Barry Stone, author of 1001 Walks You Must Experience Before You Die, delves into some of the lesser-known aspects of the world's most famous - and not-quite-famous-yet - trails.

The perfect accompaniment to practical guidebooks, Stone relates how slings and carabiners kept him from falling headlong off the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and reports on the progress of the continental-wide monster, the Trans Canada Trail, gaps in which are still being filled by countless grass-roots communities.

With walks that will appeal to everyone regardless of ability, The 50 Greatest Walks of the World includes British classics such as the Pennine Way, Offa's Dyke Path, and the Old Man of Hoy as well as personal favourites such as Italy's Cinque Terre Classic and the Isle of Skye's Trotternish Ridge, one of Britain's finest ridge traverses with almost 2,500m of ascents. Whether it's a climb, a stroll, or a life-changing slog, this book has the walk for you.


Humanity's written history stretches back only 5,000 years, a mere blip on the timeline of our existence. If you want to know what it really means to be fully human, to see the whole story, you need to go back. Way, way back.



Prehistoric humans couldn't write, but they were adept at telling their own stories. On every continent and outpost where they gained a foothold, they left signs for modern man to decipher.





From the Middle Bronze Age settlement of Arkaim on the Kazakh Steppes to the temples of the Olmec in Mexico; from one of the first European proto-cities at Nebelivka in Ukraine to the neolithic henges of Avebury and Stonehenge; from the dolmens of Antequera in the heart of Andalucia to the megalithic culture that thrived in isolation on Indonesia's tiny Nias Island.


The 50 Greatest Westerns

by Barry Stone

Published 4 August 2016
Author Barry Stone has served his apprenticeship as a western movie geek and aficionado. The Magnificent Seven, The Wild Bunch, Red River - for 50 years the western has been the only genre in a life that `just ain't big enough for two'. He has written on the history of cinema for the illustrated reference book Historica, is a regular attendee to western premieres for FOX Studios Australia, and was recently a guest of the Museum of Western Film History in Independence, California.

Intrigued by the idea of frontier wilderness, of law and order vs lawlessness, and a firm belief that `the better the bad guy, the better the film', he goes beyond the American south-west to pay homage to the Italian and even Australian western - and, after much deliberation, he ranks them in order...