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This sumptuously illustrated, beautifully written encyclopedia, the best book available on the topic, presents the most up-to-date information about planet Earth in a style and format that will appeal to an extremely wide range of readers. With thousands of photographs, illustrations, diagrams, and maps and a text written by a team of international experts, it presents an impressive overview of our globe--beginning with the history of the universe and ending with today's conservation issues. A truly spectacular reference, The Encyclopedia of Earth offers new visual interpretations of many ideas, concepts, and facts, painting a fascinating picture of Earth today and across the ages.
The encyclopedia is divided into six sections that are designed for either browsing or in-depth study. Birth gives an overview of Earth's 4.6-billion-year history, including the evolution of life. Fire explains the inner workings of our dynamic planet, its structure, and the tectonic forces that have molded its landscape. Land surveys rocks, minerals, and habitats. Air covers weather, including extreme weather events such as tornadoes and hurricanes. Water tours the oceans, rivers, and lakes of the world. The final section, Humans, provides a compelling portrait of our relationship with Earth, and of how the natural world has shaped social and political developments.
Copub: Weldon Owen Publishing
The Encyclopedia of Earth features:
* Some of the world's finest landscape photography and hundreds of detailed illustrations and diagrams, cross sections, cutaways, maps, and charts
* Coverage of topics including volcanology, paleontology, geology, natural history, cosmology, and more
* Simple, easy-to-understand explanations of complex phenomena
* The most recent scientific information and conservation data
* "Fact files" providing information at readers' fingertips
* "Heritage Watch" boxes focusing on key conservation issues and World Heritage sites

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What does it mean to be an American, and what can America be today?To answer these questions, celebrated philosopher and journalist Bernard-Henri Lévy spent a year traveling throughout the country in the footsteps of another great Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, whose Democracy in America remains the most influential book ever written about our country.
The result isAmerican Vertigo, a fascinating, wholly fresh look at a country we sometimes only think we know. From Rikers Island to Chicago mega-churches, from Muslim communities in Detroit to an Amish enclave in Iowa, Lévy investigates issues at the heart of our democracy: the special nature of American patriotism, the coexistence of freedom and religion (including the religion of baseball), the prison system, the ?return of ideology? and the health of our political institutions, and much more. He revisits and updates Tocqueville?s most important beliefs, such as the dangers posed by ?the tyranny of the majority,? explores what Europe and America have to learn from each other, and interprets what he sees with a novelist?s eye and a philosopher?s depth.
Through powerful interview-based portraits across the spectrum of the American people, from prison guards to clergymen, from Norman Mailer to Barack Obama, from Sharon Stone to Richard Holbrooke, Lévy fills his book with a tapestry of American voices?some wise, some shocking. Both the grandeur and the hellish dimensions of American life are unflinchingly explored. And big themes emerge throughout, from the crucial choices America
faces today to the underlying reality that, unlike the ?Old World,? America remains the fulfillment of the world?s desire to worship, earn, and live as one wishes?a place, despite all, where inclusion remains not just an ideal but an actual practice.
At a time when Americans are anxious about how the world perceives them and, indeed, keen to make sense of themselves, a brilliant and sympathetic foreign observer has arrived to help us begin a new conversation about the meaning of America.


From the Hardcover edition.

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The New Concise World Atlas, Second Edition offers a sweeping look at the world in a fresh, clear manner, opening with six pages of compiled statistics on world population, climate and geography, all important points of reference for the global citizen. The highly illustrated "Earth in Space" thematic section that follows provides a wide-angle overview of the planet, placing the human world in the larger context of the universe. Then, in twenty-two compact yet compelling essays, the Earth's human and natural processes are explained using a balanced combination of informative text, instructive charts and graphs, and vibrant photography and cartography.
As part of a suite of annually updated atlases, the second edition offers information the competition lacks: revised province names and boundaries in Denmark, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Serbia and Montenegro as well as the opening of four new international airports and several major new railroads. Five new city maps, several regional spreads of the United States, and inset maps of island groups such as the Azores, the Seychelles and the Comoros also appear here for the first time. With 128 pages of the latest maps at carefully selected scales, every region from the Arctic Ocean to The Volga Basin is rendered in layer-colored contours, revealing detailed political and topographical information about each of the 192 countries recognized by the United Nations. Mirroring style changes made to the popular Atlas of the World, page number indicators have been added throughout which, along with refined locator windows, allow for easy identification of adjacent map pages. Historical cross-references have also been added to the already comprehensive 55,000-entry index, so that finding specific locations will be effortless no matter which place name is most familiar. Topping off this value-laden resource, a "Regions in the News" element highlights those geographic areas that have struggled with strife and turmoil over the last twelve months. These thematic maps illustrate local ethnic populations and occupied territories, helping to decode some of the issues plaguing Afghanistan, Israel, Iraq, and Sudan.
With hundreds of dramatic full-color, large-format maps produced by Europe's finest team of cartographers, the New Concise World Atlas, Second Edition will surely be found on the shelf of anyone concerned with the state of the world.

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Very Nice

I needed a really good World Atlas and I found it with this one. I use it all the time. It has a lot of really good information at the front of the atlas that has been most helpful when I am doing research. Use this atlas along with Google Earth and you don't need anything else.

Wonderful Book

This book is more than great. The color of it is very vibrant and the book is a great size. My dad was very pleased to have opened it on Christmas. It was well worth the money for sure!

Great for research

I bought this atlas because I wanted one as up-to-date as possible (in light of political boundaries and such), and wanted something to accompany a globe I have. There is a lot of useful information at the front of the atlas, so it's not just a book of maps. I use it for reference while taking classes for my masters (logistics and transportation) degree, and my stepson uses it for some of his high-school classes, as well. I think it's an atlas worth sharing with the family to learn geography.

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What is it about Italy that inspires passion, fascination, and utter devotion? This quirky guide to the Italian way of life, with its fifty witty mini-essays on iconic Italian subjects, will answer that question as well as entertain and delight both real and armchair travelers. Topics range from insulting hand gestures to patron saints, pasta, parmesan, shoes, opera, the Vespa, the Ferrari, gelato, gondolas, and more. History, folklore, superstitions, traditions, and customs are tossed in a delicious sauce that also includes a wealth of factual information for the sophisticated traveler:? why lines, as we know them, are nonexistent in Italy? why a string of coral beads is often seen around a baby?s wrist? what the unlucky number of Italy is (it?s not thirteen, unless seating guests at a table, when it IS thirteen?taking into account the outcome of the Last Supper)? why red underwear begins to appear in shops as the New Year approaches In addition to the lyrical and poetic, Italianissimo provides useful and indispensable information for the traveler: deciphering the quirks of the language (while English has only one word for ?you,? in Italy there are three), the best place to find balsamic vinegar (in Modena, of course), the best gelato (in Sicily, where they first invented it using the snow from Mount Etna). There are also recommendations for little-known museums and destinations (the Bodoni museum, the Pinocchio park, legendary coffee bars).This is a new kind of guidebook overflowing with enlightening and hilarious miscellaneous information, filled with luscious graphics and unforgettable photographs that will decode and enrich all trips to Italy?both real and imaginary.

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In 1984, photographer Peter Feldstein set out to photograph every single resident of his town, Oxford, Iowa (pop. 676). He converted an abandoned storefront on Main Street into a makeshift studio and posted fliers inviting people to stop by. At first they trickled in slowly, but in the end, nearly all of Oxford stood before Feldstein's lens. Twenty years later, Feldstein decided to do it again. Only this time he invited writer Stephen G. Bloom to join him, and together they went in search of the same Oxford residents Feldstein had originally shot two decades earlier. Some had moved. Most had stayed. Others had passed away. All were marked by the passage of time.

In a place like Oxford, not only does everyone know everyone else, but also everyone else's brothers, sisters, parents, grandparents, lovers, secrets, failures, dreams, and favorite pot luck recipes. This intricate web of human connections between neighbors friends, and family, is the mainstay of small town American life, a disappearing culture that is unforgettably captured in Feldstein's candid black-and-white portraiture and Bloom's astonishing rural storytelling.

Meet the town auctioneer who fell in love with his wife in high school while ice-skating together on local ponds; his wife who recalls the dress she wore as his prom date over fifty years ago; a retired buck skinner who started a gospel church and awaits the rapture in 2028; the donut baker at the Depot who went from having to be weighed on a livestock scale to losing over 150 pounds with the support of all of Oxford; a twenty-one-year-old man photographed in 1984 as an infant in his father's arms, who has now survived both of his parents due to tragedy and illness.

Considered side-by-side, the portraits reveal the inevitable transformations of aging: wider waistlines, wrinkled skin, eyeglasses, and bowed backs. Babies and children have instantly sprouted into young nurses, truck drivers, teachers, and rodeo riders, become Buddhists, racists, democrats, and drug addicts. The courses of lives have been irrevocably altered by deaths, births, marriages, and divorces. Some have lost God--others have found Him. But there are also those for whom it appears time has almost stood still. Kevin Somerville looks eerily identical in his 1984 and 2004 portraits, right down to his worn overalls, shaggy mane, and pale sunglasses. Only the graying of his lumberjack beard gives away the years that have passed.

Face after face, story after story, what quietly emerges is a living composite of a quintessential Midwestern community, told through the words and images of its residents--then and now. In a town where newcomers are recognized by the sound of an
unfamiliar engine idle, The Oxford Project invites you to discover the unexpected details, the heartbreak, and the reality of lives lived on the fringe of our urban culture.

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This remarkable book introduces us to four unforgettable Apache people, each of whom offers a different take on the significance of places in their culture. Apache conceptions of wisdom, manners and morals, and of their own history are inextricably intertwined with place, and by allowing us to overhear his conversations with Apaches on these subjects Basso expands our awareness of what place can mean to people.

Most of us use the term sense of place often and rather carelessly when we think of nature or home or literature. Our senses of place, however, come not only from our individual experiences but also from our cultures. Wisdom Sits in Places, the first sustained study of places and place-names by an anthropologist, explores place, places, and what they mean to a particular group of people, the Western Apache in Arizona. For more than thirty years, Keith Basso has been doing fieldwork among the Western Apache, and now he shares with us what he has learned of Apache place-names—where they come from and what they mean to Apaches.

"This is indeed a brilliant exposition of landscape and language in the world of the Western Apache. But it is more than that. Keith Basso gives us to understand something about the sacred and indivisible nature of words and place. And this is a universal equation, a balance in the universe. Place may be the first of all concepts; it may be the oldest of all words."—N. Scott Momaday

"In Wisdom Sits in Places Keith Basso lifts a veil on the most elemental poetry of human experience, which is the naming of the world. In so doing he invests his scholarship with that rarest of scholarly qualities: a sense of spiritual exploration. Through his clear eyes we glimpse the spirit of a remarkable people and their land, and when we look away, we see our own world afresh."—William deBuys

"A very exciting book—authoritative, fully informed, extremely thoughtful, and also engagingly written and a joy to read. Guiding us vividly among the landscapes and related story-tellings of the Western Apache, Basso explores in a highly readable way the role of language in the complex but compelling theme of a people's attachment to place. An important book by an eminent scholar."—Alvin M. Josephy, Jr.

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strong and thorough examination

What do people make of places? This is the central question examined by Keith Basso in his ethno-linguistic study of the relationship between language and landscape among the Apaches of Cibecue, on the Fort Apache Reservation in central Arizona. Basso, a professor of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico, has spent over 30 years conducting field work among the Western Apaches. His publications concerning this group include articles on language, patterns of silence in social interaction, witchcraft beliefs, and ceremonial symbolism, among others. The idea for Wisdom Sits in Places stemmed from a study conducted between 1979 and 1984, in which Basso, with the help of a grant from the National Science Foundation and the guidance of the Apaches, conducted a study of Apache places and place-names; how the Apache refer to their land, the stories behind the place-names, and how these place-names are used in daily conversation by Apache men and women. The result is a stunningly informative account of the use of landscape and language in the social interactions of the Western Apaches.
Basso divides his book into four sections: Quoting the Ancestors, Stalking with Stories, Speaking with Names, and Wisdom Sits in Places. Each chapter's focus is to examine how landscape and language serve distinct purposes in Western Apache society. Basso incorporates the oral history of, and discussions with, local Apaches, as well as his formal training as an ethnographer-linguist, to explain the underlying themes of this book.
First, Basso introduces the reader to the idea of place-names and in the Western Apache construction of history. As conceived by the Apaches, the past is a "well-worn `path' or `trail' which was traveled first by the people's founding ancestors and which subsequent generations of Apaches have traveled ever since" (31). The ancestors gave names to places, based on events that occurred there. Regardless of the physical changes in the landscape that occurred over time, the story of what took place, as well as the place-name, was passed down through generations and serves as a connection between the people and their ancestors.
Second, Basso examines how the language and the land are "manipulated by Apaches to promote compliance with standards for acceptable social behavior and the moral values which support them" (41). The historical tales of place-names are without exception morality tales, intended to influence patterns of social action. Their purpose is to serve as warnings, criticisms, and enlightenment for those who are behaving improperly; not in accordance with the Apache way of life. The telling of a historical tale is "intended as a critical and remedial response" to an individual's having committed one or more social offenses. Apaches contend that if the message is taken to heart, a lasting bond will have been created between that individual and the site at which the events in the tale took place. In short, the land, accompanied with its historical tale, "makes the people live right" (61).
Third, through the act of "speaking with names", place-names can be condensed "into compact form their essential moral truths" (101). "Speaking with names" is considered appropriate only under certain circumstances, generally to enable those who engage in it "to acknowledge a regrettable circumstance without explicitly judging it, to exhibit solicitude without openly proclaiming it, and to offer advice without appearing to do so" (91). Evoking images of a particular place and narrative thus replaces a more direct form of advice or criticism, with "a minimum of linguistic means" (103).
Finally, with the guidance of his Apache friend, Dudley Patterson, Basso examines the path of wisdom in Western Apache society. Patterson explains there are two mental conditions, "steadiness of mind", and "resilience of mind", which lead to a third and most desirable condition, smoothness of mind. These three conditions are not innate; therefore, one must work on one's mind in order to gain wisdom. To work on one's mind, "one must observe different places, learn their Apache place-names, and reflect on traditional narratives that underscore the virtues of wisdom" (134). A resilient mind, according to Patterson, does not "give in to panic or fall prey to spasms of anxiety or succumb to spells of crippling worry" (132). A steady mind is "unhampered by feelings of arrogance or pride, anger or vindictiveness, jealously or lust" (133). Steadiness and resilience give way to a sense of "cleared space" or "area free of obstruction", conditions necessary for smoothness of mind. Only those who continue on the trail of wisdom their whole lives come closest to having a smooth mind, and are "able to foresee disaster, fend off misfortune, and avoid explosive conflicts with other persons" (131). Thus, wisdom is intertwined with the idea of survival through the consistent and thoughtful evocation of landscape and language.
Keith Basso and the Western Apaches of Cibecue have provided readers with an insightful and provocative account of the connection between language, land, and a people's cultural history. Wisdom Sits in Places opens the door for future research on place-names by shedding light on a previously overshadowed topic in anthropological studies. Basso's dissection of certain stories and social interactions can be overwhelming and a bit dry, but his purpose is made clear when his examinations are added together with the Apache narratives. What results is a clear picture of what language and landscape mean to the Western Apaches, the functional versatility of place-names, and the importance of being aware of one's sense of place.

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Like reading Maxim, without all the pretty pictures.

Do you read Maxim? Then you might enjoy this book. It will be redundant, however; 480 of the 499 things (I didn't count) are "How to go to Mardi Gras and get laid." (Step one: Go to Mardi Gras. Step two: --well, you get the idea.)

The rare exceptions to the "Get drunk and meet hawt girls" entries (The Running of the Bulls, say) haven't enough practical information to fill the back of a postage stamp.

You've read the title of the book, and that's the high point of the experience. Getting out there and doing something that you can look back on fondly in your settled-down is a great goal. That goal will not be facilitated--at all--by reading this meandering dreck.

This book isn't good enough to prop up a table leg.

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America’s #1 bestselling travel series

Written by more than 175 outspoken travelers around the globe, Frommer’s Complete Guides help travelers experience places the way locals do.

• More annually updated guides than any other series
• 16-page color section and foldout map in all annual guides
• Outspoken opinions, exact prices, and suggested itineraries
• Dozens of detailed maps in an easy-to-read, two-color design

Explore the city with a real New Yorker, who gives you inside tips on hotels, restaurants, attractions, and nightlife.

• The best places to eat, from vintage delis to pizza joints to power palaces.
• Off-the-beaten-path experiences and undiscovered gems, plus new takes on top attractions, and the latest news on the newest hotels, restaurants and hotspots in the City that Never Sleeps.
• The most frequently updated travel series on the market. Plus, online updates are available at Frommers.com so travelers don't have to worry about out-of-date information.
• Opinionated write-ups. No bland descriptions and lukewarm recommendations. Our expert writers are passionate about their destinations--tell it like it is in an engaging and helpful way.
• Exact prices listed for every establishment and activity--no other guides offer such detailed, candid reviews of hotels and restaurants. We include the very best, but also emphasize moderately priced choices for real people.
• All Complete guides offer user-friendly features including star ratings and special icons to point readers to great finds, excellent values, insider tips, best bets for kids, special moments, and overrated experiences.

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At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.

The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.

After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.

Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.

From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.

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Route 312 is the Chinese Route 66. It flows three thousand miles from east to west, passing through the factory towns of the coastal areas, through the rural heart of China, then up into the Gobi Desert, where it merges with the Old Silk Road. The highway witnesses every part of the social and economic revolution that is turning China upside down.

In this utterly surprising and deeply personal book, acclaimed National Public Radio reporter Rob Gifford, a fluent Mandarin speaker, takes the dramatic journey along Route 312 from its start in the boomtown of Shanghai to its end on the border with Kazakhstan. Gifford reveals the rich mosaic of modern Chinese life in all its contradictions, as he poses the crucial questions that all of us are asking about China: Will it really be the next global superpower? Is it as solid and as powerful as it looks from the outside? And who are the ordinary Chinese people, to whom the twenty-first century is supposed to belong?

Gifford is not alone on his journey. The largest migration in human history is taking place along highways such as Route 312, as tens of millions of people leave their homes in search of work. He sees signs of the booming urban economy everywhere, but he also uncovers many of the country’s frailties, and some of the deep-seated problems that could derail China’s rise.

The whole compelling adventure is told through the cast of colorful characters Gifford meets: garrulous talk-show hosts and ambitious yuppies, impoverished peasants and tragic prostitutes, cell-phone salesmen, AIDS patients, and Tibetan monks. He rides with members of a Shanghai jeep club, hitchhikes across the Gobi desert, and sings karaoke with migrant workers at truck stops along the way.

As he recounts his travels along Route 312, Rob Gifford gives a face to what has historically, for Westerners, been a faceless country and breathes life into a nation that is so often reduced to economic statistics. Finally, he sounds a warning that all is not well in the Chinese heartlands, that serious problems lie ahead, and that the future of the West has become inextricably linked with the fate of 1.3 billion Chinese people.

“Informative, delightful, and powerfully moving . . . Rob Gifford’s acute powers of observation, his sense of humor and adventure, and his determination to explore the wrenching dilemmas of China’s explosive development open readers’ eyes and reward their minds.”
–Robert A. Kapp, president, U.S.-China Business Council, 1994-2004


From the Hardcover edition.

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