Gabriela Mistral is the only Latin American woman writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Even so, her extraordinary achievements in poetry, narrative, and political essays remain largely untold. Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler explores boldly and thoughtfully the complex legacy of Mistral and the way in which her work continues to define Latin America.

Edited by Professor Marjorie Agosín, Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler addresses for the first time the vision that Mistral conveyed as a representative of Chile during the drafting of the United Nations Human Rights Declaration. It depicts Mistral as a courageous social activist whose art and writings against fascism reveal a passionate voice for freedom and justice.

The book also explores Mistral’s Pan-American vision and her desire to be part of a unified American hemisphere as well as her concern for the Caribbean and Brazil. Readers will learn of her sojourn in Brazil, her turbulent years as consul in Madrid, and, finally, her last days on Long Island.

Students of her poetry, as well as general readers, will find Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler an insightful collection dedicated to the life and work of an inspiring and original artist.

The contributors are Jonathan Cohen, Joseph R. Slaughter, Verónica Darer, Patricia Varas, Eugenia Muñoz, Darrell B. Lockhart, Ivonne Gordon Vailakis, Santiago Daydí-Tolson, Diana Anhalt, Ana Pizarro, Randall Couch, Patricia Rubio, Elizabeth Horan, Emma Sepúlveda, Luis Vargas Saavedra, and Marie-Lise Gazarian-Gautier.

The Ganges has always been more than just an ordinary river. For millions of Indians, she is also a goddess. According to popular belief, bathing in “Mother Ganga” dissolves all sins, drinking her waters cures illness, and dying on her banks ensures freedom from the cycle of death and rebirth.

Yet there remains a paradox: while Ganga is worshipped devotedly, she is also exploited without remorse. Much of her water has been siphoned off for irrigation, toxic chemicals are dumped into her, and dams and barrages have been built on her course, causing immense damage. Ganga is in danger of dying—but if the river dies, will the goddess die too?

The question took journalist Julian Crandall Hollick on an extraordinary journey through northern India: from the river’s source high in the Himalayas, past great cities and poor villages, to lush Saggar Island, where the river finally meets the sea. Along the way he encounters priests and pilgrims, dacoits and dolphins, the fishermen who subsist on the river, and the villagers whose lives have been destroyed by her. He finds that popular devotion to Ganga is stronger and blinder than ever, and it is putting her—and her people—in great risk.

Combining travelogue, science, and history, Ganga is a fascinating portrait of a river and a culture. It will show you India as you have never imagined it.

A Gathering of Ways is John Matthias’ first collection of poems since the publication of his warmly received Northern Summer collection in 1985. The book consists of three long poems dealing with the geography, geology, prehistory, and history of two places closely identified with Matthias’ work, the East Anglian region of Britain and the American Midwest, and a third place that provides the book with a new and deeply resonant setting: those parts of southern France and northern Spain through which run the famous pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela.

“An East Anglian Diptych” explores those parts of Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Norfolk linked by three rivers and by those ancient paths and tracks known as ley lines which connect locality and locality and time with time. “Facts From an Apocryphal Midwest” explores another group of trails that began as prehistoric paths down which copper from Lake Superior was carried from the early days of the mound-builders. Despite the historical backdrop of these poems, both bring the reader into the present in unexpected ways, preparing him or her for the strange and visionary “A Compostela Diptych,” winner of the Poetry Society of America’s George Bogin Memorial Award.

The history of Cyprus offers a reflection of larger world history. Coveted by a succession of foreign powers, it has been repeatedly occupied: the Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, crusaders, Venetians, Genoese, Ottomans, and British have all left their mark on this Mediterranean island. Alongside the Roman and early Byzantine ruins of Salamis, other impressive monuments date from the Frankish and Venetian times, including the Abbey of Bellapais; the fortified harbor of Kyrenia; the magnificent cathedrals of Nicosia; and Famagusta, the setting for Shakespeare’s Othello.

In The Geckos of Bellapais, Joachim Sartorius shares the cultures and legends, colors and lights of the Levant. He explores the island’s history—including its division after the Turkish invasion of 1974 and the difficulties that followed. A revealing exploration of Cyprus after the Turkish partition and an evocative account of one poet’s life on one of the most beautiful islands in the Mediterranean, this book belongs among the world’s best travel writing.

Written by two self-proclaimed "geezers" who have shared forty-six years of hiking together, The Geezers' Guide to Colorado Hikes is the first book aimed at hikers over the age of sixty, as well as not-yet-acclimated visitors to Colorado, who want a glorious outdoor experience with minimal accompanying pain.

Fifty-six hikes are described that fit, in a graded fashion, the physical capabilities of most older hikers. While the majority of hikes listed are in the Denver / Boulder area and the nearby foothills, the authors have detailed several routes in Rocky Mountain National Park, Aspen, and Vail that will entice more ambitious readers up into the high Colorado Rockies.

The Geezers' Guide to Colorado Hikes includes an overview of the physiology of altitude and aging, a summary of altitude-related medical problems, notes on hike preparation and what to pack, and 56 recommended hikes with: Degree of difficulty ratings, distances, e stimated round-trip time for the older hiker, starting altitude and elevation gain figures, driving direction, trail descriptions, and maps.

Bloom focuses on the conquest of the North Pole as she reveals how popular print and visual media defined and shaped American national ideologies from the early twentieth century to the present.

"The many diseases that are endemic in most of the developing nations of the world (and that may also affect travelers to these regions) are, at world levels, the most important sources of morbidity that affect the entire human race. The change in morbidity patterns in the more developed nations should not be permitted to blind the more affluent countries to the implications of this simple statement. Thus, direct and useful guides are needed to assure efficient and economical diagnosis and treatment of those infections that are endemic to the less affluent two-thirds of the earth.

"The algorithms in this book have been developed by Drs. Warren and Mahmoud, as the result of a systematic effort to produce such guides. The book is presented as another in the series "Studies in Infectious Disease Research" and is a most welcome addition, certain to supply a major and hitherto inadequately fulfilled need."—from the Foreword, by Edward H. Kass, M. D., Ph.D

This detailed interpretive guide explains the forces that created Utah's unforgettable scenery, while providing road logs of highways and major backroads through the Grand Staircase of the Colorado Plateau.

Where in Utah can you find a fossilized ant hill that is at least fifty million years old? Do you know the location of an ancient beach that disappeared along with the dinosaurs that strolled it? Find out in The Geology of the Parks, Monuments, and Wildlands of Southern Utah.

This fascinating and authoritative guide belongs on the dashboard or in the backpack of every visitor to southern Utah or student of its natural history. More than sixty illustrations and nearly three dozen photographs accompany clear explanations of the spectacular geologic features of this landscape, including Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, and Zion National Parks, as well as the Grand Staircase-Escalante Monument.

Section I of the volume surveys chronologically the origins of the formations and structural features and the geologic processes that have shaped the Colorado Plateau. Section II provides road logs with mile-by-mile geologic descriptions of key sections of highway traversing this area.

This detailed interpretive guide turns any windshield into a window of opportunity for understanding the forces that created Utah’s unforgettable scenery—whether it be a breathtaking panorama or a dazzling array of fins and fractures, pillars and pedestals, or cliffs and chasms.

The Ice Age National Scenic Trail meanders across the state of Wisconsin through scenic glacial terrain dotted with lakes, steep hills, and long, narrow ridges. David M. Mickelson, Louis J. Maher Jr., and Susan L. Simpson bring this landscape to life and help readers understand what Ice Age Wisconsin was like. An overview of Wisconsin’s geology and key geological concepts helps readers understand geological processes, materials, and landforms. The authors detail geological features along each segment of the Ice Age Trail and at each of the nine National Ice Age Scientific Reserve sites.
    Readers can experience the Ice Age Trail through more than one hundred full-color photographs, scores of beautiful maps, and helpful diagrams. Science briefs explain glacial features such as eskers, drumlins, and moraines. Geology of the Ice Age National Scenic Trail also includes detailed trail descriptions that are cross referenced with the science briefs to make it easy to find the geological terms used in the trail descriptions. Whatever your level of experience with hiking or knowledge of glaciers, this book will provide lively, informative, and revealing descriptions for a new understanding of the shape of the land beneath our feet.

Since opening in 1931, the George Washington Bridge, linking New York and New Jersey, has become the busiest bridge in the world, with 108 million vehicles crossing it in 2007. Many people also consider it the most beautiful bridge in the world, yet remarkably little has been written about this majestic structure.

Intimate and engaging, Michael Rockland's rich narrative presents perspectives on the GWB, as it is often called, that span history, architecture, engineering, transportation, design, the arts, politics, and even post-9/11 mentality. Stunning archival photos, from the late 1920s when the bridge was built through the present, are a powerful complement to the bridge's history. Rockland covers the competition between the GWB and the Brooklyn Bridge that parallels the rivalry between New Jersey and New York City. Readers will learn about the Swiss immigrant Othmar Ammann, an unsung hero who designed and built the GWB, and how a lack of funding during the Depression dictated the iconic, uncovered steel beams of its towers, which we admire today. There are chapters discussing accidents on the bridge, such as an airplane crash landing in the westbound lanes and the sad story of suicides off its span; the appearance of the bridge in media and the arts; and Rockland's personal adventures on the bridge, including scaling its massive towers on a cable.

Movies, television shows, songs, novels, countless images, and even PlayStation 2 games have aided the GWB in becoming a part of the global popular culture. This tribute will captivate residents living in the shadow of the GWB, the millions who walk, jog, bike, skate, or drive across it, as well as tourists and those who will visit it some day.

• First major book on the George Washington Bridge
• Full of amazing facts about the GWB that will surprise even bridge historians
• Includes over 30 spectacular illustrations, ranging from archival photographs of the building of the bridge to those that show it draped in an enormous flag after 9/11
• Includes personal accounts of the author's adventures on the bridge

This new edition of The Geysers of Yellowstone is the most up-to-date and comprehensive reference to the geysers of Yellowstone National Park, describing in detail each of the more than five hundred geysers in the park. The entire text has been revised and geyser descriptions have been updated based on activity observed through early 2018. Information about a number of significant new geyser developments has been added, as well as recent knowledge about some of the world’s geyser fields outside Yellowstone.
 
Both a reference work and a fine introduction to the nature of geyser activity, this popular field guide includes a glossary of key terms, a comprehensive appendix that discusses other geyser areas of the world, detailed maps of each geyser basin, and tables for easy reference. The Geysers of Yellowstone will continue to serve geyser gazers as well as newcomers to geothermal phenomena for years to come.
 

 

There is nowhere else in the world quite like Chungking Mansions, a dilapidated seventeen-story commercial and residential structure in the heart of Hong Kong’s tourist district. A remarkably motley group of people call the building home; Pakistani phone stall operators, Chinese guesthouse workers, Nepalese heroin addicts, Indonesian sex workers, and traders and asylum seekers from all over Asia and Africa live and work there—even backpacking tourists rent rooms. In short, it is possibly the most globalized spot on the planet.

But as Ghetto at the Center of the World shows us, a trip to Chungking Mansions reveals a far less glamorous side of globalization. A world away from the gleaming headquarters of multinational corporations, Chungking Mansions is emblematic of the way globalization actually works for most of the world’s people. Gordon Mathews’s intimate portrayal of the building’s polyethnic residents lays bare their intricate connections to the international circulation of goods, money, and ideas. We come to understand the day-to-day realities of globalization through the stories of entrepreneurs from Africa carting cell phones in their luggage to sell back home and temporary workers from South Asia struggling to earn money to bring to their families. And we see that this so-called ghetto—which inspires fear in many of Hong Kong’s other residents, despite its low crime rate—is not a place of darkness and desperation but a beacon of hope.

Gordon Mathews’s compendium of riveting stories enthralls and instructs in equal measure, making Ghetto at the Center of the World not just a fascinating tour of a singular place but also a peek into the future of life on our shrinking planet.

Gem of the Adriatic, Trieste sparkled and beckoned through the pages of poets and novelists. Drawn there in search of literary ghosts, of the poet Umberto Saba and the novelists Italo Svevo and James Joyce, Joseph Cary found instead a city with an imaginative life of its own, the one that rises, tantalizing from the pages of this book. The story of Cary's travels, A Ghost in Trieste, is also a tale of discovery and transformation, as the bustling world of port and airplane, baggage and trams and trains becomes the landscape of history and literature, language and art, psychoanalysis and the self.

Here is the crossroads of East and West. A port held in turn by the Romans, the Venetians, the Austrians, the Germans, the Slavs, and finally the Italians, Trieste is the capital of nowhere, fertile source of a unique literary florescence before the First World War. At times an exile home and an exiled city. "I cannot claim to have walked across it all,:" wrote Saba, the poet of Trieste in 1910 of the city Cary crosses and recrosses, seeking the poetry of the place that inspired its literary giants. Trieste's cultural and historical riches, its geographical splendor of hills and sea and mysterious presence unfold in a series of stories, monologues and literary juxtapositions that reveal the city's charms as well as its seductive hold on the writer's imagination. Throughout, literary and immediate impressions alike are elaborated in paintings and maps, and in handsome line drawings by Nicholas Read.

This "clownish and adolescent Parsifal," this Trieste of the "prickly grace," this place "impaled in my heart like a permanent point," this symbol of the Adriatic, this "city made of books" — here the book remakes the city. The Trieste of allusions magically becomes a city of palpable allure, of warmth and trying contradictions and gritty beauty. Part travel diary, part guide book, part literary history, A Ghost in Trieste is a brilliant introduction to an extraordinary time and place. In Joseph Cary, Trieste has found a new poet, and readers, a remarkably captivating companion and guide.

In the twenty years since its original publication, The Ghosts of Berlin has become a classic, an unparalleled guide to understanding the presence of history in our built environment, especially in a space as historically contested—and emotionally fraught—as Berlin. Brian Ladd examines the ongoing conflicts radiating from the remarkable fusion of architecture, history, and national identity in Berlin. Returning to the city frequently, Ladd continues to survey the urban landscape, traversing its ruins, contemplating its buildings and memorials, and carefully deconstructing the public debates and political controversies emerging from its past.

Since the second quarter of the nineteenth century, changing conditions have built and emptied small and large towns across the Colorado plain. At the time when Denver was little more than an overpopulated campsite along Cherry Creek there were numerous other settlements to the east and south, each with its own dreams of growth, gold or silver strikes, railroad connections, and rising influence over the surrounding territory. In Ghosts of the Colorado Plains, Eberhart traces some 150 of these ill-fated settlements, providing accounts of their birth, peak activity, and ultimate demise.

As early trapping, mining, cattle, farming, and transportation industries brought successive waves of “easterners” into the territory, they created some of the most colorful communities of their time. The trail towns Boston and Trail City were reputed to be two of the roughest towns in the entire west. Real estate schemers and promoters offered dreams of civilization and respectability in the “cow towns.” Elsewhere, the stage stations, side of the road settlements, and farm centers arose out of the basic necessities of commerce and from a simple desire of far-flung settlers, trappers, and others for a place to congregate, celebrate, trade, brawl, and receive news from the east. Though the personalities and events which animated these communities are all but forgotten, the towns themselves are the legacy of the competing forces that opened and developed the Colorado territory.

Readers of Guide to Colorado Ghost Towns and Mining Camps will welcome Ghosts of the Colorado Plains as an extension of Eberhart’s colorful blend of history and on-site information to a larger and much neglected area of the state. Through historical records, vignettes of personalities, and over 250 photos and 80 maps, Eberhart provides ready access to the towns and settlment sites of eastern Colorado’s past. For travelers, Ghosts of the Colorado Plains offers numerous pleasant excursions and investigations; for those less inclined to take to the field in search of artifacts and sites, the book offers fascinating glimpses of Colorado’s disappearing past.

Bristol takes readers on a journey through the history of Glacier National Park, beginning over a billion years ago from the formation of the Belt Sea, to the present day climate-changing extinction of the very glaciers that sculpted most of the wonders of its landscapes. He delves into the ways in which this area of Montana seemed to have been preparing itself for the coming of humankind through a series of landmass adjustments like the Lewis Overthrust and the ice ages that came and went.
 
First there were tribes of Native Americans whose deep regard for nature left the landscape intact. They were followed by Euro-American explorers and settlers who may have been awed by the new lands, but began to move wildlife to near extinction. Fortunately for the area that would become Glacier, some began to recognize that laying siege to nature and its bounties would lead to wastelands.
 
Bristol recounts how a renewed conservation ethic fostered by such leaders as Emerson, Thoreau, Olmstead, Muir, and Teddy Roosevelt took hold. Their disciples were Grinnell, Hill, Mather, Albright, and Franklin Roosevelt, and they would not only take up the call but rally for the cause. These giants would create and preserve a park landscape to accommodate visitors and wilderness alike.

In his new book, The Glen Canyon Country, archaeologist Don D. Fowler shares the history of a place and the peoples who sojourned there over the course of several thousand years. To tell this story, he weaves his personal experience as a student working on the Glen Canyon Salvage Project with accounts of early explorers, geologists, miners, railroad developers, settlers, river runners, and others who entered this magical place. The book details the canyon’s story via historical and scientific summaries, biographical sketches, personal memoir, and previously unpublished photos of the land and its explorers.

The German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is often seen as the quintessential eighteenth-century tourist, though with the exception of a trip to Italy he hardly left his homeland. Compared to several of his peripatetic contemporaries, he took few actual journeys, and the list of European cities in which he never set foot is quite long. He never saw Vienna, Paris, or London, for example, and he only once visited Berlin. During the last thirty years of his life he was essentially a homebound writer, but his intensive mental journeys countered this sedentary lifestyle, and the misconception of Goethe as a traveler springs from the uniquely international influence of his writing.
​
While Goethe’s Italian Journey is a classic piece of travel writing, it was the product of his only extended physical journey. The majority, rather, were of the mind, taken amid the pages of books by others. In his reading, Goethe was the prototypical eighteenth-century armchair traveler, developing knowledge of places both near and far through the words and eyewitness accounts of others. In Goethe: Journeys of the Mind, Nancy Boerner and Gabrielle Bersier explore what it was that made the great writer distinct from his peers and offer insight into the ways that Goethe was able to explore the cultures and environments of places he never saw with his own eyes.

Scott Slovic has spent his life as a teacher, writer, environmental activist, and leader in the field of ecocritical literary studies. In Going Away to Think, he reflects on the twin motivations of his life—the commitment to do some good in the world and the impulse to enjoy life and participate fully in its most intense moments—and he examines the tension created by his efforts to balance these two poles of his responsibility. These essays reveal the complex inner life of one of this generation’s most important environmental critics and literary activists. They range from profound discussions of the role and responsibilities of scholarship to deeply personal ruminations on the impact of family crises and the influence of his wide-ranging travels.

For Somerville this was a kind of pilgrimage, a journey unlike any he had undertaken in 20 years of travel-writing. It was an expedition where he traded the usual comforts and certainties for a real physical and mental challenge, with no mobile phone or other technological aids. The only plan for his journey was to begin in the East at Easter and finish at Whitsun in the extreme West, at the Monastery of the Golden Step, whose gold step, legend says, can only be seen by those who have purged themselves into purity. During his 300-mile walk, he tackled four mountain ranges, high slopes and the numerous gorges of the West. Speaking only basic Greek and trying to follow a poorly way-marked path, he had to rely on his own instincts when climbing mountain passes and crossing high plateaux, farming and shepherding country, where villages are scarce and each night's accommodation was uncertain. He saw a Crete few ever encounter.

With wit, enthusiasm, and a deep respect for the craft of brewing, Andy Crouch profiles nearly one hundred establishments in New England, offering a description and history of each, as well as insights into each brewmaster's philosophy and brewing style. For each brewery and brewpub profiled, Crouch covers the range of beers available and identifies its flagship product; he also highlights his choice for its “best beer,” which is rarely its most popular or best known offering. Crouch offers judicious evaluations of food, ambience, and of course, the beer; he also provides information on the availability of tours, directions and parking, hours of operation, entertainment, local sights of interest, and whether beer is available for take-away. In addition, he includes essays on the brewing process, understanding and appreciating beer, and a list of “eleven great New England beer bars.” Whether well-brewed beer is the focus of a trip or a welcomed complement, beer enthusiasts and novices alike will find this guide a worthwhile companion wherever they travel in New England.

In the thirteen personal essays in Grammar Lessons, Michele Morano connects the rules of grammar to the stories we tell to help us understand our worlds. Living and traveling in Spain during a year of teaching English to university students, she learned to translate and interpret her past and present worlds—to study the surprising moments of communication—as a way to make sense of language and meaning, longing and memory.
    Morano focuses first on her year of living in Oviedo, in the early 1990s, a time spent immersing herself in a new culture and language while working through the relationship she had left behind with an emotionally dependent and suicidal man. Next, after subsequent trips to Spain, she explores the ways that travel sparks us to reconsider our personal histories in the context of larger historical legacies. Finally, she turns to the aftereffects of travel, to the constant negotiations involved in retelling and understanding the stories of our lives. Throughout she details one woman’s journey through vocabulary and verb tense toward a greater sense of her place in the world.
    Grammar Lessons illustrates the difficulty and delight, humor and humility of living in a new language and of carrying that pivotal experience forward. Michele Morano’s beautifully constructed essays reveal the many grammars and many voices that we collect, and learn from, as we travel.

The Grand Canyon has long inspired deep emotions and responses. For the Native Americans who lived there, the canyon was home, full of sacred meanings. For the first European settlers to see it, the canyon drove them to great exploration adventures and Wild West dreams of wealth. The canyon also held deep importance for America’s pioneer conservationists such as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, and it played a central role in the emerging environmental movement.
 
The Grand Canyon became a microcosm of the history and evolving values of the
National Park Service, long conflicted between encouraging tourism and protecting nature. Many vivid characters shaped the canyon’s past. Its largest story is one of cultural history and changing American visions of the land.
 
Grand Canyon: A History of a Natural Wonder and National Park is a mixture of great storytelling, unlikely characters, and important ideas. The book will appeal to both general readers and scholars interested in seeking a broader understanding of the canyon.

The Nevada of lesser-known cities, towns, and outposts deserve their separate chronicles, and here Hulse fills a wide gap. He contributes in a text rich with memories tramping through rural Nevada as a child, then as a journalist seeking news and gossip, then later as an academic historian and a parent trying to share the wonders of the high desert with his family. Nobody is more qualified to write about the cultural nuances of rural Nevada than Hulse, who retired after 35 years as a professor of history at University of Nevada, Reno.

Robert Laxalt wrote an article in National Geographic in 1974 entitled “The Other Nevada” in which he referred to “the Nevada that has been eclipsed by the tinsel trimmings of Las Vegas, the round-the-clock casinos, the ski slopes of the Sierra. It is a Nevada that few tourists see.” With this book Hulse reflects on Laxalt’s insights and shows changes—often slow-moving and incremental—that have occurred since then. Much of the terrain of rural Nevada has not changed at all, while others have adapted to technological revolutions of recent times. Hulse states that there is no single “other” Nevada, but several subcultures with distinct features. He offers a tour of sorts to what John Muir called the “bewildering abundance” of the Nevada landscape.

Great Basin National Park is in large part a high-alpine park, but it sits in one of America’s driest, least populated, and most isolated deserts. That contrast is one facet of the diversity that characterizes this region. Within and outside the park are phenomenal landscape features, biotic wonders, unique environments, varied historic sites, and the local colors of isolated towns and ranches. Vast Snake and Spring Valleys, bracketing the national park, are also subjects of one of the West's most divisive environment contests, over what  on the surface seems most absent but underground is abundant enough for sprawling Las Vegas to covet it—water.

Author Caroline Seebohm and photographer Peter C. Cook bring readers an exclusive look at some of New Jersey's most magnificent private homes and gardens. From a centuries-old farm to modern glass houses, from woodlands planted with native plants to formal French and English-style gardens, the book celebrates the rich diversity of architectural and gardening styles found in the state. More than 200 gorgeous color photographs, accompanied by inspired accounts, celebrate the beauty of New Jersey homes and gardens.

For many, “Greece” is synonymous with “ancient Greece,” the civilization that gave us much that defines Western culture today. But, how did Greece come to be so powerfully attached to the legacy of the ancients in the first place and then define an identity for itself that is at once Greek and modern? This book reveals the remarkable achievement, during the last three hundred years, of building a modern nation on the ruins of a vanished civilization—sometimes literally so. This is the story of the Greek nation-state but also, and more fundamentally, of the collective identity that goes with it. It is not only a history of events and high politics; it is also a history of culture, of the arts, of people, and of ideas.
 
Opening with the birth of the Greek nation-state, which emerged from encounters between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, Roderick Beaton carries his story into the present moment and Greece’s contentious post-recession relationship with the rest of the European Union. Through close examination of how Greeks have understood their shared identity, Beaton reveals a centuries-old tension over the Greek sense of self. How does Greece illuminate the difference between a geographically bounded state and the shared history and culture that make up a nation?

A magisterial look at the development of a national identity through history, Greece: Biography of a Modern Nation is singular in its approach. By treating modern Greece as a biographical subject, a living entity in its own right, Beaton encourages us to take a fresh look at a people and culture long celebrated for their past, even as they strive to build a future as part of the modern West.

Green Travel Guide to Northern Wisconsin showcases the best green restaurants, lodgings, shops, and activities in Wisconsin’s Northland. Learn about exploring the cliffs and caves of the Niagara Escarpment while biking the Door Peninsula. Carpool to the Midwest Renewable Energy Fair in Custer where you can stay at a nearby solar-powered inn. Take an all day eco-geo-history tour of the north woods near Hayward, explore the Chequamegon-Nicolet Forest, kayak the Mississippi River backwaters, and much more.

Green Travel Guide to Southern Wisconsin surveys the best green restaurants, lodgings, shops, and activities southern Wisconsin has to offer. Dine at independent, locally owned eateries that serve up delicious fare grown and raised by farmers right down the road. Overnight at peaceful inns that sponsor workshops on topics ranging from cheesemaking to sustainability. Scour markets that sell locally foraged mushrooms, berries, and syrups as well as arts and crafts created by local artisans. Bicycle through southern Wisconsin, stopping at small-scale farms where travelers are not only welcome but encouraged to visit.

 
Honorable Mention, Foreword Magazine’s Travel Guidebook of the Year

This reader brings together more than 200 texts and images in a broad introduction to Guatemala's history, culture, and politics. In choosing the selections, the editors sought to avoid representing the country only in terms of its long experience of conflict, racism, and violence. And so, while offering many perspectives on that violence, this anthology portrays Guatemala as a real place where people experience joys and sorrows that cannot be reduced to the contretemps of resistance and repression. It includes not only the opinions of politicians, activists, and scholars, but also poems, songs, plays, jokes, novels, short stories, recipes, art, and photographs that capture the diversity of everyday life in Guatemala. The editors introduce all of the selections, from the first piece, an excerpt from the Popol Vuh, a mid-sixteenth-century text believed to be the single most important source documenting pre-Hispanic Maya culture, through the final selections, which explore contemporary Guatemala in relation to neoliberalism, multiculturalism, and the dynamics of migration to the United States and of immigrant life. Many pieces were originally published in Spanish, and most of those appear in English for the first time.

Peter Rose has spent a lifetime exploring patterns of culture, examining issues of race and ethnicity, working with refugees, teaching sociology, and roaming the world. In Guest Appearances and Other Travels in Time and Space, he reflects on his adventures and the formative experiences that led him to a fascination with lives that seem quite unlike our own.

Guest Appearances and Other Travels in Time and Space introduces us to many of those whom Rose has met along the way, a cast of characters as colorful as it is diverse. It includes his music-loving mother; his tour guides in China, Germany, and Israel; Indochinese refugees he followed to the United States; the notorious murderer, Nathan Leopold; the simple tailor, Mr. David; and three writers for whom Rose has a special affinity: Philip Roth, John Updike, and Paul Theroux.

Peter Rose gives us an entirely pleasurable and insightful look into the life of an American scholar actively involved in contemporary issues as he takes readers along on his field trips and guest appearances.

The Iowa state preserves system was created in 1965; a decade later, thirty preserves had been dedicated, including “six native prairies, a native White Pine stand, the state's only Sphagnum bog, a Balsam Fir stand, some of the oldest exposed rock outcrops in the world, an ancient fort, a fen, several Indian mound groups and a historical cemetery.” This new guide to all ninety Iowa state preserves—biological, geological, archaeological, historical, and scenic—describes the state's most treasured prairies and forests, quartzite outcrops and ice caves, and Indian mounds and wetlands as well as such historic sites as Fort Atkinson and Montauk.

Each entry includes two-color, progressively scaled maps giving the location of the preserve within the state, within its county, relative to a nearby town (with a recommended driving route), and on the local landscape (using USGS 7.5-minute topo maps). Also included are written directions (using 911 street names and signs); a description of the preserve's size, features, and history; a list of nearby or similar preserves, parks, natural areas, and other attractions; recommended readings; and contact information. (There are a few exceptions for privately owned or fragile preserves.) For travelers, a map in the introduction numbers all the preserves both geographically and alphabetically by name.

Although the preserves system emphasizes preservation rather than recreation, some preserves do have formal trails; some allow hunting, horseback riding, and canoeing; a few have museums or nature centers. This comprehensive guide allows visitors to plan active and informative visits to sites that highlight Iowa's natural and cultural heritage.

In 1879, 230 settlers in southwestern Utah heeded the call from leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to pull up stakes and move to the distant San Juan country of southeastern Utah. Their year-long journey became one of the most extraordinary wagon trips ever undertaken in North America, their trail one of peril, difficulty, and spectacular vistas. Beginning in Cedar City, Utah, this trail crosses today’s Dixie National Forest, skirts Bryce Canyon National Park, bisects the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, crosses the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, and comes close to Natural Bridges National Monument on its way to Bluff, Utah.

Though the trail that these devoted pioneers broke across raw frontier was used for several years afterward, no highway was built over most of the route because it was deemed too rugged for modern vehicles. In addition to the historical value of the story of these pioneers, this guide includes road logs, maps, and hiking trails along the historic trail. It also points out fascinating natural history along the way, making A Guide to Southern Utah’s Hole-in-the-Rock Trail a significant reference for a variety of readers. 

"This is not a history book. Rather it is a directory of towns, and compilation of known information about those towns. In undertaking the stud, I was amazed at the amount of legend and contradictory information Colorado history has collected in just one hundred years. Who was it that said: 'History is the perpetuation of saleable gossip'? (Perhaps, nobody has said it yet. In that case, it's mine, all mine.)

"As of this moment, this is the most complete compilation of Colorado mining towns—ghost or going—available.

"For the fourth edition, over 100 towns have been added. Also, I have included a new chapter (XXVI. Addendum, page 466), the first couple of pages of which can well be read as a second Preface to the book."
— Perry Eberhart, Preface, 1959 and 1969

Finally, for every resident and visitor to the region, a comprehensive guide to the gardens of eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware.  Magnificently illustrated with nearly 200 full color photographs, A GUIDE TO THE GREAT GARDENS OF THE PHILADELPHIA REGION provides essential information on how to locate and enjoy the finest gardens the area has to offer.

As the horticultural epicenter of the United States, Philadelphia and the surrounding towns, suburbs, and countryside are blessed with more public gardens in a concentrated area than almost any other region in the world.  Stretching from Trenton, New Jersey  through Philadelphia and down to Newark, Delaware, this area (often called the Delaware Valley) offers more horticultural riches than a visitor can possibly see even in a coupl of weeks of hectic garden-hopping.

In A GUIDE TO THE GREAT GARDENS OF THE PHILADELPHIA REGION  you will find:

Detailed coverage of almost 100 gardens

Maps to indicate where area gardens are in relation to each other to plan day trip itineraries

Key information about each major garden, including hours, fees, time needed for a tour, history, acreage, and special features

Over a dozen gardens that have never before been featured in any garden guidebook

Arranged by interest, to help guide readers to gardens that will most meet their needs

Notations about historical houses, cafes/restaurants, gift shops, and chidren's features at each major garden