The story Argentina: The Beautiful Land is a fictional story of family, love, conflicts, and challenges beginning in the early 1980s, using the then-coming war between Argentina and Great Britain concerning ownership of the Falkland Islands, off Argentina's east coast, as a backdrop.The story is of the fictional DeCavaliere cattle-ranching family, including those who marry into it, as it builds its businesses and reputation. Argentina's beautiful first city, Buenos Aires, and its environs are the novel's locale.The story also takes account some fictional former Nazi officers who fled Europe in the mid-1940s and removed to South America to escape the advancing Allied Forces in World War II, and the economic gains some seek to achieve in their new country, including in critical mineral mining and, in the essential cattle and beef industry, which the Argentine Intelligence Service is concerned for. The stage is set for conflict between the Argentine DeCavaliere family and others, including the newcomers.The novel, set forth in two parts, promotes the values of character, industriousness, and love, as well as the enduring importance of family which values prior generations of the family pass on to succeeding generations as each continues the family legacy..Part 1 tells the story of the fifth and sixth generations of the family while briefly relating the history and influence of its first four generations and their contributions to the legacy. Part 2 continues the story of the family's sixth generation and adds the story of its seventh and eighth.As the various challenges to the family described in part 1 and part 2 endanger the lives of some of them, the additional portrayal of the family's seventh padron and his unshakeable love for and commitment to a young woman of similar age, in turn committed to him but forced to give him up, adds a compelling tale of faith and renewal.

Presents a tour of Argentina's wine region, with information about the climate, local attractions, wine varieties, and local cuisine of each location.

Depicts buildings from twenty-two ranches in Argentina.

"Land of Smoke is one of my favourite books by one of my favourite Argentinian authors." – Samanta Schweblin, author of Seven Empty Houses Dazzling, hallucinatory short stories by a rediscovered Argentinian contemporary of García Márquez, whose groundbreaking novel January is being published in English for the first time Resplendent with otherworldly imagery and beguiling prose, Land of Smoke presents a uniquely compelling voice in Latin American literature. An old man wakes up one morning to find that his beloved garden, the envy of all his neighbours, is floating away with him on board. A young woman moves to Buenos Aires, bringing with her a replacement head. A meek German missionary leaves Paraguay for the Pampas, completely unprepared for what he will encounter there. Dazzling and hallucinatory, the stories collected here recall the masters of magical realism ­– but with Gallardo’s distinctive, idiosyncratic slant.

This is the first book in English to examine the contemporary Mapuche: their culture, their struggle for autonomy within the modern-day nation state, their religion, language, and distinct identity. Leslie Ray looks back over the history of relations between the Mapuche and the Argentine and Chilean states, and examines issues of ethnicity, biodiversity, and bio-piracy in Mapuche lands today, their struggle for rights over natural resources, and the impact of tourism and neoliberalism. The Mapuche of what is today southern Chile and Argentina were the first and only indigenous peoples on the continent to have their sovereignty legally recognized by the Spanish empire, and their reputation for ferocity and bravery was legendary among the Spanish invaders. Their sense of communal identity and personal courage has forged among the Mapuche a strong instinct for self-preservation over the centuries. Today their struggle continues: neither Chile nor Argentina specifically recognize the rights of indigenous peoples. In recent years disputes over land rights, particularly in Chile, have provoked fierce protests from the Mapuche. In both countries, policies of assimilation have had a disastrous effect on the Mapuche language and cultural integrity. Even so, in recent years the Mapuche have managed a remarkable cultural and political resurgence, in part through a tenacious defense of their ancestral lands and natural resources against marauding multinationals, which has catapulted them to regional and international attention. Leslie Ray has been a freelance translator since the mid 1980s. He has translated a number of books from Italian and Spanish in the fields of architecture, design, and art history. A regular visitor to Argentina since the late eighties, he has worked actively with Mapuche organizations there since the late 1990s. In addition to his work on the Mapuche, he has also published articles on Argentine social, indigenous, and language-related issues for publications as diverse as History Today and The Linguist.

Containing more than 600 entries, this valuable resource presents all aspects of travel writing. There are entries on places and routes (Afghanistan, Black Sea, Egypt, Gobi Desert, Hawaii, Himalayas, Italy, Northwest Passage, Samarkand, Silk Route, Timbuktu), writers (Isabella Bird, Ibn Battuta, Bruce Chatwin, Gustave Flaubert, Mary Kingsley, Walter Ralegh, Wilfrid Thesiger), methods of transport and types of journey (balloon, camel, grand tour, hunting and big game expeditions, pilgrimage, space travel and exploration), genres (buccaneer narratives, guidebooks, New World chronicles, postcards), companies and societies (East India Company, Royal Geographical Society, Society of Dilettanti), and issues and themes (censorship, exile, orientalism, and tourism). For a full list of entries and contributors, a generous selection of sample entries, and more, visit the Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia website.