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Alastair Bonnett explores extraordinary, off-grid, offbeat places including micro-nations, moving villages, secret cities, and no man's lands. Consider Sealand, an abandoned gun platform off the English coast that a British citizen claimed as his own sovereign nation, issuing passports and making his wife a princess. Or Baarle, a patchwork city of Dutch and Flemish enclaves where crossing the street can involve traversing national borders. Or Sandy Island, which appeared on maps well into 2012 despite the fact it never existed.
Containing walks and detailed maps from throughout the city, Secret Stairs highlights the charms and quirks of a unique feature of the Los Angeles landscape, and chronicles the geographical, architectural, and historical aspects of the city’s staircases, as well as of the neighborhoods in which the steps are located. From strolling through the classic La Loma neighborhood in Pasadena to walking the Sunset Junction Loop in Silver Lake, to taking the Beachwood Canyon hike through “Hollywoodland” to enjoying the magnificent ocean views from the Castellammare district in Pacific Palisades, Secret Stairs takes you on a tour of the staircases all across the City of Angels. The circular walks, rated for duration and difficulty, deliver tales of historic homes and their fascinating inhabitants, bits of unusual local trivia, and stories of the neighborhoods surrounding the stairs. That’s where William Faulkner was living when he wrote the screenplay for To Have and Have Not; that house was designed by Neutra; over there is a Schindler; that’s where Woody Guthrie lived, where Anais Nin died, and where Thelma Todd was murdered . . . Despite the fact that one of these staircases starred in an Oscar-winning short film—Laurel and Hardy’s The Music Box, from 1932—these civic treasures have been virtually unknown to most of the city’s residents and visitors. Now, Secret Stairs puts these hidden stairways back on the map, while introducing urban hikers to exciting new “trails” all around the city of Los Angeles.
Welcome to a top-level clearance world that doesn't exist...Now with updated material for the paperback edition. This is the adventurous, insightful, and often chilling story of a road trip through a shadow nation of state secrets, clandestine military bases, black sites, hidden laboratories, and top-secret agencies that make up what insiders call the "black world." Here, geographer and provocateur Trevor Paglen knocks on the doors of CIA prisons, stakes out a covert air base in Nevada from a mountaintop 30 miles away, dissects the Defense Department's multibillion dollar "black" budget, and interviews those who live on the edges of these blank spots. Whether Paglen reports from a hotel room in Vegas, a secret prison in Kabul, or a trailer in Shoshone Indian territory, he is impassioned, rigorous, relentless-and delivers eye-opening details.
This highly visual book marries style and substance to give Portland and the people who love her the guidebook they deserve: a curated and creative collection of more than 130 outings in and around Portland to inspire romance and adventure. Secret spots, beloved locales, and unexpected destinations offer endless options for date night or a weekend getaway. Finally, a stylish, cheeky, curated guidebook of cool places for Portlanders (and visitors) to go on dates/outings/field trips/adventures. These range from one-hour coffee and ice cream dates in Portland's neighborhoods to multiday expeditions to Hood River and Mount St. Helens. The authors have a bead on the obscure and fascinating, and the descriptions are motivating enough to prompt even the lazy to head out the door. The book will have serious pickup power and will become an essential resource and armchair read for Portland-area Gen X, millennial, and Gen Z couples (and singles with friends) interested in learning about off-the-beaten-path things to do, see, and taste. No more FOMO! In-the-know authors and tastemakers Eden Dawn and Ashod Simonian will reveal where the cool and quirky go, while educating readers on this beloved city.
Catching fish is not tough, if you know where to look. But knowing where to look separates the men from the boys-or the snook from the snookers, as the case may be. This book can go a long way toward helping you know where to look. It's based on more than 25 years of fishing Florida's inshore waters personally, and on the observations of dozens of good friends, many of them professional guides, who have been kind enough to assist and share a few of their secrets. SECRET SPOTS, Sarasota Bay to Marco, covers my personal favorite region of all the waters in Florida, the southwest coast. No where else has the variety and the abundance of fine inshore gamefish, plus the huge acreage of clear, shallow grass flats. - Frank Sargeant
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Wander off the beaten track to uncover the world’s most secret destinations: discover an ancient gateway to the Mayan underworld, a mysterious underwater monument sunken off the Ryukyu Islands in Japan or a prehistoric village covered for centuries by a huge sand dune in the Orkney Islands. Travel journalist Sarah Baxter’s evocative words instantly transport you to twenty-five of the world’s most obscured places. From remote locations that visitors must trek and wade just to catch a glimpse of, to forgotten cities only recently revealed and places purposefully hidden as sanctuaries from persecution, each destination has a very human story at its heart. Savour a moment to delight in the serenity and seclusion of the secret escapes collected in this beautifully illustrated guide, full of surprise, wonder and sights otherwise unseen.
Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets provides an ethnographic study of varmakkalai, or "the art of the vital spots," a South Indian esoteric tradition that combines medical practice and martial arts. Although siddha medicine is officially part of the Indian Government's medically pluralistic health-care system, very little of a reliable nature has been written about it. Drawing on a diverse array of materials, including Tamil manuscripts, interviews with practitioners, and his own personal experience as an apprentice, Sieler traces the practices of varmakkalai both in different religious traditions--such as Yoga and Ayurveda--and within various combat practices. His argument is based on in-depth ethnographic research in the southernmost region of India, where hereditary medico-martial practitioners learn their occupation from relatives or skilled gurus through an esoteric, spiritual education system. Rituals of secrecy and apprenticeship in varmakkalai are among the important focal points of Sieler's study. Practitioners protect their esoteric knowledge, but they also engage in a kind of "lure and withdrawal"---a performance of secrecy---because secrecy functions as what might be called "symbolic capital." Sieler argues that varmakkalai is, above all, a matter of texts in practice; knowledge transmission between teacher and student conveys tacit, non-verbal knowledge, and constitutes a "moral economy." It is not merely plain facts that are communicated, but also moral obligations, ethical conduct and tacit, bodily knowledge. Lethal Spots, Vital Secrets is an insightful analysis of practices rarely discussed in scholarly circles. It will be a valuable resource to students of religion, medical anthropologists, historians of medicine, Indologists, and martial arts and performance studies.