Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman


Book Description

Polly Evans had a mission: to learn everything possible about the howling, tail-wagging world of sled dogs. Fool’s errand? Or the adventure of a lifetime? The intrepid world traveler was about to find out. In the dead of winter, Polly Evans ventured to Canada’s far northwest, where temperatures plunge to minus forty and the sun rises for just a few hours each day. But though she was prepared for the cold, she never anticipated how profoundly she’d be affected by that blissful and austere place. In a pristine landscape patrolled by wolves and caribou, the wannabe musher was soon learning the ropes of arctic dogsledding, careening across the silent tundra with her own team of yapping, leaping canines. Shivering but undaunted, Polly follows the tracks of the legendary Yukon Quest, a dogsledding race more arduous than the Iditarod, witnessing a life-and-death spectacle she’ll never forget. Along the way she makes a stop at the Santa Clause house in North Pole, Alaska (where the post office delivers unstamped mail), and witnesses the astonishing northern lights weaving green and red across the sky. And before the snows melt in spring, Polly will have discovered a deep affection for the loving, mischievous huskies whose courage and enthusiasm escort her through the delights and dangers of living life at the extreme—in one of the most forbidding places on earth.




Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman


Book Description

ýI shut my eyes and see the little girl I knew myself to be, eighty years ago, racing barefoot down a slope after a bunch of colourful, fluttering butterflies. Not to catch them. Not to break their wings. Not to preserve them in a jar to show off to friends. I know now that the girl was chasing after them to share their freedom.ý Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman is the remarkable autobiography of Crystal Rogers, who dedicated her life to the welfare of stray, uncared-for animals in India, and founded CUPA (Compassion Unlimited Plus Action) in Bangalore. It tells how Rogers, who was born in India, returned to Delhi from England in 1958 and was horrified by the barbarous methods by which animals are slaughtered for consumption, the cruelty involved in the transport of domestic animals, the distress and terror of animals kept in captivity for medical research and the agony of sick and crippled animals who are prodded on to work or abandoned because they no longer serve any useful purpose. Her deep sympathy for their plight resulted in her opening an animal shelter called The Animalsý Friend in Mehrauli. Soon, she also started taking care of the homeless, diseased and dying people she found on Delhiýs streets. The book is full of memorable anecdotes, some touching, some hilarious, about the animals and people Rogers encountered over the next twenty years. Written in the best traditions of James Herriot and Gerald Durrell, this is at once a delightful account of quirky human and animal behaviour, and a powerful argument for animal activism in India.




Mad Dogs and an English Girl


Book Description

This is a story of Spanish life at the time of Franco as seen through the eyes of a naïve young girl. Based on the author's personal experience, it is often amusing, sometimes tragic but always surprising, painting a picture of a way of life that has now gone for ever.




Life Stories


Book Description

Memoirs, autobiographies, and diaries represent the most personal and most intimate of genres, as well as one of the most abundant and popular. Gain new understanding and better serve your readers with this detailed genre guide to nearly 700 titles that also includes notes on more than 2,800 read-alike and other related titles. The popularity of this body of literature has grown in recent years, and it has also diversified in terms of the types of stories being told—and persons telling them. In the past, readers' advisors have depended on access by names or Dewey classifications and subjects to help readers find autobiographies they will enjoy. This guide offers an alternative, organizing the literature according to popular genres, subgenres, and themes that reflect common reading interests. Describing titles that range from travel and adventure classics and celebrity autobiographies to foodie memoirs and environmental reads, Life Stories: A Guide to Reading Interests in Memoirs, Autobiographies, and Diaries presents a unique overview of the genre that specifically addresses the needs of readers' advisors and others who work with readers in finding books.




Dogs in the Leisure Experience


Book Description

This book explores the social and cultural constructions and debates of what are dogs and what is leisure. It looks at how working dogs play a significant role in leisure experiences such as ensuring the safety of air transport, and considers the differing roles and changing acceptance of dogs’ involvement in sport. Within the setting of the animal welfare and sentience debates, it examines the leisure needs of dogs and their owners. Providing an original contribution to our understanding of dogs as both participants and objects in the leisure experience, this book is a useful resource for researchers in leisure, hospitality and tourism.




Indifference


Book Description

In Indifference, Naisargi N. Davé examines the complex worlds of animalists and animalism in India. Through ethnographic fieldwork with animal healers, animal activists, farmers, laborers, transporters, and animals themselves, and moving across animal shelters and dairy farms to city streets and abattoirs, Davé shows how human-animal relations often manifest through care and violence. More surprisingly, what Davé also finds animating interspecies relationality in India is an ethic of indifference---that is, an orientation of mutual regard rather than curiosity, love, desire, or animus. For Davé, indifference is a respect for others in their otherness that allows human and nonhuman animals to flourish in immanent encounters. Indifference, then, becomes the basis for an interspecies ethics and a method of care and practice in everyday life. With indifference, Davé describes both a mode of relationality in the world and a scholarly approach: seeking what is possible when we approach ethico-political concepts with indifference rather than commitment or antagonism. Moments of indifference, Davé contends, offer the promise of otherwise worlds.




Going Places


Book Description

Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.




Northern Lights


Book Description

An updated third edition of Bradt's practical guide to the best places to view the Northern Lights, the only guidebook that caters to the large number of people whose dream is to see the aurora borealis. Included is information on everything from how to photograph the aurora to what to wear, and how to understand northern lights forecasting, as well as the science behind the aurora and the auroral oval. Also detailed are the best locations from which the aurora can be viewed, covering, in Europe, Scandinavia, Lapland, Iceland and Greenland, and in North America, Canada and Alaska. In addition, the guide provides information on tour operators offering northern lights packages. New for this third edition is coverage of Ivalo / Inari (Nellim & Muotka) and Iso Syöte in Finland; in Sweden both the permanent and seasonal ice hotels, as well as Kiruna Town Hall; in Canada Blachford Lake; and in Iceland new accommodation options. The Northern Lights are one of the major tourist draws of the Arctic and sub-Arctic winter and the world's most spectacular natural phenomena, arguably the greatest light show you'll ever see. olly Evans is an award-winning journalist and writer. She is the author of Bradt's Yukon, as well as five narrative travel books, including Mad Dogs and an Englishwoman, in which she tells of learning to drive sled dogs in northern Canada. When not on the road, Polly works as a teacher at Wellington College in England.




Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations


Book Description

Containing more than 5,000 quotations from authors as diverse as Bertolt Brecht, George W. Bush, Homer Simpson, Carl Sagan, William Shatner, and Desmond Tutu, the dictionary is organized alphabetically by author, with generous cross-referencing and keyword and thematic indexes. This new edition features more than 500 new quotations and 187 new authors. The book includes special sections featuring quotations from cartoons, films, political slogans, famous last words, misquotations, official advice, newspaper headlines and more.




The Irresponsible Traveller


Book Description

Publishing to coincide with Bradt's 40th anniversary, The Irresponsible Traveller is a light but edgy collection of travellers' tales. Travel writers and celebrities alike recount their exciting, and often dangerous, adventures which include being chased by a sea lion, accosted by Brazilian kidnappers and a midnight raid to free turtles on the Amazon. Over 40 years Bradt has built a reputation for publishing books covering the road less travelled, and this collection celebrates exactly the sort of writing and storytelling about 'unusual' travel experiences that has helped to establish the company as a firm favourite amongst adventurous travellers. Featuring contributions from Hilary Bradt, Michael Palin, Ben Fogle and Jonathan Scott, the title is a perfect tome to dip in and out of.