Get paid to travel and write about it.Only no one told Jules that it would mean eating oily seabirds, repeatedly falling off a husky sled, getting stranded on a Mediterranean island, and crash-landing in Iran.The exotic destinations come thick and fast – Hong Kong, Hawaii, Huddersfield – as Jules navigates what it means to be a travel writer in a world with endless surprises up its sleeve.Add in a cast of larger-than-life characters – Elvis, Captain Cook, his own travel-mad Dad – and an eye for the ridiculous, and this journey with Jules is one you won’t want to miss.

    In short, he traverses all of Asia top to bottom, and end to end. In the three decades since he first travelled this route, Asia has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed, China has risen, India booms, Burma slowly smothers, and Vietnam prospers despite the havoc unleashed upon it the last time Theroux passed through. He witnesses all this and so much more in a 25,000 mile journey, travelling as the locals do, by train, car, bus, and foot.His odyssey takes him from Eastern Europe, still hungover from Communism, through tense but thriving Turkey, into the Caucasus, where Georgia limps back toward feudalism while its neighbour Azerbaijan revels in oil-driven capitalism. As he penetrates deeper into Asia’s heart, his encounters take on an otherworldly cast. The two chapters that follow show us Turkmenistan, a profoundly isolated society at the mercy of an almost comically egotistical dictator, and Uzbekistan, a ruthless authoritarian state. From there, he retraces his steps through India, Mayanmar, China, and Japan, providing his penetrating observations on the changes these countries have undergone.Brilliant, caustic, and totally addictive, Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is Theroux at his very best.

    With Iris and Matthew as my guides, I would virtually and literally go anywhere." —Becky Selengut, author of Shroom: Mind-bendingly Good Recipes for Cultivated and Wild Mushrooms Seattle food writer Matthew Amster-Burton grew up on Chinese-American food. One day, he decided to take his ten-year-old daughter out for Chinese…in Hong Kong. Join two adventurous eaters as they explore night markets, hawker centers, gargatuan malls, and a fancy dim sum palace, all while living out their food fantasy: spending a week without having to eat anything other than Chinese food. Along with Matthew and Iris, you’ll: • Ride the world’s most exhilarating form of public transportation • Eat crispy rice, egg tarts, Hong Kong French toast, and a spicy chicken dish with more chiles than chicken • Hang out with locals (human and feline) • Discover Iris’s supervillain lair, high above the city Featuring two dozen color photos, Child Octopus is the first installment in a new series of short ebooks about Asian food and travel. We’re not experts. We just got here. And we’re hungry.

    There is a need at the time of Pakistan's golden jubilee for it to be taken seriously in its own right as a country of 130 million people. It is in reality a complex plural society which although greatly shaped by the colonial inheritance and circumstances of its birth is also experiencing rapid change. The author's approach breaks down stereotypes and assists in answering the vexed question of why democracy has succeeded in India, while Pakistan has been subject to long periods of authoritarianism during its five decades of existence.

    An organizer of the "dialogue delegation," whose goal was to negotiate with the government, Shen provides an insider's record of the day-to-day decisions that led up to June 4th. Written with the help of journalist Marianne Yen, the result is both a powerful documentary and a sensitive account of growing up in contemporary China. Now nearly ten years later as our fascination with post-Deng China continues to develop, Shen's story and the updated material he provides are weighted with increasing significance. Coupled with much of the recent analysis, Shen's firsthand account vividly contextualizes the Chinese government's opposition to democracy and offers meaningful insight into a country that promises to occupy an increasingly prominent position in the world."A cause for celebration . . . an important contribution to China's newly discovered historical memory." --New York Times Book ReviewShen Tong is a doctoral student in political sociology at Boston University and the founder of the Democracy for China Fund, which aims to support and publicize dissent networks in China. Marianne Yen is a former New York correspondent for the Washington Post.

    He did not return to Morocco for another 29 years, traveling instead through more than 40 countries on the modern map, covering 75,000 miles and getting as far north as the Volga, as far east as China, and as far south as Tanzania. He wrote of his travels, and comes across as a superb ethnographer, biographer, anecdotal historian, and occasional botanist and gastronome. With this edition by Mackintosh-Smith, Battuta's Travels takes its place alongside other indestructible masterpieces of the travel-writing genre.

    Having given birth to daughter after daughter after daughter, she becomes desperate and turns to the first of her mystical advisors, Msgr. Philippe, who persuades her, among other things, that she is invisible.And then comes the moment of her greatest triumph with the birth of her son and the heir to the throne of all the Russias, the Tsarevich Alexei.All four volumes are (planned) as follows:1. 'The Funeral Bride' 1884-1894 - published November 20152. 'The Empress of Tears' 1895-1904 - published March 20163. 'The Pride of Eagles' 1905-1914 - to be published by November 20164. 'No Greater Crown' 1914-1918 - to be published by April 2017

    Yet few people realize these men belong to a succession of nomadic warriors who emerged from the Eurasian steppes to conquer civilizations. It's a part of ancient and medieval history that's often overlooked, but for an accurate view of how the world evolved, it's essential.Covering some 6,000 miles and 6,000 years, this eye-opening course illuminates how a series of groups - from the Sacae and Sarmatians to the infamous Huns and Mongols - pushed ever westward, coming into contact with the Roman Empire, Han China, and distant cultures from Iraq to India.Along the way, you'll learn how these nomads caused a domino effect of displacement and cultural exchange; meet fascinating figures such as Tamerlane, the "Prince of Destruction"; witness struggles to control the legendary Silk Road; trace the spread of Buddhism and Islam, and more.By looking past the barbarian stereotype, you'll understand who these people were, the significance of their innovations - which include stirrups, saddles, and gunpowder - and the magnitude of their impact. Of course, these warriors did wage campaigns of terror, and you'll hear many accounts of violence as well.Led by an award-winning professor, these 36 lectures provide new insights on how the world was shaped and introduce you to cultures and empires you've likely never encountered.

    Volume 2: From the Great Qing Empire through the People's Republic of China (1644—2009).

    *Includes some of Martin's most colorful quotes. *Includes a Bibliography for further reading. "If people want to think I get drunk and stay out all night, let 'em. That's how I got here, you know." - Dean Martin A lot of ink has been spilled covering the lives of history's most influential figures, but how much of the forest is lost for the trees? In Charles River Editors' American Legends series, readers can get caught up to speed on the lives of America's most important men and women in the time it takes to finish a commute, while learning interesting facts long forgotten or never known. Like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin is an American legend for his longevity and success across a garden variety of different platforms. Martin began as a nightclub singer, performed in a comedy act, starred in films, recorded hit albums, and capped his career by serving as a television host. In fact, there may be no star who was better able to transcend the different avenues of entertainment. Martin's success was made all the more amazing by the fact that he never had to change his personality or persona to find success in his different endeavors. From the beginning, Martin's public persona remained largely unchanged. He grew more famous and wealthy, but he always remained the smooth-talking Italian with the easy charm and the cool veneer. As Jerry Lewis noted in his memoirs about Martin, "Dean had this uncanny way of making everything bad look like it wasn't all that bad." If anything, Martin suggested that no matter the circumstances, people can always face their situation with leisurely charm. Martin's versatility is unprecedented even today, an era in which stars routinely alternate between film and musical careers. Martin was able to simultaneously work across different media at the same time; even after rising to fame as a singer, he continued to perform with Jerry Lewis and star in films. But after his film career took off, he continued to perform the crooning style of music that had made him famous and had long since been outdated. While other actors were forced to drastically alter their persona to keep up with the times, Martin's ability to fuse suave glamour with an everyday ordinariness ensured he didn't need to transform anything. Martin's life and career are often compared to his close friend and contemporary Frank Sinatra, and for good reason. Both came from proud Italian families, both were cohorts in the famed Rat Pack in the 1960s, and they each maintained success even late in their careers. However, Sinatra's career was filled with far more ups and downs than Martin, and his public image experienced highs and lows along with it. It's also somewhat ironic that it was Martin who Anglicized his name but remained a bigger Italian icon than Sinatra. They each began their careers as Italian crooners, but Martin maintained his style while Sinatra adopted a brasher, more "All-American" singing method. Martin never strayed far from his humble background, even as he became one of America's biggest stars. American Legends: The Life of Dean Martin profiles the life and career of one of America's most famous performers. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Dean Martin like you never have before, in no time at all.

    The Chinese imperial system combined a highly centralized administration with a Confucian philosophy of moral-political beliefs. The emperor was the Son of Heaven and enjoyed semi-divine powers, but he was not infallible: should he fail his subjects, rebellion was justified. The emperors therefore weathered centuries of violent change and, despite brutal revolts and civil wars, remained at the center of the largest political unit in the world, the Middle Kingdom. The emperors were an extraordinary group of men--and one woman, Wu Zetian--whose virtues and faults were magnified by their exalted position. Many were literary scholars and painters (the Song emperor, Huizong, founded an imperial academy of painting). Some were mentally retarded; and some left the control of the empire to their eunuchs, concubines, or dowager empresses. Under able rulers, China's frontiers expanded, dominating Central and Southeast Asia; under weak rulers the frontiers shrank, and for centuries the country was occupied by alien Mongols. It took the arrival of a civilization from the West with superior firepower finally to shake the Middle Kingdom's foundations. The detailed coverage includes: data files for every emperor, listing important information such as name at birth and details of wives and concubines; special features ranging from the Great Wall of China to the Ming Tombs; portraits of the major emperors and maps detailing, for example, the arrival of Buddhism and the Silk Road routes; time lines with at-a-glance visual guides to the length and key events of each emperor's reign.

    In 1995, at the age of twenty-three, Michael Meyer joined the Peace Corps and, after rejecting offers to go to seven other countries, was sent to a tiny town in Sichuan. Knowing nothing about China, or even how to use chopsticks, Meyer wrote Chinese words up and down his arms so he could hold conversations, and, per a Communist dean's orders, jumped into teaching his students about the Enlightenment, the stock market, and Beatles lyrics. Soon he realized his Chinese counterparts were just as bewildered by China's changes as he was.Thus began an impassioned immersion into Chinese life. With humor and insight, Meyer puts readers in his novice shoes, winding across the length and breadth of his adopted country --from a terrifying bus attack on arrival, to remote Xinjiang and Tibet, into Beijing's backstreets and his future wife's Manchurian family, and headlong into efforts to protect China's vanishing heritage at places like Sleeping Dragon, the world's largest panda preserve.In the last book of his China trilogy, Meyer tells a story both deeply personal and universal, as he gains greater - if never complete - assurance, capturing what it feels like to learn a language, culture and history from the ground up. Both funny and relatable, The Road to Sleeping Dragon is essential reading for anyone interested in China's history, and how daily life plays out there today.

    Born with an unshakeable belief that she was destined for greatness, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels (1881-1968) rose from poverty to become one of San Francisco's most powerful women. Alma's humble beginnings and scandalous lifestyle would alienate her from the cream of San Francisco society: she became an artists' model, befriended European royalty, married sugar magnate Adolph Spreckels, lived in the grandest mansion in San Francisco, and at age fifty-seven chartered a plane and eloped with a cowboy. But that same larger-than-life personality was a fruitful asset in the many pursuits that claimed her passions, the most notable of which still stands high on the Golden Gate headlands. Big Alma celebrates the woman who brought Rodin's works to America and built the Palace of the Legion of Honor to hold them.

    With rich illustrations complementing secrets culled from experts, this resource gives participants with basic knowledge new skills for enhancing their experience and provides a visual montage of the different kinds of spots hobbyists can expect to find in the field. Additionally, the dozens of interviews from dedicated geocachers exhibit how the pursuit of hidden treasures has helped people heal frayed marriages and establish new friendships—and even saved lives.

    He spoke to his pregnant wife on the telephone before he began his evacuation after the South Tower fell. Sensing something ominous, Pasquale crouched down and huddled into a corner of the stairwell as the 110-story tower came crashing down around him. He survived the tower collapse and woke up in the open air hours later on The Pile, a stack of debris seven stories high. The firemen who rescued Pasquale shared his remarkable story of survival with the media, as did others who cared for him that day. His story became a myth, an urban legend, and an enigma that gave rise to much speculation. Here he tells his story in captivating detail of falling and "surfing' the collapse of the North Tower.Visit www.911surfer.com for more details.