The Inside Passage to Alaska, with its outer fringes & entailments, is a very complicated sea-route. Parts of it are open ocean, parts of it no wider than a modest river, & it has been in continuous product use for several thousand years. Its aboriginal past
- still tantalizingly close to hand
- puts the inside passaged on terms of close kinship with the ancient sea of the Phoenicians & the Greeks. This book is much more than a book about a sea voyage; it is about Jonathan Raban`s journey home to his father who is dying; about his crumbling relationship with his wife & also about the historical journey of the maddening Vancouver in his search for the North West Passage.

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In his early twenties Miles Hordern first crossed the oceans from the northern to the southern hemisphere, but the stretch between New Zealand & the Indian Ocean, guarded by the Torres Strait, eluded him for twelve more years. Past sailors attempting a passage through this mythical strait either drowned on the treacherous reefs or starved in open boats. Yet Miles Hordern was unable to resist its siren call. Passage to Torres Strait weaves together unravelled strands of history, & reveals that it was the castaways & beachcombers who left the most enduring legacies. ...

ADAC, Germany's equivalent of the British Automobile Association publishes an extensive series of street plans which provide detailed high-quality mapping of all the major towns & cities, including their outer suburbs. The plans name all the individual streets & indicate all the main landmarks & public buildings. All public transport facilities are shown: buses, trams, underground & overland rail lines. One way streets & car parks are indicated. Plans of larger cities include an enlargement for the city centre. The plans also show the administrative & postal divisions & have an extensive street index which, where appropriate, shows individual postal codes for each street. On the reverse, each plan has a road map at 1:100, 000, covering a very wide area around the city. Map legend

Includes:: English.

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Passau on a topographic map at 1:200, 000 from the Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie, Germany’s federal mapping agency. The map covers an area of Approx. 100 x 90km. This map is belongs to a series of 58 topographic maps from Bundesamt für Kartographie und Geodäsie, the federal cartographic agency of Germany responsible for topographic mapping at 1:200, 000 & maps at smaller scales (the more detailed topographic & leisure maps are prepared & published by the survey organizations of the individual states). Cartography is from the 200K topographic survey & the maps have very elegant, modern look whilst retaining the traditional German presentation of names of smaller towns & villages in italics. Contours are at 12, 5m intervals, enhanced by relief shading, with colouring for woodlands, moors, marches, vineyards & hop plantations. Waterways & rivers are also described in detail, with currents, waterfalls, dams, & jetties clearly marked. Road network, graded into five types, highlights in colour national & regional roads; no driving distances are marked Railway network is also shown in detail, with stations, goods only lines, etc. The maps show administrative boundaries of states & counties, & have a UTM grid plus margin ticks for latitude & longitude at 2’ intervals. Map legend is in German only. PLEASE NOTE: maps in this series provide an excellent presentation of the areas covered by them, with plenty of place names & detailed representation of the road network, & will appeal to anyone who likes quality cartography, but they are not necessarily the best option for holiday & business travel. To see other titles in this series please click on the series link. ...

Passau in a series of GPS compatible recreational editions of the Bavarian topographic survey at 1:25, 000, with waymarked hiking trails & cycling routes, campsites & youth hostels, etc. Coverage

Includes:: Büchlberg, Hutthurm, Neuburg a. Inn, Salzweg, Thyrnau, Tiefenbach. Contours used in this map vary between 5 to 20m according to the terrain, with 20m interval predominantly used for hilly areas. Varied colouring show different types of landscape: woods, vineyards, fields etc. Maps in this series feature extensive overprint highlighting local & long-distance footpaths & cycle routes, including King Ludwig Way or different variants of the Way of St James, indicating their waymarking. Symbols highlight different types of accommodation (campsites, youth hostels, refuges, etc), sport & recreational facilities, various places of interest, etc. The maps have a 1-km UTM grid. Map legend & all the text are in German only. To see other titles in this series please click on the series link.

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Between July & November 1917, in a small corner of Belgium, more than 500, 000 men were killed or maimed, gassed or drowned
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THE SUNDAY TIMES TOP 10 BESTSELLER`A timely re-appraisal... a masterpiece` General Lord Richard Dannatt The Third Battle of Ypres was a `lost victory` for the British Army in 1917. Between July & November 1917, in a small corner of Belgium, more than 500, 000 men were killed or maimed, gassed or drowned
- & many of the bodies were never found. The Ypres offensive represents the modern impression of the First World War: splintered trees, water-filled craters, muddy shell-holes. The climax was one of the worst battles of both world wars: Passchendaele. The village fell eventually, only for the whole offensive to be called off. But, as Nick Lloyd shows, notably through previously overlooked German archive material, it is striking how close the British came to forcing the German Army to make a major retreat in Belgium in October 1917. Far from being a pointless & futile waste of men, the battle was a startling illustration of how effective British tactics & operations had become by 1917 & put the Allies nearer to a major turning point in the war than we have ever imagined. Published for the 100th anniversary of this major conflict, Passchendaele is the most compelling & comprehensive account ever written of the climax of trench warfare on the Western Front.
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One hundred years on... The Battle of Passchendaele, fought from July to November 1917, epitomises everything that was most terrible about the Western Front in the First World War. This was the war of attrition at its most spectacular & ferocious. The intervening century, the most violent in human history, has not diluted the power of the images we have from this battle. We commemorate the event, we pin poppies to our chests. But it is almost impossible to underst&. Passchendaele: Requiem for Doomed Youth shows how ordinary men on both sides endured this constant state of siege, with a very real awareness that they were being gradually, deliberately, felled. Yet the men never broke. They went over the top when ordered, again & again & again. The commanders saw a soldier as ” Normal wastage”. His family knew him as a son, a husband or a brother before he had enlisted. Only the soldiers truly saw each other in those moments. By the end of 1917 each surviving soldier was a different man to the one who had left home; his experiences on the Western Front, incomprehensible to anyone but him. Here, Paul Ham tells the story of ordinary men in the grip of an extraordinary global power struggle. He lays down a powerful challenge to the idea of war as an inevitable expression of human will, & examines the culpability of governments & military commanders in a catastrophe that destroyed the best part of a generation. ...

It will be forever known as Passchendaele: the very word is used to describe wretched & perilous conditions such as were encountered at the battles which became officially designated as Third Ypres. There with better tactics, equipment & experience than he had previously employed, Haig was surely set for considerable advance & ultimate success. Initial successes were, however, reversed by stout German defence & weak British strategy before unprecedented rainfall reduced the Belgian landscape to a quagmire. Through August the British suffered net losses & only towards the end of September did the more enlightened command of Plumer bring gains against the German divisions, only for more rain & the subsequent reduction of offensive effectiveness to reduce territorial gains to a meaningless trickle. Following his popular volume on The Somme, Chris Mc Carthy re-assesses & enhances the official history of Third Ypres, presenting his research with comprehenive illustrations & valuable coloured maps. ...

The Classic Account of Passchendaele
- Reissued for the First World War Centenary. The third battle of Ypres, culminating in a
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