The telling room

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John Muir

"When John Muir died in 1914, the pre-eminent American naturalist, explorer, and conservationist had not yet written the second volume of his autobiography, in which he had planned to cover his Yosemite years, 1863 to 1875. Working with a variety of sources - Muir's letters, journals, articles, and unpublished manuscripts, as well as selections drawn from biographical pieces written about Muir by people who met him in Yosemite in the early 1870s - editors Engberg and Wesling have assembled what they term a "composite autobiography." They provide brief interpretive and transitional passages throughout the book and a short biographical/critical piece on Muir."--BOOK JACKET.

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Stephanie Elizondo Griest

Desperate to escape South Texas, Stephanie Elizondo Griest dreamed of becoming a foreign correspondent. So she headed to Russia looking for some excitement--commencing what would become a four-year, twelve-nation Communist bloc tour that shattered her preconceived notions of the "Evil Empire." In Around the Bloc, Griest relates her experiences as a volunteer at a children's shelter in Moscow, a propaganda polisher at the office of the Chinese Communist Party's English-language mouthpiece in Beijing, and a belly dancer among the rumba queens of Havana. She falls in love with an ex-soldier who narrowly avoided radiation cleanup duties at Chernobyl, hangs out with Cuban hip-hop artists, and comes to difficult realizations about the meaning of democracy. is the absorbing story of a young journalist driven by a desire to witness the effects of Communism. Along the way, she learns the Russian mathematical equation for buying dinner-party vodka (one bottle per guest, plus an extra), stumbles upon Beijing's underground gay scene, marches with 100,000 mothers demanding Elian Gonzalez's return to Cuba, and gains a new appreciation for the Mexican culture she left behind.From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Ross McSwain

Tales From out Yonder is a mixture of stories about people, places, and things-from frontiersman-rancher-fugitive Humpy Jackson, who drove Col. Randald Mackenzie and his 4th Cavalry soldiers crazy; to the Earl of Aylesford, an English nobleman who settled in Big Spring, bought a ranch and businesses, then drank himself to death; to Pancho Villa's war for the movie cameras; to Mason County's "Hoodoo" War. Read about aviation, outlaws, rainmakers, ghost towns, painted rocks, barbed wire, Nazi prisoners, Buffalo Soldiers, cedar choppers, madstones, gold, salt, onions, and more.

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Susan Whitfield

"In the first 1,000 years after Christ, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants, and military men traveled on the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road. Linking Europe, India, and the Far East, the route passed through many countries and many settlements, from the splendid city of Samarkand to tiny desert hamlets. Susan Whitfield creates a rich and varied portrait of life along the greatest trade route in history in a vivid, lively, and learned account that spans the eighth through the tenth centuries. Recounting the lives of ten individuals who lived at different times during this period, Whitfield draws on contemporary sources and uses first-hand accounts whenever possible to reconstruct the history of the route through the personal experiences of these characters."--BOOK JACKET.