December 6, 2002
Sahara
A Natural History

The majesty and mystery of the world’s largest desert.

Marq de Villiers with Sheila Hirtle

In the parched and seemingly lifeless heart of the Sahara desert, earthworms find enough moisture to survive. Four major mountain ranges interrupt the flow of dunes and gravel plains, and at certain times waterfalls cascade from their peaks. Even the sand amazes: massive dunes can appear almost overnight, and be gone just as quickly. We think we know the Sahara, the largest and most austere desert on Earth—yet it is full of surprises, as Marq de Villiers reveals in his brilliant and evocative biography of the land and its people.

Woven through de Villiers’s story is a chronicle of the desert’s nations and people: the Berbers and Arabs of the north; its black African south, whose ancestors peopled the greatest empires of Old Africa; and the extraordinary nomads—the Moors, the Tuareg (the famous “blue men”), and the Tubu—who call the desert home today. Illuminated by the eloquent written testimonies of past travelers, Sahara is a glittering geographic tour conveying the majesty, mystery, and abundance of life in what the outside world thinks of as the Great Emptiness.

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Tuesday, November 19th, 2002
Birds

Celebrated painter Robert Bateman will speak about his new book, "Birds", and his journeys to distant destinations to create his compositions. He will also be showing slides of his paintings.

Bateman's travels for this book included Canada, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, the Galapagos Islands, the Caribbean, Alaska, South Asia, Europe, Africa, and Antarctica. The landscapes of these areas are included in the paintings to show the bird's natural habitat.

Bateman is the author of "Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes"; his illustrations appear in numerous books about birds.

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Tuesday, November 12th, 2002
Adventures in Chile

Wayne Bernhardson, author of Lonely Planet's Chile & Easter Island and the forthcoming Moon Handbooks: Chile, will show slides and answer questions about travel in Chile on Tuesday, November 12. While covering the entire country, he will focus on Chilean Patagonia, including the Carretera Austral (Southern Highway) and the region of Magallanes, particularly Torres del Paine national park and other wild areas. He will also stress activities like hiking, whitewater rafting and kayaking, and fishing in the mountains, rivers and lakes of an area that resembles the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia.

Chile's El Mercurio, the country's largest circulation newspaper, has called him "the gringo who knows Chile best." Currently residing in Oakland, he was born in North Dakota, grew up in Washington state (and is a UW graduate), and also lives part-time in Buenos Aires. He has also done research in Peru, Chile, Argentina and the Falkland Islands, where he spent a year as a Fulbright scholar.

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Thursday, November 7th, 2002
Bicycling Cuba

Wally and Barbara Smith

The introduction to Bicycling Cuba contains practical information for biking in Cuba, and observations on Cuban life as Wally and Barbara Smith experienced it through six months of cycling.

The routes are organized into four major sections. One contains detailed directions for leaving Havana by bike, either west to Pinar del Rio Province or east to the Playas del Este and Playa Jibacoa. Subsequent sections cover routes in Pinar del Rio, Central Cuba, and the Oriente provinces of Holguin, Granma, Santiago de Cuba, and Guantanamo.

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Lawrence Millman

Lawrence Millman writes stylish, often wildly amusing tales of remote places and offbeat characters, specializing in unsolved mysteries and odd myths. He is not immune to misadventures of his own, often landing in extremely uncomfortable or dangerous situations in his pursuit of new—and sometimes very, very old—places, cultures, and experiences. From the experience of being marooned on an uncharted island in the Arctic to an encounter with Kodiak bears in Alaska, this collection features 17 new pieces—punctuated by a scattering of Millman’s best work from more than two decades.
Visit Lawrence Millman's Reading List for the Far North

"Millman’s a genius."—Annie Dillard

"He is that rare traveler—a person with guts and a sense of humor. He is also a wonderful writer."—Paul Theroux

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Robert Kahn

Architect Robert Kahn, editor of the "City Secrets" series, will give a slide lecture about extraordinary places in his home town, New York City. Just released, "City Secrets New York City" includes entries by artists, writers, architects, curators, designers, and historians.

Robert Kahn heads his own architectural firm, teaches design (most recently at Yale University), and travels extensively to European cities for work and pleasure. He was a recipient of the American Academy in Rome’s Rome Prize.

Other series titles include "City Secrets Rome", "City Secrets Florence, Venice and the Towns of Italy", and "City Secrets London".

Thursday, October 17, 2002
Escape from Lucania

David Roberts and Bradford Washburn

David Roberts, author of "Escape From Lucania", and Bradford Washburn will speak about Washburn's 1937 ascent of Mount Lucania.

In 1937, 17,150-ft Mt. Lucania was the highest unclimbed peak in North America. Nearly inaccessible, deep within the Wrangell-St. Elias range, it had been pronounced "impregnable" by the leader of an unsuccessful 1935 expedition.

Bradford Washburn and Bob Bates - Harvard classmates and talented, innovative mountaineers - set out to climb Lucania by flying to the base of the mountain. Their pilot was barely able to take off, alone, from the unexpectedly slushy Walsh Glacier. Conditions made it impossible for him to return. Bates and Washburn were left stranded in the midst of the Yukon's most rugged wilderness, with only half their team and part of their supplies. Their determination to climb Lucania and head for Kluane Lake, more than 100 miles to the east across virtually unknown territory, nearly cost them their lives.

David Roberts is a contributing editor to Outside magazine and is the author of several books, including "Points Unknown", "True Summit: Ascent of Annapurna", "Once They Moved Like the Wind" and "In Search of the Old Ones".

Traveling the world for eight decades, mountaineer, explorer, cartographer, and aerial photographer Bradford Washburn has documented the landscape from the Grand Canyon to the Alps, from Mount McKinley to Mount Everest. His many accomplishments include his directorship of Boston's Museum of Science.

At this event we will also celebrate the release of Bardford Washburn's new book, "On High." Filled with exciting and entertaining anecdotes and Washburn’s breathtaking photography and maps, "On High" is the first book to reveal, in his own words, the extraordinary life and work of Brad Washburn.

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Stephen Gorman

Stephen Gorman, photographer and author of "Northeastern Wilds: Journeys of Discovery in the Northern Forest" will give a slide lecture about the treasured wild forests, mountain peaks, and rivers of Northern New England. Gorman's awe-inspiring photographs accompany descriptions of the region's history, geography, and challenged environment.

Gorman is the author of "American Wilderness" and a frequent contributor to National Geographic Publications, Outside Magazine, and Backpacker magazine.

Tuesday, September 24, 2002
The Practical Nomad

Edward Hasbrouck

Edward Hasbrouck, author of "The Practical Nomad: How to Travel Around the World", will talk about planning and extended international trips. Hasbrouck will offer tips on selecting your route and companion, on air and ground travel strategies, and ways to improve your chances of spending time with people living in a country.

Hasbrouck is also the author of "The Practical Nomad Guide to the Online Marketplace". His advocacy of world travel and global awareness has marked his work as a travel agent, travel writer, seminar leader, and internet source for affordable travel.

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Jochen Hemmleb, co-author of "Detectives on Everest: The 2001 Mallory and Irvine Research Expedition" will give a slide presentation on the expedition, and its findings on the fate of Andrew Irvine. Hemmleb served as historian on the 1999 Irvine Expedition, which discovered George Mallory's body.

A mountaineer for twenty years, Hemmleb has climbed many of the classic peaks in the European Alps, and has also climbed and trekked in East Africa, New Zealand, South America, and the Himalaya. On the 1999 Mallory & Irvine Research Expedition, he reached Mount Everest’s North Col at 23,230 feet. Hemmleb’s archives on the mountaineering history of the Tibetan side of Mount Everest and the mystery of Mallory and Irvine is one of the most comprehensive private collections. He lives in southwest Germany.

Few people have ever considered the eastern United States to be an island, but when Nat Stone began tracing waterways in his new atlas at the age of ten he discovered that if one had a boat it was possible to use a combination of waterways to travel up the Hudson River, west across the barge canals and the Great Lakes, down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico, and back up the eastern seaboard. Years later, still fascinated by the idea of the island, Stone read a biography of Howard Blackburn, a nineteenth-century Gloucester fisherman who had attempted to sail the same route a century before. Stone decided he would row rather than sail, and in April 1999 he launched a scull beneath the Brooklyn Bridge to see how far he could get. After ten months and some six thousand miles he arrived back at the Brooklyn Bridge, and continued rowing on to Eastport, Maine.

Nathaniel Stone grew up in Marblehead, Massachusetts. He taught tenth grade history in Pasadena, California, and Zuni, New Mexico, where he founded the local newspaper and currently resides.

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John Hanson Mitchell

John Hanson Mitchell tells of his 1500-mile ride on a trusty old Peugeot bicycle in the early 1970's from the port of Cadiz to just below the Arctic Circle. He follows the European spring up through southern Spain, the wine and oyster country near Bordeaux, to Versailles, Wordsworth's Lake District, precipitous Scottish highlands, and finally to a Druid temple on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides. In true John Mitchell fashion this journey is interspersed with myth, natural history, and ritual, all revolving around the lure and lore of the sun, culturally and historically.

John Hanson Mitchell is the author of The Wildest Place on Earth, Ceremonial Time, and Tresspassing, and the editor of Sanctuary, the journal of the Massachusetts Audubon Society. Winner of the 1994 John Burroughs Essay Award, he received the 2000 New England Booksellers' Award for his body of work. He lives in Littleton, Massachusetts.

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Diana Preston

On May 7, 1915, a routine passage across the Atlantic from New York to Liverpool turned tragic when a German torpedo hit the British luxury liner, RMS Lusitania. The ship sank just eleven miles off the Irish coast, killing more than 1,200 people-mostly civilians and more than 100 Americans. Weaving the stories of those who were on the liner and the submarine that fired the torpedo into her own narrative, Preston brings to life the consequences of the sinking.

Describing how the drama played out against the background of the First World War, Preston's new book, Lusitania,gives pocket histories of the first days of the modern submarine and the rise of the luxury liner. Taking readers on a tour of the Lusitania, she recreates life on board of the fabulous liner and introduces the celebrities-including American millionaire Alfred Vanderbilt, theater producer Charles Frohman, and Boston bookseller Charles Lauriat-and other passengers who were there when the ship went down, juxtaposing their stories with those of the captain and crew of the U-20 that sunk the Lusitania.

Diana Preston is an Oxford-educated historian and author of The Boxer Rebellion, and A First Rate Tragedy: Captian Scott and the Race for the South Pole. Diana and her husband Michael Preston are currently working on a biography of the 17th-century British explorer, naturalist, scientist, pirate and bucaneer William Dampier. When not writing, Preston is an avid traveler with her husband. Together, they have traveled throughout India, Asia, Africa, and Antarctica, and have climber Mount Kinabalu, Mount Kilimanjaro, and Mont Roraima. Their adventures have also included gorilla-tracking in Zaire and camping their way across the Namibian desert.

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David Allen Sibley
Birding with Sibley

David Allen Sibley, author and illustrator of last fall's extraordinary new nature guide, The Sibley Guide to Birds, presents a slide lecture on bird watching and indentification.

"Once in a great while, a natural history book changes the people look at the world...in 1838, John James Audubon's Birds of America was one...in 1934, Roger Tory Peterson produced Field Guide to the Birds...Now comes ."

-- The New York Times

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Peter Mayle

Presented by Globe Corner Bookstore & The FrenchLibrary and Cultural Center -- Back Bay

Peter Mayle discusses and reads from his new book, French Lessons, a gastronomic journey celebrating France's restaurants, markets, festivals, and vineyards. Venturing from his adopted Provence to the far corners of the French countryside, the author invites readers to join him in experiencing well-established and out-of-the-way culinary delights.

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Jonathan Waterman

Kayaker/photographer Jonathan Waterman's new book, Arctic Crossing, chronicles his 2,200-mile journey across the Arctic. He will read from his book, talk about his voyage, and a show a video.
Waterman is the author of In the Shadow of Denali, Kayaking the Vermillion Sea, A Most Hostile Mountain, and other works. His documentary, Surviving Denali, won an Emmy in 1994 for Best Cinematography in a Series and won the award for Best Mountaineering Film at the International Film Festival. He lives on a thrity-foot sailboat moored in various Pacific ports.

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A French Library and Cultural Center Lecture
The New Yorker writer and author of last fall's bestseller, Paris to the Moon, will speak about the adventures of an American family living in Paris.
Please note that this lecture occurs in Back Bay. There is an admission fee of $20.00 for members, $30.00 for non-members (benefits the French Library) for this lecture. Call the French Library at (617) 912-0400 to make reservations. Also please note that Mr. Gopnik may deliver his presentation in French.

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Mark Schafer
GCB Art Exhibit

The opening reception for an exhibit of artist Mark Shafer's map collages, on view through April 8th, 2001. The reception is from 5 to 7 pm at the Harvard Square store.

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