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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorOracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present
Peter Hessler · 528 pages
From the acclaimed author of River Town comes a rare portrait, both intimate and epic, of twenty-first-century China as it opens its doors to the outside world.A century ago, outsiders saw Chinaas a place where nothing ever changes. Today the coun-try has become one of the most dynamic regions on earth. That sense of time -- the contrast between past and present, and the rhythms that emerge in a v
Color: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms: Journeys Into the Disappearing Religions of the Middle East
Gerard Russell · 368 pages
Despite its reputation for religious intolerance, the Middle East has long sheltered many distinctive and strange faiths: one regards the Greek prophets as incarnations of God, another reveres Lucifer in the form of a peacock, and yet another believes that their followers are reincarnated beings who have existed in various forms for thousands of years. These religions represent the last vestiges o
Dancing in Cambodia, at Large in Burma
Amitav Ghosh · 114 pages
Nine Hills to Nambonkaha: Two Years in the Heart of an African Village
Sarah Erdman · 329 pages
The Masque of Africa: Glimpses of African Belief
V.S. Naipaul · 241 pages
Nobel Prize-winning author Naipaul spirals outward from the central African country of Uganda, to Nigeria, Ghana, the Ivory Coast, Gabon, and concluding in South Africa, to unearth in six chapters a sense of African ancestral belief and practice.
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
J. Maarten Troost · 312 pages
The laugh-out-loud true story of a harrowing and hilarious two-year odyssey in the distant South Pacific island nation of Kiribati--possibly The Worst Place on Earth.At the age of twenty-six, Maarten Troost--who had been pushing the snooze button on the alarm clock of life by racking up useless graduate degrees and muddling through a series of temp jobs--decided to pack up his flip-flops and move
The Places in Between
Rory Stewart · 322 pages
In January 2002 Rory Stewart walked across Afghanistan--surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. By day he passed through mountains covered in nine feet of snow, hamlets burned and emptied by the Taliban, and communities thriving amid the remains of medieval civilizations. By night he slept on villagers' floors, shared their meals,
Arabian Sands
Wilfred Thesiger · 347 pages
Story of five years of travel with the nomad Arabs in the unknown deserts of Southern Arabia.
In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon
Redmond O'Hanlon · 317 pages
Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
Robert D. Kaplan · 307 pages
Author's account of his travels through the Balkan countries and a history of the region.
Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World
Rita Golden Gelman · 320 pages
The true story of an ordinary woman living an extraordinary existence all over the world. “Gelman doesn’t just observe the cultures she visits, she participates in them, becoming emotionally involved in the people’s lives. This is an amazing travelogue.” —Booklist At the age of forty-eight, on the verge of a divorce, Rita Golden Gelman left an elegant life in L.A. to follow her dream of trav
Nine Lives
William Dalrymple · 284 pages
From the Dust Jacket: A Buddhist monk takes up arms to resist the Chinese invasion of Tibet-then spends the rest of his life trying to atone for the violence by hand printing the best prayer flags in India. A Jain nun tests her powers of detachment as she watches her best friend ritually starve to death. A woman leaves her middle-class family in Calcutta, and her job in a jute factory, only to fi
Aku-Aku: The Secret of Easter Island
Thor Heyerdahl · 368 pages
Ancient, Polynesian, Archaeological, Expedition to verify the ancient relationship of the Easter Island Polynesian with the indigenous Peruvian peoples.
This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland
Gretel Ehrlich · 400 pages
For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the men and women who long for and love the complex frailties and treacherous beauty of a world defined by ice. Greenland, the world's largest island, 840,000 square miles in extent, is covered by the largest continental ice sheet in the world. Her guide, her inspiration, her companion in spirit was the g
Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey
Isabel Fonseca · 322 pages
After the revolutions of 1989, the author lived and traveled with the Gypsies of Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, Romainia, and Albania -- listening to their stories and recording their attempts to become something more than despised outsiders. In this book, alongside unforgettable portraits of individuals -- the poet, the politician, the child prostitute-
Visit Sunny Chernobyl - Adventures in the world's most polluted places
Andrew Blackwell · 320 pages
White Fever: A Journey to the Frozen Heart of Siberia
Jacek Hugo-Bader · 323 pages
A lone journey by jeep (and occasionally kayak) across one of the world's most inhospitable and surreal landscapes. An unparalleled insight into the life in Siberia and its various communities and tribes.
The Geography of Bliss: One Grump's Search for the Happiest Places in the World
Eric Weiner · 403 pages
Part foreign affairs discourse, part humor, and part twisted self-help guide, The Geography of Bliss takes the reader from America to Iceland to India in search of happiness, or, in the crabby author's case, moments of "un-unhappiness." The book uses a beguiling mixture of travel, psychology, science and humor to investigate not what happiness is, but where it is. Are people in Switzerland happier
Boychiks in the Hood: Travels in the Hasidic Underground
Robert Eisenberg · 246 pages
Boychiks in the Hood is your passport to the Hasidic "underworld" - a destination far different from popular expectations. When Robert Eisenberg, a secular Jew from Omaha, Nebraska, decided to investigate his family's distant Satmar connections, he unknowingly embarked on a journey that would carry him around the world and into the hearts and lives of the Hasidim. Armed with a loving curiosity an
Palestinian Walks: Forays into a Vanishing Landscape
Raja Shehadeh · 211 pages
"Provides a rare historical insight into the tragic changes taking place in Palestine"--Jimmy Carter (from cover).
Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey Into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism
Daniel Pinchbeck · 336 pages
"While psychedelics of all sorts are demonized in America today, the visionary compounds found in plants are the spiritual sacraments of tribal cultures around the world. From the iboga of the Bwiti in Gabon and the ayahuasca of the Secoya in Ecuador to the psilocybin mushrooms of the Mazatecs in Mexico, these plants are revered because of their potential to awaken the mind to other levels of awar