"An engaging, layered look into a culture complex enough both to produce stylish rain gear and to embrace the foul weather that necessitates it." —The New York Times Book Review
We fill our homes with Nordic furniture; we envy their humane social welfare system and healthy outdoor lifestyle; we devour their crime fiction. Even their strangely attractive melancholia seems to express a stoic, commonsensical acceptance of life's vicissitudes....

The Land of Little Rain (1903) is a collection of essays and short stories by Mary Hunter Austin. Originally published with photographs taken by acclaimed American photographer Ansel Adams, The Land of Little Rain is a classic work of nature writing. Austin is now recognized as an early feminist and conservationist who understood the intricacy and fragility of ecosystems as well as the extent to which human civilization threatens their continued existence. In...

"The former New York Times Pakistan bureau chief paints an arresting up-close portrait of a fractured country. Declan Walsh's electrifying portrait of Pakistan after 9/11 captures the sweep of this "strange, wondrous and benighted country" through the dramatic lives of nine fascinating individuals. On assignment for the New York Times and other outlets, Walsh traveled from the raucous port of Karachi to the salons of Lahore, and from Baluchistan to...