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Kosher Chinese: Living, Teaching, and Eating with China's Other Billion
Michael Levy · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorFor Fukui's Sake: Two Years In Rural Japan
Sam Baldwin · 210 pages
Learning to Bow: Inside the Heart of Japan
Bruce Feiler · 321 pages
Learning to Bow has been heralded as one of the funniest, liveliest, and most insightful books ever written about the clash of cultures between America and Japan. With warmth and candor, Bruce Feiler recounts the year he spent as a teacher in a small rural town. Beginning with a ritual outdoor bath and culminating in an all-night trek to the top of Mt. Fuji, Feiler teaches his students about Ameri
My Life in France
Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages
Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun
Iron and Silk
Mark Salzman · 211 pages
An American describes his experiences after his arrival in Hunan Province in 1982 to teach English, including wushu training and life in post-Mao China.
I'll Never Be French (no matter what I do): Living in a Small Village in Brittany
Mark Greenside · 244 pages
Author and teacher Mark Greenside recounts his struggles to fit into the life of a small Celtic village in Brittany.
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in the New China
Matthew Polly · 359 pages
Growing up a ninety-pound weakling tormented by bullies, Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become a fighter like in his favorite 1970s TV series, Kung Fu. Later, Matthew decided to pursue this quixotic dream: he dropped out of Princeton to spend two years training with the legendary sect of monks who invented kung fu and Zen Buddhism. Expecting to find a
The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca
Tahir Shah · 362 pages
A Year in Provence
Peter Mayle · 207 pages
In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glo
Beyond the Sky and the Earth: A Journey into Bhutan
Jamie Zeppa · 320 pages
In this memoir, a young Canadian woman decides to take her first trip outside of North America before she is to be married. After accepting a teaching post in Bhutan, a tiny kingdom in the Himalayas bordering China and India, she eventually breaks off her engagement and falls in love with another man.
Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
Greg Mortenson, David Oliver Relin · 338 pages
The astonishing, uplifting story of a real-life Indiana Jones and his humanitarian campaign to use education to combat terrorism in the Taliban's backyard. Anyone who despairs of the individual's power to change lives has to read the story of Greg Mortenson, a homeless mountaineer who, following a 1993 climb of Pakistan's treacherous K2, was inspired by a chance encounter with impoverished mountai
Chasing a Croatian Girl: A Survivor's Tale
Cody McClain Brown
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America after Twenty Years Away
Bill Bryson · 381 pages
After living in Britain for two decades, Bill Bryson recently moved back to the United States with his English wife and four children (he had read somewhere that nearly 3 million Americans believed they had been abducted by aliens--as he later put it, "it was clear my people needed me"). They were greeted by a new and improved America that boasts microwave pancakes, twenty-four-hour dental-floss
Almost French: A New Life In Paris
Sarah Turnbull · 320 pages
A delightful, fresh twist on the travel memoir, Almost French takes us on a tour that is fraught with culture clashes but rife with deadpan humor. Sarah Turnbull's stint in Paris was only supposed to last a week. Chance had brought Sarah and Frederic together in Bucharest, and on impulse she decides to take him up on his offer to visit him in the world's most romantic city. Sacrificing Vegemite f
The Penguin Lessons
Tom Michell · 240 pages
"A unique and moving real-life story of the extraordinary bond between a young teacher and a penguin, this book will delight readers who loved Marley & Me, Dewey the Library Cat, The Good Good Pig, and any book by Jon Katz. In 1975, twenty-three-year-old Englishman Tom Michell follows his wanderlust to Argentina, where he becomes assistant master at a prestigious boarding school. But Michell's adv
Double Cup Love
Eddie Huang · 218 pages
"As he entered adulthood (of sorts), Huang began to wonder just how authentic his Chinese identity really was, a dilemma that grew more acute as he contemplated proposing marriage to his all-American (well, all-Italian-American) girlfriend. So he enlisted his brothers Emery and Evan and returned to the land his ancestors had abandoned. His immediate goal was to sample the best food in China, from
Around India in 80 Trains
Monisha Rajesh · 264 pages
In 1991 Monisha and her family uprooted from Sheffield to Madras in the hope of making India their home again. But fed up with soap-eating rats, severed human heads, paying bribes, and the creepy colonel across the road, they soon returned to England, determined never to go back again. But twenty years later, Monisha takes a page out of Jules Verne's classic tale, turns to a map of the Indian rail
Looking for Transwonderland: Travels in Nigeria
Noo Saro-Wiwa · 309 pages
Noo Saro-Wiwa was brought up in England, but every summer she was dragged back to Nigeria - a country she viewed as an annoying parallel universe where she had to relinquish all her creature comforts and sense of individuality. Then her father, activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, was murdered there, and she didn't return for 10 years. Recently, she decided to rediscover and come to terms with the country her
Laughing Without an Accent: Adventures of an Iranian American, at Home and Abroad
Firoozeh Dumas · 240 pages
In the bestselling memoir Funny in Farsi, Firoozeh Dumas recounted her adventures growing up Iranian American in Southern California. Now she again mines her rich Persian heritage in Laughing Without an Accent, sharing stories both tender and humorous on being a citizen of the world, on her well-meaning family, and on amusing cultural conundrums, all told with insights into the universality of the
The Reluctant Tuscan: How I Discovered My Inner Italian
Phil Doran · 306 pages
A Book Sense Pick for May 2005, this is the humorous tale of how the author moved— against his will and his better judgment—to Italy with his wife, only to rediscover himself, his marriage, and the importance of getting in touch with his inner Italian.After years of working on a string of sitcoms, Phil Doran found himself on the outside looking in. Just as he and his peers had replaced the older g
The Short Bus: A Journey Beyond Normal
Jonathan Mooney · 288 pages
Labeled "dyslexic and profoundly learning disabled with attention and behavior problems," Jonathan Mooney was a short bus rider--a derogatory term used for kids in special education and a distinction that told the world he wasn't "normal." Along with other kids with special challenges, he grew up hearing himself denigrated daily. Ultimately, Mooney surprised skeptics by graduating with honors from
Goats from a Small Island
Anna Nicholas · 352 pages
Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?: A Swashbuckling Tale of High Adventures, Questionable Ethics, and Professional Hedonism
Thomas Kohnstamm · 288 pages
For those who think that travel guidebooks are the gospel truth.The waitress suggests that I come back after she closes down the restaurant, around midnight. We end up having sex in a chair and then on one of the tables in the back corner. I pen a note in my Moleskine that I will later recount in the guidebook review, saying that the restaurant "is a pleasant surprise . . . and the table service i