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John Hutnyk

An extraordinary study of the politics of representation, The Rumour of Calcutta explores the discursive construction of a 'city of intensities'. John Hutnyk analyses representations of Calcutta in a wide variety of discourses: in the gossip and traveller-lore of backpackers and volunteer charity workers; in writing - from classic literature to travel guides; in cinema, photography and maps. Throughout, the focus is on the technologies of representation which frame experiences of Calcutta, particularly Calcutta as decay. Hutnyk shows how specific practices and technologies - of tourism, representation and experience - intricately combine to reinforce and replicate the conditions of contemporary cultural and economic inequality. A provocative and original reading of both Heidegger and Marx, the book also draws upon writers as diverse as Spivak, Trinh, Jameson, Clifford, Virilio, Bataille, Derrida, Deleuze and Guattari. As such it is essential reading for students and scholars in cultural studies, anthropology, development, urban studies and sociology.

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David Thomson

"At once examining and experiencing Nevada, Thomson finds its people, its landscape, and the unexpected questions it inspires equally provocative. He shows us the historical Nevada - a classic Wild West, attracting Spanish missionaries, Mormons, uprooted Native Americans, explorers, and silver miners - and the contemporary influx of cultists, druggies, survivalists, and fortune hunters whose quests lead directly to the gaming table."--BOOK JACKET. "We see Nevada as a place of no-holds-barred experimentation, both social (gambling, prostitution, easy divorce, no taxes) and scientific (nuclear testing and storage of nuclear waste). We see suburbanites rubbing shoulders with sybarites; the natural beauty of Lake Tahoe, shadowed by the financial edifice of tourism; criminals, entertainers, and hotel impresarios sharing dreams of glory (and the memory of Bugsy Siegel and Frank Sinatra)."--BOOK JACKET. "In Nevada is a revelation of the gambler's mix of hope and anxiety, of the isolation and closeness, the beauty and banality, the fact and fancy, at the heart of the state - and the state of mind - of Nevada."--BOOK JACKET.

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Christopher Kremmer

A new and updated edition of "Stalking the Elephant Kings", the award-winning book on Laos by the author of "The Carpet Wars". Twenty years after the Indochina wars, Christopher Kremmer visited Laos - at the crossroads of change in Southeast Asia.

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Gloria Whelan

In Japan, as a provincial governor, his wife, and daughter Yuki, followed by 1,000 attendants, travel the historic Tokaido Road to the Shogun's palace in Edo, Yuki keeps up with her lessons by writing poems describing the journey.