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Longitude News: Summer Reading

READING AND TRAVEL GUIDE

Here'e our pick of new & noteworthy travel books, many just out in paper, for summer reading.

Naples Declared

Naples Declared

by Benjamin Taylor

  • CULTURAL PORTRAIT
  • 2013
  • PAPER
  • 240 PAGES

Subtitled A Walk Along the Bay, Taylor takes in the all the splendor and grit of ancient Naples from street level, mixing his travels with history, quotes from storied visitors over the ages and indelible portraits of the characters he meets. (ITA315, $17.00)

Trip of the Tongue, Cross-Country Travels in Search of America's Languages

Trip of the Tongue, Cross-Country Travels in Search of America's Languages

by Elizabeth Little

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2012
  • HARD COVER
  • 309 PAGES

What's the largest Greek city outside Greece? Astoria, Queens. Inspired by her polyglot surroundings in Sunnyside, Queens, the companionable, language-besotted Elizabeth Little packs up her Subaru and hit the road in search of people, places and languages across these United States. A companionable guide, Little uncovers a rich array of etymologies (including the origin of the word tuxedo) as she travels, 25,000 miles in all over two years, to explore languages as diverse as Navajo, Norwegian, Basque and Crow. (USA484, $25.00)

Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River

Meander: East to West, Indirectly, Along a Turkish River

by Jeremy Seal

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2012
  • HARD COVER
  • 320 PAGES

As captivated as ever by Turkey, Seal takes to a canoe on the Meander River for this third book. Travelling from Dinar to Didim, staying in villages along the way, Seal well, meanders, this river rich in mythology and history, weaving his own travels with ancient tales and the history of Anatolia. (TKY258, $28.00)

Alaskan Travels, Far-Flung Tales of Love and Adventure

Alaskan Travels, Far-Flung Tales of Love and Adventure

by Edward Hoagland

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2012
  • HARD COVER
  • 208 PAGES

From the Arctic Ocean to the Kenai Peninsula, backstreet bars of Anchorage and a 500-mile adventure on the Yukon, Edward Hoagland traveled the "real" Alaska on a grand journey some thirty years ago. Drawing on his journals of the time, Hoagland commemorates the lives of an astonishing and unforgettable array of prospectors, trappers, millionaire freebooters, drifters, oilmen, Inuits and others he enountered along the way. In the tradition of Twain's Life on the Mississippi and Jonathon Rabin's Old Glory, Alaskan Travels is a love song with a love story at its heart. The remarkably kind and competent frontier nurse Linda got him to Alaska in the first place. (ALA364, $22.95)

Darwin's Ghosts, The Secret History of Evolution

Darwin's Ghosts, The Secret History of Evolution

by Rebecca Stott

  • SCIENCE
  • 2013
  • PAPER
  • 416 PAGES

The author of the excellent Darwin and the Barnacle returns to tales of evolution with this remarkably gripping account of the history fo the idea of evolution before Darwin, tackling not just Lamark, Alfred Russel Wallace and Erasmus Darwin (CRD's grandfather) but also Aristotle, Al-Jahiz, Diderot and others lost to hgistory. With each chapter focusing on an early evolutionary thinker, Darwin's Ghosts is a terrific account of a diverse group of thinkers who, despite the very real dangers of challenging a system in which everything was presumed to have been created perfectly by God, felt compelled to understand where we came from. (NAT258, $17.00)

Land's End, A Walk in Provincetown

Land's End, A Walk in Provincetown

by Michael Cunningham

  • BIOGRAPHY/MEMOIR
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 176 PAGES

A brief, loving portrait of Provincetown, the town at the very tip of Cape Cod, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Hours. (USE254, $12.00)

Paris to the Past, Traveling Through French History by Train

Paris to the Past, Traveling Through French History by Train

by Ina Caro

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 400 PAGES

The infectiously enthusiastic Ina Caro charts 25 day trips from Paris in this marvelously conceived history and guide. From the splendor of Chartres, wonders of Sainte-Chapelle and elegant Place de la Concorde, Caro enchants. (FRN953, $17.95)

The Floor of Heaven, A True Tale of the American West and the Yukon Gold Rush

The Floor of Heaven, A True Tale of the American West and the Yukon Gold Rush

by Howard Blum

  • HISTORY
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 432 PAGES

Through the eyes of a trio of fascinating historical characters -- a Pinkerton detective, a confidence man and a prospector-turned-tycoon -- the Edgar Award-winning Howard Blum explores the dreams that drove men to the Alaskan Frontier, the 1897 Klondike Gold Rush. A tale almost too good to be true. (ALA341, $16.00)

Wild Coast, Travels on South America's Untamed Edge

Wild Coast, Travels on South America's Untamed Edge

by John Gimlette

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 358 PAGES

Gimlette sets out for the watery wilds of the Guianas, attuned to history and the eccentric castaways and adventurers he meets along the way. He takes in colonial Georgetown ("a city of stilts and clapboard, brilliant whites, fretwork, spindles and louvers"), sleepy Paramaribo and, especially, the "claggy, overgrown hinterlands." (SAM168, $16.95)

India, A Portrait

India, A Portrait

by Patrick French

  • HISTORY
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 398 PAGES

Mixing analysis, history and on-the-spot reports, French sketches the dazzling transformation of India in the 60 years since independence through the individual stories of a colorful cast of characters. (IDA659, $16.95)

In the Dolphin's Wake, Cocktails, Calamities and Caiques in the Greek Islands

In the Dolphin's Wake, Cocktails, Calamities and Caiques in the Greek Islands

by Harry Bucknall

  • TRAVEL NARRATIVE
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 304 PAGES

Setting out from Venice on a mid-morning in May, Harry Buknall hopscotch's across the Aegean, mostly by sea, pausing in Corfu, Crete, the Dodecanese, taking in Athens, Mount Athos and other places, both celebrated and out-of-the-way, en route to Istanbul. Effortlessly informative, you'll quickly forgive Bucknall's British-isms (upon arrival in Athens, he has drinks with Colonel Mark Blatherwick, the British Military Attache), Bucknall is good company, and well informed on Greek history. (GRE485, $12.95)

The Appian Way

The Appian Way

by Robert A. Kaster

  • ARCHAEOLOGY
  • 2012
  • HARD COVER
  • 124 PAGES

A professor of classics at Princeton, Robert Kaster brings flair and scholarship to this charmingly digressive, extended essay on his travels from Rome to Brinbdisi on the Via Appia. Kaster includes a "baker's dozen of must-stops, a frank caution about the terrifying traffic leaving Rome, recommended reading and other tips for the travelers. (ITA310, $22.50)

The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

The Ancient Guide to Modern Life

by Natalie Haynes

  • HISTORY
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 288 PAGES

In this light-hearted frolic through antiquity, Haynes considers modern life from the point of view of the ancients, musing on such questions as what Athenian democracy might teach present politics and the impact of Greek and Roman drama, literature and philosophy on the contemporary world. (MED195, $15.00)

The Green Shore

The Green Shore

by Natalie Bakopoulos

  • LITERATURE
  • 2012
  • HARD COVER
  • 353 PAGES

Brilliantly evocative of the faded beauty of 1970s Athens, this story of love and resistance is a fine exploration of a seminal moment in modern Greek history. Bakopoulos' lyrical debut follows the tumultuous history of an Athens family caught up in the 1967 military coup that brought to power a series of right-wing military juntas. (GRE512, $25.00)

The Greek Myths, Complete Edition

The Greek Myths, Complete Edition

by Robert Graves

  • LITERATURE
  • 2012
  • PAPER
  • 800 PAGES

A new edition of Graves' classic collection illustrated by the comic book artist Ross MacDonald. This expert retelling by Graves, a poet, memoirist and the author of I, Claudius (ITL429), still remains the seminal modern translation of the mythologies of Ancient Greece. (GRE274, $25.00)

 

More Recommendations

Here are some other groups of books that might be of interest

Longitude provides recommended reading for travelers in partnership with the leading tour operators and travel programs for hundreds of destinations worldwide. We've got the classic, new and hard-to-find books and maps to help you get the most out of your adventures.