|
|
|
 |
Helen Thayer: Walking the Gobi
Helen Thayer read from "Walking the Gobi A 1600-Mile Trek Across a Desert of Hope and Despair". She'll talk about her and her husband
Bill's adventures as the first man and woman to walk the entire
length of almost 1,500 miles, east to west, of the Mongolian Gobi
Desert. They persevered as they faced Siberian winds, accompanying
sand storms, heat reaching 126 degrees, scarcity of water and plenty
of scorpions. The Thayers' time spent with the Gobi Desert's nomads
is one of many remarkable experiences described in her book.
Named "One of the Great Explorers of the 20th Century" by National
Geographic, Thayer noted that she "first heard of the Gobi as a 13
year old growing up in New Zealand. Then the Gobi was as far away
as the moon; now at 63 the dream has come full circle."
Her previous feats are impressive. In 1988, she became the first
woman to walk and ski to either pole when she trekked solo to the
Magnetic North Pole without dogsled or snowmobile. She was the
first woman and first American to circumnavigate the Magnetic North
Pole. Her amazing adventure with her beloved companion Charlie
(her Canadian Eskimo Husky) was the basis for her first book,
"Polar Dreams." |
 |
Ferenc Mate: A Vineyard in Tuscany
Writer, photographer and vintner Ferenc Mate spoke about "A Vineyard in Tuscany: A Wine Lover's Dream", his captivating story
about his and his wife's pursuing their dream of living in Tuscany.
They restored a thirteenth-century friary (Il Colombaio) and
converted (with the advice of famed vintner neighbors in Montalcino)
a 60-acre abandoned farm into a world-renowned winery. Mate describes
the patience, determination and great humor essential to planting 15
acres of vines and building a winery.
Ference Mate's previous books include the recently published "A New England Autumn A Sentimental Journey" as well as "Autumn: A New England Journey"", "The Finely Fitted Yacht: The Boat Improvement Manual", "The World's Best Sailboats" and "The Hills of Tuscany."
|
|
Peter Thomson: The Sacred Sea
Peter Thomson, author of "The Sacred Sea: A Journey to Lake Baikal" spoke about his and his brother's extraordinary travels
to Siberia and Lake Baikal. Thomson described Lake Baikal as
"the deepest and oldest lake on earth", holding an incomparable
amount of clear and pure water and hosting a range of "unique and
sometimes bizarre animals and plants." In the book, Thomson provides fascinating
details about the creatures who inhabit Lake Baikal and its shores.
His account of travels around the lake and its remote communities
provides a context for the impact of increasing regional development.
Thomson presents the political issues and environmental threats
which are concerns for both local residents and a range of advocates
for preservation of the lake's ecosystem. He discusses the ways
in which both scientists and others are now divided about the
long-held belief that the lake is and will be capable of
self-purification.
The recipient of numerous broadcast journalism awards, Thomson was
the founding producer and editor of NPR's "Living on Earth." He
serves on the Executive Committee of Society of Environmental
Journalists. Currently a freelance environmental journalist, he
lives in Boston.
Peter and James Thomson's guide, Andrei Suknev, is the founder of
Great Baikal Trail, an international organization for promotion of
local sustainable development of Lake Baikal and surrounding areas.
For more info. about this non-profit and its volunteers' efforts,
go to: http://www.greatbaikaltrail.org/index.html |
|
 |
Robert Finch
Wednesday, Oct. 3, 6 pm
First Parish Church, 3 Church Street
Reservations Recommended
Robert Finch will speak about his new book, The Iambics of Newfoundland: Notes from an Unknown Shore.
Robert Finch spent the greater part of a decade traveling around the island of Newfoundland, at "the edge of North America." In these evocative sketches, stories, and essays, he explores the people, geography, and wildlife of a remote and lovely, but often dangerously inhospitable place. Between the icy cliffs and the Atlantic Ocean, the lush valleys and barren drifts, he collects intimate stories of birds and moose and foxes--and of the people who share their space. He evokes a landscape of raw beauty in detailed essays that ebb and flow as we make the journey with him, straining to hear the waves. But while Newfoundland may be a place of unparalleled beauty, its citizens face serious economic hardships, with the fishing industry withered and very little industry to replace it. Finch often steps aside, allowing the Newfoundlanders' to tell their stories in their own voices, and allows us to her the cadence and movement of individuals and their tales. A wide array of characters--fishermen, hunters, and hitchhikers, newcomers and oldtimers--bring to life an island tucked between provinces, languages, and cultures, a land of ancient hardship and stirring beauty. |
|
|
Marq de Villiers & Sheila Hirtle
Thursday, Sept. 20th, 2007
De Villers and Hirtle spoke about their new book, Timbuktu: The Sahara's Fabled City of Gold.
Book description:
Timbuktu-- the name still evokes an exotic, faraway place even though its glory days are long gone. Unspooling its history and legends, resolving myth with reality, Marq de Villiers and Sheila Hirtle have captured the splendor and decay of one of mankind' s treasures.
Founded in the early 1100s by Tuareg nomads who called their camp "Tin Buktu," it became, within two centuries, a wealthy metropolis and a nexus of the trans-Saharan trade. Salt from the deep Sahara, gold from Ghana, and money from slave markets made it rich. In part because of its wealth, Timbuktu also became a center of Islamic learning and religion, boasting impressive schools and libraries that attracted scholars from Alexandria, Baghdad, Mecca, and Marrakech. The arts flourished, and Timbuktu gained near-mythic stature around the world, capturing the imagination of outsiders and ultimately attracting the attention of hostile sovereigns who sacked the city three times and plundered it half a dozen more. The ancient city was invaded by a Moroccan army in 1600, which began its long decline; since then it has been seized by Tuareg nomads and a variety of jihadists, in addition to enduring a terrible earthquake, several epidemics, and numerous famines. Perhaps no other city in the world has been as golden-- and as deeply tarnished-- as Timbuktu.
Using sources dating deep into Timbuktu's fabled past, alongside interviews with Tuareg nomads and city residents and officials today, de Villiers and Hirtle have produced a spectacular portrait that brings the city back to life.
|
|
| |
|
|
|
Andro Linklater
Monday, June 25th, 2007
Andro Linklater spoke about The Fabric of America: How Our Borders and Boundaries Shaped The Country and Forged Our National Identity. With the same mix of compelling narrative history and captivating historical argument found in his previous book, Measuring America, Linklater related in fascinating detail how the borders and boundaries that formed states and a nation inspired the sense of identity that has ever since been central to the American experiment.
Linklater opens with America's greatest surveyor, Andrew Ellicott, measuring the contentious boundary between Pennsylvania and Virginia in the summer of 1784, and he ends standing at the yellow line dividing the United States and Mexico at Tijuana. In between, he chronicles the evolving shape of the nation, physically and psychologically.
|
|
|
Maureen and Tony Wheeler
Wednesday, June 6th, 2007
Maureen and Tony Wheeler, founders of Lonely Planet, spoke about their upcoming book, Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story. A unique mix of autobiography, business history, and travel book, this memoir traces the Wheelers' personal story and the evolution of their travel guide series that would become the world's largest independent guidebook publisher. Unlikely Destinations discusses the Wheelers views on the history and current state of the travel-guidebook market, how the series got its start, and insights into the unusual and wonderful places they have visited.
Tony Wheeler also spoke about his new book, Bad Lands: A Tourist On the Axis of Evil. Bad Lands is an amusing and insightful account of Tony's personal experiences in nine countries that meet his definition of 'evil.' The selection criteria are simple enough: how does a country treat its own citizens? Is it involved in terrorism? Is it a threat to other countries? And the winners are...Afghanistan, Albania, Burma, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Saudi Arabia.
|
|
|
Rory Stewart at Eliot House
Wednesday, April 11th, 2007
Rory Stewart, author of The Prince of the Marshes and The Places in Between spoke at Eliot House about his recent travels in the Middle East.
Stewart's eleven month stay in Iraq was the basis for his memoir The Prince of the Marshes. As deputy governor of Amarah and then Nasiriyah, provinces in the remote, impoverished marsh regions of southern Iraq, Stewart negotiated hostage releases, held elections, and spliced together an infrastructure for a population of millions teetering on the brink of civil war.
In January of 2002, Stewart walked across Afghanistan--surviving by his wits, his knowledge of Persian dialects and Muslim customs, and the kindness of strangers. The Places in Between makes tangible the forces of tradition, ideology, and allegiance that shape life in the map's countless places in between.
Stewart now lives in Kabul, where he is the Chief Executive of the Turquoise Mountain Foundation.
|
|
 |
Let's Go France 2007
Tuesday, April 10th, 2007
Let's Go France 2007
Four "Let's Go France" researchers/writers (Vinnie, Sara, Sam, and Kate) spoke about their travels last summer to contribute to the current "Let's Go France." With regional itineraries, each of them faced challenges for new discoveries in economical travel in France.
Let's Go staff members' predictable assignments re. touring, accommodations, and local restaurants are always personalized by individual interests (cycling, hiking, historical sites, museums, wine festivals, and night life). The group discussed favorite and unexpected travel experiences.
Who went where...
Vinnie Chiappini--Rhone-Alps, Massif Central, Dordogne and Limousin
Sara O'Rourke--Brittany, Normandy
Samantha Papadakis--Poitou Charentes, Aquitaine and Pays Basque
Kate Wang--Paris
|
|
|
William Dalrymple
Monday, April 2nd, 2007
The Last Mughal: The Fall of a Dynasty: Delhi, 1857
On a hazy November afternoon in Rangoon, 1862, a shrouded corpse was escorted by a small group of British soldiers to an anonymous grave in a prison enclosure. As the British Commissioner in charge insisted, "No vestige will remain to distinguish where the last of the Great Moghuls rests."
Bahadur Shah Zafar II, the last Mughal Emperor, was a mystic, an accomplished poet and a skilled calligrapher. But while his Mughal ancestors had controlled most of India, the aged Zafar was king in name only. Deprived of real political power by the East India Company, he nevertheless succeeded in creating a court of great brilliance, and presided over one of the great cultural renaissances of Indian history.
Then, in 1857, Zafar gave his blessing to a rebellion among the Company's own Indian troops, thereby transforming an army mutiny into the largest uprising any empire had to face in the entire course of the nineteenth century. The Siege of Delhi was the Raj's Stalingrad: one of the most horrific events in the history of Empire, in which thousands on both sides died. And when the British took the city--securing their hold on the subcontinent for the next ninety years--tens of thousands more Indians were executed, including all but two of Zafar's sixteen sons. By the end of the four-month siege, Delhi was reduced to a battered, empty ruin, and Zafar was sentenced to exile in Burma. There he died, the last Mughal ruler in a line that stretched back to the sixteenth century.
Award-winning historian and travel writer William Dalrymple shapes his powerful retelling of this fateful course of events from groundbreaking material: previously unexamined Urdu and Persian manuscripts that include Indian eyewitness accounts and records of the Delhi courts, police and administration during the siege. The Last Mughal is a revelatory work--the first to present the Indian perspective on the fall of Delhi--and has as its heart both the dazzling capital personified by Zafar and the stories of the individuals tragically caught up in one of the bloodiest upheavals in history.
Also by William Dalrymple:
The Age of Kali: Indian Travels & Encounters
City of Djinns: A Year in Delhi
From the Holy Mountain: A Journey Among the Christians of the Middle East
In Xanadu: A Quest
White Mughals: Love and Betrayal in Eighteenth-Century India
|
|
|
Mara Vorhees
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
Lonely Planet Costa Rica
Mara Vorhees, author of "Lonely Planet Costa Rica" gave an illustrated talk about travel in Costa Rica. She has travelled extensively in Costa Rica, exploring its jungles, rain forests, and other natural areas. Advice about the best places and times to view animals, birds, and turtles will accompany recommendations about outdoor recreation and overall trip planning.
Mara Vorhees' studies on sustainable development have included four years working on a research program at Harvard University as well as first-hand exposure to projects in Latin America. She has also written Lonely Planet city guides for Moscow, Washington, and Boston. |
|
|
|
