100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go


Book Description

The secret is out: Cuba is the world’s sexiest, most magnetic travel destination. What isn’t a secret is that folks from around the corner and around the globe have been exploring and falling in love with the largest Caribbean island for decades. Now you can too with 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go, written from the unique perspective of a New Yorker who has called Havana home for more than 15 years. The 100 places profiled in this book are the result of decades of travel, research, and living in Cuba by a US journalist with uncommon access, ensuring travelers incomparable experiences. Much more than a prescriptive list, these narratives incorporate adventures and mishaps, insider opinion, slang, gossip, and conversations with Cubans during a historic shift which saw Soviet support evaporate, Fidel Castro take his final bow, economic reforms whiffing suspiciously of capitalism, and quasi-normalization with the United States. From exclusive interviews with prestigious Cubans to tales from intrepid travelers, these stories decipher the mysteries of Cuba while describing the country’s most alluring sites, sounds, and off-the-beaten track locales. Author Conner Gorry has spent decades writing guidebooks for Lonely Planet (Cuba included), reporting from post-disaster situations, and covering Cuban life from the inside for a variety of international publications. Her expertise in parsing Cuban machismo and gender politics, analyzing the role and impact of Cuban women, and ferreting out the best places for women traveling solo or with children enriches the book. She first visited Cuba in 1993 and has been permanently based in Havana since 2002 where she reports on everything from clinical trials to questionable fashion. She has written several books about Cuba and founded the island’s only English-language bookstore, Cuba Libro, in 2013; most of her explorations for 100 Places in Cuba Every Woman Should Go were made on a 1946 Harley-Davidson, leading one observer to say: ‘Conner’s Cuba is where Shakespeare and Company meets Easy Rider.”




100 Places Every Woman Should Go


Book Description

With its breezy reviews and insightful advice, 100 Places Every Woman Should Go encourages women of any age to see the world — in a group, with a friend, or solo — and inspires them to create their own list of dreams. Based on her own explorations of many countries, states, and regions, and on interviews with travelers, award-winning author Stephanie Elizondo Griest highlights 100 special destinations and challenging activities — from diving for pearls in Bahrain to racing a camel, yak, or pony across Mongolia; to dancing with voodoo priestesses in Benin and urban cowboys in Texas; to taking a mud bath in a volcano off the coast of Colombia. Divided into such sections as “Places Where Women Made History,” “Places of Indulgence,” and “Places of Adventure,” this guidebook includes timely contact information, resources, and recommended reading. “Ten Tips For Wandering Women” features safety precautions plus pointers on haggling, packing, and staying parasite-free. Vivid portraits of free spirits like Frida Kahlo (“A tequila-slamming, dirty joke-telling smoker, this famous artist was bisexual and beautiful”) help travelers expand their experience.




A Hard Place to Leave


Book Description

“Intrepid and empathetic, gifted with the dispassionate gaze of a born observer…a harmonious collage of worldview and character, a wunderkammer of experiences in a life fully lived.” —Melissa Febos, The New York Times Winner of the 2023 Lowell Thomas Award “DeSanctis encounters spies and love interests, but it’s her lushly polished writing that makes this book a joy to read.” —The Washington Post Vogue's Best Books of 2022 The Washington Post’s Best Travel Books of 2022 Restless to leave, eager to return: this memoir in essays captures the unrelenting pull between the past and the present, between traveling the world and staying home. Starting in a dreary Moscow hotel room in 1983, weaving back and forth to rural New England, and ending on a West Texas trail in 2020, Marcia DeSanctis tells stories that span the globe and half a lifetime. With intimacy and depth, over quicksand in France, insomnia in Cambodia, up a volcano in Rwanda, spinning through the eye of a snowstorm in Bismarck, and atop a dumpster in her own backyard, this New York Times bestselling author, award-winning essayist and journalist for Vogue and Travel + Leisure immerses us in places waiting to be experienced and some that may be more than we’re up for. She encounters spies, angels, leopards, shoes, the odd rattlesnake, a random head of state, and many times over, the ghosts of her past. Each subsequent voyage leads to revelations about her search for solitude, a capacity for adventure, and always, a longing for home.




The China Option


Book Description

In 2014 Sophia Erickson graduated from college with an apparently useless degree in European history from an obscure foreign college. Faced with crippling student loan debts and after an anxious couple of months waiting tables in her small Massachusetts town, she decided to do something different and bought a one-way ticket to China. Over the following two years she had many amazing experiences, paid off nearly half her student loans, and visited China from Heilongjiang to Hainan, as well as Myanmar, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Singapore. She wrote The China Option: A Guide for Millennials: How to work, play, and find success in China to give Millennials a path to explore their future the way she explored her own in China. The book covers a wide range of topics from the concept of “face” to coffee culture to racism to love to LGBT issues, as well as all of the practicalities readers need to know to get in and get a job. The China Option is a manifesto for recent college grads to take control of paying off debt while living a stimulating, adventurous life and to pave a way for a successful future.




The Temporary European


Book Description

Write guidebooks, make travel TV, lead bus tours? Cameron Hewitt has been Rick Steves’ right hand for more than 20 years, doing just that. The Temporary European is a collection of vivid, entertaining travel tales from across Europe. Cameron zips you into his backpack for engaging and inspiring experiences: sampling spleen sandwiches at a Palermo street market; hiking alone with the cows high in the Swiss Alps; simmering in Budapest’s thermal baths; trekking across an English moor to a stone circle; hand-rolling pasta at a Tuscan agriturismo; shivering through Highland games in a soggy Scottish village; and much more. Along the way, Cameron introduces us to his favorite Europeans. In Mostar, Alma demonstrates how Bosnian coffee isn’t just a drink, but a social ritual. In France, Mathilde explains that the true mastery of a fromager isn’t making cheese, but aging it. In Spain, Fran proudly eats acorns, but never corn on the cob. While personal, the stories also tap into the universal joy of travel. Cameron’s travel motto (inspired by a globetrotting auntie) is "Jams Are Fun"—the fondest memories arrive when your best-laid plans go sideways. And he encourages travelers to stow their phones and guidebooks, slow down, and savor those magic moments that arrive between stops on a busy itinerary. The stories are packed with inspiration and insights for your next trip, including how to find the best gelato in Italy, how to select the best produce at a Provençal market, how to navigate Spain’s confusing tapas scene, and how to survive the experience of driving in Sicily (hint: just go numb). And you’ll get a reality check for every traveler’s "dream job": researching and writing guidebooks; guiding busloads of Americans on tours around Europe; scouting and producing a travel TV show; and working with Rick Steves and his merry band of travelers. It’s a candid account of how the sausage gets made in the travel business—told with warts-and-all honesty and a sense of humor. For Rick Steves fans, or anyone who loves Europe, The Temporary European is inspiring, insightful, and fun.




The Creative Spark


Book Description

“Knowledgeable, probing, and thoughtful.” —Foreword Reviews Smokey Robinson • Barbara Kingsolver • Francis Ford Coppola • David Sedaris • Jane Goodall and other luminaries reveal the secrets to their creative success. Amy Tan talks about how she finds truth by writing fiction. Melissa Etheridge tells us how she channels her fire into her music. Pico Iyer shares how seeking stillness enhances his creativity. And Coppola discusses how he found the courage to make groundbreaking films. In The Creative Spark, a collection of interviews prefaced by brief biographies, these luminaries join dozens of other voices to create a symphony of inspiration. Lucinda Williams talks about honesty and making every word count; Jane Goodall cites the value of persistence and believing in yourself; and Smokey Robinson heralds the timeless power of love songs. For more than a decade, award-winning author Michael Shapiro (A Sense of Place) has interviewed many of our brightest creators. In The Creative Spark, musicians, authors, explorers, and chefs speak about what drives them, what helps them see the world in fresh ways, and what inspires them to turn their visions into art. Shapiro’s work as a music journalist has led to interviews with legends including Graham Nash, Lyle Lovett, Melissa Etheridge, Jake Shimabukuro, Merle Haggard, and Jethro Tull bandleader Ian Anderson. And he’s spoken with creative masters in other fields, such as comedian Joan Rivers and author Frances Mayes. Yet it’s not simply that Shapiro has had access to so many supremely talented people—it’s that he gets them to go deep. Moments into his penetrating conversation with Lucinda (her fans call her by her first name), she tells Shapiro about how decisions made about her mother’s funeral led to fissures in her family. From this achingly personal conversation, readers can glean fresh insights into why Lucinda has such a devoted following and why her songs open listeners’ hearts. Unexpected revelations pop up in every chapter of The Creative Spark. Iowa folksinger Greg Brown isn’t a household name, but his fellow musicians revere his poetic compositions. Then there’s San Francisco Giants announcer Mike Krukow, who turns every broadcast into a work of art. Chefs, including SingleThread’s Kyle Connaughton, discuss how they’re transforming the way we approach fine dining and why social responsibility is essential. Each chapter starts with a short biography of the creative person being profiled, then segues into Q+A. This collection brings together some of the best-known artists of our time with others who may not be as famed but who have valuable insights about living an artful life. The Creative Spark stands as a testament to human achievement, showing how creativity illuminates our world. And how it resides in each and every one of us, just waiting to break out.




The Girl Who Said No


Book Description

An eighteen-year-old woman named Franca Viola made history in 1966 as one of the first “#metoo” heroines of modern times, when she refused to go along with a centuries-old forcible marriage custom in Sicily. Having endured kidnap and rape, she publicly defied the expectation that she would marry the rapist to “restore her broken honor.” A social uproar occurred throughout the island ― and beyond. In Natalie Galli’s The Girl Who Said No, Viola’s remarkable story unfolds when the author arrives in Palermo to search for this brave heroine, with little more than the memory of a tiny article she had spotted two decades prior. Galli wanted to know: whatever had become of this courageous girl who had overturned an ancient, entrenched tradition? The riveting events after Franca pressed charges with the police form the core of this gripping memoir. Viola was subjected to public taunting whenever she appeared on the streets of her town; Mafia-orchestrated bullying threatened her entire family. Galli traced the dramatic tale to its conclusion, in spite of initial warnings from her own relatives not to break the Sicilian code of silence. Throughout her search for the enigmatic Franca, Galli shares her own poignant and hilarious observations about a vibrant culture steeped in contradictions and paradoxes. Does she succeed in locating the elusive proto-feminist whose case forever changed Italian culture and history? Travel along on Galli’s engaging odyssey to find out.




Strange Tales of World Travel


Book Description

“What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen or experienced?” Gina and Scott Gaille have traveled to more than 100 countries, including many off-the-beaten-path places in Africa, South America, and Asia. Wherever they go, they ask this question. Everyone has a story, and some are truly extraordinary. Strange Tales of World Travel recounts 50 of these Bizarre, Mysterious, Horrible, Hilarious encounters, including: Daring Diplomat, who ate the flesh of the venomous cobra bird in the Sahara Desert Pearl Trader, who survived a fever through a harrowing "human" honey treatment in Oman Agent Ghost, who was shot and left to die in a garbage dump in Africa Death-Defying Instagrammer, who stepped on the tail of the world’s sixth most venomous snake in Australia to take a better photo Human Pet, who became a prince’s prisoner in Qatar Imperial CEO, who made a minion fly twelve hours to Paris from Abu Dhabi to buy clean underwear Gorilla Doll, who broke the rules of visiting Rwandan gorillas and got dragged up the side of a volcano Strange Tales of World Travel presents unforgettable stories that celebrate the unique character of countries around the globe—and the distinctive characters that make travel endlessly intriguing and exhilarating.




Waking in Havana


Book Description

In 1972, when she was a young, divorced, single mother, restless and idealistic, Elena Schwolsky made a decision that changed her life: leaving her eighteen-month-old son with his father, she joined hundreds of other young Americans on a work brigade in Cuba. They spent their days building cinderblock houses for workers and their nights partying and debating politics. The Cuban revolution was young, and so were they. At a moment of transition in Schwolsky’s life, Cuba represented hope and the power to change. Twenty years later, she is drawn back to this forbidden island, yearning to move out of grief following the death of her husband from AIDS and feeling burned out after spending ten years as a nurse on the frontlines of the epidemic. Back in Cuba, she experiences the chaotic bustle of a Havana most Americans never see—a city frozen in time yet constantly changing. She takes readers along with her through her humorous attempts to communicate in a new language and navigate this very different culture—through the leafy tranquility of the controversial AIDS Sanitorium and into the lives of the resilient, opinionated, and passionate Cubans who become her family and help her to heal.




The Best Travel Writing, Volume 11


Book Description

The Best Travel Writing, Volume 11 is the latest in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing — from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure, spiritual growth, romance, hilarity and misadventure, service to humanity, and encounters with exotic cuisines and cultures. Includes winners from the annual Solas Awards for Best Travel Writing. Introduction by Rolf Potts In The Best Travel Writing, Volume 11, readers will: Piece together the puzzle of life in rural Cambodia Reawaken the joy of travel on a bus ride through Mexico Reexamine war memories with former soldiers in Vietnam Learn the ropes and the art of sailing with a "good captain" on the Pacific Find a true soul sister in the highlands of Ecuador Follow Vincent van Gogh's footsteps in France Survive (or not) a home invasion in Brazil...and much more