Travel Literature

ISBN: 9781529355277
Title: 99% INVISIBLE CITY
Author: MARS ROMAN / KOHLESTEDT KURT
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

This is 99% Invisible.

__________

A beautifully designed guidebook to the unnoticed yet essential elements of our cities, from the creators of the wildly popular 99% Invisible podcast

Have you ever wondered what those bright, squiggly graffiti marks on the sidewalk mean?

Or stopped to ponder who gets to name the streets we walk along?

Or what the story is behind those dancing inflatable figures in car dealerships?

99% Invisible is a big-ideas podcast about small-seeming things, revealing stories baked into the buildings we inhabit, the streets we drive, and the sidewalks we traverse. The show celebrates design and architecture in all of its functional glory and accidental absurdity, with intriguing tales of both designers and the people impacted by their designs.

Now, in The 99% Invisible City: A Field Guide to Hidden World of Everyday Design, host Roman Mars and coauthor Kurt Kohlstedt zoom in on the various elements that make our cities work, exploring the origins and other fascinating stories behind everything from power grids and fire escapes to drinking fountains and street signs. With deeply researched entries and beautiful line drawings throughout, The 99% Invisible City will captivate devoted fans of the show and anyone curious about design, urban environments, and the unsung marvels of the world around them.

__________

You are about to see stories everywhere, you beautiful nerd. Now get out there.

'If you've ever wondered why our world is the way it is, this show has your answers' The Hustle

'99% Invisible...is completely wonderful and entertaining and beautifully produced...' Ira Glass, This American Life

'The hugely inventive 99% Invisible treats the design of everyday things like a forensic science.' WIRED

Imprint: Hodder and Stoughton
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781786498106
Title: AGE OF ISLANDS : In Search of New and Disappearing Islands
Author: BONNETT ALASTAIR
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

New islands are being built at an unprecedented rate whether for tourism or territorial ambition, while many islands are disappearing because of rising sea levels or fragmenting due to shrinking ice. It is a strange planetary spectacle, an ever-changing map which even Google Earth struggles to keep pace with.

But it is also, Alastair Bonnett believes, a spectacle which is imprinting itself on our hopes and anxieties. From a 'crannog', an ancient artificial island in a Scottish loch, to the militarized artificial islands China is building in the South China Sea, he sets out to explore some of the world's newest, most fragile and beautiful islands to find out why they have such a hold on our imaginations.

Imprint: Atlantic Books
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9780006547754
Title: AGE OF KALI : TRAVELS AND ENCOUNTERS IN INDIA
Author: DALRYMPLE WILLIAM
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

William Dalrymple, who wrote so magically about India in 'City of Djinns', returns to the country in a series of remarkable essays. Featured in its pages are 15-year-old guerrilla girls and dowager Maharanis; flashy Bombay drinks parties and violent village blood feuds; a group of vegetarian terrorists intent on destroying India's first Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet; and a palace where port and cigars are still carried to guests on a miniature silver steam train. Dalrymple meets such figures as Imran Khan and Benazir Bhutto; he witnesses the macabre nightly offering to the bloodthirsty goddess Parashakti - She Who Is Seated on a Throne of Five Corpses; he experiences caste massacres in the badlands of Bihar and dines with a drug baron on the North-West Frontier; he discovers such oddities as the terrorist apes of Jaipur and the shrine where Lord Krishna is said to make love every night to his 16,108 wives and 64,732 milkmaids. 'The Age of Kali' is the fourth fascinating volume from the author of 'In Xanadu', 'City of Djinns' and 'From the Holy Mountain'.

Imprint: Harper Collins
RRP: $24.99

ISBN: 9780143790990
Title: AMERICAN JOURNEYS
Author: WATSON DON
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

A superb book about Don Watson's journeys around America. Featured as one of Newsweek's 50 'What to Read Now and Why' titles.

Only in America - the most powerful democracy on earth, home to the best and worst of everything - are the most extreme contradictions possible. In a series of journeys acclaimed author Don Watson set out to explore the nation that has influenced him more than any other.

Travelling by rail gave Watson a unique and seductive means of peering into the United States, a way to experience life with its citizens- long days with the American landscape and American towns and American history unfolding on the outside, while inside a tiny particle of the American people talked among themselves.

Watson's experiences are profoundly affecting- he witnesses the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina on the Gulf Coast; explores the savage history of the Deep South, the heartland of the Civil War; and journeys to the remarkable wilderness of Yellowstone National Park.

Yet it is through the people he meets that Watson discovers the incomparable genius of America, its optimism, sophistication and riches - and also its darker side, its disavowal of failure and uncertainty.

Beautifully written, with gentle power and sly humour, American Journeys investigates the meaning of the United States- its confidence, its religion, its heroes, its violence, and its material obsessions. The things that make America great are also its greatest flaws.

Imprint: Penguin Books
RRP: $19.99

ISBN: 9780141988337
Title: ANOTHER KYOTO
Author: KERR ALEX / SOKOL KATHY ARLYN
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

An evocative, definitive work on Kyoto, the most beautiful city in Japan.

Another Kyoto is a matchless guide to a great city, It is the fruit of Alex Kerr's half-century of living in Japan and of lore gleaned from people he's met along the way: artists, Zen monks and Shinto priests, Japanese literati, and expat personalities from days past, such as legendary art dealer David Kidd. Kerr turns what we thought we knew about Kyoto inside-out, revealing the inner ideas behind simple things like walls, floors, and sliding doors.

After this book, one can never walk through a Zen gate in the same way again.


Imprint: Penguin Books
RRP: $22.99

ISBN: 9781780601397
Title: ARABIA : Through the Looking Glass
Author: RABAN JONATHAN
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK

Into Jonathan Raban’s familiar Earls Court neighbourhood after the 1970s oil boom came new visitors from the Arab world, dressed in floor-length robes and yashmaks. A people apart, little known, Raban wanted to get behind the myth and the rumour to discover the reality of their lives and world. His journey took him through Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, Yemen, Egypt and Jordan. What he discovered was a far cry from the camel, tent and sand dune archetypes of early European explorers. Oil wealth had seeped into almost every corner, and Bedouin encampments had been replaced by cosmopolitan boomtowns, camels by Range Rovers. The sons of Bedouin nomads were now studying medicine in Europe and engineering in New York. Yet in this fast-moving world, old certainties remained – and cultural innovation lagged miles behind economic change.

Raban’s gift for friendship introduces us to a series of memorable individuals – rich and poor – set against the feel, the smells, the sounds and the nuances of Arabia.

Imprint: ELAND
RRP: $29.99

ISBN: 9780241970065
Title: ART OF TRAVEL
Author: DE BOTTON ALAIN
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

The Art of Travel is Alain de Botton's travel guide with a difference. Few activities seem to promise us as much happiness as going travelling: taking off for somewhere else, somewhere far from home, a place with more interesting weather, customs and landscapes. But although we are inundated with advice on where to travel to, we seldom ask why we go and how we might become more fulfilled by doing so. With the help of a selection of writers, artists and thinkers - including Flaubert, Edward Hopper, Wordsworth and Van Gogh - Alain de Botton's bestselling The Art of Travel provides invaluable insights into everything from holiday romance to hotel mini-bars, airports to sight-seeing. The perfect antidote to those guides that tell us what to do when we get there, The Art of Travel tries to explain why we really went in the first place - and helpfully suggests how we might be happier on our journeys. "Richly evocative, sharp and funny. De Botton proves himself to be a very fine travel writer indeed". (Sunday Telegraph). "Delightful, profound, entertaining, I doubt if de Botton has written a dull sentence in his life' Jan Morris 'An elegant and subtle work, unlike any other. Beguiling". (Colin Thubron, The Times). Alain de Botton's bestselling books include Essays in Love; The Romantic Movement; Kiss and Tell; Status Anxiety; How Proust Can Change Your Life; The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work; The Art of Travel; The Architecture of Happiness and Religion for Atheists. He lives in London and founded The School of Life and Living Architecture.

Imprint: Penguin Books
RRP: $26.99

ISBN: 9780804848718
Title: AT HOME IN JAPAN : A Foreign Woman's Journey of Discovery
Author: OTOWA REBECCA
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

What would it be like to move to Japan, leaving everyone you know behind, to become part of a traditional Japanese household? At Home in Japan tells an extraordinary true story of a foreign woman who goes through an amazing transformation, as she makes a move from a suburban lifestyle in California to a new life, living in Japan. She dedicates 30 years of her life as a housewife, custodian and chatelaine of a 350–year–old farmhouse in rural Japan. This astonishing book traces a circular path from were Rebecca began, to living under Japanese customs, from the basic day to day details of life in the house and village, through relationships with family, neighbors and the natural and supernatural entities with which the family shares the house.

Imprint: TUTTLE
RRP: $19.99

ISBN: 9781523506484
Title: ATLAS OBSCURA - 2nd Edition : An Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders
Author: FOER JOSHUA
Format: HARD COVER
Publishing status: TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK

Inspiring equal parts wonder and wanderlust, Atlas Obscura celebrates over 700 of the strangest and most curious places in the world. The second edition, revised and updated with 20% new material, reveals more hidden wonders. Among them: The Glowing Termite Mounds of Emas Brazil, The secretive FBI Spy House in Washington DC, the spooky Pirate Cemetery in Madagascar, and in Whitehorse, Canada, the The World's Largest Weathervane.

Created by Joshua Foer, Dylan Thuras (the founders of Atlas Obscura) and Ella Morton, Atlas Obscura revels in the weird, the unexpected, the overlooked, the hidden and the mysterious. Every page expands our sense of how strange and marvellous the world really is. And with its compelling descriptions, hundreds of photographs, surprising charts, maps for every region of the world, it is a book to enter anywhere, and will be as appealing to the armchair traveler as the die-hard adventurer.

Imprint: WORKMAN PRESS
RRP: $55.00

ISBN: 9781925847697
Title: AUSTRALIAS BEST 100 WALKS
Format: TRADE PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

An inspirational guide to Australias best walks selected by Australias most trusted destination magazine.

There are so many incredible walks in Australia but how do you know which are the best ones? Our free time is precious and few people have the time to survey a range of walks – it can years to find a handful of good ones. Over 150 issues and 33 years Australian Geographic has explored Australian landscapes. Our editors, writers and photographers have the energy, expertise and contacts to know where all the most exciting and exhilarating walks are to be found. In this much anticipated book, we reveal our best 100 with detailed descriptions and stunning photography to inspire both walkers and armchair travellers. The Australian Geographic guide to Australia’s Best 100 Walks will have walkers itching to lace their boots up with this showcase of the sheer beauty and diversity of our landscapes and wildlife. With this book, walkers can set out knowing they’re going to have an incredible day outdoors. A great walk can be an exhilarating experience that will stay with you forever. Perhaps you’re stirred by endless mountain views or soothed by stepping into a living green cathedral. Maybe the challenge drives you harder and farther than you thought possible. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in the presence of a rare creature and feel a jolt of connection. There’s always magic to be found when walking but the very best walks will do all of these things. Fortunately, Australia is full of extraordinary walks – here’s our collection of the best to be found in every corner of this country.

Imprint: Australian Geographic
RRP: $39.99

ISBN: 9781526611468
Title: AUTUMN LIGHT : Japan's Season of Fire and Farewells
Author: IYER PICO
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: ACTIVE TITLE

We cherish things, Japan has always known, precisely because they cannot last; it's their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty.


Returning to his home in Japan after his father-in-law's sudden death, Pico Iyer soon picks up the steadying patterns of his everyday rites: going to the post office in the day and engaging in spirited games of ping-pong in the evenings. But in a country whose calendar is marked with occasions honouring the dead, he soon finds himself grappling with the question we all have to live with: how to hold on to the things we love even though we know that they - and we - are dying.

As the maple leaves begin to turn and the heat starts to soften, Iyer shows us a Japan we have seldom seen before through the season that reminds us to take nothing for granted.

Imprint: Bloomsbury Publishing
RRP: $22.99

ISBN: 9781860468247
Title: BARCELONA
Author: HUGHES ROBERT
Format: PAPER COVER
Publishing status: TEMPORARILY OUT OF STOCK

Robert Hughes has been visiting Barcelona since the 1960s and he has written an epic tribute to a city he loves. He tells the story of the growth of this Mediterranean metropolis from its origins as a Roman colonial town to the twentieth century, examining its relationship to the rest of Catalunya, to Spain and to the wider European world. Much of Barcelona's history is reflected in its architecture and Hughes builds his history around the stones of the city but his account is also rich in political and military drama and the actions of remarkable personalities. He introduces the reader to Barcelona's painting, poetry, folklore, language, food and much more. He also addresses the paradoxical question of Catalan identity, a people simultaneously so Spanish and yet so un-Spanish. Hughes's Barcelona has become, as it deserves to be, the standard work on the city in English.

Imprint: HARVILL
RRP: $32.99