The lines between what constitutes migration and what constitutes human trafficking are messy at best. State policies rarely acknowledge the lived experiences of migrants, and too often the laws and policies meant to protect individuals ultimately increase the challenges faced by migrants and their kin. In some cases, the laws themselves lead to illegality or statelessness, particularly for migrant mothers and their children. Crossing the Gulf tells the stories of the intimate lives of migrants in the Gulf cities of Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Kuwait City. Pardis Mahdavi reveals the interconnections between migration and emotion, between family and state policy, and shows how migrants can be both mobilized and immobilized by their family relationships and the bonds of love they share across borders. The result is an absorbing and literally moving ethnography that illuminates the mutually reinforcing and constitutive forces that impact the lives of migrants and their loved ones—and how profoundly migrants are underserved by policies that more often lead to their illegality, statelessness, deportation, detention, and abuse than to their aid.

"If you're thinking about buying your first sailboat and making it your own, you need to read this refreshingly honest tale." -- Ed Robinson, author of Poop, Booze & Bikinis Had I ever sailed? No. Did I think that mattered? No. I felt I had whatever grit and guile I needed to handle this silly sailing stuff. I parachuted with a sheet, drove a car that started with a screwdriver, swished with hydrogen peroxide. I rode horses, climbed rocks, leapt off cliffs. I spent summers in the sleeper of a big rig. I ate Malt-o-Meal. Surely these were excellent traits of a sailor. Surely I was salty enough. I fancied I was. Either way, we were going to find out. The time to go was now. All we needed was a boat. Follow all of Annie's adventures at www.havewindwilltravel.com.

The main intent of this book is to prepare the North American sailor for his first crossing of the Atlantic to Europe. It is actually so exhaustive in its coverage that it will indeed help the bluewater sailor to learn how to cross any ocean in the world.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Central and Eastern Europe was a configuration of nations dominated by three empires: Austrian, German and Russian, whose borders promised to be set in concrete. The Austrian Empire was a multi-ethnic entity of countries that had been absorbed over time. Among these were Polish lands annexed by Austria in the eighteenth century, which became the Austrian province of Galicia, where Zofia Neuhoff was born in 1905 into an upper-middle-class family. Victorian manners reigned supreme, young ladies were coached to gracefully alight from the carriage and 'culture' was a magic word, socially distinguishing people who possessed it from those who did not. That haute bourgeoisie morphed into the central-European intelligentsia. Zofia's childhood was upended by five years of WWI which she spent in the picturesque environs of Innsbruck. By 1918, the three imperishable empires disintegrated and several sovereign states emerged from the ruins. After the Neuhoffs returned to independent Poland, Zofia's life continued on an even keel with a happy marriage and a law degree unusual for a woman in the 1930s. In September 1939, Poland was invaded by both Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. Overnight, Zofia's existence was shattered. Alone, with an 18-month-old toddler, in the midst of mass arrests and deportations of civilian population, how could she cope with this new harsh reality for which her sheltered life had not prepared her?