ALTIPLANO PUBLICATIONS is interested in new or unusual approaches to living and learning. We are open to any ideas that could contribute to quality of life. No subject is beyond our interest but we do have a bias in favor of three areas.
   
        Sense of place. In dealing with alternative travel and living abroad, we favor narrations that get past the usual travel guide clichés and discover what gives a place its unique identity. We believe that a setting includes the people in it, and that photographing monuments and buying trinkets is a sad substitute for truly experiencing a place.
 
         Bicycles, pedestrians, public transportation. A great hoax of the twentieth century was to convince whole societies that it's wonderful to live removed from commerce ("single-use zoning"). Result: folks have to get into their car to buy an aspirin or a loaf or bread. The winners are the oil, auto and tire companies. The losers are decent citizens who have no options for useful exercise. The effect is a decline in fitness, a strain on the pocket book (it costs well over $6,000 per year to support a car), a catastrophic impact on the environment, and an aesthetic wasteland (what James Howard Kunstler (www.kunstler.com) calls The Geography of Nowhere). It is no coincidence that fitness statistics improve in cities and regions with walkable neighborhoods, efficient public transportation and quality bicycle paths.

          Horse race handicapping. Author Tom Ainslie has written that the game of horse race handicapping is a greater challenge than even bridge or chess. Altiplano Publications publishes and publicizes books that treat this infinite subject with the dignity it deserves.

          About the publisher. Mark Cramer is the author of an odd array of books including the work of fiction, Scared Money and Kinky Handicapping, both on horse racing, FunkyTowns USA: the best alternative and visionary places (featured on CNN), and Culture Shock! Cuba. He is an avid but not-so-fast cyclist and challenges Lance Armstrong to a race across Paris during rush hour. He lives across the street from an off-track betting establishment (mixed-use zoning), rereads Charles Bukowski, listens to Coltrane and enjoys hiking in the Andes at 17,000 feet above sea level.