Literatureview.com: Travel

Assembling California

Tue, 22 Oct 2007 02:09:00 GMT

by John McPhee
Looking for the geological origins of the great state of California
Assembling California is a journey through the vast expanse of geological time with John McPhee as your tour guide. At the end of the journey the reader arrives in California just as the Loma Prieta Earthquake catapults the Pacific Plate northward relative to the North American Plate.

The Road To Ubar

Tue, 22 Oct 2007 02:09:00 GMT

by Nicholas Clapp
The quest for a mythical city in the sands of the Rub’ al-Khali of Oman
One of my great frustrations is the realization that there are limits on how much we can know about the history of early civilizations. I found a kindred spirit when I opened the wonderful book by Nicholas Clapp entitled The Road to Ubar.

Legacies, A Chinese Mosaic

Tue, 22 Oct 2007 02:09:00 GMT

by Bette Bao Lord
The secret to China, is power not money
In the rush to exploit China's economic opportunity, many foreign investors have been rudely shocked by this enigmatic giant. Past agreements involving large sums of money are being broken for political or economic expediency.

Unearthing Atlantis

Tue, 22 Oct 2007 02:08:00 GMT

by Charles Pellegrino
Looking for the lost city of Atlantis amid the rubble on the island of Santorini
There has been much written about the lost world of Atlantis, a mythical city said to have been populated by an advanced race of people. It had the great misfortune of being swallowed up by an ocean. All of this was chronicled in Plato’s dialogues Timaeus and Critias. Over time the word Atlantis has become associated with writers of the occult.

Toujours Provence

Tue, 22 Oct 2007 02:08:00 GMT

by Peter Mayle
An Englishman shares his love affair with a region in France known for its food, wine, and its joie de vivre
Toujours Provence is the sequel to the author’s first work, A year in Provence. The new work lacks the continuity of the first work and comes off more as a collection of remembrances rather than an odyssey through time with all the freshness of first discovery that characterized the first work.

Shut Up And Deal

Tue, 22 Oct 2007 02:10:00 GMT

by Jesse May
Welcome to the world of "Hold’em Poker and guys with names like Kamikaze Will
Poker was once a game played behind closed doors away from the eye of law enforcement and the uninitiated. In Buloxi, Mississippi, I grew up watching it played in peoples’ houses. The breed of men who played were what my grandma called reprobates, men unwilling to work an honest job. Instead, they spent their time trying to get rich quick. I found them fascinating then and now.