Essays & Travelogues Books - Page 3

MagicBeanDip.com

Page 3 of 200 - Go to page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 14

A Moveable Feast

Ernest Hemingway

A Moveable Feast Ernest Hemingway Amazon Price: $16.32
List Price: $24.00
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Scribner
Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $12.96

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 147 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and this pencil."

Begun in the autumn of 1957 and published posthumously in 1964, Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast captures what it meant to be young and poor and writing in Paris during the 1920s. A correspondent for the Toronto Star, Hemingway arrived in Paris in 1921, three years after the trauma of the Great War and at the beginning of the transformation of Europe's cultural landscape: Braque and Picasso were experimenting with cubist forms; James Joyce, long living in self-imposed exile from his native Dublin, had just completed Ulysses; Gertude Stein held court at 27 rue de Fleurus, and deemed young Ernest a member of rue génération perdue; and T. S. Eliot was a bank clerk in London. It was during these years that the as-of-yet unpublished young writer gathered the material for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, and the subsequent masterpieces that followed.

Among these small, reflective sketches are unforgettable encounters with the members of Hemingway's slightly rag-tag circle of artists and writers, some also fated to achieve fame and glory, others to fall into obscurity. Here, too, is an evocation of the Paris that Hemingway knew as a young man -- a map drawn in his distinct prose of the streets and cafés and bookshops that comprised the city in which he, as a young writer, sometimes struggling against the cold and hunger of near poverty, honed the skills of his craft.

A Moveable Feast is at once an elegy to the remarkable group of expatriates that gathered in Paris during the twenties and a testament to the risks and rewards of the writerly life.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

J. Maarten Troost

The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific J. Maarten Troost Amazon Price: $10.36
List Price: $12.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Broadway
Amazon Marketplace: 115 new & used starting at $3.63

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Social Sciences -> Anthropology -> Cultural
Subjects -> Travel -> Australia & South Pacific -> General
Subjects -> Travel -> Australia & South Pacific -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 103 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

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 to Tarawa, a remote South Pacific island in the Republic of Kiribati. He was restless and lacked direction, and the idea of dropping everything and moving to the ends of the Earth was irresistibly romantic. He should have known better.

The Sex Lives of Cannibals tells the hilarious story of what happens when Troost discovers that Tarawa is not the island paradise he dreamed of. Falling into one amusing misadventure after another, Troost struggles through relentless, stifling heat, a variety of deadly bacteria, polluted seas, toxic fish, and worst of all, no television or coffee. And that’s just the first day.

Sunburned, emaciated, and stinging with sea lice, Troost spends the next two years battling incompetent government officials, alarmingly large critters, erratic electricity, and a paucity of food options. He contends with a cast of bizarre local characters, including “Half-Dead Fred” and the self-proclaimed Poet Laureate of Tarawa (a British drunkard who’s never written a poem in his life), and eventually settles into the ebb and flow of island life, just before his return to the culture shock of civilization.

With the rollicking wit of Bill Bryson, the brilliant travel exposition of Paul Theroux, and a hipster edge that is entirely Troost’s own, The Sex Lives of Cannibals is the ultimate vicarious adventure. Readers may never long to set foot on Tarawa, but they’ll want to travel with Troost time and time again.

A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines

Anthony Bourdain

A Cook's Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines Anthony Bourdain Amazon Price: $10.92
List Price: $14.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Harper Perennial
Amazon Marketplace: 54 new & used starting at $4.17

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General AAS
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Gastronomy -> Essays

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 122 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

as if you were with him all along 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This was a great, relaxing read. All the joys of a food trip (without the physical flavours and the life-and-death risks) without all the costs of an around-the-world trek. The great adventures of this chef can only inspire you to go find your own perfect meal.

Fun! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and Anthony Bourdain's irresistible writing style. Friendly--not flowery or snobby. I guess I'm one of very few who found it much more entertaining than Kitchen Confidential. I liked reading about what went on on the other side of the camera and that some of the feasts and locations were not his choices. I was surprised that a star of a television show was flying coach class to Asia. Could that be true? I do know that the average tourist or even a very wealthy one would never be able to duplicate some of the special attention and exquisite meals he was served--especially in Japan.

Editorial Review:

The only thing "gonzo gastronome" and internationally bestselling author Anthony Bourdain loves as much as cooking is traveling. Inspired by the question, "What would be the perfect meal?," Tony sets out on a quest for his culinary holy grail, and in the process turns the notion of "perfection" inside out. From California to Cambodia, A Cooks' Tour chronicles the unpredictable adventures of America's boldest and bravest chef.

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years

Bill Bryson

I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Bill Bryson Amazon Price: $19.77
List Price: $29.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Random House Audio
Amazon Marketplace: 27 new & used starting at $17.68

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Arts & Literature -> Authors
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> Travel
Subjects -> Biographies & Memoirs -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 231 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The master humorist and bestselling author of A Walk in the Woods now guides us on an affectionate, hysterically funny tour of America's most outrageous absurdities.

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 three 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 hotlines, and the staunch conviction that ice is not a luxury item.

Delivering the brilliant comic musings that are a Bryson hallmark, I'm a Stranger Here Myself recounts his sometimes disconcerting reunion with the land of his birth. From motels ("one of those things--airline food is another--that I get excited about and should know better") to careless barbers ("in the mirror I am confronted with an image that brings to mind a lemon meringue pie with ears"), I'm a Stranger Here Myself chronicles the quirkiest aspects of life in America, right down to our hardware-store lingo, tax-return instructions, and vulnerability to home injury ("statistically in New Hampshire I am far more likely to be hurt by my ceiling or underpants than by a stranger").

Along the way Bill Bryson also reveals his rules for life (#1: It is not permitted to be both slow and stupid. You must choose one or the other); delivers the commencement address to a local high school ("I've learned that if you touch a surface to see if it's hot, it will be"); and manages to make friends with a skunk. The result is a book filled with hysterical scenes of one man's attempt to reacquaint himself with his own country, but it is also an extended, if at times bemused, love letter to the homeland he has returned to after twenty years away.

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War

Tony Horwitz

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War Tony Horwitz Amazon Price: $10.85
List Price: $15.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Vintage
Amazon Marketplace: 124 new & used starting at $6.20

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> Civil War -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General
Subjects -> History -> Americas -> United States -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 257 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.

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.

In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' reenactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandishes a rebel flag; at Andersonville, he finds that the prison's commander, executed as a war criminal, is now exalted as a martyr and hero; and in the book's climax, Horwitz takes a marathon trek from Antietam to Gettysburg to Appomattox in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'

Written with Horwitz's signature blend of humor, history, and hard-nosed journalism, Confederates in the Attic brings alive old battlefields and new ones 'classrooms, courts, country bars' where the past and the present collide, often in explosive ways. Poignant and picaresque, haunting and hilarious, it speaks to anyone who has ever felt drawn to the mythic South and to the dark romance of the Civil War.

The Snow Leopard (Penguin Classics)

Peter Matthiessen

The Snow Leopard (Penguin Classics) Peter Matthiessen Amazon Price: $9.75
List Price: $15.00
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Penguin Classics
Amazon Marketplace: 22 new & used starting at $9.25

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Nature Writing
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Reference
Subjects -> Science -> Biological Sciences -> Animals -> Mammals

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 69 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Boring 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 5 people found this review helpful.

I'm sorry. I tried to enjoy this book because it was recommended to me by my favorite author. I found it great to get me to sleep at night and not so great at inspiring me to seek adventure, spiritual or otherwise. I had no idea what this dope-head was talking about.

Interesting and Compelling Book 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The Snow Leopard is slow paced and there is little plot. The book is about a long hike and the author's coming or not coming to terms with his divorce from and the death of his ex-wife. That is really it, but the Snow Leopard took me to a new and better place, one that I can not easily explain. This is one of the best books I have ever read.

Editorial Review:

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas— now celebrating its thirtieth anniversary

IN 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Z en Buddhism, was also on a spiritual quest—to find the Lama of Shey at the ancient shrine on Crystal Mountain. As the climb proceeds, Matthiessen charts his inner path as well as his outer one, with a deepening Buddhist understanding of reality, suffering, impermanence, and beauty.

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart

Tim Butcher

Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart Tim Butcher Amazon Price: $16.50
List Price: $25.00
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: Grove Press
Amazon Marketplace: 42 new & used starting at $14.69

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Africa -> Central Africa
Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> General
Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Published to rave reviews in the United Kingdom and named a Richard & Judy Book Club selection—the only work of nonfiction on the 2008 list—Blood River is the harrowing and audacious story of Tim Butcher's journey in the Congo and his retracing of renowned explorer H. M. Stanley's famous 1874 expedition in which he mapped the Congo River. When Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the legendary Congo River and the idea of re-creating Stanley's legendary journey along the three-thousand-mile waterway. Despite warnings that his plan was suicidal, Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vehicles, including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of characters from UN aid workers to a pygmy-rights advocate, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers. An utterly absorbing narrative that chronicles Tim Butcher's forty-four-day journey along the Congo River, Blood River is an unforgettable story of exploration and survival.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide

Peter Allison

Whatever You Do, Don't Run: True Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide Peter Allison Amazon Price: $11.53
List Price: $16.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: The Lyons Press
Amazon Marketplace: 79 new & used starting at $4.64

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> Botswana
Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> General
Subjects -> Travel -> Africa -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 38 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

LOL 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Yes, I did laugh out loud.
I should have read it before my trip to the Okavango. I read botanical, animal books, but none captures the experience like this one!. However, since you tend to find amusing what you relate to, I would have missed much. Afterwards, it just reminded me of a wonderful experience. Nevertheless, you don't have to have the experience to enjoy it. The author is funny, funny, funny and manages to give an intriguing and realistic glimpse into the life of a guide. I'm mailing it to all my South African companions.

Enthralling 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

If you want a window into the life of a Safari Guide, mixed with humour, good story telling and a wonderful insight into African wildlife - read this book. I have just read it in one sitting. Loved it!

Enjoyable! 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

I found this book very enjoyable and surprisingly readable. No, he's not Bill Bryson, but except for A Walk in the Woods I found this book more entertaining than most of Brysons' other books. Stories of unpredictable animals and not so charming clients fill this book as well as tales about the author who has an endearing way of poking fun at himself.

Nothing thought provoking or "deep" about it, just pure enjoyment.

We Are Soldiers Still LP: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam

Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway

We Are Soldiers Still LP: A Journey Back to the Battlefields of Vietnam Harold G. Moore, Joseph L. Galloway Amazon Price: $19.46
List Price: $24.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: HarperLuxe
Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $14.64

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> History -> Asia -> Vietnam -> General
Subjects -> History -> Asia -> Vietnam -> General AAS
Subjects -> History -> Military -> United States -> General

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 18 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A Lesson in War and Remembrance 4 out of 5 stars.
3 of 5 people found this review helpful.

Only a person who has fought in a war,only a person who has led in the heat and storm of battle can truly appreciate and understand war. Only they can make the best case for or against it. In this followup to "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young," General Moore does just that: talk about the destructive waste of war in real terms and helps the reader, and hopefully the American Public, understand the folly of war.

There are just and necessary wars, but Vietnam and most likely Iraq are not among them. His comments to the cadets at West Point regarding Vietnam, Iraq, Secretaries McNamara and Rumsfeld are especially poignant. As he says, we are about to ask those young men and women to risk their lives and possibly give their lives to their country. The least we can do is be honest with them. Amen to that, and to this book.

This book proves that we as a nation should listen, stand up and take note when our former military officers speak out against wars. They know whereof they speak.

There are essays on leadership, war, a tribute to one of General Moore's men and to his wife, but the real heart of this book is his return to battlefield of Vietnam, his meeting and developing respect and friendship with the men who tried to kill him on this ground, just as he was tried to kill them. Good stuff. Moving stuff.

The most striking thing about this book is the revelation that virtually all signs of the American presence in Vietnam are gone, erased from the face of the earth. It's as if we had never been there. Vietnam has moved on, its people accustomed to the comings and goings of war, while we Americans are still wrestling with and battling with our memories and scarred psyches of that war.

"Oh, how I love the smell of napalm in the morning" is a movie line and only a movie line. This book is the real stuff. It's not pretty and its tragic, but in the end it's heartwarming and hopeful---if and only if our leaders and the American people take notice.

Pray to God that they (we) do.

Editorial Review:

In the mega-bestselling memoir We Were Soldiers Once . . . and Young, authors Hal Moore and Joe Galloway brought to life one of the most pivotal and heartbreaking battles of the Vietnam War. In this powerful sequel, they return to the Vietnam battlefield they immortalized to explore how the war changed them, their men, their enemies, and both countries. Mixing gritty and vivid detail with reverence and respect for their comrades, We Are Soldiers Still recounts an unusual homecoming in which soldiers on both sides return to the Ia Drang Valley to look back—and forward.

Hidden Mickeys, 3rd Edition: A Field Guide to Walt Disney World's Best-Kept Secrets (Disneyland's Hidden Mickey's)

Steven M. Barrett

Hidden Mickeys, 3rd Edition: A Field Guide to Walt Disney World's Best-Kept Secrets (Disneyland's Hidden Mickey's) Steven M. Barrett Amazon Price: $9.56
List Price: $11.95
Usually ships in 24 hours
By: The Intrepid Traveler
Amazon Marketplace: 49 new & used starting at $5.40

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Travel -> Reference & Tips -> Essays & Travelogues
Subjects -> Travel -> North America
Subjects -> Travel -> United States -> Regions -> South -> South Atlantic

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

More Fun With Mickey 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 12 people found this review helpful.

HIDDEN MICKEYS, 3RD EDITION: A FIELD GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD'S BEST-KEPT SECRETS is an entertaining little guide that will provide you and your family tons of fun while standing in the sometimes endless-seeming ride lines at Walt Disney World (WDW). This book contains information, clues, and hints to help you find Hidden Mickeys throughout the WDW theme parks, the resort hotels, and all the places in between. HIDDEN MICKEYS, 3RD EDITION: A FIELD GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD'S BEST-KEPT SECRETS contains details on over 700 Mickeys hidden around the WDW complex, and teaches you the rules of the game. The hunt for Hidden Mickeys is a great, fun-filled, family activity that adds even more magic and wonder to your trip to Mickey's house.

What is a Hidden Mickey? A Hidden Mickey is partial or complete image of Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, or other Disney character that has been incorporated into the design and/or decoration of a ride, attraction, hotel, restaurant, etc. These images blend into the area that surrounds them, and you need an eagle eye to spot each one. The most common Hidden Mickey is the classic three-circle Mickey head, but there are head profiles, body profiles, front silhouettes, detailed pictures, and even 3-D images. Sometimes it is just Mickey's gloves, handprints, shoes, or ears; or even his name or initials.

Hidden Mickey's most likely originated during the late 1970s, early 1980s when the Disney PTB (Powers That Be) tried to restrict traditional Disney characters to the Magic Kingdom theme park. The folks designing EPCOT at the time could not resist hiding Mickey in the new park, and so Hidden Mickeys were born. People started spotting them, and now Hidden Mickeys are found in almost all new construction. The phenomenon has quite literally taken on a life of its own.

HIDDEN MICKEYS, 3RD EDITION: A FIELD GUIDE TO WALT DISNEY WORLD'S BEST-KEPT SECRETS is set up as a series of six scavenger hunts, one each for the Magic Kingdom, EPCOT, Disney-MGM Studios, the Animal Kingdom, the resort's hotel, and the rest of the complex. You can keep score or just play for fun. Each section contains both clues for the hunt, which guide you to each Hidden Mickey, and hints, which basically tell you exactly what to look for if you can't find them. The hints and clues are easy to understand, and are laid out in a logical pattern that takes you in a rough circle throughout each park. There is even a map with each hunt to help verify the correct location.

This handy guide fits easily in to a purse or carryall bag for quick and easy reference while on the hunt. It is definitely going to be part of our next WDW adventure, and I highly recommend that it be part of yours. We have already experienced the thrill of spotting a few Hidden Mickeys on our own and are very excited about the prospect of finding them all.

Editorial Review:

Described as a must have and definitely something that you'll want to bring along the next time you head down to WDW by Disney guru Jim Hill of jimhillmedia.com, Steve Barrett's Hidden Mickeys is a necessity for Walt Disney World buffs. This updated third edition adds scores of new hidden Mickeys and eliminates those erased by time.

Page 3 of 200 - Go to page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 14

Return to MagicBeanDip.com

This page was created in 2.4266 seconds.