Antarctica’s legend as a fascinating, forbidding place is confirmed and expanded in these insider articles. Covering everything from “Happy Camper School” to washing dishes to what it’s like to fall in love in a place where the sun never goes down (or never comes up), these articles limn a world of colorful characters (human and otherwise) and breathtaking backdrops. The humor runs high here in work by Karen Joyce, who recounts an odd afternoon when it “rained chickens,” and Glenn Grant, who riffs on the dreaded “psych test.” Some of the contributors are award-winning travel writers: Bill Fox, for example, leads a pithy tour through the remote base McMurdo, while Lucy Bledsoe tells of looking for krill and finding dinosaur bones instead. Other contributors are newbies who vividly conjure the region’s extraordinary sights, from gale-force winds and magnificent glaciers to mummified seals and charming penguins.

Recounts the author's journey through America along the nation's backroads

Interweaves the story of British explorer Percy Fawcett, who vanished during a 1925 expedition into the Amazon to find an ancient civilization, with the author's own adventure-filled quest into the uncharted wilderness to uncover the mysteries surrounding Fawcett's final journey and the secrets of what really lies deep in the Amazon jungle. Reprint. A best-selling book.

The best writers in Minneapolis share what they love about their city

Writer Porter Fox spent three years exploring 4,000 miles of the border between Maine and Washington, traveling by canoe, freighter, car, and foot. In Northland, he blends a deeply reported and beautifully written story of the region

"The author retraces Frederick Law Olmsted's journey across the American South in the 1850s, on the eve of the Civil War. Olmsted roamed eleven states and six thousand miles, and the New York Times published his dispatches about slavery and its defenders. More than 150 years later, Tony Horwitz followed Olmsted's route, and whenever possible his mode of transport--rail, riverboats, in the saddle--through Appalachia, down the Ohio and Mississippi, through Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and across Texas to the Rio Grande, discovering and reporting on vestiges of what Olmsted called the Cotton Kingdom"--

A portrait of one of the world's most complex and diverse cities interweaves the history of Istanbul with observations and reflections on the city's landmarks, art, people, institutions, and great spaces.

"From one of our most widely praised travel writers--author of Wild Coast and Panther Soup--an eye-opening journey through Sri Lanka that, in the author's inimitable mixture of history, observation, and interpretation, reveals the island nation to us as never before. Writing with his signature eye for the unusually telling detail, his sense of urbane wonder, and his investigative desire for the whole story, John Gimlette takes us from Sri Lanka's exuberant capital city of Colombo to the dry interior where more than 5,300 wild elephants congregate around its ancient reservoirs; from the Portuguese-built forts of cinnamon country to the tsunami-ravaged south-east; from the tea plantations of the highlands and the Shangri-la-ish city of Kandy to the desiccated Jaffna Peninsula in the north. He examines Sri Lanka's colonial history (Portuguese, British, Dutch and Arab); the centuries-old strife between Sinhalese and Tamils; and the most recent civil war, which lasted from 1983 to 2009. He describes his encounters with world-class cricketers, terrorists, a former president, ancient tribesmen, British expats, survivors of the civil war massacres, and with the island's amazing flora and fauna, including the world's greatest concentration of leopards. He discovers a place of both extravagant beauty and profound devastation, a place capable of being both heavenly and hellish at the same time, and succeeds in bringing it to vibrant, fascinating life on the page"--

A lively and provocative account of Italy's diverse culture of the past and present evaluates the question about the appropriateness of political unification, sharing controversial anecdotes on major historical figures and events while debunking nationalistic myths and casting Giuseppe Verdi in a sympathetic light. By the author of The Ruling Caste.

"An account of Louise Erdrich's trip through the lakes and islands of southern Ontario with her 18-month old baby and the baby's father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader and guide"--