Staff Picks
Browse by Region: World, Asia, Middle East, West & South Asia, Australia & Oceania, Africa, Europe, North America, South America, Central America, & Caribbean, Polar Regions and Oceans
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World
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The Times Comprehensive Atlas of the World $228.00 (20% off $285.00)
The Times Comprehensive contains 249 pages of reference maps of continents, countries, and oceans. In addition, it offers a 224-page gazetteer-index to more than 200,000 place names and geographical features, including full cross-referencing with alternative and former names, coordinates for every settlement, and a comprehensive glossary of geographical terms.
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Oxford Comprehensive Atlas of the World $200.00 (20% off $250.00)
The core of this leather-bound edition of the Oxford Comprehensive Atlas is the extensive world mapping section of 290 pages. These spectacular maps are accompanied by a set of six ocean floor maps and a 56 page section on World Geography which features colorful spreads on astronomy, biodiversity and the natural world, climate change and global warming, together with economic topics such as globalization.
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Visual Atlas of the World by National Geographic, $80.00 (20% off $100.00)
This large-format reference blends two National Geographic “bests” to create a refreshingly vivid world portrait. Incorporated in the many up-to-the-moment regional maps that portray each continent are hundreds of brilliant photographs. The latest political boundaries and country names are also incorporated, as well as vital information on the oceans, space, national flags, and more.
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Audubon: Early Drawings written by John James Audubon, introduction by Richard Rhodes, $100.00 (20% off $125.00)
The drawings in The Birds of America are published together here for the first time in large format and full color. In these 116 portraits of species collected in America and in Europe we trace Audubon’s development into a scientist and an artist who could proudly sign his artworks “drawn from Nature.”
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National Geographic Society National Exploration Experience by Beau Riffenburgh, $40.00 (20% off $50.00)
From the travels of Erik the Red through the journeys of Marco Polo to the heroic attempts of Livingstone and Scott, vivid text and rich illustrations tell the story of how intrepid explorers have expanded our knowledge of the world.
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Six Degrees: Our Future On a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas, $13.56 (20% off $16.95)
In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a landmark report projecting average global surface temperatures to rise between 1.4 degrees and 5.8 degrees Celsius (roughly 2 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of this century. Based on this forecast, author Mark Lynas outlines what to expect from a warming world, degree by degree.
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The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World
by Eric Weiner, $11.19 (20% off 13.99)
The author takes readers on a whirlwind tour of countries that are quietly pursuing the most American of obsessions - the pursuit of happiness - or, in the crabby author’s case, moments of “un-unhappiness.” Weiner doesn’t profess to know what happiness is, but with a mixture of psychological insight, scientific research, geopolitical analysis and wry humor, he successfully shows us where happiness is.
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The Best American Travel Writing 2008 edited by Anthony Bourdain, $11.20 (20% off $14.00)
Here you will find Seth Stevenson’s extraordinary experience of “Looking for Mammon in the Muslim World” as he makes his way through sweltering and paradoxical Dubai. Exotic tastes and larger-than-life personalities abound as Bill Buford accompanies the chocolate maker Frederick Schilling to the rain forests of Brazil. And on the other side of the world, Calvin Trillin trolls Singapore for the ultimate street food, while Kristin Ohlson delves into the harrowing challenges faced by proprietors of restaurants in Kabul, Afghanistan.
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Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel 2009 by Lonely Planet, $18.39 (20% off $22.99)
Lonely Planet’s Best in Travel takes on the world’s hottest trends, destinations, journeys, and experiences, profiling more than 300 unique travel adventures. It contains snapshots on every country in the world, and sets the year’s travel agenda with the top pick cities, countries, and regions.
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The Book of Marvels: An Explorer’s Miscellany by Mark Jenkins, $24.00 (20% off $30.00)
This eclectic history of exploration sweeps from antiquity to the 1800s, encompassing ages when new marvels might be waiting over the next hill or a new world just over the horizon. In centuries past, undertaking a journey meant a voyage into the unknown, traveling for months or years into unexplored areas on the map where cartographers could only speculate “There be dragons.” And those fortunate adventurers who made it home again always had fantastical tales to tell.
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Travelers’ Tales the Best Women’s Travel Writing edited by Lucy McCauley, $13.56 (20% off $16.95)
From the Travelers’ Tales series. Told by women who traveled the earth to discover new places, people, and facets of themselves.
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The Ordeal of Elizabeth Marsh: A Woman in World History by Linda Colley, $14.36 (20% off $17.95)
This is a book about a world in a life. Elizabeth Marsh (1735-1785) traveled farther and was more intimately affected by developments across the globe than the vast majority of men. She was the first woman to publish in English on Morocco, and the first to carry out extensive explorations in eastern and southern India.
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A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes by David Tanis, $28.00 (20% off $35.00)
David Tanis might cook in the most famous restaurant in America (Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA), but here he is all about keeping meals simple at home. Tanis has an elemental, unpretentious finesse with ingredients and a genuine gift for words. Deliciously down-to-earth, his intuitive menus make cooking a pleasure.
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Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Nature and Science by David Quammen, $12.76 (20% of $15.95)
A revised and expanded edition of Quammen’s first book of nonfiction, with reprints of some of his best-loved Natural Acts columns, which first appeared in Outside magazine in the early 1980s.
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2666 by Roberto Bolano, $24.00 (20% off $30.00)
Composed in the last years of Roberto Bolano’s life, 2666 was greeted across Europe and Latin America as his highest achievement, surpassing even his previous work in its strangeness, beauty and scope.
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The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer, $11.96 (20% off $14.95)
One of the most acclaimed and perceptive observers of globalism and Buddhism now gives us the first serious consideration–for Buddhist and non-Buddhist alike–of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama’s work and ideas as a politician, scientist, and philosopher.
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Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi by Geoff Dyer, $19.20 (20% off $24.00)
A wildly original novel of erotic fulfillment and spiritual yearning. Nothing Dyer has written before is as wonderfully unbridled, as dead-on in evocation of place, longing and the possibility of neurotic enlightenment.
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Landmark Herodotus: The Histories written by Herodotus, edited by Robert B. Strassler, $21.60 (20% off $27.00)
Ten years in the making, The Landmark Herodotus gives us a new translation by Andrea L. Purvis that makes this remarkable work of literature more accessible than ever before. Illustrated, annotated, and filled with maps, this edition also includes twenty-one appendices written by scholars at the top of their fields.
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Asia
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The Eaves of Heaven: A Life in Three Wars by Andrew X. Pham, $12.80 (20% off $16.00)
In a narrative set between the years of 1940 and 1976, Pham Catfish and Mandala recounts the story of his once wealthy father, Thong Van Pham, who lived through the French occupation of Indochina, the Japanese invasion during WWII and the Vietnam War.
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The Last Days of Old Beijing by Michael Meyer, $12.80 (20% off $16.00)
A fascinating, intimate portrait of Beijing through the lens of its oldest neighborhood now facing destruction as China relentlessly modernizes.
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More Chinglish: Speaking in Tongues by Oliver Lutz Radtke, $6.39 (20% off $7.99)
Offers a fresh look at the unintentional but very funny creative misuses of the English language in Chinese street signs, products and advertising.
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Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China by James Fallows, $11.96 (20% off $14.95)
The ten essays collected here cover a wide range of topics: from visionary tycoons and TV-battling entrepreneurs, to environmental pollution and how China subsidizes our economy. Fallows explains the economic, political, social, and cultural forces at work turning China into a world superpower at breakneck speed.
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Hiroshige: One Hundred Views of Edo by Melanie Trede, $120.00 (20% off $150.00) Hiroshige’s Edo: Masterful ukiyo-e woodblock prints of Tokyo in the mid-19th century. This reprint is made from one of the finest complete original set of woodprints belonging to the Ota Memorial Museum of Art in Tokyo.
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Middle East
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The Hakawati by Rabih Alameddine, $12.80 (20% off $16.00)
Osama’s grandfather was a hakawati, or storyteller, and his bewitching stories–of his arrival in Lebanon, an orphan of the Turkish wars, and of how he earned the name “al-Kharrat,” the fibster–are interwoven with classic tales of the Middle East, stunningly reimagined.
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Turquoise: A Chef’s Travels in Turkey by Greg Malouf, $40.00 (20% off $50.00) Turkey has become a sought-after travel destination not only for its beauty but also for its culinary wonders. In Turquoise Greg and Lucy Malouf visit spice markets and soup kitchens enjoy fish sandwiches on the Bosphorus and drink in ancient teahouses. The recipes inspired by their travels capture the enticing flavors that define Turkish cuisine from the ancient ruins of Pergamum to modern day Istanbul.
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Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace… One School at a Time by Greg Mortenson, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
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.
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West & South Asia, Australia & Oceania
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Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri, $12.75 (20% Off $15.00)
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Lahiri delivers eight dazzling stories that take readers from Cambridge and Seattle to India and Thailand as they explore the secrets at the heart of family
life.
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In Other Rooms, Other Wonders by Daniyal Mueenuddin, $19.16 (20% Off $23.95)
A major literary debut that explores class, culture, power, and desire among the ruling and servant classes of Pakistan.
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To Live or to Perish Forever: Two Tumultuous Years in Pakistan by Nicholas Schmidle, $20.00 (20% off $25.00)
Takes readers to Pakistan’s rioting streets, Taliban camps in the North-West Frontier Province and on many adventures as he provides a contemporary history of this country long riven by internal conflict.
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Africa
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Season of Migration to the North by Tayeb Salih, $11.20 (20% off $14.00)
After years of study in Europe, the young narrator returns to his village along the Nile in the Sudan to make a contribution to the new postcolonial life of his country, but he discovers a stranger among the familiar faces of childhood. Selected by a panel of Arab writers and critics as the most important Arab novel of the twentieth century.
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The Antelope’s Strategy: Living in Rwanda After the Genocide
by Jean Hatzfeld, $20.00 (20% off $25.00)
Hatzfeld returns to Rwanda to talk with both the Hutus and Tutsis–some of the killers who had been released from prison or returned from Congolese exile, and the Tutsi escapees who must now tolerate them as neighbors. An astonishing exploration of the pain of memory, the nature of stoic hope, and the ineradicability of grief.
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Europe
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The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon, $12.80 (20% off $16.00)
Hemon has turned his talents to an embracing novel that intertwines haunting historical atmosphere and detail with sharp, shimmering and sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking contemporary storytelling.
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, $11.96 (20% off $14.95)
An international publishing sensation, the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.
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Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal
by Peter Thomson, $15.96 (20% off $19.95)
Siberia’s Lake Baikal is one of nature’s most magnificent creations, the largest and deepest body of fresh water in the world. What begins as a search for restoration in nature becomes as well a discovery of the restorative power of trust, faith and human connection.
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A Culinary Traveller in Tuscany: Exploring & Eating Off the Beaten Track by Beth Elon, $14.36 (20% off $17.95) Just when we thought we knew everything there was to know about Tuscany, along comes Beth Elon–cookbook writer and 30 year resident of a small village at the foot of the Appenines–who takes us along the back roads and through the ancient hill towns to remote restaurants that are for the most part overlooked by tourists and known only to the locals.
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Bruno Chief of Police by Martin Walker, $19.96 (20% off $24.95)
Walker pens the first in a wonderful new series that follows the exploits of Benoit Courreges, affectionately nicknamed Bruno, the chief of police in a small French village in the South of France where the rituals of the cafe still rule.
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The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
In this enthralling international bestseller, two girls live inconspicuous lives in the center of an elegant Paris apartment building. It is only when a stranger moves into their building–and sees through the girls’ disguises–that Paloma and Rene discover their kindred spirits.
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North America
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The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food by Mark Kurlansky, $22.36, (20% off $27.95)
Award-winning and bestselling author Mark Kurlansky takes us back to the food and eating habits of a younger America: Before the national highway system brought the country closer together; before chain restaurants imposed uniformity and low quality; and before the Frigidaire meant frozen food in mass quantities, the nationas food was seasonal, regional and traditional.
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Time and Tide in Acadia by Christopher Camuto, $19.96 (20% off $24.95)
Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park have been described as the climax of the coast of Maine. Millions are drawn every year to the stunning beauty of this rocky landscape of spruce-fir forest and granite islands. Some, like nature writer Christopher Camuto, never stop coming back.
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Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City by Eric W Sanderson, illustrated by Markley Boyer, $32.00 (20% off $40.00)
On September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson first set eyes on the land that would become Manhattan. It’s difficult for us to imagine what he saw, but for more than a decade, landscape ecologist Eric Sanderson has been working to do just that. Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City is the result of those efforts, reconstructing, in words and images, the wild island that millions of New Yorkers now call home.
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Netherland by Joseph O’Neill, $11.96 (20% off $14.95)
The author of this New York Times Notable Book delivers a mesmerizing novel about a man trying to make his way in an America of shattered hopes and values, and the unlikely occurrences that pull him back into an authentic, passionately engaged life. In the wittiest, angriest, most exacting and most desolate work of fiction yet about post-9/11 New York and London, the game of cricket provides solace to a man whose family disintegrates after the attacks.
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The Last Fish Tale: The Fate of the Atlantic & Survival in Gloucester, America’s Oldest Fishing Port and Most Original Town by Mark Kurlansky, $12.80 (20% off $16.00)
The culture of fishing is vanishing, and consequently, coastal societies are changing in unprecedented ways. The once thriving fishing communities from Newfoundland to Florida and along the West Coast have been forced to abandon their roots and become tourist destinations instead. Gloucester, Massachusetts, however, is a rare survivor.
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Nine Lives: Death and Life in New Orleans by Dan Baum, $20.80 (20% off $26.00)
A multi-voiced biography of the dazzling, surreal, and imperiled city New Orleans through the lives of nine characters over forty years and bracketed by two epic storms: Hurricane Betsy, which transformed the city in the 1960’s, and Katrina, which nearly destroyed it.
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This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War by Drew Gilpin Faust, $12.76 (20% off $15.95)
In this book, Gilpin Faust (president of Harvard University) reveals the ways that death on such a scale changed not only individual lives but the life of the nation, describing how the survivors managed on a practical level and how a deeply religious culture struggled to reconcile the unprecedented carnage with its belief in a benevolent God.
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South America, Central America, & Caribbean
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Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann, $22.00 (20% off $27.50)
After stumbling upon a hidden trove of diaries, acclaimed “New Yorker” writer David Grann set out to solve “the greatest exploration mystery of the twentieth century”: What happened to the British explorer Percy Fawcett and his quest for the Lost City of Z?
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The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw by Bruce Barcott, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
Bruce Barcott chronicles Sharon Matola’s inspiring crusade to stop a multinational corporation in its tracks. As the story unfolds, Barcott addresses the realities of economic survival in Third World countries, explores the tension between environmental conservation and human development, and puts a human face on the battle over globalization.
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Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes: Life & Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett, $21.56 (20% off $26.95)
A riveting account of the experiences and discoveries made by linguist Daniel Everett while he lived with the Piraha, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil. Everett, then a Christian missionary, arrived among the Piraha in 1977–with his wife and three young children–intending to convert them. What he found was a language that defies all existing linguistic theories and reflects a way of life that evades contemporary understanding.
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The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, $11.20 (20% off $14.00)
Things have never been easy for Oscar, a sweet but disastrously overweight, lovesick Dominican ghetto nerd. Oscar dreams of becoming the Dominican J. R. R. Tolkien and, most of all, of finding love. But he may never get what he wants, thanks to the Fuku - the curse that has haunted Oscar’s family for generations.
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Polar Regions and Oceans
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The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World by Steven Kazlowski, $31.96 (20% off $39.95)
places the reality of climate change in our hands. We see the plight of the polar bear, an indicator species already feeling the detrimental effects of our reliance on fossil fuels, as its icy habitat melts.
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Ocean: An Illustrated Atlas by National Geographic, $52.00 (20% off $65.00)
Detailing a mysterious realm that’s as vital to our existence as the air we breathe, this new atlas immerses readers in the wonders of the deep through more than 250 up-to-the-minute maps, photographs, and satellite images. The accessible text lays out key concepts, points of interest, and little known facts, opening our eyes to living phenomena from giant squid to tiny microbial bodies.
