There are a bazillion titles on bookstore shelves and more than a few are travel-themed, but let me assure you: the Travelogues are different. These aren't the “got up, had banana pancake for breakfast, before shuffling-off to see some temples” kinds of stories. That’s probably because I’m not your typical fuddy-duddy travel writer. “Real” travel writers are glamorous, but real traveling is all I know. Vacations are when everything is safe and convenient and when you come to expect words like ‘aioli’ on the menu and when every “adventure” can be charged to American Express. Real traveling, on the other hand, is when everything can happen and nothing happens as planned and, whatever happened, mañana it will seem like a damn fine stroke of luck. At its most banal, day-to-day, real traveling is anything but normal and never glamorous. Except, maybe, in retrospect. The reality is that —very often— I have no idea where I’m going, except that I am. Nor how I’m gonna get there, except that I will. All these stories unfold as they may. That’s what these books are about. That’s what makes them different. The Travelogues pick up where traditional travel literature leaves off. They don’t mess around, pretending to describe every experience as if it were the feature in Condé Nast Traveler. They do, however, reveal what it’s really like to travel Out There. They describe everything: the good, the twisted, the ugly, and —occasionally— the sublime. No punches are pulled. It’s all in there. These are all out-of-the-ordinary experiences that lie within reach of ordinary people like you and I. Anyone can go and do those things. You too..., but only if you want to. That’s what the Travelogues are. That’s what “The South” is. Go ahead: discover the new kind of travel writing.

After a not-so-brief absence from South America, I returned and picked-up exactly where I had left off, exactly where I’d begun originally: in smoggy Lima. Only this second time, I angled north: for the equator. The north of Peru is strikingly different from the south and yet again, like once before, I struck-up the most interesting acquaintanceships in a Plaza de Armas. Ecuador came next: there I discovered the whole continent in miniature, but nothing except tourist gimmicks to delay me. I crossed the next border with rare trepidation because the land of coffee, cartels, and cocaine -Colombia- was enjoying such an unsavory reputation. But it proved one of the most extraordinary countries that I've ever set-foot-in. My heart had never felt so heavy as when I took the first step into Venezuela. There I could have lingered longer, visited more places, but a strike paralyzed the cities and it had seemed prudent to leave while I could. Panama: getting in was a lot more exciting than being in. Nicaragua: tiny islands half-lost far-off at sea. Honduras: good roads and donuts. El Salvador: a tragic country whose people have suffered through everything yet refuse to give-in to despair. Guatemala, everybody’s favorite corner of Latin American: Antigua, Chichicastenango and El Mirador. Big Mama on Caye Culker, Belize. Mexico: too many kilometers on too many buses in too few days. Travelogue02 swings through every country south of the Rio Grande, eighteen in all, except the Guianas.    The author is nobody special — he’s just of a new breed of travel writers. And his Travelogues are for a new breed of readers — normal contemporary sorts of people like and my neighbor Tom, feeding their curiosity for curiosity’s sake, taking armchair voyages through countries that until a few years ago were virtually unknown to the outside word. While bookshop shelves tend to sag under the weight of stories about places, not journeys, the latter are far more fascinating. Few books today capture the essence of what it is like to travel. Having established himself with the original bold “what’s it really like Out There” anthology, the author does exactly that. Each Travelogue offers its reader more than the old tired travel diary. Just like each one of the author’s trips turned out most unusual, these books —too— are out of the ordinary. They’re collections of short stories, each capturing a particular moment: some are funny, some emotional, some suspenseful, some downright silly... and each one is very different from every other. They are snapshots of people and places and adventures that had been recorded in words rather than by multicolored pixels of a digital point-and-shoot. What makes them unreal is that all these stories are 100% true... Seriously, you couldn't make this stuff up even if you wanted to. None of it is this normal cut-and-dry stuff. Every story offers a fresh insight, a totally different perspective. On the beaten path... and off of it, against the backdrop of the exotic, anything can happen: and it usually does. More often than not, these stories are set in villages kilometers apart, but there’s never telling what might happen next. The author doesn't care where the journey might take him — it’s all about the experience of being Out There. He’s simply following his passion for discovering and exploring. For Travelogues’ readers, the books are a jaunt into the unknown. It’s the journey and not the destination that matters.

Some oppressed groups fought with guns, some fought in court, some exercised civil disobedience; the Melungeons, however, fought by telling folktales. Whites and blacks gave the name "children of perdition" to mixed Americans during the 300 years that marriage between whites and nonwhites was outlawed. Mixed communities ranked socially below communities of freed slaves although they had lighter skin. To escape persecution caused by the stigma of having African blood, these groups invented fantastic stories of their origins, known generally as "lost colony" legends. From the founding of America, through the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II, the author documents the histories of several related mixed communities that began in Virginia in 1619 and still exist today, and shows how they responded to racism over four centuries. Conflicts led to imprisonment, whippings, slavery, lynching, gun battles, forced sterilization, and exile--but they survived. America's view of mixing became increasingly intolerant and led to a twentieth-century scheme to forcibly exile U.S. citizens, with as little as ?one drop? of black blood, to Africa even though their ancestors arrived before the Mayflower. Evidence documents the collaboration between American race purists and leading Nazi Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust. The author examines theories of ethnic purity and ethnic superiority, and reveals how mixed people responded to "pure race" myths with origin myths of their own as Nazi sympa-thizers in state and federal government segregated mixed Americans, citing the myth of Aryan supremacy. Finally, Children of Perdition explains why many Americans view mixing as unnatural and shows how mixed people continue to confront the Jim Crow "one drop" standard today. Some oppressed groups fought with guns, some fought in court, some exercised civil disobedience; the Melungeons, however, fought by telling folktales. Whites and blacks gave the name "children of perdition" to mixed Americans during the 300 years that marriage between whites and nonwhites was outlawed. Mixed communities ranked socially below communities of freed slaves although they had lighter skin. To escape persecution caused by the stigma of having African blood, these groups invented fantastic stories of their origins, known generally as "lost colony" legends. From the founding of America, through the American Revolution, the Civil War and World War II, the author documents the histories of several related mixed communities that began in Virginia in 1619 and still exist today, and shows how they responded to racism over four centuries. Conflicts led to imprisonment, whippings, slavery, lynching, gun battles, forced sterilization, and exile--but they survived. America's view of mixing became increasingly intolerant and led to a twentieth-century scheme to forcibly exile U.S. citizens, with as little as ?one drop? of black blood, to Africa even though their ancestors arrived before the Mayflower. Evidence documents the collaboration between American race purists and leading Nazi Germans who perpetrated the Holocaust. The author examines theories of ethnic purity and ethnic superiority, and reveals how mixed people responded to "pure race" myths with origin myths of their own as Nazi sympa-thizers in state and federal government segregated mixed Americans, citing the myth of Aryan supremacy. Finally, Children of Perdition explains why many Americans view mixing as unnatural and shows how mixed people continue to confront the Jim Crow "one drop" standard today.

Höweler + Yoon Architecture, founded in 2001 and based in Boston, gained early praise for ephemeral and interactive public projects and today is recognized for striking works that combine conceptual speculation and technological sophistication. The firm's impressive body of work has expanded the scope of design beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries and has won them numerous national and international awards. Verify in Field is Höweler + Yoon Architecture's second book. Its title derives from a notational convention on architectural drawings to indicate that the information is subject to unknown conditions in the field. The book highlights verification as an integral part of the design process and demonstrates it as a productive tool to test ideas and act on the world. For both disciplinary and contractual reasons, the instruments of design--drawings, models, and prototypes--operate on the world at a distance. Techniques of prototyping, measurement, feedback, negotiation, and intervention inform the diverse output of the studio. Verify in Field features recent designs by Höweler + Yoon architecture, including such projects as the Memorial to Enslaved Laborers at the University of Virginia; a floating outdoor classroom in Philadelphia; the MIT Museum;; and a pedestrian bridge in Shanghai's Expo Park. The book also examines the discipline's pressing questions, as they relate to verification, uncertainty, and design agency, in a series of essays by Eric Höweler and J. Meejin Yoon on topics that include means and methods, the public realm, energy and environments, the construction detail, and social media. These themes are echoed in conversations with collaborators, historians, and theorists: Adam Greenfield, Nader Tehrani, Kate Orff, Daniel Barber, and Ana Miljacki.

Recounts the journey of the first generation of African Americans stolen from a Spanish slave ship and brought to Jamestown in 1619, discussing their contributions to the establishment of the young colony and their efforts to purchase freedom and establish communities.

The author explores the theories surrounding the people called Melungeon, perhaps from the French word, "mélange," meaning a mixture. Includes lists of common surnames for Melungeons, Brass Ankles, Carmel Indians, Cubans, Guineas, Lumbee/Croatan Indians, Pamunkey/Powhatan Indians, and Redbones.