The extreme travel community goes to places beyond the ordinary - and William Baekeland, a young man with incredible riches, joins expeditions to isolated islands of Antarctica, the Russian Arctic, Central African Republic, Sudan and Timor-Leste, among others. He becomes the awe and the inspiration of many travellers, young and old, on his quest to 'go everywhere'. But is all as it seems? This incredible true story written by one of the world's most experienced travellers will take you on a journey to some of the most unusual places of our planet while turning into a real-life detective story as the elusive truth finally reveals itself.

At twenty-three, William Simon Baekeland was well on his way to becoming the world’s best traveled person. The “billionaire” heir to a great plastics fortune had already visited 163 countries, but his real passion was finding ways to visit the world’s most challenging destinations—war torn cities, disputed territories, and remote or officially off-limits islands at the margins of the map. He earned rock-star status in the world of extreme travel by finding ingenious ways to bring the world’s most widely traveled people to difficult-to-reach and forbidden places. But when his story began to unravel, an eccentric group of hyper-well-traveled country collectors were left wondering how they had allowed their obsession to blind them to the warning signs that William Baekeland wasn’t who they thought he was. Mad Travelers: A Tale of Wanderlust, Greed and the Quest to Reach the Ends of the Earth delves deep inside the subculture of country collecting, taking readers to danger zones like Mogadishu and geographical oddities like Norway’s nearly impossible-to-reach Bouvet Island. Along the way, this raucous tale of adventure and international intrigue illuminates the perils and pleasures of wanderlust while examining a fundamental question: why are some people compelled to travel, while others are content to stay home? Mad Travelers is a perceptive and at times hilarious account of how the pursuit of everywhere put the world’s greatest travelers at the mercy of a brilliant young con man. Soon to be an HBO documentary.

“Dazzles from start to finish.” —Georgia Hunter, New York Times bestselling author of We Were the Lucky Ones Set against the backdrop of World War II, a sweeping, atmospheric novel of sacrifice, ambition, and commitment, and the secrets we keep from the ones we love It's 1927 when Alec and June meet as children in a tranquil English village. Alec, an orphan, anchors himself in the night sky and longs for adventures. June memorizes maps and railway timetables, imagining a future bright with possibilities. As the years pass, their loves feels inevitable, but soon the Second World War separates them. Alec enlists as a Royal Air Force pilot flying daredevil fighter sorties at night; June finds her calling as a codebreaker at Bletchley Park, covert work that will mean keeping her contribution to the war effort a secret from Alec forever. Each is following a dream—but those dreams force them apart for years at a time. Their postwar reunion is bittersweet: Alec, shot down and imprisoned in a series of POW camps, grapples with his injuries and the loss of his RAF career. June, on the other hand, has found her vocation and struggles to follow the expected path to domesticity, as much as she loves Alec. But Alec wants nothing more than to make a life and a family together. With the war behind them, their scars—both visible and unseen—make them strangers to each other. Now each must decide how much to reveal to the other, which dreams can be sacrificed, and which secrets are too big to bear alone. Spanning forty years and shifting from bustling Indian ports to vibrant gardens in Edinburgh to a horse farm in Kenya, The Stars We Share is a poignant, heart-wrenching novel about the decisions and concessions that make a life and a love worth having.

Written in a detailed and fascinating manner, this book is ideal for general readers interested in the English language.

What does it take to travel around the world? What surprises await you as you dream, discover and uncover your next great adventure?This book explores, for the first time, the Filipino wanderlust from the perspective of twenty of the most well-traveled Filipinos as they take you to their journeys around the world, sharing their colorful stories as well as their best travel tips and recommendations in a well-curated manner. It is as entertaining as much as it is informative. This travel book is like no other.If you're looking for inspiration to re-ignite your love for travel during these unprecedented times, then this is what you've been waiting for. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------'In this thoroughly researched and lovingly written compendium, Dondon Bales does what has never been done before - celebrating a diverse group of people who share one thing alone: their love of travel. Both a who's who and simultaneously an intimate portrait of the colourful traveller community of the Philippines, this unique book makes me wonder why there isn't such a guide to the travellers of every country. An absolute must!' - Harry Mitsidis, The World's Most Traveled Person, founder of NomadMania, and author of 'The Curious Case of William Baekeland' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------'Galà is the ultimate introduction to who is who among Filipino hard-core travellers. The author has managed to piece together a treasure trove of exciting, inspiring and sometimes outright scary experiences from outstanding storytellers with a variety of backgrounds. If their worldwide tales won't encourage you to hit the road, I don't know what will.' - Gunnar Garfors, 1st person to visit every country twice, multiple Guinness World Record holder, and author of '198: How I Ran Out of Countries' ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------'Inspiring! Masterfully written with a variety of gold nuggets on world travel experiences.' - Jhet Torcelino-van Ruyven, world traveler, speaker and bestselling author of 'The Tale of Juliet: You Have the Power to Change Your Life'

From the renowned author of Possession, The Children’s Book is the absorbing story of the close of what has been called the Edwardian summer: the deceptively languid, blissful period that ended with the cataclysmic destruction of World War I. In this compelling novel, A.S. Byatt summons up a whole era, revealing that beneath its golden surface lay tensions that would explode into war, revolution and unbelievable change — for the generation that came of age before 1914 and, most of all, for their children. The novel centres around Olive Wellwood, a fairy tale writer, and her circle, which includes the brilliant, erratic craftsman Benedict Fludd and his apprentice Phillip Warren, a runaway from the poverty of the Potteries; Prosper Cain, the soldier who directs what will become the Victoria and Albert Museum; Olive’s brother-in-law Basil Wellwood, an officer of the Bank of England; and many others from every layer of society. A.S. Byatt traces their lives in intimate detail and moves between generations, following the children who must choose whether to follow the roles expected of them or stand up to their parents’ “porcelain socialism.” Olive’s daughter Dorothy wishes to become a doctor, while her other daughter, Hedda, wants to fight for votes for women. Her son Tom, sent to an upper-class school, wants nothing more than to spend time in the woods, tracking birds and foxes. Her nephew Charles becomes embroiled with German-influenced revolutionaries. Their portraits connect the political issues at the heart of nascent feminism and socialism with grave personal dilemmas, interlacing until The Children’s Book becomes a perfect depiction of an entire world. Olive is a fairy tale writer in the era of Peter Pan and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind In the Willows, not long after Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. At a time when children in England suffered deprivation by the millions, the concept of childhood was being refined and elaborated in ways that still influence us today. For each of her children, Olive writes a special, private book, bound in a different colour and placed on a shelf; when these same children are ferried off into the unremitting destruction of the Great War, the reader is left to wonder who the real children in this novel are. The Children’s Book is an astonishing novel. It is an historical feat that brings to life an era that helped shape our own as well as a gripping, personal novel about parents and children, life’s most painful struggles and its richest pleasures. No other writer could have imagined it or created it.

This authoritative catalogue of the Corcoran Gallery of Art's renowned collection of pre-1945 American paintings will greatly enhance scholarly and public understanding of one of the finest and most important collections of historic American art in the world. Composed of more than 600 objects dating from 1740 to 1945.