Valuable reference book, please ask at library issue desk.

If you have ever wondered what happened to Britain's lost railways and where you can explore this bygone network, then this book is for you - a new and revised edition that brings the routes on offer right up to date. While many old railways have been sold to private owners, there is now a growing network of several thousand miles which one can explore. Ideal for young and old alike, families, those who need an easier walk, railway enthusiasts, walkers, cyclists or just those who are curious about local history, this essential guide will point you in the direction of one of this country's least known national resources - its network of former railway lines, encompassing a wealth of natural and industrial heritage.

Vol. 1 (1880/81); v. 2 (1882/83); v. 3 (1884/85); v. 4 (1887/88); v. 5 (1889/90); v. 6 (1891/92); v. 7 (1892/93); v. 8 (1895/96); v. 9 (1897/98); v. 10 (1899/1900); v. 11 (1901/02); v. 12 (1903/04); v. 13 (1905/06); v. 14 (1908/09); v. 15 (1910/11); v. 16 (1912/13); v. 17 (1914/15); v. 18 (1916/17); v. 19 (1918/19); v. 20 (1922/23).

From a drunken housewife who barely escapes being caught in adultery to the author's soul-stirring encounter with one of the earth's last scenes of natural splendor, Going to Extremes succeeds in encompassing the surreal qualities and mind-bending contradictions of Alaska today. What Joe McGinniss found on his extraordinary odyssey was a world of stark contrasts. He introduces us to the people-from pot-smoking high-school principals to TV-watching Eskimos-and their problems: rampant drinking, divorce, human disintegration, and the oil-inspired greed and waste. And he recaptures both the power and the beauty of a land still untamed and undefiled, and the endurance of a spirit of independence and adventure that finds Alaska its natural home. A deeply moving, personal book, in turns wry, witty, cutting and bedazzling, Going to Extremes is, quite simply, a thoroughly rewarding experience.

The territory of Napa County, California, contains more than grapevines. The deepest roots belong to Wappo-speaking peoples, a group whose history has since been buried by the stories of Spanish colonizers, Californios (today's Latinos), African Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Euro Americans. Napa's history clearly is one of co-existence; yet, its schoolbooks tell a linear story that climaxes with the arrival of Euro Americans. In "This Land was Mexican Once," Linda Heidenreich excavates Napa's subaltern voices and histories to tell a complex, textured local history with important implications for the larger American West, as well. Heidenreich is part of a new generation of scholars who are challenging not only the old, Euro-American depiction of California, but also the linear method of historical storytelling—a method that inevitably favors the last man writing. She first maps the overlapping histories that comprise Napa's past, then examines how the current version came to dominate—or even erase—earlier events. So while history, in Heidenreich's words, may be "the stuff of nation-building," it can also be "the stuff of resistance." Chapters are interspersed with "source breaks"—raw primary sources that speak for themselves and interrupt the linear, Euro-American telling of Napa's history. Such an inclusive approach inherently acknowledges the connections Napa's peoples have to the rest of the region, for the linear history that marginalizes minorities is not unique to Napa. Latinos, for instance, have populated the American West for centuries, and are still shaping its future. In the end, "This Land was Mexican Once" is more than the story of Napa, it is a multidimensional model for reflecting a multicultural past.