Peter Allison was only nineteen when he left Australia for Africa, thinking he might travel around and see a bit of the country before going home to a 'proper job'. But Africa worked its magic, and Peter ended up falling, quickly and completely, in love with the country and its wildlife. Landing in a game reserve in the wildlife-rich Okavango Delta, he became a safari guide and, some twelve years later, his short holiday in Africa isn't over yet.Whatever You Do, Don't Run is his gu...

Whatever You Do, Don't Run is a hilarious collection of true tales from top -safari guide Peter Allison. In a place where thewrong behavior could get you eaten, Allison has survived face-to-face encounters with big cats, angry -elephants, and the world's most unpredictable animals—herds of untamed tourists and foolhardy guideswhose outrageous antics sometimes make them even more dangerous than a pride of hungry lions!Join Allison as he faces down charging lion...

“I’m drenched in cream, marinated in wine, basted in cognac, and thoroughly buttered by the end of The Alice B. Toklas Cook Book.”—Eula Biss, New York Times bestselling author of Having and Being HadA beautiful new edition of the classic culinary memoir by Alice B. Toklas, Gertrude Stein’s romantic partner, with a new introduction by beloved culinary voice Ruth Reichl.Restaurant kitchens h...

Years after her successful and impactful career at the CIA, Christina Hillsberg became enthralled with the stories of the trailblazing women who forged new paths within the Agency long before she began her career there in the aughts. These were women who sacrificed their personal lives, risked their safety, defied expectations, and boldly navigated the male-dominated spy organization.Through exclusive interviews with current and former female CIA officers, many of whom have never s...

One of our most beloved writers reassess the electrifying works of literature that have shaped her life.“I sometimes think I was born reading…I can’t remember the time when I didn’t have a book in my hands, my head lost to the world around me.”Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-reader is Vivian Gornick’s celebration of passionate reading, of returning again and again to the books that have shaped her at crucial points in her life. In nine essays that traverse litera...

Into Enemy Waters is the story of World War II's most elite and daring unit of warriors, the direct precursors to the Navy SEALs, told through the eyes of its last living member, ninety-five-year-old George Morgan. Morgan was just a wiry, seventeen-year-old lifeguard from New Jersey when he joined the Navy's new combat demolition unit, tasked to blow up enemy coastal defenses ahead of landings by allied forces. His first assignment: Omaha Beach on D-Day.When he returned st...

A groundbreaking, breathtaking history of the Chinese workers who built the Transcontinental Railroad, helping to forge modern America only to disappear into the shadows of history until now.From across the sea, they came by the thousands, escaping war and poverty in southern China to seek their fortunes in America. Converging on the enormous western worksite of the Transcontinental Railroad, the migrants spent years dynamiting tunnels through the snow-packed cliff...

A classic in the making -- an account of the biggest year in birdwatching history.In the USA, some 50 million people lay claim to being bird-watchers or “birders,” spending billions of dollars on birding-related travel and membership fees every year. A select, and utterly obsessed, few compete in one of the world’s quirkiest contests -- the race to spot the most species in North America in a single year. And 1998 wasn’t just a big year. It was the biggest. The Big Year

The epic life story of the Native American holy man who has inspired millions around the worldBlack Elk, the Native American holy man, is known to millions of readers around the world from his 1932 testimonial, Black Elk Speaks. Adapted by the poet John Neihardt from a series of interviews, it is one of the most widely read and admired works of American Indian literature. Cryptic and deeply personal, it has been read as a spiritual guide, a philosophical m...

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal...

Seduced by the government’s offer of 320 acres per homesteader, Americans and Europeans rushed to Montana and the Dakotas to fulfill their own American dream in the first decade of the twentieth century.Jonathan Raban’s stunning evocation of the harrowing, desperate reality behind the homesteader’s dreams strips away the myth—while preserving the romance—that has shrouded our understanding of our own heartland.

Another "dazzling epic" from the author of Brilliant, exploring an overlooked yet elemental force in our lives-silence-from contemporary Cistercian monks to an extraordinary 19th-century prison. *Lev Grossman, Time The author of the "dazzling epic" (Time) Brilliant delivers an indelible view of the ways silence affects those who seek it and those who have it imposed upon them. Through her original, intertwined histories of the penitentiary and the monastery, Jane Brox illuminates the many ...