Results by title
93 books match the query 'Special Interest' and 20 start with t
The Big Bang Symphony
A Novel of AntarcticaLucy Jane Bledsoe
University of Wisconsin Press, 2010
At least that’s how thirty-year-old Rosie Moore views it as she flies in for her third season on the Ice. She plans to avoid all entanglements, romantic and otherwise, and do her work as a galley cook. But when her flight crash-lands, so do all her plans.
Mikala Wilbo, a brilliant young composer whose heart—and music—have been frozen since the death of her partner, is also on that flight. She has come to the Ice as an artist-in-residence, to write music, but also to secretly check out the astrophysicist father she has never met.
Arriving a few weeks later, Alice Neilson, a graduate student in geology who thinks in charts and equations, is thrilled to leave her dependent mother and begin her career at last. But from the start she is aware that her post-doc advisor, with whom she will work in Antarctica, expects much more from their relationship.
As the three women become increasingly involved in each other’s lives, they find themselves deeply transformed by their time on the Ice. Each falls in love. Each faces challenges she never thought she would meet. And ultimately, each finds redemption in a depth and quality of friendship that only the harsh beauty of Antarctica can engender.
The Cruel Way
Switzerland to Afghanistan in a Ford, 1939Ella K. Maillart
University of Chicago Press, 2013
While the core of the book is the journey itself and their interactions with people oppressed by political conflict and poverty, towards the end of the trip the women’s increasingly troubled relationship takes center stage. By then the glamorous, androgynous Schwarzenbach, whose own account of the trip can be found in All the Roads Are Open, is fighting a losing battle with her own drug addiction, and Maillart’s frustrated attempts to cure her show the profound depth of their relationship.
Complete with thirteen of Maillart’s own photographs from the journey, The Cruel Way is a classic of travel writing, and its protagonists are as gripping and fearless as any in literature.
The Dead Ladies Project
Exiles, Expats, and Ex-CountriesJessa Crispin
University of Chicago Press, 2015
The Dead Ladies Project is an account of that journey—but it’s also much, much more. Fascinated by exile, Crispin travels an itinerary of key locations in its literary map, of places that have drawn writers who needed to break free from their origins and start afresh. As she reflects on William James struggling through despair in Berlin, Nora Barnacle dependant on and dependable for James Joyce in Trieste, Maud Gonne fomenting revolution and fostering myth in Dublin, or Igor Stravinsky starting over from nothing in Switzerland, Crispin interweaves biography, incisive literary analysis, and personal experience into a rich meditation on the complicated interactions of place, personality, and society that can make escape and reinvention such an attractive, even intoxicating proposition.
Personal and profane, funny and fervent, The Dead Ladies Project ranges from the nineteenth century to the present, from historical figures to brand-new hangovers, in search, ultimately, of an answer to a bedrock question: How does a person decide how to live their life?
The Greatest Ballpark Ever
Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn DodgersMcGee, Bob
Rutgers University Press, 2005
In this lively story of sports, politics, and the talented, hilarious, and charming characters associated with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Bob McGee chronicles the ballpark's vibrant history from the drawing board to the wrecking ball, beginning with Charley Ebbets and the heralded opening in 1913, on through the eras that followed. McGee weaves a story about how Ebbets Field's architectural details, notable flaws, and striking facade brought Brooklyn and its team together in ways that allowed each to define the other.
Drawing on original interviews and letters, as well as published and archival sources, The Greatest Ballpark Ever explores the struggle of Charley Ebbets to build Ebbets Field, the days of Wilbert Robinson's early pennant winners, the eras of the Daffiness Boys, Larry MacPhail, and Branch Rickey, the tumultuous field leadership of Leo the Lip, the fiery triumph of Jackie Robinson, the golden days of the Boys of Summer, and Walter O'Malley's ignominious departure.
With humor and passion, The Greatest Ballpark Ever lets readers relive a day in the raucous ballpark with its quirky angles and its bent right-field wall, with the characters and events that have become part of the nation's folklore.
The Ice Cave
A Woman’s Adventures from the Mojave to the AntarcticLucy Jane Bledsoe
University of Wisconsin Press, 2006
These are Bledsoe’s gripping tales of fending off wolves in Alaska, encountering UFOs in the Colorado Desert, and searching for mountain lions in Berkeley. Her memorable story “The Breath of Seals” takes readers to Antarctica, the wildest continent on earth, where she camped out with geologists, biologists, and astrophysicists. These fresh and deeply personal narratives remind us what it means to be simply one member of one species, trying to find food and shelter—and moments of grace—on our planet.
The Kindness of Strangers
Tom Lutz
University of Iowa Press, 2021
You may never visit these places, but Tom Lutz will do it for you. And while global media may serve up a steady diet of division, violence, oppression, hatred, and strife, The Kindness of Strangers shows that people the world over are much more likely to meet strangers with interest, empathy, welcome, and compassion.
The Literary Guide and Companion to Southern England
Revised EditionRobert M. Cooper
Ohio University Press, 1998
In a series of intriguing routes through the English countryside, Professor Robert Cooper notes those attractions that the casual tourist might unknowingly pass by, such as the house where Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities, or the windswept quay where John Fowles’s French Lieutenant’s woman walked. Maps and information about restaurants and accommodations give the traveler the opportunity of having pints of “half and half” where Jane Austen dined or visiting the pub where Blake’s scuffle led to his trial for treason.
This newly revised and updated edition of Robert Cooper’s acclaimed handbook combines the utility of current travel information with the appeal of literary history, biography, and anecdote in a leisurely and flavorful guide to the broad sweep of southern England outside of London. A rich and reliable guide to the landscape that fostered one of our most cherished cultures, The Literary Guide and Companion to Southern England is an indispensable resource for those who wish to experience literature firsthand.
The Other Jersey Shore
Life on the Delaware RiverMichael Aaron Rockland
Rutgers University Press, 2024
The Other Jersey Shore takes readers on a personal tour of the New Jersey portion of the Delaware River and its surroundings. You will learn about the role that the river played in human history, including Washington’s four crossings of the Delaware during the Revolutionary War. And you will also learn about the ecological history of the river itself, once one of the most polluted waterways in the country and now one of the cleanest, providing drinking water for 17 million people. Michael Aaron Rockland, a long-time New Jersey resident, shows readers his very favorite spots along the Delaware, including the pristine waterfalls and wilderness in the Delaware Water Gap recreation area. Along the way, he shares engrossing stories and surprising facts about the river that literally defines western New Jersey.
The Patagonian Sublime
The Green Economy and Post-Neoliberal PoliticsMendoza, Marcos
Rutgers University Press, 2019
Mendoza explores the fraught intersection of the green economy with the New Left politics of the Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner governments. Mendoza documents the strategies of capitalist development, national representation, and political rule embedded in the “green productivist” agenda pursued by Kirchner and Fernández. Mendoza shows how Andean Patagonian communities have responded to the challenges of community-based conservation, the fashioning of wilderness zones, and the drive to create place-based monopolies that allow ecotourism destinations to compete in the global consumer economy.
The Poconos
An Illustrated Natural History GuideCarl S. Oplinger and Robert Halma
Rutgers University Press, 2006
The Poconos, a rich plateau nestled in northeastern Pennsylvania between the Delaware River and the Moosic Mountains, encompass a variety of alluring features. The perfect reference for amateur naturalists, outdoor enthusiasts, tourists, and others who wish to explore the area, this classic guide clearly explains the unique geographic characteristics, animal habits and habitats, climate, geology, and vegetation of the area.
The authors trace the region from its beginnings millions of years ago as part of a shallow sea, through the reshaping forces of great glaciers, to today’s roadways and turnpikes. This revised and expanded edition also includes brief profiles of individuals who played significant roles in the preservation or understanding of the area’s ecology. Chapters provide a general survey of the area, including its history and places to be explored and observed, information on forest types, wildlife, and aquatic habitats, updated facts and figures on animal populations, as well as new details on invasive species.
Throughout the book, numerous boxes direct readers to observatory points for specific birds, ecosystems, vegetation types, and geological features, while maps, tables, original pen-and-ink illustrations, and a select list of field guides and other references enhance the book’s appeal. An indispensable companion for visitors as well as residents, The Poconos is a must-read for everyone who wants to discover or better understand the beauty and natural history of this unique region.
The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World
Jewish Heritage in Europe and the United StatesDaniel J. Walkowitz
Rutgers University Press, 2018
The Remembered and Forgotten Jewish World investigates the politics of heritage tourism and collective memory. In an account that is part travelogue, part social history, and part family saga, acclaimed historian Daniel J. Walkowitz visits key Jewish museums and heritage sites from Berlin to Belgrade, from Krakow to Kiev, and from Warsaw to New York, to discover which stories of the Jewish experience are told and which are silenced. As he travels to thirteen different locations, participates in tours, displays, and public programs, and gleans insight from local historians, he juxtaposes the historical record with the stories presented in heritage tourism. What he finds raises provocative questions about the heritage tourism industry and its role in determining how we perceive Jewish history and identity. This book offers a unique perspective on the importance of collective memory and the dangers of collective forgetting.
The Sea and the Jungle
H.M. Tomlinson
Northwestern University Press, 1996
The Tensaw River
Alabama's Hidden Heritage CorridorMike Bunn
University of Alabama Press, 2025
Where nature meets history—explore Alabama’s hidden river legacy.
The Tensaw River introduces one of the American South’s richest and most fertile natural features. Author Mike Bunn is director of Historic Blakeley State Park, which is nestled in a prominent bend of the majestic Tensaw River. Reading Bunn is like sailing with a knowledgeable captain along the river’s natural and cultural byways as he offers a treasury of stories and facts that illuminate the river’s astonishing flora and fauna and the sweep of human history along the river’s ageless, meandering waterways.
Forming the eastern boundary of the expansive Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the Tensaw has had little industrial development. Left largely undisturbed, the river still flows free and bountiful into the grand estuary of Mobile Bay in ways and along vistas that would be recognizable to Native Americans centuries ago and to pioneers who arrived before Alabama became a state.
Bunn’s unforgettable stories in The Tensaw River trace the construction and occupation of the Bottle Creek site, an important mound complex built by Southeastern Native Americans a millennia ago. Nearby Blakeley is a spectral antebellum ghost town whose lost memories also tease the imagination. During the Civil War, the boom of artillery fire in the battle that sealed the fate of the city of Mobile echoed along the bends in the Tensaw.
Located near popular Gulf Coast travel destinations, the Tensaw’s forty-one-mile-long “Forgotten Cultural Heritage Corridor” is a gateway to the enchanting beauty of—and humankind’s enduring relationship to—the landscape of the American South.
The View from the Hill
Four Seasons in a Walker’s BritainChristopher Somerville
Haus Publishing, 2023
In Christopher Somerville’s workroom is a case of shelves that holds four hundred and fifty notebooks. Their pages are creased and stained with mud, blood, flattened insects, beer glass rings, smears of plant juice, and gallons of sweat. Everything Somerville has written about walking the British countryside has had its origin in these little black and red books.
During the lockdowns and enforced isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, Somerville began to revisit this treasury of notes, spanning forty years of exploring on foot. The View from the Hill pulls together the best of his written collections, following the cycle of the seasons from a freezing January on the Severn Estuary to the sight of sunrise on Christmas morning from inside a prehistoric burial mound. In between are hundreds of walks to discover toads in a Cumbrian spring, trout in a Hampshire chalk stream, a lordly red stag at the autumn rut on the Isle of Mull, and three thousand geese at full gabble in the wintry Norfolk sky. Somerville’s writing enables readers to enjoy these magnificent walks without stirring from the comfort of home.
This Magnetic North
Candid Conversations on a Changing Northern MichiganTim Mulherin
Michigan State University Press, 2025
This book explores a phenomenon occurring around Michigan’s Great Lakes and other high-demand scenic locations across the country: natural landscapes are undergoing profound human and climatological change as people pick up their lives and move to bucolic locations. The Grand Traverse region in northwest lower Michigan has been one of the most impacted regions in the state, with the population increase accelerated by the pandemic and climate change. The impact of this growth is explored through field observations and interviews involving dozens of born-and-raised locals, “boomerangers” (those who grew up, left, then returned), and relocators. The author explores the tensions between newcomers and “natives.” Interviewees include tourist industry leaders, conservationists, business owners, public safety officials, tribal members, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore officials, and more. These voices characterize the region’s diverse views, providing insight into how one of the most popular vacation destinations in the country is attempting to balance environmental preservation with an influx of people. Northwest lower Michigan’s story of transformation, as tradition collides with progress, holds many lessons and will resonate with everyone who has ever lived in or visited such an enchanting place and dreams of calling it home.
Trail Running Eastern Massachusetts
Ben Kimball
University of Massachusetts Press, 2022
Eastern Massachusetts offers incredible trail-running opportunities, ranging from popular long-distance routes like the Bay Circuit Trail to lesser-known loops that run through the mountains and forests of the Quabbin watershed and Merrimack Valley region, and trails that pass alongside the shores of Cape Cod. All over the Bay State, there are trails suitable for runners of all levels waiting to be discovered and explored.
Avid trail runner Ben Kimball offers a selection of fifty-one of eastern Massachusetts’s most spectacular trail sites, including detailed trail descriptions, topographic maps, directions, parking information, safety tips, and much more. Both experienced and novice trail runners will find Trail Running Eastern Massachusetts to be an invaluable resource for exploring nature and getting a good workout, in the Boston area and beyond.
Transatlantic Women Travelers, 1688-1843
Misty Krueger
Bucknell University Press, 2021
Travel Wild Wisconsin
A Seasonal Guide to Wildlife Encounters in Natural PlacesCandice Gaukel Andrews
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
Traveling in Place
A History of Armchair TravelBernd Stiegler
University of Chicago Press, 2013
Organized into twenty-one “legs”—or short chapters—Traveling in Place begins with a consideration of Xavier de Maistre’s 1794 Voyage autour de ma chambre, an account of the forty-two-day “journey around his room” Maistre undertook as a way to entertain himself while under house arrest. Stiegler is fascinated by the notion of exploring the familiar as though it were completely new and strange. He engages writers as diverse as Roussel, Beckett, Perec, Robbe-Grillet, Cortázar, Kierkegaard, and Borges, all of whom show how the everyday can be brilliantly transformed. Like the best guidebooks, Traveling in Place is more interested in the idea of travel as a state of mind than as a physical activity, and Stiegler reflects on the different ways that traveling at home have manifested themselves in the modern era, from literature and film to the virtual possibilities of the Internet, blogs, and contemporary art.
Reminiscent of the pictorial meditations of Sebald, but possessed of the intellectual playfulness of Calvino, Traveling in Place offers an entertaining and creative Baedeker to journeying at home.
Traveling with Service Animals
By Air, Road, Rail, and Ship across North AmericaHenry Kisor and Christine Goodier
University of Illinois Press, 2019