Graceland Cemetery in Chicago - A Sherlockian Walk Midst the Tombstones
by Brenda Rossini
Rambunctious ... Ten Tales of Twisted Travel and Tangled Thought
by Jefferson Rose
Henri Michaux (1899-1984), the great French poet and painter, set out as a young man to see the Far East. Traveling from India to the Himalayas, and on to China and Japan, Michaux voices his vivid impressions, cutting opinions, and curious insights: he has no trouble speaking his mind. Part fanciful travelogue and part exploration of culture, A Barbarian in Asia is presented here in its original translation by Sylvia Beach, the famous American-born bookseller in Paris.
Every great city is a restless work in progress, but nowhere is the urban impulse more in flux than in Berlin, that sprawling metropolis located on the fault line of history. A short-lived fever-dream of modernity in the Roaring Twenties, redubbed Germania and primped up into the megalomaniac fantasy of a Thousand-Year Reichstadt in the Thirties, reduced in 1945 to a divided rubble heap, subsequently revived in a schizoid state of post-World War II duality, and reunited in 1989 when the wall cam...
The Harbours of England (The Complete Works of John Ruskin -, #13)
by John Ruskin
Paula Weideger boarded a "vaporetto" on the Grand Canal, and under the sunny blue Venetian sky she, like millions of others, fell in love with the city. Venice was where she wanted to live and, with a combination of luck and determination, she did. This is the story of her adventures in one of the world's most treasured places. Follow in her footsteps as Weideger makes her way into the labyrinth and discovers the city's secrets. There are mysteries, obstacles, and surprises -- many of them deli...
Established on its many islands by Roman refugees, the heart of a maritime empire, a republic for a thousand years, Venice has always been distinct from the rest of Italy - and from anywhere else. Its unique light and hundreds of canals, palaces and churches from mosaic encrusted Byzantine to harmonious Palladian - have attracted visitors, painters and writers as diverse as Turner, Proust and Pound. Historically celebrated for its wealth and independence of mind, the city has also become a byw...
"A casually wondrous experience; it made me feel like the city was unfolding beneath my feet.” —Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror In place-names lie stories. That’s the truth that animates this fascinating journey through the names of New York City’s streets and parks, boroughs and bridges, playgrounds and neighborhoods. Exploring the power of naming to shape experience and our sense of place, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro traces the ways in which native Lenape, Dutch settlers, British invaders, a...
Madrid (Cityscopes) (Literary Guides for Travellers)
by Jules Stewart and Helen Crisp
Spain's top city for tourism, Madrid attracts more than six million visitors a year. Helen Crisp and Jules Stewart relate the story of a city and its people through the centuries, while their carefully curated listings give a nod to well-known attractions and sights, as well as hidden gems. Spain's art capital, with its `Golden Triangle' of museums and myriad art galleries, Madrid is also a city of dazzling nightlife, with a profusion of cafes and bars. This is the story of a vibrant, energetic...
Profiling individual, legendary authors, best-selling author Jerry Hopkins combines his research and his own experiences as a longtime expatriate with an intimate knowledge of Asia and offers us a unique perspective on the impact of Eastern culture in Western literature. From the time of Marco Polo's trek across the Central Asian desert to the empire of the mighty Mongol Khan, no other place on earth, not the languid South Pacific or even deepest, darkest Africa has so challenged and enchanted...
The bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it's because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires. A memoir of a life in the antiquarian book trade, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey between the shelves-and then behind the counter, into the overstuffed basemen...
A Visit To America (The Fonthill Complete A. G. Macdonell)
by A G Macdonell
In 1934, at the peak of the Great Depression, A. G. Macdonell embarked on a journey across America. This travelogue is the deliciously scathing product of that adventure: a vivid and unflinchingly honest record of life in the cities and the slums, on the roads, railways, and the vast open plains. "The hot breath of the Apocalyptic Horsemen is on my neck, and I still wake up on occasions in peaceful England, cold with terror from the dream that I am once again upon the road." By the time he depar...
Henry James wrote of Venice: 'You desire to embrace it, to caress it, to possess it ...' whereas Mark Twain found St Mark's 'so ugly ...propped on its long row of thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seems like a vast, warty bug taking a meditative walk'. Reactions to Venice have been, throughout the ages, astonishingly different. John Julius Norwich has put together a dazzling anthology, drawing on the writings of Byron, Goethe, Wagner, Casanova, Jan Morris, Robert Browning and...