In the late 19th century, photographers visited the lands and people of three Central Asian khanates newly conquered by Czarist Russia. Their portraits and scenes of daily life, collected as part of a documentation project on the Turkic peoples, open a new window on the era.

Though it lies on the old trans-Himalayan trade route, the steep valley of the Swat River in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province is still one of the country's remotest regions, and one of the most beautiful. A photographer evokes the peace and quiet majesty of the Vale.

The dreams of 83 Bosnian students have been rekindled, thanks to their own courage, the vision of an Arab-American photographer and the hospitality of American families, schools and communities. Together, they are preserving Bosnia's seed corn: its future leaders.

"In the late 1800's, my grandmother, whom we called "Sitto," was sent to school in her Lebanese mountain village. There she was taken not into the classroom, but into the kitchen. As a result, she didn't learn to read or write; instead, she became a wonderful cook."

Fonio, a tasty and nutritious cereal once common in West Africa, has become expensive and hard to find because women no longer have hours to spend preparing it. Now, a Dakar teacher's mechanical fonio husker offers hope that the valuable grain will find renewed popularity.

The woodcarver's chisel and the embroiderer's needle still express Swat's elegant artistic style, in which patterns and motifs from Hellenistic Central Asia and from the Islamic world join to create a unique fusion. Some design elements can be traced back more than 1500 years.