Bringing out the local character of the California coast, this ultimate beach-lover's guide covers 175 beaches including 123 with surfing, 48 with camping, and even 21 nude beaches. Includes recommendations for over 150 small hotels, guest cottages, and coastal inns. 50 maps.
The spellbinding tale of six queer witches forging their own paths, shrouded in the mist, magic, and secrets of the ancient California redwoods. Danny didn’t know what she was looking for when she and her mother spread out a map of the United States and Danny put her finger down on Tempest, California. What she finds are the Grays: a group of friends who throw around terms like queer and witch like they’re ordinary and everyday, though they feel like an earthquake to Danny. But Danny didn’t just find the Grays. They cast a spell that calls her halfway across the country, because she has something they need: she can bring back Imogen, the most powerful of the Grays, missing since the summer night she wandered into the woods alone. But before Danny can find Imogen, she finds a dead boy with a redwood branch through his heart. Something is very wrong amid the trees and fog of the Lost Coast, and whatever it is, it can kill. Lush, eerie, and imaginative, Amy Rose Capetta’s tale overflows with the perils and power of discovery — and what it means to find your home, yourself, and your way forward.
&‘You approach family stories with caution and care, especially when a thing long forgotten is uncovered in the telling.'In this deft memoir, Richard Shaw unpacks a generations-old family story he was never told: that his ancestors once farmed land in Taranaki which had been confiscated from its owners and sold to his great-grandfather, who had been with the Armed Constabulary when it invaded Parihaka on 5 November 1881.Honest, and intertwined with an examination of Shaw's relationship with his father and of his family's Catholicism, this book's key focus is urgent: how, in a decolonizing world, Pakeha New Zealanders wrestle with, and own, the privilege of their colonial pasts.
An unprecedented book showcasing the California coast via the Pacific Coast Highway and beyond. As America stands to the rest of the world, so stands California to America—a shining promise of endless possibility. California is both dream and reality. Coastal California is for anyone who has felt the lure of a Pacific sunset. From the physical beauty of Monterey to the grandeur of Southern California, photographer Jake Rajs displays his skillful command of capturing the coastline and Pacific Ocean in every season and the land that is affected by it. Including such locations as Redwood National Park, Point Reyes National Seashore, Sausalito, Huntington Beach, Long Beach, and Pacific Palisades, Coastal California is sure to be the gift book of the year for those who feel the rush of the Pacific Coast Highway and those who just dream of it.
“A thorough and engaging history of Maine’s rocky coast and its tough-minded people.”—Boston Herald “[A] well-researched and well-written cultural and ecological history of stubborn perseverance.”—USA Today For more than four hundred years the people of coastal Maine have clung to their rocky, wind-swept lands, resisting outsiders’ attempts to control them while harvesting the astonishing bounty of the Gulf of Maine. Today’s independent, self-sufficient lobstermen belong to the communities imbued with a European sense of ties between land and people, but threatened by the forces of homogenization spreading up the eastern seaboard. In the tradition of William Warner’s Beautiful Swimmers, veteran journalist Colin Woodard (author of American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good) traces the history of the rugged fishing communities that dot the coast of Maine and the prized crustacean that has long provided their livelihood. Through forgotten wars and rebellions, and with a deep tradition of resistance to interference by people “from away,” Maine’s lobstermen have defended an earlier vision of America while defying the “tragedy of the commons”—the notion that people always overexploit their shared property. Instead, these icons of American individualism represent a rare example of true communal values and collaboration through grit, courage, and hard-won wisdom.
It certainly is not easy to add anything to that grand, opulent, and vibrant book that is Naples. More than a city, Naples is a universe of opposites: it is a place blessed with great beauty and breathtaking landscapes, but it is equally dark and grungy, as southern Italian cities frequently are. Naples is aristocratic and ragamuffin, open and inviting, and, at the same time, unruly and secretive. So begins Cesare Cunaccia's introduction to Hidden Naples and the Amalfi Coast, a beautiful journey through Italy's most beautiful southern city of Naples and the extraordinary surrounding coast. The book captures the unique essence of Naples: it affords a glimpse of the glorious architecture, from beautiful churches to private palazzos and their gardens; introduces the reader to local crafts, such as the elaborate Nativity scenes which have been a tradition for centuries (even King Charles III engaged in the favorite local pastime ); and the museums, known for their exceptional collections of ancient art and important archeological remains. Through gorgeous photography and lively text, Hidden Naples and the Amalfi Coast is the only volume devoted to the treasures of this intriguing region of Italy.
Prize-winning essays on our changing place in the natural world by the best-selling author of Moby-Duck. Writing in the grand American tradition of Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez, Donovan Hohn is an “adventurous, inquisitive, and brightly illuminating writer” (New York Times). Since the publication of Moby-Duck a decade ago, Hohn has been widely hailed for his prize-winning essays on the borderlands between the natural and the human. The Inner Coast collects ten of his best, many of them originally published in such magazines as the New York Times Magazine and Harper’s, which feature his physical, historical, and emotional journeys through the American landscape. By turns meditative and comic, adventurous and metaphysical, Hohn writes about the appeal of old tools, the dance between ecology and engineering, the lost art of ice canoeing, and Americans’ complicated love/hate relationship with Thoreau. The Inner Coast marks the return of one of our finest young writers and a stylish exploration of what Guy Davenport called “the geography of the imagination.”
The irresistible novel that was adapted into a major motion picture starring Leonardo DiCaprio. The Khao San Road, Bangkok -- first stop for the hordes of rootless young Westerners traveling in Southeast Asia. On Richard's first night there, in a low-budget guest house, a fellow traveler slashes his wrists, bequeathing to Richard a meticulously drawn map to "the Beach." The Beach, as Richard has come to learn, is the subject of a legend among young travelers in Asia: a lagoon hidden from the sea, with white sand and coral gardens, freshwater falls surrounded by jungle, plants untouched for a thousand years. There, it is rumored, a carefully selected international few have settled in a communal Eden. Haunted by the figure of Mr. Duck -- the name by which the Thai police have identified the dead man -- and his own obsession with Vietnam movies, Richard sets off with a young French couple to an island hidden away in an archipelago forbidden to tourists. They discover the Beach, and it is as beautiful and idyllic as it is reputed to be. Yet over time it becomes clear that Beach culture, as Richard calls it, has troubling, even deadly, undercurrents. Spellbinding and hallucinogenic, The Beach by Alex Garland -- both a national bestseller and his debut -- is a highly accomplished and suspenseful novel that fixates on a generation in their twenties, who, burdened with the legacy of the preceding generation and saturated by popular culture, long for an unruined landscape, but find it difficult to experience the world firsthand.