National Network for Equitable Library Service

For more than fifteen years, bestselling author and historian Hampton Sides has traveled widely across the continent exploring the America that lurks just behind the scrim of our mainstream culture. In these two dozen pieces, collected here for the first time, Sides gives us a fresh, alluring, and at times startling America brimming with fascinating subcultures and bizarre characters who could live nowhere else.

This is the inspiring story of an ordinary guy who achieved two great goals that others had told him were impossible. First, he set a record for the longest automobile journey ever made around the world, during the course of which he blasted his way out of minefields, survived a breakdown atop the Peak of Death, came within seconds of being lynched in Pakistan, and lost three of the five men who started with him, two to disease, one to the Vietcong. After that-although it took him forty-seven more years-Albert Podell set another record by going to every country on Earth.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run is a hilarious collection of true tales from top -safari guide Peter Allison.

Raised in a strict Chinese-American household, Val Wang dutifully got good grades, took piano lessons, and performed in a Chinese dance troupe-until she shaved her head and became a leftist. But Val's true mutiny was when she moved to China, the land her parents had fled. In 1998, Val arrives in Beijing expecting to find freedom... but she finds her traditional relatives instead. She discovers a city rebelling against its roots, struggling to find a new, modern identity like her. A thriving avant-garde subculture makes art out of the chaos in Beijing's gritty outskirts.

Ramita Navai gives voice to ordinary Iranians forced to live extraordinary lives: the porn star, the aging socialite, the assassin and enemy of the state who ends up working for the Republic, the dutiful housewife who files for divorce, and the old-time thug running a gambling den. In today's Tehran, intrigues abound and survival depends on an intricate network of falsehoods: mullahs visit prostitutes, local mosques train barely pubescent boys in crowd-control tactics, and cosmetic surgeons promise to restore girls' virginity.

How much money does it take to quit your job? Exhausted and on the verge of burnout, Janice poses this question to herself as she doodles on a notepad at her desk. Surprisingly, the answer isn't as daunting as she expected. With a little math and a lot of determination, Janice cuts back, saves up, and buys herself two years of freedom in Europe.A few days into her stop in Paris, Janice meets Christophe, the cute butcher down the street-who doesn't speak English. Through a combination of sign language and franglais, they embark on a whirlwind Paris romance.

An American pastry chef living in Paris shares his deliciously funny, offbeat, and irreverent look at the city of lights.

To live in a pristine land unchanged by man; to roam the wilderness through which few other humans have passed; to choose an idyllic site, cut trees, and build a log cabin; to be a self-sufficient craftsman, making what is needed from materials available; to be not at odds with the world, but content with one's own thoughts and company: thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. This book is a simple account of the day-by-day explorations and activities he carried out alone, and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company.

The author recounts his more than 6,500-mile journey across America, during which he visited the sites of famous rock star deaths and experienced philosophical changes of perspective.

Outfitted with a pair of ratty sand shoes and a knapsack full of trade goods, Eric Hansen set off to cross the rainforest of Borneo, one of the last places on earth largely untouched by Western civilization. For seven months Hansen hunted wild pig, gathered roots, and lived among tribes whose longhouses were still decorated with the headhunting swords of their ancestors, completing one of the great adventures of our time.