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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Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in Colum McCann’s intricate portrait of a city and its people.
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The Way of the World illustrated by Thierry Vernet, text by Nicolas Bouvier, $13.56 (20% off $16.95)
In 1953, twenty-four-year old Nicolas Bouvier and his artist friend Thierry Vernet set out to make their way overland from their native Geneva to the Khyber Pass. They had money to last them a few months and a Fiat to take them where they were going, but above all they were equipped with the certainty that by hook or by crook they would reach their destination,
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Strange Maps: Atlas of Cartographic Curiosities by Frank Jacobs, $24.00 (20% off $30.00)
Spanning many centuries, all continents, and the realms of outer space and the imagination, this collection of 138 unique graphics combines beautiful full-color illustrations with quirky statistics and smart social commentary. The result is a distinctive illustrated guide to the world.
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The Darwin Experience: The Story of the Man and His Theory of Evolution by John Van Wyhe, $40.00 (20% off $50.00)
Combining science, travel, culture, and history, this elegant, richly illustrated volume offers not just hundreds of full-color photographs but also a trove of removable facsimile documents that bring Charles Darwin and his groundbreaking theories to life.
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Sites of Antiquity from the Blue Guide series, $40.00 (20% off 50.00)
Charles Freeman’s book takes 50 sites from Syria and Sinai to southern France and the Solway Firth, stretching right across what became the Roman Empire, to show how civilisation developed in the Mediterranean and spread through Europe, Asia Minor, north Africa and parts of Arabia.
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The Fourth Part of the World by Toby Lester, $24.00 (20% off $30.00)
To celebrate the discovery of the “fourth part of the world,” maps were printed showing North America surrounded by water for the first time. One map remains. Illustrated with rare maps and diagrams, The Fourth Part of the World is the story of that map: the geographical and intellectual journeys that have helped us decipher our world.
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Best American Travel Writing 2009 edited by Simon Winchester, $11.20 (20% off $14.00)
Acclaimed writer Winchester brings his keen literary eye to this year’s volume of the finest travel writing from the past year, providing a collection that is full of insights, humor, the exotic and distant, and the ordinary and near.
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The Skeptical Romancer: Selected Travel Writings written by W. Somserset Maugham, edited by Pico Iyer, $19.20 (20% off $24.00)
Maugham worked as a secret agent in Russia, published novels in London, staged plays in New York, and traveled throughout Europe, Asia, India, and the United States, chronicling his travels, wherever he went, with exceptional insight. Iyer selects vignettes of Maugham’s prose that track his transformation from a boyish traveler in Spain to a worldly man of letters.
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Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne, $20.76 (20% off $25.95)
Since the early 1980s, David Byrne has been riding a bike as his principal means of transportation in New York City. Two decades ago, he discovered folding bikes and started taking them on tour with his band. The more cities he saw from his bicycle, the more he became hooked on this mode of transport and the sense of liberation it provided.
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The Map as Art: Contemporary Artists Explore Cartography by Katharine Harmon, $36.00 (20% off $45.00)
Maps can be simple tools, comfortable in their familiar form. Or they can lead to different destinations: places turned upside down or inside out, territories riddled with marks understood only by their maker, realms connected more to the interior mind than to the exterior world. These are the places of artists’ maps, that happy combination of information and illusion.
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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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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 Disappeared: A Love Story by Kim Echlin, $11.99 (20% off 14.99)
The Disappeared traces one woman’s three-decades long journey from the peaceful streets of Montreal to the humid, war-torn villages of Cambodia, as a brief love affair turns into a grand passion of loss, mourning, and remembrance, set against one of the most brutal genocides of the twentieth century.
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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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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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Middle East
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Land of Marvels by Barry Unsworth, $11.96 (20% off $14.95)
In this masterful work of historical fiction set during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire, the schemes of Western powers grappling for a foothold in Mesopotamia vividly come to life.
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The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, $12.00 (20% Off $15.00)
The Forever War is the definitive account of America’s conflict with Islamic fundamentalism and a searing exploration of its human costs. Through the eyes of Filkins, we witness the rise of the Taliban in the 1990s, the aftermath of the attack on New York on September 11th and the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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West & South Asia, Australia & Oceania
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Sahyadris: India’s Western Ghats photographs by Sandesh V. Kadur, text by Kamaljit S. Bawa, $40.00 (20% off $50.00)
On the Malabar Coast of southern India, along the Arabian Sea, lies a range of mountains known as the Western Ghats, or Sahyadris. Countless species of plants and animals live here, many of which are found nowhere else on earth, and countless of which are still being discovered. The book features nearly 400 photographs that portray both India’s beauty and vanishing heritage.
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Stones into Schools: Promoting Peace with Books, Not Bombs: in Afghanistan and Pakistan by Greg Mortenson, $21.56 (20% off 26.95)
In this first-person narrative, Greg Mortenson picks up where Three Cups of Tea left off in 2003, recounting his relentless, ongoing efforts to establish schools for girls in Afghanistan. He shares for the first time his broader vision to promote peace through education and literacy, as well as touching on military matters, Islam, and women
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The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk, $23.16 (20% off $28.95)
It is 1975, a perfect spring in Istanbul. Kemal, scion of one of the city’s wealthiest families, is about to become engaged to Sibel, daughter of another prominent family, when he encounters Fusun, a beautiful shopgirl and a distant relation.
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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
In the spirit of Joyce’s Dubliners and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s collection of linked stories illuminates a place and a people through an examination of the entwined lives of landowners and their retainers on the Gurmani family farm in the countryside outside of Lahore, Pakistan.
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Africa
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Beneath the Lion’s Gaze by Maaza Mengiste, $19.96 (20% off $24.95)
Beneath the Lion’s Gaze tells a gripping story of family and of the bonds of love and friendship set in a time and place that has rarely been explored in fiction. It is a story about the lengths human beings will go in pursuit of freedom and the human price of a national revolution.
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The African Trilogy: Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God by Chinua Achebe, $24.00 (20% off $30.00)
Here, collected for the first time, are the three internationally acclaimed classic novels that comprise what has come to be known as Chinua Achebe’s African Trilogy. These books capture a society caught between its traditional roots and the demands of a rapidly changing world.
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The Last Resort: A Memoir of Zimbabwe by Douglas Rogers, $19.99 (20% off $24.99)
The Last Resort is a remarkable true story about one family in a country under siege. Born and raised in Zimbabwe, Douglas Rogers is the son of white farmers living through that country’s long and tense transition from postcolonial rule. When Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe launched his violent program to reclaim white-owned land, Rogers’ parents were caught in the cross fire.
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Blood River: The Terrifying Journey Through the World’s Most Dangerous Country by Tim Butcher, $12.80 (20% Off $16.00)
Ever since Stanley first charted its mighty river in the 1870s, the Congo has epitomized the dark and turbulent history of a continent. Daily Telegraph correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000. Before long he became obsessed with the idea of recreating Stanley’s original expedition — despite warnings that his plan was suicidal.
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Say You’re One of Them by Uwem Akpan, $11.99 (20% Off $14.99)
From a portrait of a family living together in a makeshift shanty in urban Kenya to a Rwandan girl’s account of her family’s struggles to maintain normalcy amid unspeakable horrors, each of the short stories in this collection is a testament to the wisdom and resilience of children–a collection of brilliant short stories about children’s lives in crisis in modern Africa.
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Strength in What Remains by Tracy Kidder, $20.80 (20% Off $26.00)
Deo arrives in America from Burundi in search of a new life. Having survived a civil war and genocide, he lands at JFK airport with two hundred dollars, no English and no contacts. He ekes out a precarious existence delivering groceries, living in Central Park and learning English by reading dictionaries in bookstores. Then Deo begins to meet the strangers who will change his life.
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Europe
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Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire by Tilar J. Mazzeo, $12.79 (20% off $15.99)
A young witness to the dramatic events of the French Revolution and a new widow during the chaotic years of the Napoleonic Wars, Barbe-Nicole Clicqout Ponsardin defied convention by assuming the reins of the fledgling wine business she and her husband had nurtured.
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City of Thieves by David Benioff, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
During the Nazis’ brutal siege of Leningrad, Lev Beniov is arrested and thrown into the same cell as a handsome deserter named Kolya. Instead of being executed, Lev and Kolya are given a chance by complying with an outrageous directive: secure a dozen eggs for a powerful Soviet colonel to use in his daughter’s wedding cake.
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Gourmet Rhapsody by Muriel Barbery, $12.00 (20% Off $15.00)
In the heart of Paris, the greatest food critic in the world, is dying. Monsieur Arthens has been lording over the world’s most esteemed chefs for years, destroying and building reputations on a whim. But now, during his final hours, his mind has turned to simpler things. He is desperately searching for that singular flavor, that sublime something once sampled, never forgotten, “the Flavor” par excellence.
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Stones of Aran: Labyrinth by Tim Robinson, $18.36 ($20% Off $22.95)
Robinson’s ambition is to find out both what it is to know a landscape extensively and intimately as possible and what it takes to make that knowledge, the sense of the landscape itself, come alive in writing. It is a project that draws on the legacies of Thoreau and Joyce, to which Robinson brings his own polymathic gifts as cartographer, mathematician, historian and, above all, shaper of words.
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The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
In a city ravaged by war, a musician plays his cello for twenty-two days at the site of a mortar attack, in memory of the fallen. Among the strangers drawn into the orbit of his music are a young father in search of water for his family, an older man in search of the humanity he once knew, a young woman, and a sniper.
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The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson, $20.76 (20% off $25.95)
In the follow-up to best seller The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Mikael Blomkvist–crusading journalist and publisher of the magazine Millennium–has decided to publish a story exposing an extensive sex trafficking operation between Eastern Europe and Sweden. On the eve of publication, the two reporters responsible for the story are brutally murdered.
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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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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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Boston Noir edited by Dennis Lehane, $12.76 (20% off $15.95)
Here Dennis Lehane extends his literary prowess to that of master curator. In keeping with the Akashic Noir series tradition, each story in Boston Noir is set in a different neighborhood of the city–the impressively diverse collection extends from Roxbury to Cambridge, from Southie to the Boston Harbor, and all stops in between.
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American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon by Steven Rinella, $12.00 (20% off $15.00)
Rinella takes us across the continent in search of the buffalo’s past, present, and future, American Buffalo tells us as much about ourselves as Americans as it does about the creature who perhaps best of all embodies the American ethos.
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Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters by Ted Gioia, $13.56 (20% off $16.95)
Tracing the history of the Delta blues from the field hollers and plantation music of the nineteenth century to the exploits of modern-day musicians in the Delta tradition, Delta Blues tells the full story of this timeless and unforgettable music.
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State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America edited by Sean Wilsey & Matt Weiland, $13.59 (20% off $16.99)
Inspired by the example of the legendary WPA American Guide series of the 1930s and ’40s, now 50 of our foremost writers have produced original pieces of reportage and memoir that capture the 50 states in our time, creating a fresh portrait of America as it lives and breathes today.
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The Given Day : A Novel by Dennis Lehane, $12.76 (20% off $15.95)
Set in Boston at the end of the First World War, The Given Day tells the story of two families–one black, one white–swept up in a maelstrom of revolutionaries and anarchists, immigrants and ward bosses, Brahmins and ordinary citizens, all engaged in a battle for survival and power.
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Zeitoun by Dave Eggers, $19.20 (20% off $24.00)
When Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a prosperous Syrian-American and father of four, chose to stay through the storm to protect his house and business. In the days after the storm, he traveled the flooded streets in a secondhand canoe, passing on supplies and helping those he could. A week later, Zeitoun abruptly disappeared.
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Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen by Christopher McDougall, $19.96 (20% Off $24.95)
McDougall takes us from the high-tech science labs at Harvard to the sun-baked valleys and freezing peaks across North America where ever-growing numbers of ultra-runners are pushing their bodies to the limit, and, finally, to the climactic race in the Copper Canyons where a tribe of the world’s greatest distance runners shares their secrets.
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South America, Central America, & Caribbean
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Don’t Sleep There Are Snakes: Life & Language in the Amazonian Jungle by Daniel L. Everett, $12.80 (20% off $16.00)
Everett arrived among the Piraha, a small tribe of Amazonian Indians in central Brazil, in 1977. 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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Seven Fires: Grilling the Argentine Way by Peter Kaminsky & Francis Mallmann, $28.00 (20% off $35.00)
A trailblazing chef reinvents the art of cooking over fire. Gloriously inspired recipes push the boundaries of live-fired cuisine in this primal yet sophisticated cookbook introducing the incendiary dishes of South America’s biggest culinary star.
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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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Polar Regions and Oceans
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Polar Obsession by Paul Nicklen, $42.50 (20% off $50.00)
In a wise and wonderful intertwining of art and science, his bold expeditions plunge him into freezing seas to capture unprecedented, up-close documentation of the lives of leopard seals, whales, walruses, polar bears, bearded seals, and narwhals.
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Heart of the Great Alone: Scott, Shackleton, and Antarctic Photography by David Hempleman-Adams, $40.37 (20% off $47.50)
The achievements of the early polar photographers stand out in the history of photography for the beauty of their images and the almost impossible conditions they encountered. And none of these are more remarkable than the photographs recorded by the official chroniclers of two epic Antarctic expeditions–that of Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton.
