The Cretan Way is a 500 km walking route which takes you from east to west across the varied and spectacular landscapes of Crete. It is the ideal way to discover the rural, mountainous and coastal regions of this incredible island. The Cretan Way is the first ever guidebook for a long-distance hike in Crete and includes maps, descriptions, a travelogue, GPS tracks, accommodation info and tips for walking one of the most remarkable routes in the world.

George Psychoundakis was a twenty-one-year-old shepherd from the village of Asi Gonia when the battle of Crete began: “It was in May 1941 that, all of a sudden, high in the sky, we heard the drone of many aeroplanes growing steadily closer.” The German parachutists soon outnumbered the British troops who were forced first to retreat, then to evacuate, before Crete fell to the Germans. So began the Cretan Resistance and the young shepherd’s career as a wartime runner. In this unique account of the Resistance, Psychoundakis records the daily life of his fellow Cretans, his treacherous journeys on foot from the eastern White Mountains to the western slopes of Mount Ida to transmit messages and transport goods, and his enduring friendships with British officers (like his eventual translator Patrick Leigh Fermor) whose missions he helped to carry out with unflagging courage, energy, and good humor. Includes thirty-two black-and-white photographs and a map.

This is the first book to help the visitor understand Crete's remarkable landscape, which is just as spectacular as the island's rich archaeological heritage. Crete is a wonderful and dramatic island, a miniature continent with precipitous mountains, a hundred gorges, unique plants, extinct animals and lost civilisations, as well as the characteristic agricultural landscape of olive groves, vines and goats, Jennifer Moody and Oliver Rackham explain how the island's peculiar and extraordinary features, moulded and modified by centuries of human activity, have come together to create the landscape we see today. They also explain the formation and ecology of Crete's beautiful mountains and coastline, and the contemporary threats to the island's fragile natural beauty.

Renowned British novelist Unsworth documents his fascinating travels in Crete, largest of the Greek isles and home to the Minoan civilization of 1500 B.C.--one of the most glittering and sophisticated cultures the world has ever seen.

Why do Cretans live longer than other people? Why are the wrong combinations of certain foods and drugs lethal? Can brazil nuts prevent cancer? Why do peanut bags expand on airplane flights? Just what IS the connection between Silly Putty and Flubber? Is there a difference between natural and synthetic vitamin E? How do you get rid of skunk smell? Why are witches linked with broomsticks? Why must bleach never be combined with acids? Why might the whiff of an armpit trigger romance? Why is fish known as "brain food?" Dr. Joe Schwarcz has been delighting readers for years in his weekly newspaper columns, collected here for the first time. Find out how a case from John Mortimer's Rumpole of the Bailey provides a valuable lesson about foods that shouldn't be combined with MAO inhibitors in "Death by Souffle"; read about a chemistry prof who fooled the scientific community into believing that Lot's wife was actually turned into a pillar of salt in "The Lot of Lot's Wife"; watch as two scientists battle it out for the right to claim bottled body odor as their own in "The Whiff of Romance"; and learn why you really shouldn't be throwing out your albedo (the stringy stuff found on the inner skin of citrus fruit) in "This Pulp Isn't Fiction." With its blend of fascinating historical stories, anecdotes about everyday life, and debunking of nonsensicalcures and schemes, this book is guaranteed to amuse, inform, and delight.