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At Café Des Amis in Breaux Bridge, breakfast comes with zydeco music and dancing on the side, a tradition begun in 1998. Melding "pragmatism and adaptability," says historian Carl Brasseaux, is typically Cajun.

Cajun Country

Zydeco and étouffée still reign in western Louisiana, where the zesty gumbo known as Acadian culture has simmered since 1764

"It caught the public's imagination," says Heaney. "We will be dead and gone for years, and people will still be saying, coming off the boat: 'That's Alcatraz.'"

Breaking into Alcatraz

A former guard’s inside look at America’s most famous prison

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Galena’s 2007 Summer Highlights

The British colonists who settled a bit of land they soon named Jamestown (depicted in a 19th-century engraving) gave England its first enduring encampment in the New World--and, not incidentally, began our national narrative.

Beyond Jamestown

After the colony was founded, 400 years ago this month, Capt. John Smith set out to explore the riches of Chesapeake Bay

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Cajun Country Highlights & Hotspots

The question doesn't rank up there with, say, What is gravity? But where was the hamburger invented? To promote its claim, Akron, Ohio, hosts the National Hamburger Festival on July 21 and 22. Over 20,000 people served, including competitive eater Dave "Coondog" O'Karma.

Highlights & Hotspots

A selection of the season’s noteworthy events

The first thing Terry Smith did after moving to Washington in 1977 was buy a boat and sail it on the Bay.

A Great Adventure

Terry Smith, author of “Beyond Jamestown,” sailed in the 400-year-old wake of colonial explorer Capt. John Smith

Outer slope of the Rano Raraku volcano, the quarry of the Moais with many uncompleted statues.

The Mystery of Easter Island

New findings rekindle old debates about when the first people arrived and why their civilization collapsed

Conspiracists try to decode Masonic symbols, like those in the temple's stained-glass window.

The Lost Symbol’s Masonic Temple

Conspiracy buffs, including author Dan Brown, tour the lavish Washington, D.C. temple of the Freemasons

Several dozen companies, such as Manhattan Rickshaw, operate in the United States.

Rickshaws Reinvented

The ancient transportation takes a modern turn

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Highlights & Hotspots

Some of this year’s noteworthy European events

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Next Stop, Squalor

Is poverty tourism “poorism,” they call it exploration or exploitation?

In Lisbon's Rossio Square, Pistolesi's computer-aided stitching together of 12 distinct images yields one, he says, that is "like a painting."

Circling Squares

A 360-degree perspective on some of Europe’s most alluring public spaces

The Finnish capital, facing the Baltic Sea (residents frequent the quay), enjoys a setting that has long enthralled visitors, including a Frenchman in 1838: "This town stretches over a vast peninsula...," he wrote, "the sea surrounds it on all sides."

Helsinki Warming

The city of Sibelius, known as a center for innovative technology and design, now stakes its claim as an urban hotspot

A Hindu monk offers a morning prayer along the Ganges River.

India’s Holiest City

At Varanasi, Hindu pilgrims come to pray—and to die—along the sacred Ganges River

"There were kids everywhere, in densities now unimaginable," says Bryson (at age 7).

Boys’ Life

In 1950s Des Moines, childhood was “unsupervised, unregulated and robustly physical”

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Travelin’ Man

Nailing stories from Timbuktu to the Basque Country

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Mixing Terrorism and Tourism

In this Q & A, Josh Hammer, author of “Peace at Last?,” discusses the change from war reporting to travel reporting

"Baltimore had once been a cosmopolitan jewel," writes Frank Deford.

Bleeve It, Hon

The tentative city the sportswriter grew up in has regained a bit of swagger

Griswold has reported from the Middle East, West and East Africa and South and Southeast Asia.

An interview with Eliza Griswold, author of “Waging Peace in the Philippines”

Eliza Griswold discusses the U.S. approach on Jolo and applying these lessons to Iraq and Afghanistan

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