It's unbelievable Explore some of the weirdest, wildest places on Earth through the pages of this fascinating book. Get ready to visit the world's strangest and most surprising places From animal islands filled with deadly snakes to terrifying towns and decaying buildings, these natural features and man-made structures will blow your mind. Journey to a giant blue hole in Belize that's filled with toxic gases and sea-creature skeletons, a lake in Tanzania that runs red, a town so overrun with spiders its residents are forced to eat them, and a vast 226-foot-wide crater that is always on fire. You won't believe your eyes The strange places include Terrifying terrains: Deadmen Valley, Canada Spine-tingling towns: Chernobyl, Ukraine and Miyake Village, Japan (the "toxic terror") Weird Water: Devil's Kettle, US and and Blood Falls, Antarctica Beastly abodes: Snake Island, Brazil Fright sites: the Church of Bones, Czech Republic

In this expanded edition of his classic Strangers in High Places, Michael Frome continues to capture the attention and admiration of nature lovers, environmentalists, and professionals as he reviews the last quarter-century in and around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Frome's superbly written account tells the story of the Great Smoky Mountains and their inhabitants--Eastern Cherokee, back-country settlers, lumbermen, moonshiners, bears and boars. Frome chronicles the power struggles, legislation, and land transactions surrounding the creation of the national park and discusses the continuing threats to the park's natural beauty. Frome's recent conversations with residents, new and old, along with a complement of historic and contemporary photographs, confirm the views stated in the book's original 1966 edition. The author brings his knowledge, experience, and insights to bear on "one of God's special places." He suggests alternatives to commercial overdevelopment and the destruction of the Great Smokies' flora and fauna, citing recent cases such as the Tellico Dam project and the continuing pollution of the Pigeon River. Always emphasizing our inevitable relationship with our surroundings, Frome relates the story of the Great Smoky Mountains with respect and affection for the region, its people, and their history. Michael Frome ranks among the foremost American authors on travel and conservation. His interests are closely associated with national parks, national forests, and natural beauty in the United States and other countries. He has been a columnist and correspondent for major newspapers and magazines and a university lecturer. He is author of Conscience of a Conservationist: Selected Essays.

Stranger Cities explores the metaphysics of Australian society and the clash between its competing strands of romantic culture and classic civilization. The social expression, artistic resonance, economic significance, civic character, historic phases, mythic representations, creative antinomies, and imaginative contribution of these metaphysical fundamentals form the background of Australia’s distinctive urban civilization with its bustling stranger populations, ocean-facing portal cities, revealing art and architecture, and cyclical worlds of markets and industries, war and peace. Murphy portrays a classic eudemonic society whose dominant ethos of phlegmatic happiness vies with a subsidiary current of melancholic and choleric romanticism.