posted by admin on Feb 26
Featuring Jeremy Treglown following in the footsteps of V. S. Pritchett in Spain, Tim Parks on the joys and sorrows of commuting from Verona to Milan, and Christopher de Bellaigue tracking down the Armenians in Turkey. Plus Todd McEwen on Cary Grant’s trousers and new fiction by Ann Beattie, Tessa Hadley, and Jim Shepard.
Order Granta Volume 94: On The Road Again (Granta): Ian Jack form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 25
Review
“Shackelford captures Jefferson’s intellectual vitality, his cultured interests, and the esteem in which he was held by so many who came into contact with him… [His] splendid account of Jefferson abroad captures what he was truly about.” — Times Literary Supplement
“An intimate and richly detailed description of Jefferson’s encounters with European culture… Shackelford’s contribution to the study of Jefferson’s intellect is as attractive as it is substantive in contributing to our understanding of Jefferson’s intellect and the forces that shaped it.” — Georgia Historical Quarterly
“This is a beautiful book: graceful in prose and rich in illustrations.” — Journal of American History
“Shackelford captures Jefferson’s intellectual vitality, his cultured interests, and the esteem in which he was held by so many who came into contact with him… [His] splendid account of Jefferson abroad captures what he was truly about.” — Times Literary Supplement
“An intimate and richly detailed description of Jefferson’s encounters with European culture… Shackelford’s contribution to the study of Jefferson’s intellect is as attractive as it is substantive in contributing to our understanding of Jefferson’s intellect and the forces that shaped it.” — Georgia Historical Quarterly
“This is a beautiful book: graceful in prose and rich in illustrations.” — Journal of American History
During his time as minister to the court of Louis XVI, from 1784 to 1789, Thomas Jefferson became not only a friend of France but also the champion of European culture in the United States. Because the man who was to become America’s third president learned so much from his five years abroad — about the fine arts of architecture and painting and about the practical arts of agriculture, bureaucracy, and commerce — his stay in Europe remains one of the most important of any American before or since. Illustrated with more than sixty images of the actual places the future president visited and described — including both contemporary works and new photographs — Jefferson’s Travels in Europe is the first book to describe and explore the significance of Jefferson’s European journey, detailing the sights he visited, the people he met, and the events he attended. Based on extensive research into Jefferson’s account books and correspondence, as well as the experiences of other travelers of the day, George Green Shackelford connects Jefferson’s journeys in France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and the German Rhineland to his intellectual and aesthetic development.
“Immaculately researched, thoughtful, and persuasive… A valuable, handsomely produced book.” — Journal of the Early Republic
“An engaging account of important cultural landmarks in late eighteenth-century Europe and… a useful contribution to the literature on Thomas Jefferson, providing an insight into the private man and his wide circle of friends in Europe. It reminds us again of the vitality and comprehensiveness of Jefferson’s interests.” — Journal of Southern History
“A meticulously researched and presented work that increases our knowledge of this period of Jefferson’s life.” — William and Mary Quarterly
[original long copy]“While Americans generally still consider Thomas Jefferson to be a veritable Apostle of Americanism, it was his foreign residence and travels that made him America’s most sophisticated national leader. To understand how Thomas Jefferson completed his metamorphosis from a talented provincial, it is necessary to reconstitute what he saw on his European journeys, to describe where he lived in Europe, and to speak of how his European friends influenced him.”–George Green Shackelford, in Thomas Jefferson’s Travels in Europe.
During his time as minister to the court of Louis XVI, from 1784 to 1789, Thomas Jefferson became not only a friend of France but also the champion of European culture in the United States. Because the man who was to become America’s third president learned so much from his five years abroad–about the fine arts of architecture and painting and about the practical arts of agriculture, bureaucracy, and commerce–his stay in Europe remains one of the most important of any American before or since. In the first book to describe and explore the significance of Jefferson’s European journey, George Green Shackelford offers the reader an intimate and richly detailed account of what Jefferson saw and how he saw it. In the process, he assesses the influence on Jefferson of such figures as the architect Charles Louis Clérisseau and the artist Maria Cosway.
Illustrated with more than sixty images of the actual places Jefferson visited and described–including both contemporary works and new photographs– Jefferson’s Travels in Europe shows how Jefferson’s journeys in France, England, Italy, the Netherlands, and the German Rhineland shaped his intellectual and aesthetic development. Coaxing meaning out of Jefferson’s account books and correspondence, and the parallel experiences of other travelers of the day, Shackelford has created a unique document, one that bears “a general resemblance to the book that Thomas Jefferson never wrote, his Notes on Europe.”
Order Thomas Jefferson’s Travels in Europe, 1784-1789: George Green Shackleford form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 23
Review
“…an adventurer who struggles to balance life’s demands while experiencing as much of the world as possible…” — Michael Wilson, friend, 15 February 2006
“…an adventurer who struggles to balance life’s demands while experiencing as much of the world as possible…” –Michael Wilson, friend, 15 February 2006
Catamount’s Quest is an autobiography about the life and times of Douglas Stream. Filled with travel/adventures stories from Europe and the United States, this fascinating book will inspire readers of all ages to experience more of their world. There is also a spiritual element interwoven into the story… how God has enabled me to overcome various shortcomings.
Order Catamount’s Quest … A Passion for Adventure: Douglas K. Stream form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 23
“Pictures from Italy” is an exciting travelogue by Dickens and is one of his masterpieces. It narrates his reflections during his stay there. In ceaseless picturesque images, he paints the streets and buildings as well as the life of Italy. An engrossing travelogue that reveals the history, culture, different classes of society and his own reactions to what he saw. This EasyRead Large Edition has been optimized for readers who prefer a standard 16pt large type.
About the Author
With all of his works still in print, Dickens is without a doubt one of the most popular authors of all times. Flourishing in the Victorian era, this English novelist is renowned for his unforgettable characters and vivid story lines.
Order Pictures From Italy (EasyRead Large Edition): Charles Dickens form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 21
“Pictures from Italy” is an exciting travelogue by Dickens and is one of his masterpieces. It narrates his reflections during his stay there. In ceaseless picturesque images, he paints the streets and buildings as well as the life of Italy. An engrossing travelogue that reveals the history, culture, different classes of society and his own reactions to what he saw. This EasyRead Comfort Edition has been optimized for readers who do not need large type yet prefer a print that does not strain their eyes.
About the Author
With all of his works still in print, Dickens is without a doubt one of the most popular authors of all times. Flourishing in the Victorian era, this English novelist is renowned for his unforgettable characters and vivid story lines.
Order Pictures From Italy (EasyRead Comfort Edition): Charles Dickens form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 20
This is Book Two of my travel stories. Non-fiction stories of some of the travels I have taken. Chapters on Cruises to Western Caribbean, Mexican Rivera, a tour through Eastern Canada and a Grand Tour of Europe.
About the Author
These stores are memories of traveling with my late husband, and then with my sister.
Order My Several Journeys Book Two: Elizabeth Mulford form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 19
Cult followers of bike lore now have a chunk of gospel to chew on: Victor Vincente of America’s classic ‘world’s longest prose poem’–’A Dirt Road Rider’s Trek Epic.’
VVA is one of the more mysterious founding fathers of mt-biking, as well as a source of the revival of road racing in America. He inspired Greg Lemond and others with his unsponsored, half-starved European and Olympic racing exploits. In the 70’s, he set the first ‘RAAM’ record, riding back and forth nonstop across the U.S., which was when he gave himself his name. He has hosted legendary offroad eventssome which involved prizes in the form of roadkill.
His notorious newsletter of race results and stories was the first home of this long-running prose-poem about days and nights offroad, in the natural and cultural outback. These are put-you-there tales any cultural explorer can relate to–and be surprised by.
The DRRTE–plus new episodes–is showcased here along with media-reprints from VVA’s heyday and dirt road scene. Illustrated; with artful glimpses of his other projects, including coin art, t-shirts, posters, and stamps.
Order A Dirt Road Rider’s Trek Epic: Victor Vincente of America form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 19
Review
Paget is at her best when writing about her travels. — The Californian, Silas Spaeth, December 26, 2004
Readers will find Paget’s experiences of adjusting to marrying into a French family… most interesting. — Monterey County Herald, Bob Walch, January 30, 2005
Ideas for living the good life on a shoestring budget run throughout Edible Alchemy: Making Life Magic, a book of restaurant reviews, holiday celebrations, and travel memoirs. Ruth Pennington Paget delves into the culinary culture of the ethnic restaurants she takes her family and friends to as a way to enrich life. She explores the universal aspirations that render life sacred in her food stories about Greek Orthodoxy’s Epiphany and New Year’s, Islam’s Ramadaan and Eid al-Fitr, Judaism’s Rosh Hashanah, and Hispanic Day of the Dead.
The travel memoirs from the time she lived in Europe and Wisconsin recount her foibles as an innocent abroad and new mother. Ultimately, Edible Alchemy will inspire one to write one’s own life story.
Order Edible Alchemy: Making Life Magic: Ruth Pennington Paget form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 19
Review
“Wherever I Wander is mysterious. Sensuous. Spellbinding. Gentle.” — Sharon Doubiago, author of Hard Country
“Judith Azrael gives us koans to brew within the mind.” — Kim Stafford, author of The Muses Among Us
Wherever I Wander is a collection of Judith Azrael’s lyrical prose written between 1979 and 2001. She takes the reader on an unforgettable voyage of discovery from Northern California to the San Juan islands, to Southeast Asia and along footpaths to tiny villages and chapels on the Greek islands. Whether she writes of teaching a writing workshop at a prison camp, stays at Buddhist monasteries, or watching dolphins leap from the sea in Bali, her words are haunting in their beauty and simplicity.
Order Wherever I Wander: Judith Azrael, Judith Anne Greenberg form Amazon.
posted by admin on Feb 17
A mattanza, in Italian, is a slaughter–in the instance Theresa Maggio relates, a springtime slaughter of bluefin tuna, the fish highly prized by sports fishermen and gourmands. In these elegant pages, Maggio describes the hard lives of Sicilian fishermen who chase the bluefin, reenacting a hunt that extends far back into prehistory and whose rituals, including that ceremonial massacre, have gone essentially unchanged for thousands of years.
Maggio, a former science writer at the Los Alamos National Scientific Laboratory, first traveled to her ancestral island in her early 30s. On the rocky coast of Favignana she witnessed her first mattanza, an unexpected “font of primal energy, beauty, and suffering, all in a tiny square of sea.” After observing the coordinated efforts of the fishermen, who battled to drive the three-quarter-ton fish into a carefully constructed maze of net traps, Maggio came to develop an appreciation for the hunt in Sicilian village life. It is a ritual as laden with meaning as the buffalo hunt in Plains Indian cultures.
Maggio’s memoir of life, death, and hard work in a dangerous sea joins with Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s Lives as a thoughtful study in human ecology. –Gregory McNamee
From Publishers Weekly
It is important to remember this slim book’s subtitle. Its subject is in fact la mattanza (literally, the slaughter), the ancient and ritualistic blue-fin tuna catch that preoccupies fishing societies along the eastern Mediterranean beginning in early spring. Blue-fin tuna are “giants, eight-feet long, some bigger”; every year during la mattanza, hundreds of the tuna are caught and hauled up by teams of local fishermen. Maggio is a travel writer who has spent the last 15 years visiting the Sicilian island of Favignana, where the men who work the giant tuna traps have slowly accepted her as a part of their decidedly masculine circle. Her relationship with the island, its denizens and the waning glory of la mattanza tradition is both obsessive and tender. At her best, Maggio is a wry storyteller and a lyrical verbal landscapist. Perhaps unconsciously, she sometimes slips into the bare narrative of an absent but inescapable literary forebear–as if the very presence of muscled men wrestling with giants of the sea demands the voice of Hemingway. But hers is not a simple account of man vs. nature: it’s an eloquent tribute to a unique community, where the local Madonna cradles a slippery fish in place of the Messiah and wild cats dine on homemade pasta served on paper plates. If the author asserts herself too frequently as the protagonist of her story, it is only because Favignana needs to be diluted with an outsider’s curiosity in order to be digested. And after all, what is a love story without a lover? 30 b&w photos. 8-city author tour. (May)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Order Mattanza: Love and Death in the Sea of Sicily: Theresa Maggio form Amazon.