Real American Food draws from Burt Wolf's lifetime of experiences traveling the country producing programming for PBS. Packed with fascinating trivia and history, this book defines the distinctive contributions of key regions to American cuisine.

Experience firsthand the drama of the Spanish Conquest of Peru through the eyes of Pedro de Cieza de León. "The Travels of Pedro de Cieza de León, A.D. 1532-50, contained in the first part of his Chronicle of Peru" offers a unique window into 16th-century South America. This chronicle, meticulously prepared for print republication, details Cieza de León's extensive travels and observations during a pivotal era of exploration. Journey with him through the landscapes of what is now Colombia and Peru, witnessing the clash of cultures and the unfolding history of the Spanish Empire in the New World. A vital historical document for anyone interested in Latin American history, exploration, or the impact of the Spanish Conquest, this book provides an unparalleled perspective on a transformative period. Explore the past with this enduring account, a testament to the spirit of adventure and the enduring power of historical narrative. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

A funny and affecting portrait of Britain's love hate relationship with the railway with a new chapter for this paperback editionBritain gave railways to the world, yet its own network is the dearest (definitely) and the worst (probably) in Western Europe. Trains are deeply embedded in the national psyche and folklore - yet it is considered uncool to care about them. For Matthew Engel the railway system is the ultimate expression of Britishness. It represents all the nation's ingenuity, incompetence, nostalgia, corruption, humour, capacity for suffering and even sexual repression. To uncover its mysteries, Engel has travelled the system from Penzance to Thurso, exploring its history and talking to people from politicians to platform staff. Along the way Engel ('half-John Betjeman, half-Victor Meldrew') finds the most charmingly bizarre train in Britain, the most beautiful branch line, the rudest railwayman, and - after a quest lasting decades - an Individual Pot of Strawberry Jam. Eleven Minutes Late is both a polemic and a paean, and it is also very funny.

Sven Hedin inherited the steel sinews of his Norse ancestors. During his many years of exploration he frequently put his physical capacities to extreme tests. He trained his constitution to stand an elevation of 19,000 feet above sea level and a temperature of 37 degrees below zero only to find himself a few months later staggering under a blistering sun in the dry river bed of a blazing desert with the thermometer at 113. He once started out with a caravan consisting of 130 beasts of burden, only to struggle weeks later to the gates of Lhasa with but eight horses and one mule. He survived ten days without food and half of that time without water, where natives succumbed to the rigors of the desert. He seemed to know every form of physical privation and touched the limits of human endurance. When a boy he was ambitious to be the first to reach "that point where only South winds blow." He found his destiny to lie in other lands, but the distinction he achieved was no less unique. With his many volumes of accounts of exploration and discoveries to draw from, Hedin in this great autobiography has compressed between two covers the most thrilling experiences of a lifetime of adventure.

The author shares his impressions of Russia's people, landscapes, and historic sites, and recounts his experiences traveling across the Soviet Union

More than seventy years after D. H. Lawrence made his "savage pilgrimage" to New Mexico, British twenty-something Henry Shukman set off on his own journey there, in search of the spirit of Lawrence, the rugged and enigmatic beauty of the American Southwest, and answers to questions of love and life. His New Mexico quest takes him to dusty roadside gas stations, cheap Mexican restaurants, and ancient Indian pueblos, and he crosses paths with amiable cowboys and lonesome cowgirls, a plane-flying priest, more than one romantically inclined stranger, and a barroom philosopher at every stop. He's not afraid to strip naked to join strange men in an open-air hot tub, nor is he intimidated by salsa dancing at the Red Dog Saloon. As he finds himself in towns called Truth or Consequence, or just driving along the magical New Mexico roads, his journey becomes one of self-discovery - in the end, he finds exactly what he is searching for in the dusty town of Las Vegas, New Mexico.

"Anybody can become a New Yorker--if you live here for six months and at the end of the six months you find that you walk faster, talk faster, and think faster, then you're a New Yorker." And so Ed Koch--the 105th mayor of the city whose fans would argue is actually the center of the universe--defines the essence of his beloved melting pot in the introduction to New York: A State of Mind. "This electricity comes from a population that is so different than the rest of the United States because we have the sons and daughters of every country, of every state in the Union," he describes, his very words reverberating with the footsteps of thousands of hopeful immigrants. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art (where Koch claims to purchase all of his ties) to the Central Park Zoo and the Statue of Liberty, New York City captures the imagination of all who visit. Complete with hundreds of images culled from the area's finest photographers, New York: A State of Mind tells the story of this metropolis on the move. From the book's pages, buildings glimmer, food entices, and urbanity reaches on, all with the momentum of an eclectic and diverse citizenry. In Chinatown and in Little Italy, in Brooklyn and in the Bronx, a world of cultures meets under a looming skyline. As native son Koch eloquently surmises, "Only in New York."

In August 1948, 545 passengers boarded an overcrowded, clapped-out vessel in Marseilles to face an uncertain future in Australia and New Zealand. they came from displaced persons camps in Germany, death camps in Poland, labour camps in Hungary, gulags in Siberia and stony Aegean islands. there were those who had been hunted by the Nazis and those who had welcomed them; those who had followed the Communists and those who had fled from them. the epic voyage lasted almost three months and was marked by conflict and controversy until it seemed as though this hellship had absorbed the traumas of its passengers. As the conditions on board deteriorated, tension and violence simmered above and below decks. But romances and seductions also flourished, and lifelong bonds were formed. Diane Armstrong set sail on the Derna with her parents when she was nine years old. Like a detective searching for clues, she has located over a hundred of the passengers. through their recollections and memorabilia, as well as archival documents, she has recreated the voyage and traced what became of their hopes and dreams. the result is the unique portrayal of a migrant ship and its passengers.

Adrian Seligman served before the mast in square rigged ships and came home to find his grandfather had left him some money - enough to buy a three-masted barquentine. With an amateur crew and his wife, he sailed to Rio, Tristan da Cunha and Cape Town, then across the Southern Ocean to Sydney.

"The difference between Gordon Ramsay and a talking pig is that Gordon Ramsay never shuts up." —From Kitchen Con Our consumer culture can’t help but get wrapped up in designer crazes— these days our collective attention is focused on the designer food frenzy. Chefs are our newest celebrities and their restaurants are their stages, but hidden behind the elegant façade of fine dining exists the stark and sometimes shocking reality of the food industry. Renowned food critic Trevor White exposes what goes on behind the scenes in the high-stakes world of the restaurateur. Diners, be forewarned: this biting critique of restaurant culture shows today’s most celebrated restaurants for what they really are: greedy, ostentatious businesses solely dedicated to the fame of their owners. Kitchen Con pays tribute to the history of dining out, starting with the first restaurants and moving on to the most fashionable and well-known kitchens in New York, Paris and London. Witty, humourous and polished, White takes his reader on a whirlwind trip through the restaurant racket, sparing no one!

This account chronicles a chapter in modern Palestinian history - the revolt against Israeli occupation known as the Intifada - from inception to bitter defeat. It focuses on the daily lives of the Palestinians with whom the author became close during his time in the Middle East.

"When her marriage suddenly ends, and a diary documenting her beloved grandfather's escape from Nazi-occupied Netherlands in the summer of 1942 is discovered, Naomi K. Lewis decides to retrace his journey to learn about her family history. Despite suffering from extreme disorientation and a lifetime of anxiety, she travels alone for the first time. Moving from Amsterdam to Lyon--relying on the marvels of GPS--she discovers family secrets and her own narrative as a second-generation Jewish Canadian. With vulnerability, humour, and wisdom, Lewis's memoir asks tough questions about her identity as a secular Jew, the accuracy of family stories, and the impact of the Holocaust on subsequent generations. How do immigrants weave their sense of identity into their chosen countries? Must we be able to locate ourselves within family and cultural geography to belong?"--

"Part memoir, part history, part political commentary - and all Richler - This Year in Jerusalem is a personal, passionate, and quirkily comic examination of the idea of Israel-as-homeland: for Jews, for Palestinians, and, not least, for the author himself. Richler re-creates the Montreal of his adolescence - the local Zionist youth organization functioning as an escape from the zealous Hasidism of his grandfathers; the idea of emigration to Israel growing into a shimmering dream for himself and his friends. And, going to Israel to look up his old pals from St. Urbain Street, he shows us what happened to those who actually did "make aliyah"--Who settled in the cities and on the kibbutzim, survived the turmoils of war, and are faced today with the opportunities and dangers of peace with the Palestinians. He shows us, as well, the course of his own migration - away from Zionism and through the maze of his own sense of Judaism until he rediscovers his true homeland: "I owe as much to the thin gruel of my Canadian experience as I do to my Jewish provenance." Woven through his story are his fond (and not so fond) recollections of his family, his encounters in today's Israel with the kids he grew up with in Montreal a million years ago, and his most mordant observations on the state of the state of Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Witty, intelligent, well reasoned, and across-the-board provocative, here is Mordecai Richler at his inimitable - and controversial - best." -- dust jacket

Hang on for a Wild Journey through the Political and Spiritual Adventures of the Baby-Boom Generation Join Wes "Scoop" Nisker as he takes us on a hilarious, wild ride through the heyday of the Beats and the Hippies and the birth of the modern environmental movement, and the surge of Buddhism in the West.

A firsthand report on contemporary Vietnam presents a portrait of a nation that is struggling under the hold of Communism and places the Vietnam war in the perspective of a four-thousand-year-old history. 25,000 first printing. $25,000 ad/promo.

The Jordan Rift Valley, stretching from the Red Sea to Lebanon, was ripped open millions of years ago by vast forces within the earth. This geological object has also been a part of human history ever since early humans used it as a path in their journey out of Africa. And for a quarter of a century it has been part of the biography of Israeli writer Haim Watzman. In the autumn of 2004, as his country was riven by a fierce debate over its borders, Watzman took a two-week journey up the valley. Along the way he met scientists who try to understand the rift through the evidence lying on its surface--an archaeologist who reconstructs the fallen altars of a long-forgotten people, a zoologist whose study of bird societies has produced a theory of why organisms cooperate, and a geologist who thinks that the valley will some day be an ocean. He encountered people whose life and work on the shores of the Dead Sea and Jordan River have led them to dream of paradise and to seem to build Gardens of Eden on earth--a booster for a chemical factory, the director of a tourist site, and an aging socialist farmer who curates a museum of idols. And he discovered that the geography’s instability is mirrored in the volatility of the tales that people tell about the Sea of Galilee. As an observant Jew who has written extensively about science and scholarship, Watzman tries to understand the valley in all its complexity--its physical facts, its role in human history and his own life, and the myths it has engendered. He realizes that human beings can never see the rift in isolation. "It is the stories that men and women have told to explain what they see and what they do as a result that create the rift as we see it,” he writes. "As hard as we try to comprehend the landscape itself, it is humanity that we find. Watzman’s poetic evocation of the scientific and the human is a unique chronicle of a quest for knowledge. Finalist, Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature, 2008.

England, says Matthew Engel, is the most complicated place in the world. And, as he travels through each of the historic English counties, he discovers that's just the start of it. Every county is fascinating, the product of a millennium or more of history: still a unique slice of a nation that has not quite lost its ancient diversity.He finds the well-dressers of Derbyshire and the pyromaniacs of Sussex; the Hindus and huntsmen of Leicestershire; the goddess-worshippers of Somerset. He tracks down the real Lancashire, hedonistic Essex, and the most mysterious house in Middlesex. In Durham he goes straight from choral evensong to the dog track. As he seeks out the essence of each county - from Yorkshire's broad acres to the microdot of Rutland - Engel always finds the unexpected .Engel's England is a totally original look at a confused country: a guidebook for people who don't think they need a guidebook. It is always quirky, sometimes poignant and often extremely funny.

Experience the excitement, beauty and mystery of a journey to Syria and Palestine in 1843 as vividly documented in the notes of Ridley H. Herschell in 'A Visit to My Father-Land.' This fascinating travelogue charts his journey through the Holy Land, describing its landscapes, people, and history, and providing a fascinating insight into the cultures and customs of the region. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in travel, history, and the Middle East. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Experience the excitement, beauty and mystery of a journey to Syria and Palestine in 1843 as vividly documented in the notes of Ridley H. Herschell in 'A Visit to My Father-Land.' This fascinating travelogue charts his journey through the Holy Land, describing its landscapes, people, and history, and providing a fascinating insight into the cultures and customs of the region. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in travel, history, and the Middle East. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

Here the late Raphael Patai (1910-1996) recreates the fascinating world of Jewish seafaring from Noah's voyage through the Diaspora of late antiquity. In a work of pioneering scholarship, Patai weaves together Biblical stories, Talmudic lore, and Midrash literature to bring alive the world of these ancient mariners. As he did in his highly acclaimed book The Jewish Alchemists, Patai explores a subject that has never before been investigated by scholars. Based on nearly sixty years of research, beginning with study he undertook for his doctoral dissertation, The Children of Noah is literally Patai's first book and his last. It is a work of unsurpassed scholarship, but it is accessible to general readers as well as scholars.An abundance of evidence demonstrates the importance of the sea in the lives of Jews throughout early recorded history. Jews built ships, sailed them, fought wars in them, battled storms in them, and lost their lives to the sea. Patai begins with the story of the deluge that is found in Genesis and profiles Noah, the father of all shipbuilders and seafarers. The sea, according to Patai's interpretation, can be seen as an image of the manifestation of God's power, and he reflects on its role in legends and tales of early times. The practical importance of the sea also led to the development of practical institutions, and Patai shows how Jewish seafaring had its own culture and how it influenced the cultures of Mediterranean life as well. Of course, Jewish sailors were subject to the same rabbinical laws as Jews who never set sail, and Patai describes how they went to extreme lengths to remain in adherence, even getting special emendations of laws to allow them to tie knots and adjust rigging on the Sabbath.The Children of Noah is a capstone to an extraordinary career. Patai was both a careful scholar and a gifted storyteller, and this work is at once a vivid history of a neglected aspect of Jewish culture and a treasure trove of sources for further study. It is a stimulating and delightful book.