In this brilliant, engrossing work, Jack Turner explores an era—from ancient times through the Renaissance—when what we now consider common condiments were valued in gold and blood.Spices made sour medieval wines palatable, camouflaged the smell of corpses, and served as wedding night aphrodisiacs. Indispensible for cooking, medicine, worship, and the arts of love, they were thought to have magical properties and were so valuable that they were often kept under lock and key. For so...

An essential history of a taste that shaped the world.Spices: for centuries the staple of cuisine, remedies and ritual, they have commanded the highest of prices. To this day, saffron is, per ounce, one of our most expensive commodities. For their sake, fortunes have been made and lost and new worlds discovered. Astoundingly, in the 17th-century more people died for the sake of cloves than in all the European dynastic wars of the period.Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs depict a...

Award-winning nature writer Jack Turner directs his attention to one of America's greatest natural treasures: the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Comprised of two national parks, three national wildlife refuges, parts of six national forests, and eleven wilderness areas, Greater Yellowstone is a vast array of differing environments and geographies.In a series of essays, Turner explores this wonderland, venturing on twelve separate trips in all seasons using various modes of travel: h...

Jack Turner grew up with an image of the Tetons engraved in his mind. As a young man, he climbed the peaks of this singular range with basic climbing gear friends. Later in life, he led treks in India, Pakistan, Nepal, China, Tibet, and Peru, but he always returned to the mountains of his youth. He continues to climb the Tetons as a guide for Exum Mountain, Guides, the oldest and most prestigious guide service in America. Teewinot is his ode to forty years in the mountains that he loves.

The election of America’s first black president has led many to believe that race is no longer a real obstacle to success and that remaining racial inequality stems largely from the failure of minority groups to take personal responsibility for seeking out opportunities. Often this argument is made in the name of the long tradition of self-reliance and American individualism. In Awakening to Race, Jack Turner upends this view, arguing that it expresses not a deep commitment to the...

In the heart of the Sahara, legends speak of a lost city made of gold — The Golden Citadel, where a forgotten king once trapped the power of the sun itself. When former soldier and adventurer Daniel Creed comes into possession of an ancient map, his search for fortune becomes a race against death. Pursued by ruthless treasure hunters and haunted by the desert's secrets, Daniel joins forces with Zahra Al-Mansur, a woman bound to the Citadel by blood and destiny. Together, they uncover a civ...

If anything is endangered in America it is our experience of wild nature—gross contact. There is knowledge only the wild can give us, knowledge specific to it, knowledge specific to the experience of it. These are its gifts to us.How wild is wilderness and how wild are our experiences in it, asks Jack Turner in the pages of The Abstract Wild. His answer: not very wild. National parks and even so-called wilderness areas fall far short of offering the primal...

Infania: Let's Go Treasure Hunting is the first in a series of novels all following the same band of oddball criminals that never manage to get anything done without a few bumps and scrapes along the way. Things only get odder when they come across a new cabin boy. What follows is a story filled with action, adventure, and everything in between, except for a well thought out plan. No one really seems to know what's going on, which happens to be part of the fun.

All three Jack Turner series novels come in this compendium set of books.Follow Jacks life from schoolboy through to becoming rich and famous. His life his loves his hopes his dreams are all laid bare.The complete set of Jack Turner books trace his life from attending a prestigious private school to becoming a Peer, the repercussions of helping a Baroness through to missing a link from his past that almost gets him killed. Excitement, mystery, thrilling content and adventure all the way.

This is a modern-day story of unrequited love, lies and betrayal where honour and duty are words, not actions, and the consequences of these decisions, lead to a tragic ending.From humble beginnings, Jack Turner is introduced into high society by his best friend, Rupert Winstanley. Into a network of the wealthy and the upper classes, who play by their own rules. A private club where emotions are kept under control or disguised and, a stiff upper lip is obligatory.From a camar...

Young history Professor Jack Turner is settling into his new position at Culpepper University, when he gets a surprise visit from his friend, police Sgt. Joe Boyd. Joe has started a new hobby, a fun pastime that's also helping him lose some weight—metal detecting. Joe asks if he can do this on Jack's lakefront property, which includes over a dozen acres of woods. Intrigued by a hobby that combines physical exercise and Jack's love of history, Jack asks to tag along. Neither man has any ide...

Jack and Rachel leave Culpepper for their long-awaited honeymoon trip, a driving tour through New England. On day three, they stop at a little bayside town in Cape Cod to visit Jack's grandmother. After he gets called away to handle an emergency, Rachel stays and listens as Jack's grandmother shares a remarkable story about how she and Jack's grandfather met in the early days of World War II. It's a story filled with danger, decades-old family secrets, daring rescues, and romance. Jack is ...