|
|
If You Like Bill Bryson... |
|
Humorous Travel, Science, and Language
|
|
|
|
Stephen Fry in America
by Stephen Fry
A lighthearted assessment of the United States and the American experience by the British humorist traces his interactions with a wide range of colorful locals, from movie moguls in Hollywood and politicians in Washington, D.C., to financial tycoons on Wall Street and leather-clad bikers from the Midwest.
|
|
|
|
Around the World in 50 Years: My Adventure to Every Country on Earth
by Albert Podell
In an extraordinary tale of courage, persistence, determination and the uncanny ability to extricate himself from one dangerous situation after another, the author recounts his adventures as he set two records—one for the longest automobile journey ever made around the world, and one for going to every country on Earth.
|
|
|
|
Driving Home: an American Journey
by Jonathan Raban
A volume of essays by the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Passage to Juneau explores two decades of current events and life on the edge in the Pacific Northwest and beyond, sharing his experiences in such venues as a Tea Party convention hosted by Sarah Palin and a road trip in flooded Mississippi.
|
|
|
|
Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls
by David Sedaris
A new collection of essays by the humorist and best-selling author of Me Talk Pretty One Day 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 Beginner's Guide to Paradise: 9 Steps to Giving Up Everything So You Too Can: Move to a South Pacific Island, Wear a Loincloth, Read a Hundred Books, Build a Bungalow, Diaper a Baby Monkey, and Maybe, Just Maybe, Fall in Love!* : *Individual Results May Vary, Baby Monkey Not Included
by Alex Sheshunoff
In a hilarious true story of a quarter-life crisis that led to love, adventure and a boatload of weirdness, the author shares his experiences living on a remote island in the Pacific, covering such topics as loincloth-tying, monkey-diapering and the effects of global capitalism of the island paradise of Yap.
|
|
|
|
The Kingdom by the Sea: a Journey around the Coast of Great Britain
by Paul Theroux
As he travels around the coast of Great Britain, the author of The Mosquito Coast provides a profile of Britain and her people in a collection of interviews with citizens during the time of the papal visit, the Falklands crisis, a great railway strike, spiraling unemployment, and the birth of Prince William.
|
|
|
|
The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific
by J. Maarten Troost
A perpetual student discusses her trip to the remote South Pacific after an unsuccessful series of temp jobs, a place where she anticipated a romantic island paradise vacation but instead experienced humorous misadventures and a host of environmental challenges.
|
|
|
|
The Disappearing Spoon: and Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements
by Sam Kean
Explores intriguing tales about every element of the periodic table, sharing their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, evil, love, the arts, and the lives of the colorful scientists who discovered them.
|
|
|
|
Human Errors: a Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes
by Nathan H. Lents
A lighthearted, illuminating tour of the physical imperfections that make us human seeks to explain the human body's counter-intuitive tendency to fall ill, break down and generate superfluous parts, exploring human evolutionary history as a virtual litany of errors and compromises that reveal how human intelligence has proven adept at maneuvering around the body's design flaws.
|
|
|
|
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal
by Mary Roach
The humor scientist behind Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers and Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife takes a tour of the human digestive system, explaining why the stomach doesn't digest itself and whether constipation can kill you.
|
|
|
|
Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution
by Neil deGrasse Tyson
An exploration of new theories about the formation and evolution of the universe traces the big bang, through the first three billion years on Earth, to today's search for life on other planets, in a volume that covers such topics as dark energy, life on Mars, and current mysteries about space and time.
|
|
|
|
Dreyer's English: an Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style
by Benjamin Dreyer
A witty, authoritative guide to writing by the leading Twitter language guru and veteran Random House copy chief shares playful lessons on better writing that cover usage questions ranging from the series comma to split infinitives.
|
|
|
|
Inventing English: a Portable History of the Language
by Seth Lerer
Seth Lerer tells a masterful history of the English language from the age of Beowulf to the rap of Eminem. Many have written about the evolution of grammar, pronunciation, and vocabulary, but only Lerer situates these developments within the larger history of English, America, and literature. This edition features a new chapter on the influence of biblical translation and an epilogue on the relationship of English speech to writing. A unique blend of historical and personal narrative, Inventing English is the surprising tale of a language that is as dynamic as the people to whom it belongs.
|
|
|
|
The Story of French
by Jean-Benoît Nadeau
Provides a fascinating history of the origins and evolution of the French language, from the first extant document written in French in the mid-ninth century and the purging of Latin from the French courts to the obsession of French speakers to preserve and protect the purity of the language and its role as the pre-eminent language of literature, science, and diplomacy.
|
|
|
|
Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods
by Michael Wex
A humorous history of the Yiddish language from the middle ages to today traces the origins of numerous everyday terms, citing events throughout the past one thousand years that contributed to Jewish European communication practices while offering insight into Yiddish relationships with nature, sex, food, and more.
|
|
|
|
|
|