General Books - Page 12

Botswana - Culture Smart!: a quick guide to customs and etiquette

Michael Main

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Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> Botswana

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships.

Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. Contents include


* customs, values, and traditions
* historical, religious, and political background
* life at home
* leisure, social, and cultural life
* eating and drinking
* dos, don'ts, and taboos
* business practices
* communication, spoken and unspoken


"Culture Smart has come to the rescue of hapless travellers." Sunday Times Travel

"... the perfect introduction to the weird, wonderful and downright odd quirks and customs of various countries." Global Travel

"...full of fascinating-as well as common-sense-tips to help you avoid embarrassing faux pas." Observer

"...as useful as they are entertaining." Easyjet Magazine

"...offer glimpses into the psyche of a faraway world." New York Times

The Village of Waiting

George Packer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A book of little inherent value. 1 out of 5 stars.
17 of 37 people found this review helpful.

I have to disagree with every review written about this book thusfar. It is not well written, for one. The style is amateurish, and it has little substance.
But that's not what really bothers me about this book. What really bothers me is that he writes about soliciting a prostitute that he describes as having a "twelve-year-old's body." Another thing that bothered me was that George Packer dropped out of the Peace Corps without even telling his so-called friends in the village that he was leaving. He wasted the opportunity that was given to him, wrote a mediocre book about it, and yet reviewers come on Amazon.com and laud it.
Want some free advice? Read any other book about Africa, Togo, or the Peace Corps instead. This one is not very good.

Editorial Review:

Now restored to print with a new Foreword by Philip Gourevitch and an Afterword by the author, this book is a frank, moving, and vivid account of contemporary life in West Africa. Stationed as a Peace Corps instructor in the village of Lavié (the name means "wait a little more") in tiny and underdeveloped Togo, Packer reveals his own schooling at the hands of an unforgettable array of townspeople--peasants, chiefs, charlatans, children, market women, cripples, crazies, and those who, having lost or given up much of their traditional identity and fastened their hopes on "development," find themselves trapped between the familiar repetitions of rural life and the chafing monotony of waiting for change.

Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town

Paul Theroux

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Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 68 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the travel-writing tradition that made Paul Theroux's reputation, Dark Star Safari is a rich and insightful book whose itinerary is Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town: down the Nile, through Sudan and Ethiopia, to Kenya, Uganda, and ultimately to the tip of South Africa. Going by train, dugout canoe, "chicken bus," and cattle truck, Theroux passes through some of the most beautiful — and often life-threatening — landscapes on earth.
This is travel as discovery and also, in part, a sentimental journey. Almost forty years ago, Theroux first went to Africa as a teacher in the Malawi bush. Now he stops at his old school, sees former students, revisits his African friends. He finds astonishing, devastating changes wherever he goes. "Africa is materially more decrepit than it was when I first knew it," he writes, "hungrier, poorer, less educated, more pessimistic, more corrupt, and you can't tell the politicians from the witch doctors. Not that Africa is one place. It is an assortment of motley republics and seedy chiefdoms. I got sick, I got stranded, but I was never bored. In fact, my trip was a delight and a revelation."
Seeing firsthand what is happening across Africa, Theroux is as obsessively curious and wittily observant as always, and his readers will find themselves on an epic and enlightening journey. Dark Star Safari is one of his bravest and best books.

The Traveler's Key to Ancient Egypt, Revised: A Guide to the Sacred Places of Ancient Egypt

John Anthony West

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

For any mind that is even slightly ajar, let alone open... 5 out of 5 stars.
21 of 22 people found this review helpful.

This book is essential for any traveller to Egypt with a mind that is even slightly ajar, let alone open.

West gives an alternative account of the meaning of the monuments and antiquities to be seen in Egypt, more esoteric (though certainly not more difficult to understand) than that which is usually presented in guide books. He points out the details which brought him to the conclusion that the Giza Sphinx is in fact closer to 13,000 years old than the 4,500 years old that has been traditionally believed, and has a different viewpoint to the orthodox school in many cases. He presents both sides of the argument, and gives the information necessary to make up one's own mind based on observation of what is actually there to be seen.

On my first visit to Egypt, my companions and I felt rather sorry for tourists in groups with official guides, because they seemed to be missing out on at least half of the story, and in many cases the whole point.

I was particularly impressed with West's analysis of the architecture of the Temple of Luxor, based on the work of Schwaller de Lubicz, and once it was pointed out how the whole building maps onto a plan of the human skeleton, I found it very difficult to refute.

Whilst I did not always agree with his conclusions on every occasion, it cannot be disputed that West has raised thoroughly pertinent questions which conventional Egyptology has either glibly brushed under the carpet or failed to address at all.

Editorial Review:

Revised edition. A travel guide that explores the spiritual significance of the sights of Egypt.

Alive in Africa: My Journeys on Foot in the Sahara, Rift Valley, and Rain Forest

William F. Wheeler

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A story within a story 4 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I met William's wife Linda on a flight in July '08 and I learned about William passing in June '08. Linda was so proof of him and his journeys, I couldn't wait to get this book in September. Amazing person with such an amazing life. My best to Linda.

A Last Great Adventurer! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is a masterpiece showing how the human spirit can be unleashed when someone has the courage to strike out on an untrodden path to realize their life's dream. It is sure to become a classic!

Bill Green

A definite don't miss... 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I was ecstatic to receive this book to review. On camel through the Sahara, on horseback through the Rift Valley and on foot into the rainforest. What a perfect book for the armchair adventurer/traveler! Like another reviewer I have to start by commenting on the appearance of the book first. I cannot remember ever having read an adult book where so much care was invested in the books appearance. The photographs were incomparable, my only complaint in that regard being that I wish they were printed on glossier paper, that being said I understand why a consistent paper type was maintained through the book. The pencil sketches were exquisite and the faint design included on all the pages gave me a feeling of reading an actual journal more than a book. I only wish more publishers recognized the need for "atmosphere" in a book.

The actual writing was a bit more varied. I felt that the 3 stories, and each was a very separate event, had a very different quality. The second was better than the first and the third better than the second. Sadly, as the quality of the stories improved, they grew shorter. The book begins with his journey on camel through the Sahara. In fact, it begins with a tragedy that unfortunately, colored my perception of that first journey. In addition, the author seemed to focus much of his writing in the first tale on the bad experiences he suffered with his guide. It was as if much of the journey was sacrificed in telling the reader in painful detail just how rotten a bad guide could make a trip rather than focusing on the more positive aspects. The second tale, his trip through the Rift Valley, also ended on a sad note but did include more information on what taking the trip was actually like. I was somewhat discouraged by the time I reached his story of traveling through the rainforest but was instead pleasantly surprised to discover that he finally hit his stride and was bringing the reader along this time. His descriptions were well-written and detailed enough that I could easily imagine myself there. Again though, as this was the shortest of the tales, I felt a bit cheated.

Overall it is a definite keeper and no lover of travel stories should miss it. The good outweighs the bad. I will say though that some of what was written by the author regarding the author, the constant amusement at his native guides fear of animals he had never seen before, the cavalier exposure of his animals to known fatal diseases fully understanding what would likely happen, and several other small incidents left me with the inkling suspicion that perhaps, the author wasn't a very nice guy. Likely, better editing would have avoided that, I'm not sure. My hope is that I am wrong. Regardless though, I do encourage everyone to read this book if for no other reason than to better understand what we are losing.

Editorial Review:

Alive in Africa chronicles author and photographer William F. Wheeler's exceptional journeys on foot through a continent of great extremes—from the Sahara desert to the grasslands of the Great Rift Valley, to the Congo rainforest. Illustrated with his stunning images, this elegantly written book takes us back to a bygone age when explorers traveled without GPS or satellite phones.

Living in Morocco: Design from Casablanca to Marrakesh

Landt Dennis

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Morocco is an exhilarating combination of vivid sensuality and intense spirituality, an intoxicating blend of cultures. Berber, Arab, French, English, and Spanish: the country's rich mixture of heritages is matched by its geography, which ranges from coast to mountain to desert. This revised edition of Living in Morocco celebrates the indigenous arts of a country at the height of a cultural renaissance. Morocco is known for fine leather and for pottery that dates back a thousand years. Berber rugs are justly famous, and there is a thriving tradition of woodworking, especially in the native thuya wood. Most extraordinary, though, is Morocco's decorative painting and tilework, where, forbidden by religion to depict human figures, craftsmen have developed a vocabulary of pattern and ornament. The book is filled with brightly colored ceilings, decorated courtyards and walls, plaster of Paris carved and painted in intricate geometrics, tiles so small that 150 could fit in a matchbox. Lavishly illustrated chapters on decorative and folk arts alternate with chapters on Moroccan life today. We visit Chaouen in the Rif Mountains (a city only recently open to Westerners), where the town's undulating surfaces are painted a bone-chilling blue-tinted white. We peer into an abandoned kasbah in the Sahara, and absorb the sights, sounds, and smells of the frenzied souk. We take time out in the shady blue-and-pink environs of the Majorelle Gardens, laid out by French painter Jacques Majorelle, and explore the story behind La Mamounia, the famous hotel that has welcomed such guests as Winston Churchill. Most important, we see Morocco's arts brought to life in its homes—from former harems to traditional Hispano-Moorish houses. Glorious photographs make this a treasure for the armchair traveler, while the documentation of Morocco's houses, arts, and crafts make it an invaluable resource for decorators and designers. Published in hardcover under the title Morocco: Designs from Casablanca to Marrakesh. 346 color photographs.

Africa Trek I: From the Cape of Good Hope to Mount Kilimanjaro

Alexandre Poussin, Sonia Poussin

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Editorial Review:

Three years, eleven countries, 1,200 families, 14,000 kilometers of adventures while walking in the footsteps of mankind through the Cradle of Life. Alexandre and Sonia Poussin undertake to walk the length of Africa entirely on foot, from the Cape of Good Hope to the Sea of Galilee. In a three-year trek along the Great Rift Valley of East Africa, their goal is to symbolically retrace the passage of early Man, from Australopithecus to Modern Man. Without sponsors, without support team, sharing the poverty of their hosts, they speak to us on each page of the generosity and enthusiasm of these men and women who populate the African continent. Day after day, Alexandre and Sonia become a bit more African themselves. In this volume, which recounts the first seven thousand kilometers up to Mount Kilimanjaro, we are privileged to share an intimate look into the heart of Africa and her people. The adventure continues in Africa Trek II.

Africa's Top Wildlife Countries, Sixth Edition

Mark W. Nolting

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Starting from scratch, Africa's Top Wildlife Countries answers such questions as: What safari options are available? What countries offer the kind of experience I am seeking? When is the best time to go? Covering Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Burundi, Congo, Lesotho, Malawi, Rwanda, Swaziland, Mauritius, and the Seychelles Islands, this is a complete guide for anyone planning a trip to Africa. Its user-friendly format makes planning a safari easy by highlighting and comparing wildlife reserves, depicting and describing types of accommodations and other major attractions. Jam-packed with information essential for the successful safari, this edition has been completely revised, and includes over 50 maps detailing countries and major wildlife reserves (including a new two-page Eco-Map depicting the primary vegetation zones, country, and park locations), 32 pages of color photographs, more than 125 black and white photos, 11 charts, and numerous illustrations. "A must for all safari goers traveling in any part of Africa." -- R. Michael Wright, President, African Wildlife Foundation

Africa's Top Wildlife Countries: Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Rwanda, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia & Zimbabwe

Mark W. Nolting

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Editorial Review:

Navigating Africa can be daunting, particularly when planning a safari – an experience that varies greatly according to location. This guide demystifies the process, by detailing the safari stats of 18 African countries with maps, color photographs, illustrations of wildlife, 11 useful charts, and an accommodation guide with a detailed rating system.

Top 10 Cape Town and the Winelands (EYEWITNESS TOP 10 TRAVEL GUIDE)

DK Publishing

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Editorial Review:

Drawing on the same standards of accuracy as the acclaimed DK Eyewitness Travel Guides, The DK Top 10 Guides use exciting colorful photography and excellent cartography to provide a reliable and useful pocket-sized travel. Dozens of Top 10 lists provide vital information on each destination, as well as insider tips, from avoiding the crowds to finding out the freebies, The DK Top 10 Guides take the work out of planning any trip.

Cape Town is one of the most visited cities in Africa and is perched on a rugged stretch of land at the very tip of the continent, pounded by two thundering oceans and dominated by the iconic Table Mountain. With enough heart-pumping activities, from abseiling to paragliding, as well as more relaxed outings to beaches, vineyards and museums, the city easily captivates the visitor. From Robben Island to excursions to the Winelands and from the city's historic center, Cape Town with lots on offer.