“Jealous. That’s what I am. Green with golf envy…Why didn’t we think of that? I mean, what golfer worth his, or her, balls wouldn’t want to trade all the troubles of life for the adventure and privilege of teeing it up everywhere from the glacial volcanoes of the Andes to the Arctic Circle in Norway?”--from the foreword by Turk Pipkin At 47, David Wood sold everything he owned and set out to fulfill every golfer’s dream: For one year, he traveled the world (covering 60,000 miles and every continent except Antartica) by plane, boat, train, motorcycle and rickshaw, to play the game he loves in the most exotic locales, including the world’s highest, driest, hottest, coldest, and most remote golf courses, and lived to tell the tale. Along the way, he met a bevy of fascinating characters, including surly cabbies, taxi drivers with a death wish, welcoming golf course managers, threatening kangaroos, and golf pros out for a quick game. David faced dire situations, such as bouts of food poisoning in India and Egypt, altitude sickness in Argentina, getting booted out of the Ukraine by armed guards, and muddling through with limited language skills, but through it all he maintained a sense of humor and of course his passion for golf, which he played every chance he got.

This multivolume set is much more than a collection of essays on sports and sporting cultures from around the world: it also details how and why sports are played wherever they exist, and examines key charismatic athletes from around the world who have transcended their sports. Sports Around the World: History, Culture, and Practice provides a unique, global overview of sports and sports cultures. Unlike most works of this type, this book provides both essays that examine general topics, such as globalization and sport, international relations and sport, and tourism and sport, as well as essays on sports history, culture, and practice in world regions—for example, Latin America and the Caribbean, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and Oceania—in order to provide a more global perspective. These essays are followed by entries on specific sports, world athletes, stadiums and arenas, famous games and matches, and major controversies. Spanning topics as varied as modern professional cycling to the fictional movie Rocky to the deadly ball game of the ancient Mayans, the first three volumes contain overview essays and entries for specific sports that have been and are currently practiced around the world. The fourth volume provides a compendium of information on the winners of major sporting competitions from around the world. Readers will gain invaluable insights into how sports have been enjoyed throughout all of human culture, and more fully comprehend their cultural contexts. The entries provide suggestions for further reading on each topic—helpful to general readers, students with school projects, university students and academics alike. Additionally, the four-volume Sports Around the World spotlights key charismatic athletes who have changed a sport or become more than just an outstanding player.

Ten-year-old Sadie Meadows is reading in bed on New Year's Eve when she notices an unopened present beneath her window. She finds it contains a book called The World from Your Bedroom - There and Back Again, but when she opens it up and begins to read, she is disappointed to see it is nothing more than a travel book packed with pages detailing hundreds of places across the world. She reads the first page, then puts the book down just as sleep claims her at the instant that the New Year arrives. She awakes to find that, instead of being in her bedroom at home in Skipton, somehow she has been transported to Ireland, the location that she had just read about in the book. There follow a series of adventures, each set in a different location, as Sadie finds herself travelling across the globe as she attempts to get back home again. This month sees her journeying across China and the Far East into the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.

From tropical rainforests to frozen glaciers, South America has some of the most varied landscapes on Earth. Brazil is South America’s largest country in both area and population. Learn more about the natural resources, tourism, and culture in South America, an Exploring Our Seven Continents book.

Mauritius in the late 1980’s, unemployment is at its peak and a young girl gets the amazing opportunity to travel leaving behind her bleak job in a textile factory. A whole Mauritian crew of one hundred and fifty is recruited to form the hotel staff of a brand new cruise ship, the Astor which flies the Mauritian flag and is due for a three month maiden voyage from the port of Southampton in England to Genoa in Italy around the South America Coast to Peru and the Caribbean islands. Their difficulty to adapt to European food and misery of seasickness is compensated by the luxury of their new living quarters and fascination seeing so many wonderful places. The cabin stewardesses Mela, Bianca, Nicoleta and other members of the crew tour this great world stunned by the beauty of Norwegian Glaciers and fjords, the greatness of the Amazon River and awed at Jerusalem and the holy land. Souvenirs of unpalatable pizza in Portugal, encounter with rude Spanish horse carriage drivers in Malaga, meeting with a Togolese in Hamburg, a Pakistanis in Montreal are evoked. They befriend Turkish students in Ankara, eat delicious baby octopus salads in the Balearic Islands and dive in cold seas of the Mediterranean and warm lagoons of the Indian Ocean. In French speaking countries they delight in using their familiar Creole with people of Haiti and Jamaica and enjoy the different French accents of Montreal and Quebec in Canada, Casablanca in Morocco, and Dakar in Senegal. They dance in the nightclubs of the world, moving to South American music in Salvador de Bahia and carnival music in Rio de Janeiro, Whitney Houston’s 1987 tube ‘I want to dance with somebody’ in Montreal and Mediterranean rhythms in Greece.

Shamanism can be defined as the practice of initiated shamans who are distinguished by their mastery of a range of altered states of consciousness. Shamanism arises from the actions the shaman takes in non-ordinary reality and the results of those actions in ordinary reality. It is not a religion, yet it demands spiritual discipline and personal sacrifice from the mature shaman who seeks the highest stages of mystical development.

Step into an earlier America to explore 15 different social studies topics ranging from exploring the New World to The Bill of Rights with these engaging texts. Leveled Texts for Social Studies: Early America is an award-winning resource designed to help all students grasp important historical people and events through high-interest social studies material written at four different reading levels ranging from 1.5 to 7.2. Each text is presented in a two-page format and complemented with comprehension questions written at each reading level. Includes a Teacher Resource CD with a modifiable version of each passage plus full-color versions of the text and image files. This resource is aligned to the interdisciplinary themes from the Partnership for 21st Century Skills and supports Common Core State Standards. 144 pages + CD

Describes the physical characteristics of honeybees, where they are found, their behavior and social interactions, and a brief history of beekeeping.