Tourism History

John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle, two leading experts on the nation’s roadside landscape, examine the crucial role that small- to mid-sized city hotels played in American life during the early decades of the 20th century, a time when the automobile was fast becoming the primary mode of transportation. Before the advent of the interstate system, such hotels served as commercial and social anchors of developing towns across the country. America’s Main Street Hotels provides a thorough survey of the impact these hotels had on their communities and cultures.

In thinking about her native land, Julia Reed quotes another Southern writer, Willie Morris, who said, “It’s the juxtapositions that get you down here.” These juxtapositions are, for Julia Reed, the soul of the South and in her warmhearted and funny new audiobook, South Toward Home, she chronicles her adventures through the highs and the lows of Southern life - the Delta hot tamale festival, a masked ball, a rollicking party in a boat on a sand bar, scary Christian billboards, and the southern affection for the lowly possum.

Bob Cornuke is a real-life Indiana Jones, searching for evidence of biblical events and artifacts. In this book, he tells the story of his search for the remains of Noah's ark. Using investigative skills learned during his years as a police officer, Bob investigates all the clues, from ancient Scriptures to modern day eyewitness accounts. His quest to learn the truth about Noah's ark leads him from his safe home in the foothills of Colorado to the dangerous mountain ranges in Turkey and Iran.

Charles Swett (1828-1910) was a prosperous Vicksburg merchant and small plantation owner who was reluctantly drawn into secession but then rallied behind the Confederate cause, serving with distinction in the Confederate Army. After the war some of Swett's peers from Mississippi and other southern states invited him to explore the possibility of settling in British Honduras or the Republic of Honduras. Confederates in the Tropics uses Swett's 1868 travelogue to explore the motives of would-be Confederate migrants' fleeing defeat and Reconstruction in the United States South.

Five generations of Marnie O. Mamminga's family have been rejuvenated by times together in Wisconsin's Northwoods. In a series of evocative remembrances, Mamminga takes us to Wake Robin, the cabin her grandparents built in 1929 on Big Spider Lake near Hayward, on land adjacent to Moody's Camp. Along the way, she preserves the spirit and cultural heritage of a vanishing era, conveying the heart of a place and the community that once gathered there.

This is Michael Krupa’s story of how in 1939 he escaped the German invasion of Poland only to be captured by the Red Army, accused of espionage and interrogated in the notorious Lubianka prison. He was then sent to the infamous Pechora Gulag, where most inmates died of overwork and starvation within a year. Amazingly, Kupra then escaped and made the gruelling journey from Siberia to Afghanistan. This is a remarkable true story of survival and also gives a chilling insight into the brutality of Stalinist Russia.

When prize-winning war correspondent Tony Horwitz leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again - this time from a war close to home, and to his own heart.

Es sind unerhörte Episoden, die Ulrich Wickert aus Frankreichs Geschichte und Gegenwart zu erzählen weiß. Er spannt einen weiten historischen Bogen und lässt es sich nicht nehmen, eine Fülle von komischen wie nachdenklich stimmenden Erfahrungen auszubreiten. Mit dem ihm eigenen Witz und mit pointierter Ironie wägt Wickert ab, was die Franzosen so liebenswert macht und weswegen man ihrer bisweilen überdrüssig ist. "Vom Glück, Franzose zu sein" - lauter wahre Begebenheiten, die so unglaublich klingen, als handelten sie von einem unbekannten Land: von Frankreich.

Since Fidel Castro staged a coup and assumed power of Cuba in 1959, the United States has been obsessed with this small island nation, only 90 miles south of the Florida Keys. But because of the country's isolation, the island and its people have remained a mystery. This revised edition of Cuba takes listeners through the country's storied history, its people, and what the future holds for this island nation.

There's an old clip of Bugs Bunny sawing the entire state of Florida off the continent - and every single time a news story springs up about some shenanigans in Florida, someone on the internet posts it in response. Why are we so ready to wave goodbye to the Sunshine State? In A Florida State of Mind: An Unnatural History of Our Weirdest State, James D. Wright makes the case that there are plenty of reasons to be scandalized by the land and its sometimes-kooky, sometimes-terrifying denizens, but there's also plenty of room for hilarity.

Take four friends, put them on two Ural motorcycles (complete with sidecars), send them off on a 2,500-mile odyssey retracing history’s most famous retreat, add what some might consider an excessive amount of Vodka, and you’ve got Sylvain Tesson’s Berezina, a riotous and erudite book that combines travel, history, comradery, and adventure.

Indian cuisine has a rich legacy of myriad faiths, history, food invasions, cultural landscapes and rituals. This book is richly spiced with the author's memories and personal stories bringing the flavors of India alive. The narrative is peppered with food stories of India, the place of food in sacred worship, food etiquette, and taste memory. When the author travels through diverse regions, she explores food rituals, myths and traditions.

The Birdsville Track runs through three deserts, from Marree in Northern South Australia, to Birdsville in outback Queensland. This legendary, dirt road has a rich folk history, intriguing culture and unique ecosystems. But it doesn’t give up its secrets easily - unless you have the Birdsville Track Audio Tour of course! The Birdsville Track Audio Tour has 45 tracks and 138 minutes of professional-quality audio. The tracks are designed to be played at set points along the Birdsville Track, as shown on the map.

Ken Ilgunas, lifelong traveler, hitchhiker, and roamer, takes listeners back to the 19th century, when Americans were allowed to journey undisturbed across the country. Inspired by the United States' history of roaming, and taking guidance from present-day Europe, Ilgunas calls into question our entrenched understanding of private property and provocatively proposes something unheard of: opening up American private property for public recreation. He imagines a future in which folks everywhere will have the right to walk safely, explore freely, and roam boldly.

Alaska, is an American frontier that makes the United States an Arctic nation. No other state makes the United States a nation of Inuit peoples. No other state places American citizens in the backyard of its historic rival Russia. It could even be argued no other state has contributed more raw materials, from timber and furs to black gold. Because of how special this state is, the rhetoric employed by U.S. Presidents as Commanders in Chief is consequential and insightful. This publication is a compilation of their speeches while visiting Alaska throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

The Bears Ears National Monument in southeastern Utah, created by President Obama in 2016 and eviscerated by the Trump administration in 2017, contains more archaeological sites than any other region in the United States. In The Bears Ears, acclaimed adventure writer David Roberts takes listeners on a tour of his favorite place on Earth, as he unfolds the rich and contradictory human history of the 1.35 million acres of the Bears Ears domain. Weaving personal memoir with archival research, Roberts sings the praises of the outback he's explored for the last 25 years.

À la fin du XVIIIe siècle ils étaient trois à rêver, avec leur œuvre, d’atteindre les sommets, d'atteindre le firmament : Mozart et sa « Petite musique de nuit », les frères Montgolfier et leur ballon. Hélas la petite sonate ne fut jouée qu’après la mort de l’auteur, et c’est Pilâtre de Rozier qui s’envola à la place des deux frères!

It's exhausting being Irish. The constant self-flagellation is enough to put anybody off their breakfast. Why are we so hard on ourselves? Is it the postcolonial overhang following centuries of oppression at the hands of a litany of foreign invaders? Or is it collective guilt for sending Westlife out into the wider world? In Surviving Ireland, acclaimed comedy writer Colm Tobin takes the listener by the hand for a satirical romp through modern Irish life.

Il Messico è il paese dei contrasti estremi. E all'estremo di tutto, c'è Mahahual: dove finisce la penisola dello Yucatán, sorge questo paesino di mille abitanti, a pochi chilometri dalla frontiera con il Belize. Angolo di paradiso tra palme e mangrovie, di fronte ha la barriera corallina seconda al mondo per estensione, il Mar dei Caraibi e lo scorrere lento del tempo: siamo nello stato del Quintana Roo, che a nord vanta la celebre Cancún, mentre qui c'è l'opposto assoluto, non solo geografico, perché a Mahahual il cemento non ha ancora invaso la vista.

The Birdsville Track runs through three deserts, from Marree in northern South Australia, to Birdsville in outback Queensland. This legendary, dirt road has a rich folk history, intriguing culture, and unique ecosystems. But it doesn't give up its secrets easily, unless you have the Birdsville Track Audio Tour of course!