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In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. His name was Christopher Johnson McCandless. He had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter.??How McCandless came to die is the unforgettable story of Into the Wild.Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir.??In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his??cash.??He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and , unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented.??Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away.??Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild.Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life.??Admitting an interst that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the dries and desires that propelled McCandless.??Digging deeply, he takes an inherently compelling mystery and unravels the larger riddles it holds: the profound pull of the American wilderness on our imagination; the allure of high-risk activities to young men of a certain cast of mind; the complex, charged bond between fathers and sons.When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naivet?, pretensions, and hubris.??He is said??to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity , and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding--and not an ounce of sentimentality. Mesmerizing, heartbreaking, Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page."God, he was a smart kid..." So why did Christopher McCandless trade a bright future--a college education, material comfort, uncommon ability and charm--for death by starvation in an abandoned bus in the woods of Alaska? This is the question that Jon Krakauer's book tries to answer. While it doesn't—cannot—answer the question with certainty, Into the Wild does shed considerable light along the way. Not only about McCandless's "Alaskan odyssey," but also the forces that drive people to drop out of society and test themselves in other ways. Krakauer quotes Wallace Stegner's writing on a young man who similarly disappeared in the Utah desert in the 1930s: "At 18, in a dream, he saw himself ... wandering through the romantic waste places of the world. No man with any of the juices of boyhood in him has forgotten those dreams." Into the Wild shows that McCandless, while extreme, was hardly unique; the author makes the hermit into one of us, something McCandless himself could never pull off. By book's end, McCandless isn't merely a newspaper clipping, but a sympathetic, oddly magnetic personality. Whether he was "a courageous idealist, or a reckless idiot," you won't soon forget Christopher McCandless.

First published in 1982, William Least Heat-Moon's account of his journey along the back roads of the United States (marked with the color blue on old highway maps) has become something of a classic. When he loses his job and his wife on the same cold February day, he is struck by inspiration: "A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity."Driving cross-country in a van named Ghost Dancing, Heat-Moon (the name the Sioux give to the moon of midsummer nights) meets up with all manner of folk, from a man in Grayville, Illinois, "whose cap told me what fertilizer he used" to Scott Chisholm, "a Canadian citizen ... [who] had lived in this country longer than in Canada and liked the United States but wouldn't admit it for fear of having to pay off bets he made years earlier when he first 'came over' that the U.S. is a place no Canadian could ever love." Accompanied by his photographs, Heat-Moon's literary portraits of ordinary Americans should not be merely read, but savored.

What are 1001 things you should treat yourself and your guests to in New York City? Be serenaded by Cole Porter's piano at the Waldorf, or hear Woody Allen play clarinet at the Carlyle. Drink champagne on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum, or discover the abandoned subway station at City Hall. Eat at America's very first pizzeria, or enjoy the most expensive cocktail in the country at the World Bar. Ride the Staten Island Ferry, or ride a bike through Central Park. Go surfing out at Rockaway Beach, or relax in a Russian bath in the East Village . . . . Organized by theme-including Eating and Drinking, 24-hour New York, Shopping and Spending, Arts and Culture, Views and Sites, the Great Outdoors, and Classic New York-and packed with detailed, helpful indexes organized by neighborhood and by category, this is simply the most fun and comprehensive guidebook to New York City ever. The Best Things to Do in New York crosses genres and boroughs to explore every aspect of the most diverse and exciting city in the world. Written from experience by two people who love the city, and featuring priceless tips from expert contributors-from authors on their favorite bookstores to architects on the city's best buildings-The Best Things to do in New York is much more than just a guide.

Join Meriwether Lewis and William Clark's Corps of Discovery as they navigate the muddy Missouri River and begin a great adventure set against the background of the vast North American continent. Lewis and Clark for Kids takes children from President Jefferson's vision of an exploratory mission across a continent full of unique plants and animals through their dangerous and challenging journey into the unknown to the expedition's triumphant return to the frontier town of St. Louis. Twenty-one activities bring to life the Native American tribes they encountered, the plants and animals they discovered, and the camping and navigating techniques they used. A glossary of terms and listings of Lewis and Clark sites, museums, and related Web sites round out this comprehensive activity book.

Pages: 58, Hardcover, Little Bookroom

In Texas "Yankee" is a loose term covering a lot of ground. If you're not a Texan or a southerner, you're a Yankee and therefore, to many Texans, suspect.

There are many rites of passage to being a Yankee in Texas: the first time you spot a pickup with a gun rack; the first time you realize that a week is a long time to go without Mexican food; the first time you recognize a change in seasons; your first thunderstorm; your first honky-tonk.

Culture shock in Texas can be intense and is exacerbated by local rules of propriety that tell us to keep our mouths shut. But here in this book we are going to talk about it all with good old Yankee outspokenness. We'll clear the air, share experiences, orient newcomers, and have some good laughs.

The recent interpretation of Maya hieroglyphs has given us the first written history of the New World as it existed before the European invasion. Now, two central figures in the massive effort to decode the glyphs, Linda Schele and David Freidel, make this history available for the first time in all its detail. A Forest of Kings is the story of Maya kingship, from the beginning of its institution and the first great pyramid builders two thousand years ago to the decline of Maya civilization and its destruction by the Spanish. Here the great historic rulers of Precolumbian civilization come to life again with the decipherment of the writing. At its height, Maya civilization flourished under great kings like Shield-Jaguar, who ruled for over sixty years, expanding his kingdom and building some of the most impressive works of architecture in the ancient world. Long placed on a mist-shrouded pedestal as austere, peaceful stargazers, the Maya elites are now known to have been the rulers or populous, aggressive city-states.

Hailed as "a Rosetta Stone of Maya civilization" (Brian M. Fagan, author of People of the Earth), A Forest of Kings is "a must for interested readers," says Evon Vogt, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

Delightfully witty, this book takes readers through the gamut of facts about Texans, how to understand the conversations, why and how Texans dress the way they do, why pickup trucks are a way of life, and how they, too, can acquire big hair. Illustrated with clever cartoons. November '98 publication date.