Everywhere you look, for heaven's sake, there are ladies. Never mind for heaven's sake, this is heaven. It is the Garden of Eden, where you are allowed to eat all the apples you want. The air itself is sexy. Never mind meanderings on hill tribes and Buddhist temple architecture, or burble about meditation and mantras, and dire warnings about 'prostitutes' and 'the sex industry'. Because that is why you have come here. You are a man with ample leisure time and money in your pocket, and you are here for the ladies. Because they do it. Welcome to Thailand, where hundreds of thousands of male tourists are lured every year by thoughts of luscious silk-skinned maidens whose smiles promise ecstasy. And despite the exotic sights, gorgeous beaches and mouth-watering food, for many the magic of the east means sex. In the raucous seaside resorts like Patang and Pattaya, armies of sultry young temptresses ensare the hearts and bankrolls of besotted foreigners. Totally frank, Kit McCann charts his own uninhibited rake's progress through the moonscape of lust and its pitfalls. A vast comedy of corruption, deceit, drugs, murder, despair, suicide, and above all, greed. He should know, he saw it all.

A “certainly weird . . . strangely wonderful . . . [and] often irresistible” search to find the real Garden of Eden (The New York Times Book Review). Where, precisely, was God’s Paradise? St. Augustine had a theory. So did medieval monks, John Calvin and Christopher Columbus. But when Darwin’s theory of evolution changed our understanding of human origins, shouldn’t the desire to put a literal Eden on the map have faded away? Not so fast. This “gloriously researched, pluckily written historical and anecdotal assay of humankind’s age-old quixotic quest for the exact location of the Biblical garden” (Elle) explores an obsession that has consumed scientists and theologians alike for centuries. To this day, the search continues, taken up by amateur explorers, clergymen, scholars, engineers and educators—romantic seekers all who started with the same simple-sounding Bible verses, only to end up at a different spot on the globe: Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, the North Pole, Mesopotamia, China, Iraq—and Ohio. Inspired by an Eden seeker in her own family, “Wilensky-Lanford approaches her subjects with respect, enthusiasm and conscientious research” (San Francisco Chronicle) as she traverses a century-spanning history provoking surprising insights into where we came from, what we did wrong, and where we go from here. And it all makes for “a lively journey” (Kirkus Reviews).