In Mediterranean Winter, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Balkan Ghosts and Eastward to Tartary, relives an austere, haunting journey he took as a youth through the off-season Mediterranean. The awnings are rolled up and the other tourists are gone, so the damp, cold weather takes him back to the 1950s and earlier—a golden, intensely personal age of tourism. Decades ago, Kaplan voyaged from North Africa to Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece, luxuriating in the radical freedom of youth, unaccountable to time because there was always time to make up for a mistake. He recalls that journey in this Persian miniature of a book, less to look inward into his own past than to look outward in order to dissect the process of learning through travel, in which a succession of new landscapes can lead to books and artwork never before encountered. Kaplan first imagines Tunis as the glow of gypsum lamps shimmering against lime-washed mosques; the city he actually discovers is even more intoxicating. He takes the reader to the ramparts of a Turkish kasbah where Carthaginian, Roman, and Byzantine forts once stood: “I could see deep into Algeria over a rib-work of hills so gaunt it seemed the wind had torn the flesh off them.” In these austere and aromatic surroundings he discovers Saint Augustine; the courtyards of Tunis lead him to the historical writings of Ibn Khaldun. Kaplan takes us to the fifth-century Greek temple at Segesta, where he reflects on the ill-fated Athenian invasion of Sicily. At Hadrian’s villa, “Shattered domes revealed clouds moving overhead in countless visions of eternity. It was a place made for silence and for contemplation, where you wanted a book handy. Every corner was a cloister. No view was panoramic: each seemed deliberately composed.” Kaplan’s bus and train travels, his nighttime boat voyages, and his long walks in one archaeological site after another lead him to subjects as varied as the Berber threat to Carthage; the Roman army’s hunt for the warlord Jugurtha; the legacy of Byzantine art; the medieval Greek philosopher Georgios Gemistos Plethon, who helped kindle the Italian Renaissance; twentieth-century British literary writing about Greece; and the links between Rodin and the Croa- tian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic. Within these pages are smells, tastes, and the profundity of chance encounters. Mediterranean Winter begins in Rodin’s sculpture garden in Paris, passes through the gritty streets of Marseilles, and ends with a moving epiphany about Greece as the world prepares for the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. Mediterranean Winter is the story of an education. It is filled with memories and history, not the author’s alone, but humanity’s as well.

Mediterranean Winteris a lyrical account of Robert Kaplan's journey in the off season around the Mediterranean, retracing the footsteps of his youth. A beautifully written meditation on the golden age of travel and the pleasures of history, it takes us from Tunisia, once proud Carthage, rival to Rome, through Sicily, up the Dalmatian coast and into Greece.Mediterranean Winteris alive with the spirits of the past, from Hadrian and Homer to Hannibal and Ibn Khaldun, and closes with a fascinating pilgrimage to Patrick Leigh Fermor, whom Kaplan visits in his hideaway on the Aegean.

This is the first volume in the series ""Regional Climate " "Studies"." It presents the analysis of climatological data from 500 years b.c. to the present day. It discusses climate variablity and its interaction with the biosphere in the Mediterranean area. Different approaches are applied to describe and interpret climate variability and to denote trends. Specific emphasis is given to variable water cycle which makes the book a prerequisite for all those concerned with the problem of desertification as well as the validation of climate models. The book adresses the role of remote sensing data to detect synergies throughout the Mediterranean basin and refers to recent marine research results. The second volume of the series will probably be published in February 2003.

This multi-authored book provides an updated description of climate variability in the Mediterranean basin, focusing on decadal and centennial time scales and on the results available on the impact of future emission scenarios at regional scale. The authors describs both local physical processes responsible for these variability - such as changes in the surface properties and land use- and globalprocesses - such as changes in the large scale atmospheric circulation associated to global warming, NAO, tropical monsoon and ENSO. Regional climate change issues are also addressed. Mediterranean Climate Variability aims to review the research on this region and to provide at the same time both an introduction and a reference for researchers. It covers topics typical of Climatology, Climate history, Meteorology, Oceanography, Environmental Science but the information here provided would also be useful for research in agriculture, social and economic studies. It is addressed to scientists and students interested in the Mediterranean climate and environment. Some topics have interesting connections to nearby regions: Northern Atlantic, West Africa, central and Eastern Europe. Each chapter will contain a summary meant to provide information to policy makers, researchers from other fields, and in general to a wide audience without a technical expertise on climate. * Provides an updated analysis of the Mediterranean climate features and guidelines for future research * Considers both oceanographic and atmospheric aspects * Analyzes the Mediterranean climate in a global perspective

Rod Heikell is the acknowledged expert on Mediterranean sailing, and this is the perfect guide for anyone cruising the area. Thoroughly updated and in colour throughout, this new edition conveys the magic of Mediterranean cruising, as well as giving practical first-hand advice on sailing these enticing waters. Although the Mediterranean provides wonderfully diverse cruising opportunities, it can also deliver a few surprises to the unwary. Rod Heikell gives sound advice on anchoring, berthing bow or stern-to, what weather to expect, facilities and the costs of keeping a boat there, plus advice on navigation, popular routes, formalities and what to expect ashore. Each country around the Mediterranean is covered, and there's even a handy section on shoe-string cruising for those on a tight budget. 'Offers time-served advice to both the novice and the old-hand.' Nautical Magazine

This book comments on the complexities of Mediterranean tourism, with contributions from researchers, consultants, managers and advisors from thirteen countries. It is an excellent reference tool for undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as industry practitioners, for the examination of tourism in different Mediterranean contexts.