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Oracle Bones: A Journey Between China's Past and Present
Peter Hessler · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorColor: A Natural History of the Palette
Victoria Finlay · 448 pages
In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale
Amitav Ghosh · 393 pages
Overview: Once upon a time an Indian writer named Amitav Ghosh set out to find an Indian slave, name unknown, who some seven hundred years before had traveled to the Middle East. The journey took him to a small village in Egypt, where medieval customs coexist with twentieth-century desires and discontents. But even as Ghosh sought to re-create the life of his Indian predecessor, he found himself i
Travels with Herodotus
Ryszard Kapuscinski · 288 pages
From the renowned journalist comes this intimate account of his years in the field, traveling for the first time beyond the Iron Curtain to India, China, Ethiopia, and other exotic locales.In the 1950s, Ryszard Kapuscinski finished university in Poland and became a foreign correspondent, hoping to go abroad -- perhaps to Czechoslovakia. Instead, he was sent to India -- the first stop on a decades-
Indonesia, Etc: Exploring the Improbable Nation
Elizabeth Pisani · 416 pages
"An entertaining and thought-provoking portrait of Indonesia: a rich, dynamic, and often maddening nation awash with contradictions. Jakarta tweets more than any other city on earth, but 80 million Indonesians live without electricity and many of its communities still share in ritual sacrifices. Declaring independence in 1945, Indonesia said it would 'work out the details of the transfer of power
Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War
Tony Horwitz · 432 pages
Propelled by his boyhood passion for the Civil War, Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance. He joins "hardcore" reenactors; witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war; finds that Ande
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-
Walking the Bible: A Journey by Land Through the Five Books of Moses
Bruce Feiler · 488 pages
The author recounts his ten-thousand-mile journey across the Middle East in search of the roots of the Bible to discover whether it was an abstraction or a living, breathing entity.
Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea
Claudio Magris · 416 pages
In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia
Michael Wood · 256 pages
Black Sea
Neal Ascherson · 305 pages
"This strikingly original book is about place and history - about the universe of the Black Sea, from Jason and the Golden Fleece to the fall of Communism and the new world disorder. As Neal Ascherson shows in a colorful, learned, and surprising chronicle, the Black Sea has been a decisive "personality" in the history of Europe and Asia; his exploration of the myths and realities surrounding it re
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.
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
India: A Million Mutinies Now
V.S. Naipaul · 624 pages
The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon
David Grann · 339 pages
A grand mystery reaching back centuries. A sensational disappearance that made headlines around the world. A quest for truth that leads to death, madness or disappearance for those who seek to solve it. The Lost City of Z is a blockbuster adventure narrative about what lies beneath the impenetrable jungle canopy of the Amazon. After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed New Yorker wr
Why the Dutch are Different: A Journey into the Hidden Heart of the Netherlands
Ben Coates · 293 pages
"Stranded at Schiphol airport, Ben Coates called up a friendly Dutch girl he'd met some months earlier. He stayed for dinner. Actually, he stayed for good. In the first book to consider the hidden heart and history of the Netherlands from a modern perspective, the author explores the length and breadth of his adopted homeland and discovers why one of the world's smallest countries is also so signi
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
Ghost Empire
Richard Fidler · 516 pages
In 2014, Richard Fidler and his son Joe made a journey to Istanbul. Fired by Richard's passion for the rich history of the dazzling Byzantine Empire - centred around the legendary Constantinople - we are swept into some of the most extraordinary tales in history.The clash of civilizations, the fall of empires, the rise of Christianity, revenge, lust, murder. Turbulent stories from the past are bro
Paris to the Past: Traveling through French History by Train
Ina Caro · 400 pages
Through twenty-five one-day train trips, the author describes outings spanning seven hundred years of French history, including Orléans, Versailles, Place de la Concorde, and Saint-Denis.
Notes from a Small Island
Bill Bryson · 324 pages
After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move Mrs Bryson, little Jimmy et al. back to the States for a while. But before leaving his much-loved Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around old Blighty, a sort of valedictory tour of the green and kindly island that had for so long been his home. The resulting book was a eulogy to the country that produced M
The Worst Journey in the World
Apsley Cherry-Garrard · 607 pages
The Worst Journey in the World is a 1922 memoir by Apsley Cherry-Garrard of Robert Falcon Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the South Pole in 1910–1913. It has earned wide praise for its frank treatment of the difficulties of the expedition, the causes of its disastrous outcome, and the meaning of human suffering under extreme conditions. ---------- Contains: - [Worst Journey in the World
Empires of the Indus: The Story of a River
Alice Albinia · 366 pages
One of the largest rivers in the world, the Indus rises in the Tibetan mountains, flows across northern India and then through Pakistan. For millennia it has been worshipped as a god, for centuries used as a tool of imperial expansion; today it is the cement of Pakistan's fractious union. This recounts a journey along the Indus, upstream and backwards in time, through two thousand miles of geograp