Staying close to the river

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collected and edited by Doug Lansky

A collection of stories in which various well-known writers share their humorous and sometimes bizarre travel experiences.

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T.R. Pearson

Welcome to the daring, thrilling, and downright strange adventures of William Willis, one of the world's original extreme sportsmen. Driven by an unfettered appetite for personal challenge and a yen for the path of most resistance, Willis mounted a single-handed and wholly unlikely rescue in the jungles of French Guiana and then twice crossed the broad Pacific on rafts of his own design, with only housecats and a parrot for companionship. His first voyage, atop a ten-ton balsa monstrosity, was undertaken in 1954 when Willis was sixty. His second raft, having crossed eleven thousand miles from Peru, found the north shore of Australia shortly after Willis's seventieth birthday. A marvel of vigor and fitness, William Willis was a connoisseur of ordeal, all but orchestrating short rations, ship-wreck conditions, and crushing solitude on his trans-Pacific voyages. He'd been inspired by Kon-Tiki, Thor Heyerdahl's bid to prove that a primitive raft could negotiate the open ocean. Willis's trips confirmed that a primitive man could as well. Willis survived on rye flour and seawater, sang to keep his spirits up, communicated with his wife via telepathy, suffered from bouts of temporary blindness, and eased the intermittent pain of a double hernia by looping a halyard around his ankles and dangling upside-down from his mast.Rich with vivid detail and wry humor, Seaworthy is the story of a sailor you've probably never heard of but need to know. In an age when countless rafts were adrift on the waters of the world, their crews out to shore up one theory of ethno-migration or tear down another, Willis's challenges remained refreshingly personal. His methods were eccentric, his accomplishments little short of remarkable. Don't miss the chance to meet this singular monk of the sea.From the Hardcover edition.

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Georgie Anne Geyer

Soviet Central Asia: an exotic region of harsh deserts and rugged mountains shut off by communism since 1917, mysterious lands that still evoke images of the ancient Silk Road caravans. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tatarstan, and Azerbaijan are primarily inhabited by Muslim peoples of whom we know very little. Now that the long winter of communism has ended and these new republics slowly open to the West, syndicated columnist and television personality Georgie Anne Geyer has taken it upon herself to learn more. A modern-day Marco Polo, she shares her eye-opening personal experiences in Waiting for Winter to End. Join her as she sets out from Moscow for Kazan and Alma-Ata, Bishkek and Tashkent, Samarkand and Baku. Sit in on her interviews with nascent political leaders about the post-Soviet situation, in which possible dangers for the United States are revealed. Travel with a witty, observant, and knowledgeable companion to a resources-rich region that will become more and more important for the world. Georgie Anne Geyer's latest book is a lively, multifaceted account of her adventures in places to which few Westerners have gone before. Part travelogue, part history, part insider's political briefing - an entirely enjoyable and entertaining read.

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Bernard De Voto

Contents: Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County from A Tramp Abroad from Old Times on the Mississippi Private History of a Campaign that Failed from A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses from Pudd'nhead Wilson from Following the Equator from Mark Twain in Eruption from Europe and Elsewhere from Mark Twain's Autobiography Mysterious Stranger Letters