San Antonio College Library

Ever since Roman tourists scratched graffiti on the pyramids and temples of Egypt over two thousand years ago, people have traveled far and wide seeking the great wonders of antiquity. In From Stonehenge to Samarkand, noted archaeologist and popular writer Brian Fagan offers an engaging historical account of our enduring love of ancient architecture--the irresistible impulse to visit strange lands in search of lost cities and forgotten monuments....

This is our annual collection of the best travel writing of the year, much of it never published before, from big names in travel literature and emerging new writers. The Best Travel Writing Volume 9 is the latest in the annual Travelers' Tales series launched in 2004 to celebrate the world's best travel writing - from Nobel Prize winners to emerging new writers. The points of view and perspectives are global, and themes encompass high adventure,...

"Travel writing is a genre monopolized by Westerners. For centuries the preserve of Europeans who reported on the "exotic," it sought to make sense of other landscapes and cultures, but almost exclusively through a European prism of references." "This anthology, stretching from the fifth to the nineteenth centuries, introduces an entirely different tradition of travel writing-the work of travelers from the world beyond Europe. Other Routes collects...

Ludwig Leichhardt was an important scientific explorer of Australia. His letters narrate his life from his student years in the mid-1830s until 1848 when he disappeared in the Australian interior. His main interest was natural philosophy, particularly biology, geology and geography, but he also recorded many aspects of the surrounding world, describing social life in early Victorian England and commenting on some of the leading teachers and philosophers...

In Footsteps in the Jungle, Jonathan Maslow recounts the exploits of thirteen of these scientists whom he calls "the luckiest men and women of all time"--The explorers who first mapped the tropical regions of the Americas and discovered the biological orgy that is nature in the tropics. They were the first to color the chorus of tropical birds; the first to know the swiftness of the jaguar; the first to learn the loves of the orchid family and to...