‘A Year to Remember’ recalls the events experienced by the author during a one-year journey, through Europe and the Middle East, covering approximately 25,000 miles in a converted Land Rover.
The countries visited, now over forty years ago and often with a totally inadequate period of time allocated to them, included Belgium, Holland, Northern Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Northern Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Southern Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Albania, Austria, Switzerland, and France.
The reader will note that the geography of several international borders has changed and will be aware that wars and mass tourism have rendered some of the places described as almost unrecognisable today.
Perhaps this is the value of this memoir, for in spite of the lure of these locations for the modern day traveller, so many of the most memorable places that were visited, regretfully now no longer have the same attraction for the author to revisit. Where lasting friendships were made, many have moved out or died. Their homes, into which we were freely invited, have been reduced to rubble.
This is not intended to be a depressing introduction, but the natural beauty of so many places has also been altered and so it does perhaps, illustrate the value of what was experienced. The world has changed and the events of the past cannot really be re-created. Nevertheless, the memories remain. We are now lucky to be able to remember those times through the medium of words and pictures.

“America after America” is a book of travel notes, impressions about American way of life in comparison with European lifestyle. They are thoughts that crossed the author's mind during his second travel in the United States. It is not a description of sites or happenings, there are no portrayals of characters, or exciting adventures. Thoughts fly far away while the plane, bus, or train carries us over miles and miles. Those long American roads through desert are excellent for putting down our thoughts. Accordingly this is more a book of travel thoughts than one of travel adventures.
The author of this book, Cristache Gheorghiu, is an accomplished painter living in Romania. Click here to visit his picture gallery.

In April, 1848, the author of the present volume left England in company with Mr. A. R. Wallace--"who has since acquired wide fame in connection with the Darwinian theory of Natural Selection"--on a joint expedition up the river Amazons, for the purpose of investigating the Natural History of the vast wood-region traversed by that mighty river and its numerous tributaries. Mr. Wallace returned to England after four years' stay, and was, we believe, unlucky enough to lose the greater part of his collections by the shipwreck of the vessel in which he had transmitted them to London. Mr. Bates prolonged his residence in the Amazon valley seven years after Mr. Wallace's departure, and did not revisit his native country again until 1859. Mr. Bates was also more fortunate than his companion in bringing his gathered treasures home to England in safety. So great, indeed, was the mass of specimens accumulated by Mr. Bates during his eleven years' researches, that upon the working out of his collection, which has been accomplished (or is now in course of being accomplished) by different scientific naturalists in this country, it has been ascertained that representatives of no less than 14,712 species are amongst them, of which about 8000 were previously unknown to science. It may be remarked that by far the greater portion of these species, namely, about 14,000, belong to the class of Insects--to the study of which Mr. Bates principally devoted his attention--being, as is well known, himself recognised as no mean authority as regards this class of organic beings. In his present volume, however, Mr. Bates does not confine himself to his entomological discoveries, nor to any other branch of Natural History, but supplies a general outline of his adventures during his journeyings up and down the mighty river, and a variety of information concerning every object of interest, whether physical or political, that he met with by the way.