National Network for Equitable Library Service

Neil Peart is an internationally critically acclaimed, bestselling, and award-nominated author, and for more than thirty years has been the legendary drummer and lyricist for Rush, the most successful band in the history of Canadian rock music. Defying categorization, his books have earned a devoted readership by combining elements of memoir, travel writing, and social commentary with a thoughtful, musical sense of self-discovery.

In November of 2001, Glen Heggstad decided to ride his motorcycle to the tip of South America. His journey was interrupted when he was kidnapped at gunpoint by Colombian rebels and held captive for five weeks. Yet even after his traumatic incarceration, Glen did what few others would--finished his trip. Three years later, frustrated by the climate of fear in a media-saturated world and the resulting stranglehold of self-imposed security in the U.S., Glen decided to look for truth on his own terms--on the back of his motorcycle.

"Ice Diaries is stunningly written and should be on the shelf of anyone fascinated by the globe’s final geographic and psychic frontier.” — The New York Times

“It’s a discussion of the Antarctic as a physical landscape—its impact on the imagination—and an exploration of one person’s inner world.” — The Chicago Tribune

Winner of the Banff Mountain Book Festival Grand Prize and one of the Guardian’s Best Books of 2016.

A bold narrative written by a man trying to stay alive by staying on the move. Within a ten-month period, Neil Peart suffered family losses so devastating that they left him a ghost — physically a man but with nothing inside: no hope, meaning, faith, or desire to keep living. One year after the first tragedy, Neil was choosing between life and his own death. Finally, all he could decide was motion. He got on his BMW R1100GS motorcycle, and over the next 14 months, rode 55,000 miles, in search of a reason to live.

35 concerts. 17,000 motorcycle miles. Three months. One lifetime. Now in paperback

In May 2015, the veteran Canadian rock trio Rush embarked on their 40th anniversary tour, R40. For the band and their fans, R40 was a celebration and, perhaps, a farewell. But for Neil Peart, each tour is more than just a string of concerts, it’s an opportunity to explore backroads near and far on his BMW motorcycle. So if this was to be the last tour and the last great adventure, he decided it would have to be the best one, onstage and off.

Whether navigating the backroads of Louisiana or Thuringia, exploring the snowy Quebec woods, or performing onstage at Rush concerts, Neil Peart has stories to tell. His first volume in this series, Far and Away, combined words and images to form an intimate, insightful narrative that won many readers.

Following in the tradition of Ghost Rider and Traveling Music, Rush drummer Neil Peart lets us ride with him along the backroads of North America, Europe, and South America, sharing his experiences in personal reflections and full-color photos. Spanning almost four years, these twenty-two stories are open letters that recount adventures both personal and universal — ; from the challenges and accomplishments in the professional life of an artist to the birth of a child.

Havana is Cuba's soul: a mix of Third World, First World, and Other World. After over a decade of visits as a teacher, researcher, and friend, Karen Dubinsky looks past political slogans and tourist postcards to the streets, neighbourhoods, and personalities of a complicated and contradictory city. Her affectionate, humorous vignettes illustrate how Havana's residents--old Communist ladies, their sceptical offspring, musicians, underground vendors, entrepreneurial landlords, and poverty-stricken professors--go about their daily lives.

Serala drank frat boys under the table. She wore saris and ate delicately from plates of curry at family events; elsewhere she wore a lip ring, designer shades, and a cowboy hat and ordered bloody steaks. She wrote volumes of poetry, made amateur films, singlehandedly ran a chapter of Food Not Bombs, and ended up as a fierce advertising agency executive. She often slept less than five hours per week and would, at the slightest excuse, drive from L.A. to New York in a cool 50 hours. In some moments of danger, she split the lips of menacing strangers.