China: A Quick Guide to Customs & Etiquette (Culture Smart!)
by Kathy Flowers
Bad etiquette and a misunderstanding about customs can put an otherwise very exciting trip on hold faster than a bad case of food poisoning. Culture Smart! is a quick, accurate guide to customs and etiquette. Essential cultural and etiquette points are covered, making you confident in a variety of situations. -You will know what to expect in each particular culture -You will learn how to behave in specific social and business situations - Essential attitudes and values are clearly explained -You will find each topic a quick, easy read due to the concise writing style -Small and light, it tucks into your pocket or purse.

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
by Jung Chang
The forces of history and the exceptional talents of Jung Chang combine to produce a work of nonfiction with the breadth and drama of the richest, most memorable fiction classics. Wild Swans is a landmark book, with the intimacy of memoir and the panoramic vision of a monumental human saga, which tells of the lives of Jung Chang, her mother, her grandmother, and of 20th-century China. 16-page photo insert.

Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
by Jon Krakauer
Jon Krakauer’s literary reputation rests on insightful chronicles of lives conducted at the outer limits. He now shifts his focus from extremes of physical adventure to extremes of religious belief within our own borders, taking readers inside isolated American communities where some 40,000 Mormon Fundamentalists still practice polygamy. Defying both civil authorities and the Mormon establishment in Salt Lake City, the renegade leaders of these Taliban-like theocracies are zealots who answer only to God.
At the core of Krakauer’s book are brothers Ron and Dan Lafferty, who insist they received a commandment from God to kill a blameless woman and her baby girl. Beginning with a meticulously researched account of this appalling double murder, Krakauer constructs a multi-layered, chilling narrative of messianic delusion, polygamy, savage violence, and unyielding faith. Along the way he uncovers a shadowy offshoot of America’s fastest growing religion, and raises provocative questions about the nature of religious belief.

The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--And How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World
by Steven Johnson
The Ghost Map takes place in the summer of 1854. A devastating cholera outbreak seizes London just as it is emerging as a modern city: more than 2 million people packed into a ten-mile circumference, a hub of travel and commerce, teeming with people from all over the world, continually pushing the limits of infrastructure that's outdated as soon as it's updated. Dr. John Snow — whose ideas about contagion had been dismissed by the scientific community — is spurred to intense action when the people in his neighborhood begin dying. With enthralling suspense, Johnson chronicles Snow's day-by-day efforts, as he risks his own life to prove how the epidemic is being spread.
When he creates the map that traces the pattern of outbreak back to its source, Dr. Snow didn't just solve the most pressing medical riddle of his time. He ultimately established a precedent for the way modern city-dwellers, city planners, physicians, and public officials think about the spread of disease and the development of the modern urban environment.

The Silver Spoon was originally published in Italy in 1950, and became an instant classic. Considered to be essential in every household, it is still one of the most popular wedding presents today. A group of cooking experts was commissioned to collect hundreds of traditional recipes from the different Italian regions and make them available for the first time to a wider audience. In the process, they updated ingredients, quantities and methods to suit contemporary tastes and customs, at the same time preserving the memory of ancient recipes for future generations. They also included modern recipes from some of the most famous Italian chefs, resulting in a style of cooking that appeals to the gourmet as well as the occasional cook Every recipe has been checked for suitability, measurements converted and methods rewritten to accommodate cultural differences, yet maintaining the authenticity of real Italian cooking. The color coding of each section simplifies the process of cross-referencing ingredients and methods. A section with original menus from the 15 most famous Italian chefs of the last 50 years has been expanded to include original menus from Italian celebrity chefs working outside Italy. This cookbook will share the bookshelves with other titles such as The Joy of Cooking and Larousse Gastronomique.

A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons
by Robert M Sapolsky.
"I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla," writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist's coming-of-age in remote Africa.
A fascinating account of Sapolsky's twenty-one-year study of a troop of baboons in Kenya, A Primate's Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with sardonic commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti. Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on unspoiled Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore enamored of his subjects — unique and compelling characters in their own right —he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him.

Rats: Observations on the History and Habitat of the City's Most Unwanted Inhabitants
Robert Sullivan
Thoreau went to Walden Pond to live simply in the wild and contemplate his own place in the world by observing nature. Robert Sullivan went to a disused, garbage-filled little alley in lower Manhattan to contemplate the city and its lesser-known inhabitants — by observing the rat.
While dispensing gruesomely fascinating rat facts and strangely entertaining rat-stories Sullivan gets to know not just the beast but its friends and foes: the exterminators, the sanitation workers, the agitators and activists who have played their part in the centuries-old war between human city dweller and wild city rat. With a notebook and night-vision gear, he sits nightly in the stream-like flow of garbage and searches for fabled rat-kings, and eventually travels to the Midwest to learn about rats in Chicago, Milwaukee, and other cities of America. With tales of rat fights in the Gangs of New York era and stories of Harlem rent strike leaders who used rats to win tenants basic rights, Sullivan looks deeper into the largely unrecorded history of the city and its masses. Funny, wise, sometimes disgusting but always compulsively readable, Rats is a classic of nature writing.
Did you know?
26% of all electric cable breaks and 18% of all phone cable disruptions are caused by rats, 25% of all fires of unknown origin are rat-caused, and rats destroy an estimated 1/3 of the world's food supply each year. The rat has been called the world's most destructive mammal-other than man.
A female rat can produce up to twelve litters of twenty rats a year: one pair of rats has the potential for 15,000 descendants in a year.

Ordinary Wolves
Seth Kantner
In the tradition of Jack London, Seth Kantner lets readers experience life on the modern Alaskan tundra. Jeered and bullied by native children because he is white, the main character is caught between cultures. After an accident for which he is responsible, he faces a decision that could radically change his life. Like his young protagonist, Seth Kantner grew up in a sod igloo in Alaska, and his experiences of wearing mukluks before they were fashionable, eating boiled caribou and communing with the native tribes add depth and power to this vivid story.

Bold Spirit: Helga Estby's Forgotten Walk Across Victorian America
Linda Lawrence Hunt
In 1896, a Norwegian immigrant and mother of eight children named Helga Estby was behind on taxes and the mortgage when she learned that a mysterious sponsor would pay $10,000 to a woman who walked across America.
Hoping to win the wager and save her family’s farm, Helga and her teenaged daughter Clara, armed with little more than a compass, red-pepper spray, a revolver, and Clara’s curling iron, set out on foot from Eastern Washington. Their route would pass through 14 states, but they were not allowed to carry more than five dollars each. As they visited Indian reservations, Western boomtowns, remote ranches and local civic leaders, they confronted snowstorms, hunger, thieves and mountain lions with equal aplomb.
Their treacherous and inspirational journey to New York challenged contemporary notions of femininity and captured the public imagination. But their trip had such devastating consequences that the Estby women's achievement was blanketed in silence until, nearly a century later, Linda Lawrence Hunt encountered their extraordinary story.

Drop City
T.C. Boyle
It is 1970, and a down-at-the-heels California commune has decided to relocate to the last frontier …the unforgiving landscape of interior Alaska …the ultimate expression of going back to the land. The novel opposes two groups of characters: Sess Harder, his wife Pamela, and other young Alaskans who are already homesteading in the wilderness and the brothers and sisters of Drop City, who, despite their devotion to peace, free love, and the simple life, find their commune filled with tension. As these two communities collide, their alliances shift and unexpected friendships and dangerous alliances are born as everyone struggles with the bare essentials of life.

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