Travel

The bestselling author of The Sex Lives of Cannibals returns with a sharply observed, hilarious account of his adventures in China—a complex, fascinating country with enough dangers and delicacies to keep him, and readers, endlessly entertained. more...

Price: $14.95

The French you learned in school won’t get you far! Pardon My French is an entertaining and useful guide to the words and phrases every Francophile, traveler, student, and word maven should know, with fascinating lore and tidbits that make sense of the Gallic mind-set. Englishman Charles Timoney was thrown into French life headfirst twenty-five years ago when he and his wife moved to her native France. He had studied French in school, but his memory of vocabulary list and verb-conjugation drills proved no match for day-to-day living and communicating with French coworkers. As he blundered toward fluency, he collected the idioms and phrases that no one ever taught him in a classroom and that wonderfully (sometimes wickedly) epitomized l’esprit francais. Pardon My French includes insider’s language tips for dining, shopping, understanding French slang, and more. Selections include:. • Faire un canard, which literally means “to do a duck,” but also refers to dunking sugar lumps in coffee and is the preferred way to get a kick of sugary caffeine in France. • Tablette de chocolat, which literally means “chocolate bar,” but is also the term for a finely muscled male stomach in France, Since the English equivalent is a six pack,” it’s a splendid example of how differently we see things! more...

Price: $20.00

"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti -- for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore enamored of his subjects -- unique and compelling characters in their own right -- and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him. By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate's Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers. more...

Price: $15.00

The astonishing adventure classic about life in Tibet just before the Chinese Communist takeover is now repackaged for a new generation of readers. In this vivid memoir that has sold millions of copies worldwide, Heinrich Harrer recounts his adventures as one of the first Europeans ever to enter Tibet and encounter the Dalai Lama. more...

Price: $14.95

World-renowned polar explorer Captain Roald Amundsen’s (1872-1928) conversational, candid, and engrossing account of his Norwegian expedition’s successful race, first aboard the Fram and then by dogsled, to be the first to reach the South Pole. more...

Price: $4.99