Four corners

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Edith Wharton

Edith Wharton's seven works of travel have been called "brilliantly written and permanently interesting." For the first time, excerpts from each of these works have been made available to the general reader in a single volume. The collection spans a period of three decades: from the time of leisurely travel by chartered steam yacht, diligence, railway, and motor car during the belle epoque, through the horror and pathos of the French landscape during World War I, to the Morocco of 1917 - a country previously forbidden to most women and foreigners. Scornful of guidebooks, Edith Wharton focused instead on the "parentheses of travel" - the undiscovered by-ways of Europe, Morocco, and the Mediterranean. Among the sites she describes are the towns of Tirano, Brescia, Poitiers, and Chauvigny; the gardens of the Villa Caprarola and the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati; Hippone and Goletta. Her account of Mount Athos in Greece (written in the recently discovered diary of her 1888 Mediterranean cruise), may be the first ever by an American. An intrepid reporter, she also depicts the front lines of Lorraine and the Vosges during World War I. She describes art, architecture, sculpture, and landscape with the eye of a knowledgeable connoisseur and the sensitivity of an observant and imaginative novelist. Open to all experiences, she is a voracious intellectual wanderer who often interprets the sights she sees in the light of the extensive historic, literary, and classical reading begun in her youth.

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Rubén Gallo

An anthology of writings, combining literary essays and urban reportage, by various authors, depicts life in Mexico City, describing places and elements old and new, the Metro, monuments, eating and drinking, urban renewal and its disasters, the earthquake, maids, corruption and bureaucracy, the city at its margins, and more.

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Flora Lewis

The condition in the mid 1980's of twenty-five European countries: Britain, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Austria, West Germany, Soviet Union, East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia.

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Mimi LaFollette Summerskill

"This is the fascinating story of an American family and their adventures set in the Semien mountains, the 8,000 feet highlands of northern Ethiopia. Dr. John Summerskill, the author's spouse, had been president of San Francisco State University during the student upheavals of the late 60s. He had a major run-in with then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, about the handling of the student demonstrations. The Ford Foundation found the perfect candidate in Dr. Summerskill to be an advisor and administrator to the newly founded Haile Selassie I University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Following the career trail of her husband, the author and her family moved into one of the great homes of Addis Ababa, situated on three acres of eucalyptus trees and lawns. There were lion cages but no lions; a mammoth aviary, but no birds. And the house had no furniture, but what a house, with round stone towers at each corner. Here, the thrilling adventures of an American family in Ethiopia begins. Taking two of their five children, Wendy and Robert, "kicking and screaming," the Summerskills began their odyssey in Ethiopia, a country with the oldest civilization in Africa. Two of the Summerskill's older children who came to visit were on a plane that was hijacked to Aden, Yemen. In this book, you will explore each of the thirteen provinces of Ethiopia with the author and her family, as they camp near remote lakes as far south as Kenya. The author tells in vivid detail of life in Ethiopia during the final years of Emperor Haile Selassie's reign. The bustling marketplace of the capital, Addis Ababa; learning to prepare spicy Ethiopian food; a close look at the last Ethiopian Emperor; radical student activism in Haile Selassie I University; the historical sites of Ethiopia such as Lalibela, Harar and Gondar; all these and more come alive in the author's recollection of her sojourn in Ethiopia"--Page 4 of cover.