Twitchhiker

Sample

Alistair Moffat

"Historians have failed to show convincingly that King Arthur existed, for a good reason: they have been looking in the wrong place, in Wales or the West of England. The real Arthur, Alistair Moffat argues, was not a king but a cavalry general, a prince of a Welsh-speaking southern Scottish tribe known as the Votadini by the Romans and the Gododdin by themselves. In a brilliant campaign, fought mostly in Scotland, Arthur defeated the Picts to the north and the Angles to the south. He halted the tide of invasion for a generation and gave Celtic Britain a breathing space to regroup and for parts of it to survive." "Alistair Moffat's conclusions are based not only on archaeology and documents but also on an analysis of the ancient place-names of the rivers, hills and settlements of southern Scotland. The author's search leads him in the final chapters to Arthur's headquarters - his Camelot - now truly a lost city where not one stone remains standing upon another." "Despite Germanic, Norse and other invasions, Britain has remained in essence a Celtic country. Arthur and the Lost Kingdoms will restore what our Anglo-Saxon history has hidden from us, a lost sense of our Celtic selves."--BOOK JACKET.

Sample

Joyce E. Chaplin

For almost five hundred years, human beings have been finding ways to circle the Earth -- by sail, steam, or liquid fuel; by cycling, driving, flying, going into orbit, even by using their own bodily power. The story begins with the first centuries of circumnavigation, when few survived the attempt: in 1519, Ferdinand Magellan left Spain with five ships and 270 men, but only one ship and thirty-five men returned, not including Magellan, who died in the Philippines. Starting with these dangerous voyages, Joyce Chaplin takes us on a trip of our own as we travel with Francis Drake, William Dampier, Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, and James Cook. Eventually sea travel grew much safer and passengers came on board. The most famous was Charles Darwin, but some intrepid women became circumnavigators too -- a Lady Brassey, for example. Circumnavigation became a fad, as captured in Jules Verne's classic novel Around the World in Eighty Days. Once continental railroads were built, circumnavigators could traverse sea and land. Newspapers sponsored racing contests, and people sought ways to distinguish themselves -- by bicycling around the world, for instance, or by sailing solo. Steamships turned round-the-world travel into a luxurious experience, as with the tours of Thomas Cook & Son. Famous authors wrote up their adventures, including Mark Twain and Jack London and Elizabeth Jane Cochrane (better known as Nellie Bly). Finally humans took to the skies to circle the globe in airplanes. Not much later, Sputnik, Gagarin, and Glenn pioneered a new kind of circumnavigation -- in orbit. Through it all, the desire to take on the planet has tested the courage and capacity of the bold men and women who took up the challenge. Their exploits show us why we think of the Earth as home. - Jacket flap.

Sample

Justin Luke Zirilli

Gulliver Leverenze decides to abandon his family, friends and ex-boyfriend in Los Angeles, travel across the country, and start fresh in New York City, where has no job and no plan and moves in with his only friend, a fraternity brother and rising gay nightlife star, Todd Ditempto, who introduces him to a chaotic life of alcohol and men.

Sample

himself

The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, written in 1789, details its writer's life in slavery, his time spent serving on galleys, the eventual attainment of his own freedom and later success in business. Including a look at how slavery stood in West Africa, the book received favorable reviews and was one of the first slave narratives to be read widely.