Vintage books Green River Rising Willocks Tim

A compulsively readable account of an African country now virtually inaccessible to the outside world and one journalist's daring and adventurous journey • When war correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H.M. Stanley's famous nineteenth century trans-Africa expedition - but travelling alone • Despite warnings that his plan was 'suicidal', Butcher set out for the Congo's eastern border with just a rucksack and a few thousand dollars hidden in his boots. Making his way in an assortment of vessels including a motorbike and a dugout canoe, helped along by a cast of unlikely characters, he followed in the footsteps of the great Victorian adventurers • Butcher's journey was a remarkable feat, but the story of the Congo, told expertly and vividly in this book, is more remarkable still

A captivating new book from Wade Davis - winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Into the Silence - that brings vividly to life the story of the great Rio Magdalena, illuminating Colombia's complex past, present, and future • For Wade Davis, Colombia was the first country that captured his heart and gave him license to be free. Here, he tells of his travels on the mighty Magdalena, the river that made possible the nation. Along the way, he finds a people who have overcome years of conflict precisely because of their character, informed by an enduring spirit of place, and a deep love of their remarkable land • Braiding together memoir, history and journalism, Magdalena is at once an absorbing adventure through a spectacular landscape and a kaleidoscopic picture of Colombia as it stands on the verge of a new period of peace

"Зелёные холмы Африки" - лиричная хроника продлившегося месяц сафари в Восточной Африке, куда Эрнест Хемингуэй и его жена Полин отправились в декабре 1933 года. Эта выразительная повесть отлично передаёт знаменитый интерес писателя к охоте на крупную дичь и любовь к этому времяпровождению. В ней он рассказывает нам, чем притягивает охота и делится поражающими воображениями пейзажами Африки и красотой дикой природы, которой уже тогда угрожало беспардонное вмешательство со стороны человека • Книга на английском языке • Green Hills of Africa is Ernest Hemingway's lyrical journal of a month on safari in the great game country of East Africa, where he and his wife Pauline journeyed in December 1933. Hemingway's well-known interest in - and fascination with - big-game hunting is magnificently captured in this evocative account of his trip

От автора книги «В тишине», лауреата премии Сэмюэля Джонсона в области научной литературы • В 1941 году Ричард Эванс Шультес взял отпуск в Гарвардском университете и исчез в Северной Амазонии Колумбии • Ведущий мировой специалист по галлюциногенам и лекарственным растениям этого региона, он вернулся после двенадцати лет путешествия по Южной Америке на каноэ, картографируя неизведанные реки, живя среди местных племен и документируя знания шаманов • Тридцать лет спустя его ученик Уэйд Дэвис приземлился в Боготе, чтобы пойти по стопам своего наставника, создав таким образом эпический рассказ о бесстрашных приключениях, захватывающий труд по естествознанию и свидетельство духа научных исследований • язык издания: Английский • From the author of Into The Silence, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction • In 1941, Richard Evans Schultes took a leave of absence from Harvard University and disappeared into the Northern Amazon of Colombia

Tim Moore completes his epic (and ill-advised) trilogy of cycling's Grand Tours • Julian Berrendero's victory in the 1941 Vuelta a Espana was an extraordinary exercise in sporting redemption: the Spanish cyclist had just spent 18 months in Franco's concentration camps, punishment for expressing Republican sympathies during the civil war. Seventy nine years later, perennially over-ambitious cyclo-adventurer Tim Moore developed a fascination with Berrendero's story, and having borrowed an old road bike with the great man's name plastered all over it, set off to retrace the 4,409km route of his 1941 triumph - in the midst of a global pandemic • What follows is a tale of brutal heat and lonely roads, of glory, humiliation, and then a bit more humiliation

In his eightieth year, Colin Thubron takes a dramatic and often treacherous journey from the Amur's secret source to its giant mouth, covering almost 3,000 miles • Rising in the Mongolian mountains and flowing through Siberia to the Pacific, the Amur River forms the tense border between Russia and China. This is the most densely fortified frontier on Earth • Harassed by injury and by arrest from the local police, Thubron makes his way along both the Russian and Chinese shores. By the time he reaches the river's desolate end, a whole, pivotal world has come alive

In his first book since the acclaimed The Running Sky Tim Dee tells the story of four green fields. Four fields spread around the world: their grasses, their hedges, their birds, their skies, and their natural and human histories. Four real fields – walkable, mappable, man-made, mowable and knowable, but also secretive, mysterious, wild, contested and changing. Four fields – the oldest and simplest and truest measure of what a man needs in life – looked at, thought about, worked in, lived with, written • Dee’s four fields, which he has known for more than twenty years, are the fen field at the bottom of his Cambridgeshire garden, a field in southern Zambia, a prairie field in Little Bighorn, Montana, USA, and a grass meadow in the exclusion zone at Chernobyl, Ukraine

How does Italy really work? • When Valeria travels from hot, dusty Basilicata to begin her studies in a northern university town, she has little idea of the kind of education she will find there. Italian Life is her story, and that of the students and professors around her: a story of power and corruption, influence and exclusion, and the workings of a society where your connections are everything • Written with flair and insight, Italian Life joins Tim Parks' bestselling books about his beloved and paradoxical adopted country. It is a gripping, entertaining, behind-the-scenes account of how Italy actually happens, and the ways it can surprise those who know it inside out

How have the modern world, technology and our addiction to information changed who we are? What effect does it have on our relationships, minds and bodies? What can the simple act of sitting still teach us about ourselves? • When Tim Parks fails to find a cause for his crippling chronic pain, he turns to meditation. This is, however, not your average self-help book or conversion story; instead, it is a refreshingly honest and profoundly moving introspection of one writer and his quest to overcome the inner battle between mind and body. A revelatory read with delightful cultural and literary references, Teach us to Sit Still by Booker-shortlisted author Tim Parks examines how the philosophy of 'sit still, relax and stop worrying' can be profoundly life-altering

In 1981 Tim Parks moved from England to Italy and spent the next thirty years alongside hundreds of thousands of Italians on his adopted country’s vast, various and ever-changing networks of trains • Through memorable encounters with ordinary Italians – conductors and ticket collectors, priests and prostitutes, scholars and lovers, gypsies and immigrants – Tim Parks captures what makes Italian life distinctive. He explores how trains helped build Italy and how the railways reflect Italians’ sense of themselves from Garibaldi to Mussolini to Berlusconi and beyond

Travels around Italy in search of illusion, national character and goals • 'Delves into the very essence of being a fan, while seamlessly exploring Italian history, politics, culture and society,' Guardian • Is Italy a united country, or a loose affiliation of warring states? Is Italian football a sport, or an ill-disguised protraction of ancient enmities? • Tim Parks goes on the road to follow the fortunes of Hellas Verona football club, to pay a different kind of visit to some of the world's most beautiful cities. This is a highly personal account of one man's relationship with a country, its people and its national sport. A book that combines the pleasures of travel writing with a profound analysis of one country's mad, mad way of keeping itself entertained

Ludicrous, heart-warming and improbably inspirational, Spanish Steps is the story of what happens when a rather silly man tries to walk all the way across a very large country, with a very large animal who doesn't really want to • Being larger than a cat, the donkey is the kind of animal Tim Moore is slightly scared of. Yet intrigued by epic accounts of a pilgrimage undertaken by one in three medieval Europeans, and committed to historical authenticity, he finds himself leading a Pyrenean ass named Shinto into Spain, headed for Santiago de Compostela • Over 500 miles of extreme weather and agonising bestial sloth, it becomes memorably apparent that for the multinational band of eccentrics who keep the Santiagan flame alive, the pilgrimage has evolved from a purely devotional undertaking into a mobile therapist's couch