Books, Travel, Asia Shopping
Books, Travel, Asia
Colin Thubron
Shadow of the Silk Road (P.S.)
by Harper Perennial (Paperback) (Release Date: 2008-07-01)
To travel the Silk Road, the greatest land route on earth, is to trace the passage not only of trade and armies but also of ideas, religions, and inventions. Making his way by local bus, truck, car, donkey cart, and camel, Colin Thubron covered some seven thousand miles in eight months—out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey—and explored an ancient world in modern ferment.
Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul: Memories and the City
by Knopf (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2005-06-07)
A portrait, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world’s great cities, by its foremost man of letters, author of the acclaimed novels Snow and My Name Is Red.Blending reminiscence with history; family photographs with portraits of poets and pashas; art criticism, metaphysical musing, and, now and again, a fanciful tale, Orhan Pamuk invents an ingenious form to evoke his lifelong home, the city that forged his imagination. He begins with his childhood among the eccentric extended Pamuk family in the dusty, carpeted, and hermetically sealed apartment building they shared. In this place came his first intimations of the melancholy awareness that binds all residents of his city together: that of living in the seat of ruined imperial glories, in a country trying to become “modern” at the dizzying crossroads of East and West. This elegiac communal spirit overhangs Pamuk’s reflections as he introduces the writers and painters (among the latter, most particularly the ...
Peter Hessler
River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze (P.S.)
by Harper Perennial (Paperback) (Release Date: 2006-04-25)
J. Maarten Troost
Lost on Planet China or How I Learned to Love Live Squid
by Broadway (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-07-08)
China Williams
Lonely Planet Thailand
by Lonely Planet Publications (Paperback)
Discover Thailand Uncover Bangkok's best street stalls or enjoy skyscraping gourmet dinners. Climb aboard a long-tail boat and island hop to your own isolated beach paradise. Get soaked at Songkran, the Thai celebration that becomes the world's biggest water fight. Trek off the beaten path in remote Isan to watch a rare solar alignment at an ancient Angkor temple. In This Guide: Ten authors, 259 days of in-country research and 150 maps. Trek, dive or monkey-watch with our detailed coverage of national parks and natural wonders. Visit lonelyplanet.com for up-to-the-minute reviews, updates and traveler suggestions.
China Williams, Aaron Anderson, Brett Atkinson, Tim Bewer, ...
Thailand (Country Guide)
by Lonely Planet (Paperback)
Discover Thailand Uncover Bangkok's best street stalls or enjoy skyscraping gourmet dinners. Climb aboard a long-tail boat and island hop to your own isolated beach paradise. Get soaked at Songkran, the Thai celebration that becomes the world's biggest water fight. Trek off the beaten path in remote Isan to watch a rare solar alignment at an ancient Angkor temple. In This Guide: Ten authors, 259 days of in-country research and 150 maps. Trek, dive or monkey-watch with our detailed coverage of national parks and natural wonders. Visit lonelyplanet.com for up-to-the-minute reviews, updates and traveler suggestions.
Sarina Singh, Joe Bindloss, Rafael Wlodarski, Amy Karafin, ...
India (Country Guide)
by Lonely Planet (Paperback)
India: In Word and Image
by Welcome Books (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-10-14)
India is rapidly becoming one of the pre-eminent leaders of the twenty-first century. For more than a decade, Eric Meola has returned repeatedly to India, photographing the people, temples, landscapes, architecture, celebrations, and art of this uniquely exuberant and incredibly diverse country. Meola's journeys took him from the Himalayas and monasteries in the North to the temples of Tamil Nadu in the South, from the color and pageantry of Rajasthan in the West to the tea plantations of Darjeeling in the East. Over 200 photographs (edited from more than 25,000 images) will fill this beautifully printed, large-format book. The photographs will be accompanied by dozens of essays, stories, and poems by contemporary and classical Indian writers.
Paul Theroux
The Great Railway Bazaar
by Mariner Books (Paperback)
First published more than thirty years ago, Paul Theroux's strange, unique, and hugely entertaining railway odyssey has become a modern classic of travel literature. Here Theroux recounts his early adventures on an unusual grand continental tour. Asia's fabled trains -- the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express -- are the stars of a journey that takes him on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.
Matthew Polly
American Shaolin: Flying Kicks, Buddhist Monks, and the Legend of Iron Crotch: An Odyssey in theNew China
by Gotham (Paperback)
The raucously funny story of one young American’s quest to become the baddest dude on the planet (and possibly find inner peace along the way) Growing up a ninety-eight-pound weakling tormented by bullies in the schoolyards of Kansas, Matthew Polly dreamed of one day journeying to the Shaolin Temple in China to become the toughest fighter in the world, like Caine in his favorite 1970s TV series Kung Fu. American Shaolin is the story of the two years Matthew spent in China living, studying, and performing with the Shaolin monks. The Chinese term for tough training is chi ku (“eating bitter”), and Matthew quickly learned to appreciate the phrase. This is both the gripping story of Matthew’s journey and an intimate portrait of the real lives of the Shaolin monks, who struggle to overcome rampant corruption and the restrictions of an authoritarian government. Laced with humor and illuminated by cultural insight, American Shaolin is an unforgettable coming-of- age story of ...