Pines and Plains Libraries

A new collection of essays by the humorist author traces his offbeat world travel experiences, which involved surreal encounters with everything from French dentistry and Australian kookaburra eating habits to Beijing squat toilets and a wilderness Costco in North Carolina.

A satisfying quest fantasy to another time and another place. William is off on another fantastic quest to another land and another time.

Sand and stone are Earth's fragmented memory. Each of us, too, is a landscape inscribed by memory and loss. One life-defining lesson Lauret Savoy learned as a young girl was this: the American land did not hate. As an educator and Earth historian, she has tracked the continent's past from the relics of deep time; but the paths of ancestors toward her-paths of free and enslaved Africans, colonists from Europe, and peoples indigenous to this land-lie...

"We turn to philosophy for the same reasons we travel: to see the world from a different perspective, to unearth hidden beauty, and to find new ways of being. We want to learn how to embrace wonder. Face regrets. Sustain hope. Eric Weiner combines his twin passions for philosophy and global travel in a pilgrimage that uncovers surprising life lessons from great thinkers around the world, from Rousseau to Nietzsche, Confucius to Simone Weil. Traveling...

"Award-winning author Mark Kurlansky presents an insider's view of Havana: the elegant, tattered city he has come to know over more than thirty years. Part cultural history, part travelogue, with recipes, historic engravings, photographs, and Kurlansky's own pen-and-ink drawings throughout, Havana celebrates the city's singular music, literature, baseball, and food; its five centuries of outstanding, neglected architecture; and its extraordinary blend...

Reporting for the Los Angeles Times  Armed with a State of California Medical Marijuana recommendation, he begins a journey into the international underground where super-high-grade marijuana is developed and tracks down the rag-tag community of underground botanists, outlaw farmers, and renegade strain hunters who pursue excellence and diversity in marijuana, defying the law to find new flavors, tastes, and effects.  This unrelenting pursuit of...

The man-eating proclivities of Komodo dragons.  The complicated art of being a cowgirl. A picaresque ramble with a merry band of tree-cleaners.  The big-wave crusaders of the world's best surfers.  For the past twenty years, Outside magazine has set the standard for original and engaging reports on travel, adventure, sports, and the environment. Along the way, many of America's  best journalists and storytellers--including such writers as...

-- The Wet and the Dry Now with an excerpt from Lawrence Osborne's latest novel, The Ballad of a Small Player.

"When Andrew McCarthy's eldest son began to take his first steps into adulthood, McCarthy found himself wishing time would slow down. Looking to create a more meaningful connection with Sam before he fled the nest, as well as recreate his own life-altering journey decades before, McCarthy decided the two of them should set out on a trek like few others: 500 miles across Spain's Camino de Santiago. Over the course of the journey, the pair traversed...

"Colin Thubron is the intrepid, resourceful and immensely talented writer who has made a career out of going to out of the way places and then writing brilliantly about them. "-Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "Thanks to Thubron, we encounter a world which, in its beauty and awe, exceeds our imagination." -Ryszard Kapuscinski, author of Shah of Shahs and Imperium New York Times bestselling author Colin Thubron returns with a moving, intimate,...