1,000 Perfect Weekends: Great Getaways Around the Globe is another addition in the National Geographic Society books to inspire and educate.

The novel is part Forrest Gump, part Big Fish where tall tales are being told and historical figures make appearances

Amanda Brown, a young missionary from South Carolina, travels to the Belgian Congo in 1958 in order to oversee a missionary guest house in the town of Belle Vue. Belle Vue is a diamond mining town in which the race by the Belgian occupiers to get as many riches as they can before the forces of independence takes over is a major concern.

Andrew Jackson was born in northern South Carolina and at the age of 13 was already a member of the Revolutionary Army and a prisoner of the British. After securing his release, his mother left him an orphan at the age of 14, but Jackson thrived and became a lawyer through apprenticeships. By 1788 Jackson became the solicitor for Nashville, a frontier town.

The fictional story of Harrison William Sheppard, a quite boy of a dull American bureaucrat and a saucy Mexican mother. Sheppard spends his childhood in Mexico