Book picks similar to
Life on the Golden Horn by Mary Wortley Montagu
travel
non-fiction
turkey
history
Can-Cans, Cats and Cities of Ash (Great Journeys)
Mark Twain - 2007
Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries – but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: Great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
In the Heart of the Amazon Forest (Penguin Great Journeys)
Henry Walter Bates - 1863
Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: great civilizations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, and multitudes of birds and flowers new to science.
A Journey to the End of the Russian Empire
Anton Chekhov - 1893
But lucky chance the Herald was also stranded -- with a band on board, so there was an excellent party. This was a high point of Chekhov's great journey through Russia's wilderness. He was to share a cabin with an opium-smoking Chinese man, learn why Japanese ladies were famed for their sexual prowess and witness vicious punishments in the desolate wasteland of Russia's penal colony.
Borneo, Celebes, Aru
Alfred Russel Wallace - 1869
Whether living with Hill Dyaks or hunting Orang-Utans or sailing on a junk to the unbelievably remote Aru islands, Wallace opens our eyes to a now long vanished world.
The Cobra's Heart (Penguin Great Journeys)
Ryszard Kapuściński - 2007
Humane, evocative and magical, The Cobra's Heart makes the case for Kapuscinski as a great writer as well as a great journalist.
Across the Empty Quarter
Wilfred Thesiger - 2007
The result was a monument both to his resilience and to the Bedu who guided him and who emerge as the book's real heroes.An extract of 'Arabian Sands, 1959.
Snakes with Wings and Gold-digging Ants
Herodotus - 2007
Each beautifully packaged volume offers a way to see the world anew, to rediscover great civilizations and legends, vast deserts andunspoiled mountain ranges, unusual flora and strange new creatures, and much more.
Escape from the Antarctic (Penguin Great Journeys)
Ernest Shackleton - 1919
Through one of the greatest recorded feats of navigation and of leadership, he overcame almost impossible odds and rescued every one of his men from otherwise certain death.
Adventures in the Rocky Mountains
Isabella Lucy Bird - 1879
Each beautifully packaged volume offers a way to see the world anew, to rediscover great civilizations and legends, vast deserts and unspoiled mountain ranges, unusual flora and strange new creatures, and much more.
Jaguars and Electric Eels (Penguin Great Journeys)
Alexander von Humboldt - 1853
This part of his matchless narrative of adventure and scientific research focuses on his time in Venezuela - in the Llanos and on the Orinoco River - riding and paddling, restlessly and happily noting the extraordinary things on every hand. Great Journeys allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries -- but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own.
Sold as a Slave
Olaudah Equiano - 2007
His account of his life is not only one of the great documents of the abolition movement, but also a startling, moving story of danger and betrayal. "Great Journeys" allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries - but also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. Few reading experiences can begin to match that of engaging with writers who saw astounding things: great civilisations, walls of ice, violent and implacable jungles, deserts and mountains, multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. Reading these books is to see the world afresh, to rediscover a time when many cultures were quite strange to each other, where legends and stories were treated as facts and in which so much was still to be discovered.
A Time of Gifts
Patrick Leigh Fermor - 1977
A Time of Gifts is the first volume in a trilogy recounting the trip, and takes the reader with him as far as Hungary. It is a book of compelling glimpses - not only of the events which were curdling Europe at that time, but also of its resplendent domes and monasteries, its great rivers, the sun on the Bavarian snow, the storks and frogs, the hospitable burgomasters who welcomed him, and that world's grandeurs and courtesies. His powers of recollection have astonishing sweep and verve, and the scope is majestic. First published to enormous acclaim, it confirmed Fermor's reputation as the greatest living travel writer, and has, together with its sequel Between the Woods and the Water (the third volume is famously yet to be published), been a perennial seller for 25 years.
In Patagonia
Bruce Chatwin - 1977
Fueled by an unmistakable lust for life and adventure and a singular gift for storytelling, Chatwin treks through “the uttermost part of the earth”— that stretch of land at the southern tip of South America, where bandits were once made welcome—in search of almost forgotten legends, the descendants of Welsh immigrants, and the log cabin built by Butch Cassidy. An instant classic upon its publication in 1977, In Patagonia is a masterpiece that has cast a long shadow upon the literary world.
Blue Highways
William Least Heat-Moon - 1982
Hailed as a masterpiece of American travel writing, Blue Highways is an unforgettable journey along our nation's backroads.William Least Heat-Moon set out with little more than the need to put home behind him and a sense of curiosity about "those little towns that get on the map-if they get on at all-only because some cartographer has a blank space to fill: Remote, Oregon; Simplicity, Virginia; New Freedom, Pennsylvania; New Hope, Tennessee; Why, Arizona; Whynot, Mississippi."His adventures, his discoveries, and his recollections of the extraordinary people he encountered along the way amount to a revelation of the true American experience.