For author Peter James McLean, life was just one adventure after another. In Confessions of an Eccentric Dreamer, he shares a captivating recollection of his life, dreams, adventures, and foibles. This memoir narrates how his adventures began at age sixteen and continued until age ninety-two during which time he worked and retired from the New York Central Railroad; developed a money-saving, water softening device to clean steam engine boilers; and invented and patented toy guns, an electr...

Carter writes as if he has ADD, careering through his life on oil rigs in exotic locations. He won't win the Booker, but his yarns burn with anarchic energy ... in a word, irrepressible.' - Herald SunHe's back on the rigs and back in trouble.Picking up right where he left off, Paul Carter pulls out more tall tales of a mad, bad and dangerous life in the international oil trade. Starting with action and mayhem galore This Is Not A Drill sets an unrelenting ...

Michael Palin's terrific account of his journey through 18 countries bordering the Pacific Ocean, published by Phoenix for the first time.For almost a year, Michael Palin travelled through 18 countries on the perimeter of the world's largest ocean, in a spectacular journey of contrasts, drama and beauty.From head-hunters in Borneo to a meal of maggots in Mexico, his route takes him to some of the most politically volatile and physically demanding places on ...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERWINNER OF THE RBC TAYLOR PRIZEWINNER OF THE EDNA STAEBLER AWARD FOR CREATIVE NON-FICTION"Every day on a bike trip is like the one before--but it is also completely different, or perhaps you are different, woken up in new ways by the mile."**As a teenager, Kate Harris realized that the career she most craved--that of a generalist explorer, equal parts swashbuckler and philosopher--had gone extinct. From her small-town home in Ontar...

The legendary reporter and author of The Right Stuff takes on Darwin, Chomsky, and the origin of language in "his boldest bit of dueling yet" ( The New York Times).Tom Wolfe, the great journalist-provocateur, aims his piercing wit at the presiding theories of what makes us human. The Kingdom of Speech is a captivating, paradigm-shifting argument that speech—not evolution—is responsible for humanity's com...

In the tradition of Holy Cow and Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, a fascinating travel memoir of finding yourself in the India of rickshaws and rainy seasons.Jenny was miserable, and it was all India's fault...until she realized it wasn't.When Jenny's husband gets transferred to India for work, she looks forward to a new life filled with glamorous expat friends and exciting adventures. What she doesn't expect is endless bouts of food po...

During the American Revolution and the border conflicts that followed, Simon Girty's name struck terror into the hearts of U.S. settlers in the Ohio Valley and the territory of Kentucky. Girty (1741-1818) had lived with the Natives most of his life. Scorned by his fellow white frontiersmen as an "Indian lover," Girty became an Indian agent for the British. He accompanied Native raids against Americans, spied deep into enemy territory, and was influential in convincing the tribes to fight f...

'Only a man in the devil of a hurry would wish to fly to his mountains, forgoing the lingering pleasure and mounting excitement of a slow, arduous approach under his own exertions.'H.W. 'Bill' Tilman's mountain travel philosophy, rooted in Africa and the Himalaya and further developed in his early sailing adventures in the southern hemisphere, was honed to perfection with his discovery of Greenland as the ...

An affectionate travelogue that conveys not only impressions of everyday life and descriptions of unique Tibetan customs and traditions but brings us Tibetan history, politics, and religion from a fresh, unstudied perspectiveDespite the determined efforts of the Dalai Lama to publicize the Tibetan cause, for many the people, culture, history, and traditions of this country remain mysterious. Niema Ash was one of the first Westerners to enter the country whe...

For Shannon Egan, what began as a desperate bid to break from her strict religious upbringing and recover her sobriety—via a one-way ticket to Sudan, a country in the midst of genocide and civil war, and, due to Islamic law, seemingly alcohol-free—would evolve into a headlong plunge into the surreal politics of faith: the world of freelance journalism and nonprofit aid in a war zone, where big hearts and big talent compete to tell all the gory details, where children bring guns for class s...

Mission to Tibet recounts the fascinating eighteenth-century journey of the Jesuit priest ippolito Desideri (1684 - 1733) to the Tibetan plateau. The italian missionary was most notably the first european to learn about Buddhism directly with Tibetan schol ars and monks - and from a profound study of its primary texts. while there, Desideri was an eyewitness to some of the most tumultuous events in Tibet's history, of which he left us a vivid and dramatic account.Desideri ...

Two familiar agents (32 and 33) ride bikes from the east Charlotte (USA) neighborhood of Windsor Park to Cotswold Mall in southeast Charlotte on a splendid April morning. The route is meticulously noted (for map freaks). Once at the desired restaurant, a seating error is remedied and an odd analogy for human lives is discussed. The topic of recursion emerges once again. More meta-real mayhem, psecret psociety pstyle. A 2000-word pshort pstory.