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Armchair Travel August 2016
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My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I’ll not be knowing, Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take, No matter where it’s going.” ~ from Edna St. Vincent Millay's Travel
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The People's Place : Soul Food Restaurants and Reminiscences from the Civil Rights Era to Today
by Dave Hoekstra
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved the fried catfish and lemon icebox pie at Memphis's Four Way restaurant. In New Orleans, beloved chef Leah Chase recalls introducing George W. Bush to baked cheese grits and scolding Barack Obama for putting Tabasco sauce on her gumbo. In The People's Place, celebrated former Chicago Sun-Times columnist Dave Hoekstra unearths stories as he travels, tastes, and talks his way through 20 of America's soul food restaurants. Featuring photographs, recipes, and ruminations from notable regulars including Minnijean Brown, former congressman and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, jazz legend Ramsey Lewis, and many others. The People's Place is an unprecedented celebration of soul food and community.
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| The Return: Fathers, Sons, and the Land in Between by Hisham MatarHaving left Libya when he was an eight-year-old boy, London-based writer Hisham Matar finally returns, hoping to learn his father's fate. Matar's family fled their homeland when Muammar Qaddafi took control in 1978; They moved first to Kenya, then Egypt, as Qaddafi's government hunted dissidents and their families, kidnapping or murdering them. Matar's father took cloak-and-dagger precautions, but in 1990, he was kidnapped in Cairo and sent to the worst prison in Libya. Riveting, powerful, and personal, The Return is a must-read for anyone interested in Libya or lyrically told family stories; for another look at the effect of political upheaval on ordinary people, pick up Janine di Giovanni's The Morning They Came For Us. |
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Pinpoint : How GPS is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds
by Greg Milner
Over the last fifty years, humanity has developed an extraordinary shared utility: the Global Positioning System. Omnipresent, free, and available to all, GPS powers everything from your phone to the Internet to the Mars Rover. Greg Milner tells the sweeping story of GPS from its conceptual origins as a bomb guidance system to its present ubiquity. While GPS has revolutionized methods of timekeeping, navigation, and seismological prediction, it has also altered human behavior. Delving into the neuroscience of cognitive maps and spatial recognition, Milner's inventive and timely book is at once a grand history of the scientific urge toward precision and perfection and a revelatory philosophy of how humans understand themselves in the world.
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On Trails : An Exploration
by Robert Moor
In 2009, Robert Moor hiked through the Appalachian Trail. It was the culmination of a dream he had held since childhood and the beginning of a journey that would lead him to investigate trails of all kinds from tiny insect trails and neural pathways to sprawling buffalo trails, highway systems, even the internet. The result of his travels, On Trails, explores what unites these networks and reveals in turn how trails allow us to make sense of our world. This is a book that combines the nomadic joys of A Walk in the Woods with the raw wisdom of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
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Oh, Florida! : How America’s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country
by Craig Pittman
A fact-filled investigation into why the Sunshine state can be celebrated for its influence and eccentricity. Oh, Florida! surveys its many contradictions and why they fit together, touching on native subjects ranging from NASCAR and Bettie Page pinups to Glenn Beck radio rants, and USA Today.
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Run the World : My 3,500-Mile Journey Through Running Cultures Around the Globe
by Becky Wade
From elite marathoner and Olympic hopeful Becky Wade comes the story of her year-long exploration of diverse global running communities from England to Ethiopia. To investigate unique cultural approaches to the sport and reveal the secrets to the success of runners all over the world, she spent twelve months, visiting 9 countries with unique and storied running histories, logging over 3,500 miles running over trails, tracks, sidewalks, and dirt roads, Wade explored the varied approaches of runners across the globe. Whether riding shotgun around the streets of London with Olympic champion sprinter Usain Bolt, climbing for an hour at daybreak to the top of Ethiopia's Mount Entoto, or getting lost jogging through the bustling streets of Tokyo, Becky's unexpected adventures, keen insights, and landscape descriptions take the reader into the heartbeat of distance running around the world.
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| The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks by Terry Tempest WilliamsIn honor of the United States National Park Service's centennial this year, naturalist and author Terry Tempest Williams reflects on 12 of the 400+ parks, seashores, monuments, and recreation areas that are, as she so elegantly puts it, "portals and thresholds of wonder." Visiting Gettysburg, Alcatraz Island, Grand Teton, Acadia, Gates of the Arctic, and more, she reflects on her trips and her own past as well as the history of the parks, how politics and people have shaped them and continue to shape them, and the environmental issues they face. Gorgeously illustrated with selections from several accomplished photographers, The Hour of Land is a fascinating book that nature lovers will cherish. Wonder what it'd be like if an entire family traveled to a bunch of the parks? Try Michael Lanza's Before They're Gone. |
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| Midnight in Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia by David GreeneDavid Greene, a co-host of NPR's Morning Edition, spent several years based in Russia, and in Midnight in Siberia, he describes his eye-opening travels along the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Traveling third class from Moscow to Vladivostok, he meets ordinary but fascinating people -- from singing babushkas to entrepreneurial teens -- and shares food and time with them. Using this trip as a lens, he also focuses on the challenges faced by 21st-century Russia. For another entertaining look at this vast, storied place, try Ian Frazier's acclaimed Travels in Siberia. |
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| Ghost Train to the Eastern Star: On the Tracks of the Great Railway Bazaar by Paul TherouxIn the 1970s, author Paul Theroux took a railroad trip through Eastern Europe, Asia, India, China, Japan, and Siberia, and wrote about his adventures in The Great Railway Bazaar, a book that became a modern travel classic. More than 30 years later, he revisited the past and recreated his journey, which revealed the dramatic changes that had occurred since the writing of his original travelogue. Publishers Weekly says, "no matter where his journey takes him, Theroux always sends back dazzling postcards." Ghost Train to the Eastern Star is a must-read for fans of Theroux, travel, and trains. |
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| Train: Riding the Rails that Created the Modern World -- From the Trans-Siberian... by Tom ZoellnerDo you love trains or wonder what the world would be like without them? Then climb on board the Train express! Combining fascinating social history and a sparkling travelogue with lyrical language, author (and train buff) Tom Zoellner engagingly chronicles the innovation and sociological impact of railway technologies that have changed and continue to change the world. Lucky him, he also travels to such far-flung locales as India, Britain, Russia, China, Peru, Spain, and the United States, soaking up local culture and riding an assortment of trains, from old stalwarts to modern bullet trains. All aboard! |
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Funny in Farsi : A Memoir of Growing up Iranian in America
by Firoozeh Dumas
In 1972, when she was seven, Firoozeh Dumas and her family moved from Iran to Southern California, arriving with no firsthand knowledge of this country beyond her father's glowing memories of his graduate school years here. More family soon followed, and the clan has been here ever since. In a series of deftly drawn scenes, we watch the family grapple with American English (hot dogs and hush puppies? A complete mystery), American traditions (Thanksgiving turkey? An even greater mystery, since it tastes like nothing), and American culture. Funny in Farsi is an autobiography of growing up as an Iranian-American describes the author's family's 1971 move from Iran to Southern California, the members of her diverse family, and their struggle with culture shock.
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Paradise of the Pacific : Approaching Hawaii
by Susanna Moore
The history of Hawaii can be said to be the story of arrivals--from the eruption of volcanoes on the ocean floor eighteen thousand feet below, to the early Polynesian adventurers who sailed across the Pacific in double canoes, the Spanish galleons en route to the Philippines, and the British navigators in search of a Northwest Passage, soon followed by pious Protestant missionaries, shipwrecked sailors, and rowdy Irish poachers escaped from Botany Bay. In Paradise of the Pacific, Susanna Moore, the award-winning author of In the Cut and The Life of Objects, pieces together the elusive, dramatic story of Hawaii in which an isolated pagan world of human sacrifice and strict taboo, without a currency or a written language, was confronted with the equally ritualized world of capitalism, Western education, and Christian values.
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Daughters of the Samurai : A Journey from East to West and Back
by Janice P Nimura
In 1871, five young girls were sent by the Japanese government to the United States. Their mission: learn Western ways and return to help nurture a new generation of enlightened men to lead Japan. Upon their arrival in San Francisco they became celebrities, their travels and traditional clothing exclaimed over by newspapers across the nation. As they learned English and Western customs, their American friends grew to love them for their high spirits and intellectual brilliance.The passionate relationships they formed reveal an intimate world of cross-cultural fascination and connection. Ten years later, they returned to Japan, a land grown foreign to them, determined to revolutionize women's education.
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Contact your librarian for more great books! |
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Prince George's County Memorial Library System 9601 Capital Lane Largo, Maryland 20774 301-699-3500www.pgcmls.info/ |
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