In 1932 a young Fonville Winans (1911--1992) left his home in Fort Worth and set out on the waterways of south Louisiana searching for adventure and fortune. This journal recounts, in his own words, how the now-renowned photographer and his two friends -- first mate Bob Owen and second mate Don Horridge -- ventured onto untamed Louisiana waters aboard a leaking, rudderless sailboat, the Pintail.Fonville was shooting footage for a movie that he felt certain would make them rich and f...

The story of the banjo's journey from Africa to the western hemisphere blends music, history, and a union of cultures. In Banjo Roots and Branches, Robert B. Winans presents cutting-edge scholarship that covers the instrument's West African origins and its adaptations and circulation in the Caribbean and United States. The contributors provide detailed ethnographic and technical research on gourd lutes and ekonting in Africa and the banza in Haiti while also investigating tuning p...

'Hugely funny and peopled with a cast of characters I came to love like my own friends, Rush Oh! reminded me why I love reading' Hannah Kent, bestselling author of Burial RitesMary Davidson, the eldest daughter of a whaling family in New South Wales,chronicles the particularly difficult season of 1908 - a story that is poignant and hilarious, filled with drama and misadventure.Mary Davidson has got used to looking after he...

A good description  of a trip on the Rhody Carter out of Marblehead Massachusetts to the Grand Banks in search of Cod during the mid nineteenth century.

'The master of a journalistic style long vanished - urbane, lucid, courteous... A masterpiece of observation and storytelling' Ian McEwanMitchell is the laureate of old New York. The hidden corners of the city and the people who lived there are his subject. He captured the waterfront rooming-houses , nickel-a-drink saloons, all-night restaurants, the 'visionaries, obsessives, imposters, fanatics, lost souls, the end-is-near street preachers, old Gypsy Kings and old Gypsy Queens, an...

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “One of contemporary literature’s most revered essayists revives her raw records from a 1970s road trip across the American southwest ... her acute observations of the country’s culture and history feel particularly resonant today.” —Harper’s BazaarJoan Didion, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking and Let Me Tell You What I Mean, has always kept notebooks—of overheard dialogue, interv...

A man of faith faces a personal reckoning after working aboard HMS Beagle in this "gripping" historical novel ( The Wall Street Journal).Heading off to sea at the age of thirteen, Syms Covington became Charles Darwin's manservant for seven years, sailing on the historic voyage of the Beagle. Their relationship was an odd one, but it furnished exactly what Darwin needed in order to complete his groundbreaking work, as Covington shot and co...

"Some of the finest examples of contemporary, genuinely American prose. White's style incorporates eloquence without affection, profundity without pomposity, and wit without frivolity or hostility. Like his predecessors Thoreau and Twain, White's creative, humane, and graceful perceptions are an education for the sensibilities." — Washington PostThe classic collection by one of the greatest essayists of our time.Selected by E.B. White himself, this indispensable vo...

Welcome to World Records - Horrid Henry style!Horrid Henry's gizmo collection is a massive 643...but that's nothing compared to the Magnet Lady, who owns over 30,000 fridge magnets. The most words spelled backwards in a minute is 14...how many can Henry spell forwards? A British man holds the world record for eating six giant pizzas in under a minute...could Greedy Graham beat that?Weird, wonderful, hilarious and horrid, this new non-fiction book is jam-packed full of world...

"Before there was the Perfect Storm, there was the Great Hurricane of 1938. A riveting and wonderfully written account." —Nathaniel PhilbrickOn the night of September 21, 1938, news on the radio was full of the invasion of Czechoslovakia. There was no mention of any severe weather. By the time oceanfront residents noticed an ominous color in the sky, it was too late to escape. In an age before warning systems and the ubiquity of television, this unprecedented storm...

Evil master criminal sets out for world domination from the French pioneer of Science Fiction.