| My (Part-Time) Paris Life: How Running Away Brought Me Home by Lisa AnselmoManhattan creative director Lisa Anselmo was very close to her strong-willed mother -- like, codependent-close. So when her mother passed away, Anselmo was devastated and adrift. Searching for a reason to get out of bed in the morning, she started researching Paris homes for sale, just for fun. Before too many months had passed, and despite being someone who plays it safe, she had bought a Paris apartment, where she planned to live for part of each year. Describing her new life in Paris (and all the joys and troubles of home ownership in an unfamiliar place) as well as her search for a happy life, this memoir offers readers who enjoy soul-searching books an engaging Parisian get-away. |
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A Wretched and Precarious Situation: In Search of the Last Arctic Frontier
by David Welky
In 1906, from atop a snow-swept hill in the ice fields northwest of Greenland, hundreds of miles from another human being, Commander Robert E. Peary spotted a line of mysterious peaks looming in the distance. He called this unexplored realm "Crocker Land." Scientists and explorers agreed that the world-famous explorer had discovered a new continent rising from the frozen Arctic Ocean. Several years later, two of Peary's disciples, George Borup and Donald MacMillan, assembled a team of amateur adventurers to investigate Crocker Land. Populated with a cast of memorable characters, and based on years of research in previously untapped sources, A Wretched and Precarious Situation is a harrowing Arctic narrative unlike any other.
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| Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places by Colin DickeyColin Dickey, who grew up in California near the infamous Winchester Mystery House, isn't afraid to take on America's ghosts. In this spellbinding, intelligent examination, he takes readers on an offbeat road trip through some of the continental United States' most haunted places. Dickey, who believes that "if you want to understand a place, ignore the boasting monuments and landmarks, and go straight to the haunted houses," visited hotels, houses, prisons, plantations, bars, brothels, and more, and interviewed psychics, ghost hunters, and historians to better understand what our haunted places say about us. Thoughtfully digging into a little-understood area, Dickey compares ghost tales with the known facts and examines what the differences between the two means. "A lively assemblage and smart analysis," says The New York Times. |
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Atlas of Improbable Places: A Journey to the World's Most Unusual Corners
by Travis Elborough
It is perhaps the eighth wonder of our world that despite modern mapping and satellite photography our planet continues to surprise us. Hidden lairs beneath layers of rock, forgotten cities rising out of deserted lands and even mankind's own feats of engineering eccentricity lie in the most unusual of destinations. Travis Elborough goes in search of the obscure and bizarre, the beautiful and estranged.
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Focus on: The Middle East
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| Down the Nile: Alone in a Fisherman's Skiff by Rosemary MahoneyIf you're a woman who wants to row down the Egyptian Nile alone, you might want to bring your own boat. That's what author Rosemary Mahoney found out in 1998 when, due to her sex and lack of a husband, she had trouble buying one. Thankfully, she finally obtained a fisherman's skiff and was soon on her way down the famous river, stopping at various points along the way and dealing with the heat, worries about crocodiles, and cultural differences. Excerpts from the 1849 Egyptian Nile travel diaries of Florence Nightingale and Gustave Flaubert add a historical touch to Mahoney's beautifully written, eye-opening modern adventure. |
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| The Ministry of Guidance Invites You To Not Stay: An American Family in Iran by Hooman MajdAfter 50-year-old Iranian-American journalist Hooman Majd married and had a son with his American wife, Karri, the family moved to Tehran for a year...at a time when relations between the U.S. and Iran were tense, to say the least. But the couple wanted Majd -- who'd left the country of his birth as a child -- to get reacquainted with his homeland, and they wanted to introduce their son to the Iranian part of his heritage. Though they dealt with the unfamiliar (Iranian security, fasting during Ramadan, and Karri wearing a headscarf), they also found some things were familiar (parties, Facebook, and organic food). Offering an intimate insight into a country and its people, Majd's third book is also his most personal. |
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| House of Stone: A Memoir of Home, Family, and a Lost Middle East by Anthony ShadidWhen two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist Anthony Shadid visited the abandoned house his great-grandfather had built in southern Lebanon, he decided to restore the nearly 100-year-old two-story abode. In his great-grandfather's day, Christians (like his relatives) and Muslims resided peacefully together -- but for years, the town had been affected by often-violent conflicts, including 18 years of Israeli occupation. In this thoughtful, evocative memoir, he explores renovation projects, identity, family, war, change, and the meaning of home. Just before the 2012 publication of this National Book Award finalist, the amazingly talented Shadid died from an asthma attack while reporting in Syria. |
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