In this vivid tour of Alaska's Inside Passage, a Seattle-based British writer describes the natural and cultural history of the area, his personal relationship to the sea, and the colorful acquaintances he met along his solo exploration by sailboat of the region. A New York Times Notable Book for 1999.

For one week in the month of August, the writer Nessa Rapoport and her children, along with her mother and an aunt and uncle, travel by houseboat along the Trent-Severn Waterway in Ontario to the little river town where she spent summers as a child. The journey is not only a chance to show her children an important place from her youth. It is also a way of recovering the self she was at that age, of reconnecting with beloved relatives, of finding consolation for some of life's losses, and--not least--of remembering the joy she took in books, a pleasure that has stayed with her in a life of reading and writing.

As the year 1000 A.D. approached, Europeans feared the world would end. The old order was crumbling, and terrifying, confusing new ideas were gaining hold in the populace. Random and horrible violence seemed to sprout everywhere, without warning and without apparent remedy. And, in fact, when the millennium arrived, the apocalypse did take place; a world did end, and a new world arose from the ruins.

"Oversexed, Overfed, and Over here" was a phrase used to describe the million and a half American servicemen stationed in Great Britain from 1942 to 1945. Reynolds combines original documents from America and Great Britain with personal interviews to explore the relationships between the GI's and British women.