Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0358003970
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 1801
Get Book Here
Book Description
The international bestselling author records his many insights and adventures traversing the world by train in these 3 classic travel memoirs. The Great Railway Bazaar In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on his now-legendary journey from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. Asia's fabled trains—the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express—are the stars of a journey that takes Theroux on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. The Old Patagonia Express Starting with a rush-hour subway ride to South Station in Boston to catch the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, Paul Theroux takes a grand railway adventure first across the United States and then south through Mexico, Central America, and across the Andes until he winds up on the meandering Old Patagonian Express steam engine. Ghost Train to the Eastern Star Thirty years after the epic journey chronicled in The Great Railway Bazaar, Paul Theroux retraces his 25,000-mile journey to witness and experience a landscape drastically transformed by the intervening decades. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India booms while Burma smothers under dictatorship; Vietnam flourishes in the aftermath of the havoc America was unleashing on it the last time Theroux passed through.
Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547526997
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 533
Get Book Here
Book Description
The acclaimed travel writer chronicles a year of train travel across China in a revealing travelogue that “gives the reader much to relish and think about” (Publishers Weekly). The author of the train travel classics The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, takes to the rails once again in this account of his epic journey through China. The always irascible, infectiously curious author “is in top form as he describes the barren deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang, the ice forests of Manchuria and the dry hills of Tibet. He captures their otherworldly, haunting appearances perfectly. He is also right on target when he talks about the ugliness of China's poorly planned, hastily built cities” (Mark Salzman, The New York Times). Theroux hops aboard a train as part of a tour group in London and sets out for China's border. He then spends a year traversing the country, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of a unique moment in history. From sweeping and desolate natural landscapes to the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton, Theroux offers an unforgettable portrait of a magnificent land and an extraordinary people.
Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547348584
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 669
Get Book Here
Book Description
The acclaimed author of The Great Railway Bazaar retraces his legendary journey through Europe and Asia in this “funny, informative and lyrical” travelogue (The Guardian, UK). Paul Theroux virtually invented the modern travel narrative by recounting his 25,000-mile journey by train through eastern Europe, central Asia, the Indian subcontinent, China, Japan, and Siberia. Three decades later, the world he recorded in The Great Railway Bazaar has undergone phenomenal change. The Soviet Union has collapsed and China has risen; India booms while Burma smothers under dictatorship; Vietnam flourishes in the aftermath of the havoc America was unleashing on it the last time Theroux passed through. Now Theroux returns to capture the texture, sights, smells, and sounds of this new landscape. Theroux’s odyssey takes him from eastern Europe, still hung-over from communism. He experiences a tense but thriving Turkey, and a Georgia limping back toward feudalism while its neighbor Azerbaijan revels in oil-fueled capitalism. Through it all, Theroux travels as the locals do—by train, bus, taxi, and foot; he encounters fellow writers, including Orhan Pamuk, Haruki Murakami, and Arthur C. Clarke; and, as always, his omnivorous curiosity and unerring eye for detail capture it all.
Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 054752515X
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 406
Get Book Here
Book Description
The acclaimed author recounts his epic journey across Europe and Asia in this international bestselling classic of travel literature: “Compulsive reading” (Graham Greene). In 1973, Paul Theroux embarked on a four-month journey by train from the United Kingdom through Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia. In The Great Railway Bazaar, he records in vivid detail and penetrating insight the many fascinating incidents, adventures, and encounters of his grand, intercontinental tour. Asia's fabled trains—the Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Frontier Mail, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Mandalay Express, the Trans-Siberian Express—are the stars of a journey that takes Theroux on a loop eastbound from London's Victoria Station to Tokyo Central, then back from Japan on the Trans-Siberian. Brimming with Theroux's signature humor and wry observations, this engrossing chronicle is essential reading for both the ardent adventurer and the armchair traveler.
Author: Edward C. Goodman
Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers
ISBN: 9781579122058
Category : Railroad travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Get Book Here
Book Description
Rich and inviting, this collection of 101 train travel stories, both fact and fiction, by renowned writers from around the world and throughout history, is a feast for the armchair vagabond.The stories, essays, historic accounts, poetry, songs and other pieces that comprise this impressive anthology have been carefully selected from the widest range of sources to reflect the glories of travel by rail, from the Orient Express to the New York City subway. So many of the world's great writers have celebrated train travel, and here they are in one collection-Mary McCarthy on the Italian railways; Paul Theroux on the old Patagonia Express; Lewis Carroll from Through the Looking Glass; F. Scott Fitzgerald from Tender Is the Night; Ian Fleming, Walt Whitman, Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes, Rudyard Kipling-by turns funny, exciting and moving, and a joy to read throughout.Whether your true love is travel, great literature or trains, you'll get lost in this eclectic and exotic compilation that extends to all parts of the globe and deep into the imaginations of our finest writers.
Author: Lawrence Osborne
Publisher: North Point Press
ISBN: 1429957328
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 283
Get Book Here
Book Description
A PASSIONATE, AFFECTIONATE RECORD OF ADVENTURES AND MISADVENTURES IN THE WORLD'S HOTTEST METROPOLIS Tourists come to Bangkok for many reasons—a sex change operation, a night with two prostitutes dressed as nuns, a stay in a luxury hotel. Lawrence Osborne comes for the cheap dentistry. Broke (but no longer in pain), he finds that he can live in Bangkok on a few dollars a day. And so the restless exile stays. Osborne's is a visceral experience of Bangkok, whether he's wandering the canals that fill the old city; dining at the No Hands Restaurant, where his waitress feeds him like a baby; or launching his own notably unsuccessful career as a gigolo. A guide without inhibitions, Osborne takes us to a feverish place where a strange blend of ancient Buddhist practice and new sexual mores has created a version of modernity only superficially indebted to the West. Bangkok Days is a love letter to the city that revived Osborne's faith in adventure and the world.
Author: Tom Zoellner
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698151399
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages : 420
Get Book Here
Book Description
An epic and revelatory narrative of the most important transportation technology of the modern world In his wide-ranging and entertaining new book, Tom Zoellner—coauthor of the New York Times–bestselling An Ordinary Man—travels the globe to tell the story of the sociological and economic impact of the railway technology that transformed the world—and could very well change it again. From the frigid trans-Siberian railroad to the antiquated Indian Railways to the Japanese-style bullet trains, Zoellner offers a stirring story of this most indispensable form of travel. A masterful narrative history, Train also explores the sleek elegance of railroads and their hypnotizing rhythms, and explains how locomotives became living symbols of sex, death, power, and romance.
Author: Paul Theroux
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241977517
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 522
Get Book Here
Book Description
The Sunday Times bestseller Paul Theroux collects a rich feast of his writing and essays - from travel to personal memoir - published all together here for the first time Drawing together a fascinating body of writing from over 14 years of work, Figures in a Landscape ranges from profiles of cultural icons (Oliver Sacks, Elizabeth Taylor, Robin Williams) to intimate personal remembrances; from thrilling adventures in Africa to literary writings from Theroux's rich and expansive personal reading. Collectively these pieces offer a fascinating portrait of the author himself, his extraordinary life, restless and ever-curious mind.
Author: Taras Grescoe
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805095586
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
Get Book Here
Book Description
Taras Grescoe rides the rails all over the world and makes an elegant and impassioned case for the imminent end of car culture and the coming transportation revolution "I am proud to call myself a straphanger," writes Taras Grescoe. The perception of public transportation in America is often unflattering—a squalid last resort for those with one too many drunk-driving charges, too poor to afford insurance, or too decrepit to get behind the wheel of a car. Indeed, a century of auto-centric culture and city planning has left most of the country with public transportation that is underfunded, ill maintained, and ill conceived. But as the demand for petroleum is fast outpacing the world's supply, a revolution in transportation is under way. Grescoe explores the ascendance of the straphangers—the growing number of people who rely on public transportation to go about the business of their daily lives. On a journey that takes him around the world—from New York to Moscow, Paris, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Bogotá, Phoenix, Portland, Vancouver, and Philadelphia—Grescoe profiles public transportation here and abroad, highlighting the people and ideas that may help undo the damage that car-centric planning has done to our cities and create convenient, affordable, and sustainable urban transportation—and better city living—for all.
Author: Sharon Hudgins
Publisher: Reaktion Books
ISBN: 1789140072
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 257
Get Book Here
Book Description
All aboard for a delicious ride on nine legendary railway journeys! Meals associated with train travel have been an important ingredient of railway history for more than a century—from dinners in dining cars to lunches at station buffets and foods purchased from platform vendors. For many travelers, the experience of eating on a railway journey is often a highlight of the trip, a major part of the “romance of the rails.” A delight for rail enthusiasts, foodies, and armchair travelers alike, Food on the Move serves up the culinary history of these famous journeys on five continents, from the earliest days of rail travel to the present. Chapters invite us to table for the haute cuisine of the elegant dining carriages on the Orient Express; the classic American feast of steak-and-eggs on the Santa Fe Super Chief; and home-cooked regional foods along the Trans-Siberian tracks. We eat our way across Canada’s vast interior and Australia’s spectacular and colorful Outback; grab an infamous “British railway sandwich” to munch on the Flying Scotsman; snack on spicy samosas on the Darjeeling Himalayan Toy Train; dine at high speed on Japan’s bullet train, the Shinkansen; and sip South African wines in a Blue Train—a luxury lounge-car featuring windows of glass fused with gold dust. Written by eight authors who have traveled on those legendary lines, these chapters include recipes from the dining cars and station eateries, taken from historical menus and contributed by contemporary chefs, as well as a bounty of illustrations. A toothsome commingling of dinner triangles and train whistles, this collection is a veritable feast of meals on the move.
