"Aurelia, Aurélia begins on a boat. The author, sixteen years old, is traveling to Europe at an age when one can 'try on personae like dresses.' She has the confidence of a teenager cultivating her earliest obsessions--Woolf, Durrell, Bergman--sure of her maturity, sure of the life that awaits her. Soon she finds herself in a Greece far drearier than the Greece of fantasy, 'climbing up and down the steep paths every morning with the real old women,...

Endangered Species of Country Life takes the reader on a very special journey. For those of the younger generation, who have grown up with the Internet, the iPad and the smartphone, this book will lead you on a fascinating voyage of discovery. For those who are a bit longer in the tooth, the book will usher you on an odyssey of nostalgia and reminiscence. But, regardless of whether your years are fourteen, forty or fourscore and ten, you are sure...

During the nineteenth century, more than three hundred boats met their end in the steamboat graveyard that was the Lower Missouri River, from Omaha to its mouth. Although derided as little more than an "orderly pile of kindling," steamboats were, in fact, technological marvels superbly adapted to the river's conditions. Their light superstructure and long, wide, flat hulls powered by high-pressure engines drew so little water that they could cruise...

Everyone dreams of tropical escape. But what happens when you escape for too long? Imagine spending 24 hours a day with your spouse in 31 not-so-square feet . . . for years; crossing the Pacific Ocean on two gallons of fuel; and tossing spaghetti marinara around your living room, then cleaning it up while bouncing like ice in a martini shaker. Tightwads on the Loose tells the story of Wendy and Garth, lured to sea by the promise of adventure. They...