller with Waltrip’s access and experience could write. Sundays Will Never Be the Same reaches its crescendo with a heart-wrenching insider account of that pivotal weekend in Daytona, including a poignant pre-race interview in which Dale rhapsodized about his family and his plans for the future. After the wreck, Waltrip takes us along on his frantic ride to the trauma center and into the waiting room, where Dale’s family and friends struggle to accept the unthinkable. Darrell recounts the weeks that followed: the shock and disbelief, the outpouring of grief from around the world, and the top-to-bottom safety changes NASCAR eventually made in what would become the most enduring tribute to Dale Earnhardt and his legacy.*** With touching nostalgia and his trademark wit, NASCAR Hall-of-Famer Darrell Waltrip recalls scenes from his remarkable life, vividly recounting memorable moments with some of the giants of the sport—such as this first encounter with the young man who would become his “frenemy,” NASCAR’s legendary superstar, Dale Earnhardt: One evening a bleary-eyed mustachioed young man wearing a dirty T-shirt and Hush Puppies wandered into the shop carrying a half-empty fifth of Jack Daniel’s. He regarded me silently for several minutes, taking an occasional pull from the bottle. Finally Robert introduced us. “This here’s Dale,” Robert said, in his Virginia twang. “He’s married to my daughter Brenda. You may have heard of his dad, Ralph. Dale’s a driver and a mechanic.” I walked over to Dale and stuck out my hand. “Darrell Waltrip,” I said. “Nice to meet you.” Dale drained the bottle and tossed it into a nearby barrel, where it landed with a clatter, then he wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “This your car?” he said.
England For All Seasons
Susan Allen Toth - 1997
Now, with England for All Seasons, she will entice even an experienced London visitor into exciting new adventures, from sharing the most scenic London bus routes to bargain-hunting to out-of-the-way places and personal walking tours of eccentric museums. With whimsy and a trenchant eye, she also traverses the country outside London: the estuaries and rivers of Cornwall, the lonely beaches of Anglesey, and the wild sea-lochs of Mull.Whether looking for literary landscapes or the most delicious sherry trifle, Susan Allen Toth illuminates the nooks and crannies of a multifarious culture, the vibrant, real England that every Anglophile dreams of finding. At once entertaining and contemplative, England for All Seasons is as delightful a travel companion as your liveliest, most trusted friend.
Wayward: Fetching Tales from a Year on the Road
Tom Gates - 2012
His travel stories have had millions of views online and are collected within for the first time. The content of Wayward was written during a yearlong trip around the world, during which the author lived in twelve countries over twelve months. Gates' writing has been described as “evocative”, “hilarious” and “brilliant.” He has been described as a “wanker”, “kind of a dipshit” and “retarded”.Wayward is a must-read for anyone who needs a shrink and likes to travel.
In Siberia
Colin Thubron - 1999
In the late 90s, post–Soviet Union, he decided to explore Siberia—this time by truck, by bus, by boat. The result is an evocative account of an extraordinary region. He travels through exotic cities and deserted villages, meets nostalgic old Stalinists and aggressive Orthodox churchmen, and generally interweaves Siberia's fascinating history with a description of the place today.