When Robyn Davidson first set out to make her journey across the deserts of Australia, alone but for her dog and four camels, she was called a lunatic, a would-be suicide, and a shameless publicity seeker. But this high-spirited, engrossing book reveals that she is something more: a genuine traveler driven by a love of Australia's landscape, an empathy for its indigenous people, and a willingness to cast away the trappings of her former identity.

The voyage began in the lunar terrain of the Peruvian Andes, where coca leaf is the only remedy against altitude sickness. It continued down rapids so fierce they could swallow a raft in a split second. It ended six months and 4,200 miles later, where the Amazon runs gently into the Atlantic. The author's personal account of the first expedition to travel the entirety of the world's longest river is filled with death-defying encounters: with narco-traffickers...

The author recounts his ten-year investigation into the life a twelfth-century Indian slave who lived in a remote corner of Egypt

Chronicles the relationship of Italy's high-ranking politicians with the Sicily Mafia from the end of World War II to the present

After the revolutions of 1989, the author lived and traveled with the Gypsies of Bulgaria, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the former Yugoslavia, Romainia, and Albania -- listening to their stories and recording their attempts to become something more than despised outsiders. In this book, alongside unforgettable portraits of individuals -- the poet, the politician, the child prostitute- - are vivid insights into the wit, language, wisdom,...