In brilliant, brand-new, never-before-published pieces, Dave passes on home truths to his new grandson and to his daughter Sophie, who will be getting her learner's permit in 2015 ("So you're about to start driving! How exciting! I'm going to kill myself"). He explores the hometown of his youth, where the grown-ups were supposed to be uptight fifties conformists, but seemed to have a lot of un-Mad Men-like fun, unlike Dave's own Baby Boomer generation,...

Go up-river and deep into the jungle, far from Brazil's cities and stadiums, where families of giant otters, tufted capuchin monkeys and mischievous coati (South American raccoon cousins) rally their wits to survive in a breathtakingly beautiful yet dangerous land. Follow their lives through an exciting year, from first steps in a brave new world, to ingenious resilience during drought and monsoon.

Whether you want to explore the streets of Rio de Janeiro or lounge on its beaches, celebrate the culture of Carnaval and discover the best places to hear the sounds of bossa nova and samba, or explore the vast Amazon rain forest in the north, Brazil proves to be an extraordinarily diverse country of modern cities, verdant landscapes, and rich heritage.

Rio de Janeiro is a city of extremes: from Carnaval's hedonistic delights, to the poverty of the favelas, to the softly seductive samba beat. But there's a dark side to this beautiful city: for years, Rio was ravaged by inflation, drug wars, and crooked leaders, and the legacy of decades of corruption can be seen in the very real struggles the city faces today. Now, Rio is ready to remake itself, this time into a global, modern capital ready for its...

"The true story of the British explorer Percy Fawcett, who set out on a doomed expedition to find a lost city in the Amazon jungle"--

"C�andido Rondon is by any measure the greatest tropical explorer in history. Between 1890 and 1930, he navigated scores of previously unmapped rivers, traversed untrodden mountain ranges, and hacked his way through jungles so inhospitable that even native peoples had avoided them--and led Theodore Roosevelt and his son, Kermit, on their celebrated "River of Doubt" journey in 1913-14. Upon leaving the Brazilian Army in 1930 with the rank of a two-star...