The Illustrated Virago Book of Women Travellers by Mary Morris (ed) with Larry O'Connor

$25.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

This bestselling anthology of travel writing is now beautifully enhanced with photographs in a new illustrated edition. Three hundred years of wanderlust are captured here by women who travelled for peril or for pleasure. Some of the contributors were observers of the countries in which they travelled, others were more active participants in the cultures they visited, but they are all storytellers weaving tales about the people and places they encountered. Featuring writings by Isabella Bird, Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, Dervla Murphy and many more, the Illustrated Virago Book of Women Travellers is a literary delight, a visual pleasure and the ultimate armchair travelling companion. ...Show more

The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail - Travels to the Wilder Reaches of Wales by Byron Rogers

$10.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

Byron Rogers' Wales is not the stereotypical nation of rugby heroes, eisteddfods and coal mining. His travels take him to an altogether stranger and more magical country. He pieces together the story of Kaiser Wilhelm's sojourn in a Welsh spa town before the Great War, and tours the Welsh waxwork museum largely populated with effigies of Prince Philip discarded by Madame Tussaud's. He also tells the true story of how a project to ensure the survival of the Welsh language came to involve the translation of pornographic novels, how Kurt Cobain proposed to Courtney Love in a nightclub in Newport, and above all how the Holy Grail came to be in the safe keeping of the manager of Lloyd's Bank in Aberystwyth. Byron Rogers' collections of travel pieces have become reliable sales and critical success, attracting acclaim from Miles Kington to Jeremy Paxman, and each volume reprinting several times. The Bank Manager and the Holy Grail - a Waterstone's 'Best of Welsh' promotion choice in hardback in early ...Show more

Burton Holmes - Travelogues: The Greatest Traveller of His Time 1892-1952 by Burton Holmes

$20.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Series: Bibliotheca Universalis Ser. | Reading Level: very good

Wanderlust Burton Holmes, the man who brought the world home It was the Belle poque, a time before air travel or radio, at the brink of a revolution in photography and filmmaking, when Burton Holmes (1870-1958) began a lifelong journey to bring the world home. From the grand boulevards of Paris to China 's Great Wall, from the construction of the Panama Canal to the 1906 eruption of Mount Vesuvius, Holmes delighted in finding "the beautiful way around the world" and made a career of sharing his stories, colorful photographs, and films with audiences across America. He coined the term "travelogue" in 1904 to advertise his unique performance and thrilled audiences with two-hour sets of stories timed to projections of multihued, hand-painted glass-lantern slides and some of the first "moving pictures." Paris, Peking, Delhi, Dubrovnik, Moscow, Manila, Jakarta, Jerusalem: Burton Holmes was there. He visited every continent and nearly every country on the planet, shooting over 30,000 photographs and nearly 500,000 feet of film. This book represents the best of the Holmes archive, brimming with brilliant color photographs. A rare window onto the world of 100 years ago, it is also the ultimate inspiration to strike out on a travel adventure of your own. Text in English, French, and German ...Show more

Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History of a Lost Land by Patrick French

$10.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: good-very good

In 1982, while he was still a schoolboy, Patrick French met the Dalai Lama for the first time. Ever since, he has been fascinated by Tibet’s people, its history, and its recent plight.For centuries, Tibet has occupied a unique place in the Western imagination: romantic, mysterious, a remote mountai n kingdom of incarnate lamas and nomadic herdsmen, of gold-roofed monasteries and hidden valleys which hold the secret of eternal youth. In recent years, Tibet has acquired an additional resonance as the oppressed vassal of its mighty neighbour China. Its plight has attracted Hollywood stars, and the exiled Dalai Lama has become the global embodiment of spiritual attainment and unflagging commitment to his nation. Tibet, Tibet has its origins in Patrick French’s twenty-year involvement in the Tibetan cause. Part memoir, part travel book, part history, it is a quest for the true Tibet. On his journey, Patrick French is continually sidetracked by a cascade of information, thoughts and reflections on such subjects as how to blind a cabinet minister using a yak’s knucklebones, the correct method of travelling across a desert by night, and the reasons for the Dalai Lama’s transformation into ‘an unknown dark-brown bird, bigger than a normal raven’. Patrick French has found a new way of writing about a place and its history. He fascinatingly illuminates one of the most persistently troubling of international issues, and confirms his reputation as one of the finest writers at work today. ...Show more

The Shark God : Encounters with Myth and Magic in the South Pacific by Charles Montgomery

$15.00 NZD

Category: Pacific | Reading Level: very good

Encounters With Myth And Magic In The South Pacific This is a daring journey to confront legend and sorcery in a forgotten corner of the South Pacific. Deep in the stacks of the Bodleian Library, a young man opens a small packet of sand, buried among crates of notes from the first missionaries to the So uth Pacific. A memento from the scene of a century-old murder, that envelope and its dusty contents send Charles Montgomery on a remarkable quest to find its island source in the forgotten archipelago of Melanesia. Retracing a voyage made by his missionary great-grandfather, Montgomery seeks out remote shores where gospel and empire never took hold. He discovers communities still steeped in 'kastom' - the indigenous religion of spirits, shamans and sorcery - and he meets a bizarre cast of barefoot prophets, witch doctors and gun-runners. Montgomery is confronted by the ongoing struggles between the old world and the new, as Christianity vies with shark spirits and sorcery for the salvation of souls. By turns funny and profoundly moving, The Shark God blends travelogue with history rich in tales of magic, mischief and violence, and it paints a vivid portrait of a place where the unseen world is every bit as powerful as the physical one. As the author is drawn into the world of miracles, his adventure becomes a quest for the origins of myth and faith, and a metaphor for the transforming power of story. First published as The Last Heathen in Canada in 2004. ...Show more

In Search of a Character - Two African Journals by Graham Greene

$5.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: good

Tamu: A New Zealand Family in Java by Marie Gray

$12.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

The White Road : A Pilgrimage of Sorts by Edmund De Waal

$16.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

An intimate narrative history of porcelain, structured around five journeys through landscapes where porcelain was dreamed about, fired, refined, collected, and coveted. Extraordinary new nonfiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, " The ""Hare with the Amber Eyes." In "The White Road," bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted-and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills"-sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history. Part memoir, part history, part detective story, "The White Road" chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft, and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls" The Hare with the Amber Eyes," de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire. ...Show more

The Pillars of Hercules - A Grand Tour of the Mediterranean by Paul Theroux

$14.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

"DAZZLING."--Time" THEROUX'S] WORK IS DISTINGUISHED BY A SPLENDID EYE FOR DETAIL AND THE TELLING GESTURE; a storyteller's sense of pacing and gift for granting closure to the most subtle progression of events; and the graceful use of language. . . . We are delighted, along with Theroux, by the politenes s of the Turks, amazed by the mountainous highlands in Syria, touched by the gesture of an Albanian waitress who will not let him pay for his modest meal. . . . The Pillars of Hercules is] engrossing and enlightening from start (a damning account of tourists annoying the apes of Gibraltar) to finish (an utterly captivating visit with Paul Bowles in Tangier, worth the price of the book all by itself)."--Chicago Tribune"ENTERTAINING READING . . . WHEN YOU READ THEROUX, YOU'RE TRULY ON A TRIP."--The Boston Sunday Globe"HIS PICARESQUE NARRATIVE IS STUDDED WITH SCENES THAT STICK IN THE MIND. He looks at strangers with a novelist's eye, and his portraits are pleasantly tinged with malice."--The Washington Post Book World"THEROUX AT HIS BEST . . . An armchair trip with Theroux is sometimes dark, but always a delight."--Playboy"AS SATISFYING AS A GLASS OF COOL WINE ON A DUSTY CALABRIAN AFTERNOON . . . With his effortless writing style, observant eye, and take-no-prisoners approach, Theroux is in top form chronicling this 18-month circuit of the Mediterranean."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review) ...Show more

The Inside Hustle by Joanna Walden

$15.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

In Brazil: Encountering festivals, gods and heroes in one of the world's most seductive nations by Fran Bryson

$14.00 NZD

Category: Travel | Reading Level: very good

In Brazil, you can commune with spirits and you can party with gods. In Brazil, you can learn a lot about life, heroes, and possibilities. We might think we know about Brazil. We've watched the World Cup, we've heard about the danger and the corruption, we've seen the samba and the rainforest. But Bra zil still holds secrets. Over many years, Fran Bryson developed a fascination with Brazil that slowly became an obsession. In the course of several journeys she discovered the country: from the glittering modern city of Brasilia to the small, deeply religious towns, and from the inner reaches of the Amazonian jungle to the vibrant backlands - home to cowboys and troubadours. In Brazilis Fran's experience of travelling through one of the world's most colourful and contradictory nations and, in doing so, making sense of her life and the world around her. ...Show more

The Journal of Jean-Francois de Galaup de la Perouse, 1785-1788 by Jean Francois De Galaup De Laperouse; Jean-Francois de Galoupe de La Perouse; John Dunmore (Editor)

$110.00 NZD

Category: Nautical | Series: Hakluyt Society, Second Ser. | Reading Level: very good

During the second half of the 18th century, Britain and France despatched a number of major expeditions to the Pacific. The greatest contribution by far was that of James Cook, but the voyages of Bougainville, Surville and Marion du Fresne had each played an important part in Pacific exploration. After Cook's death, France, with the active support of Louis XVI, organized a large-scale expedition to the Pacific, planned to last four years, concentrating on areas of the Pacific left unexplored or inadequately explored by Cook. It was to be led by an experienced and highly-regarded naval officer, Galaup de La Perouse. All the major French scientific societies and savants of the times co-operated in drawing up the instructions and, overseas, such men as Joseph Banks willingly assisted. ...Show more