Banner Message
For a limited time, last semester's preceptorial books are 20% off!
Our campus remains closed to visitors, so we cannot offer in-person browsing or curbside pickup at this time. We process mail orders from 9 a.m.–4 p.m. MT, Monday through Friday.
Nature
Although Herman Melville's Moby-Dick is beloved as one of the most profound and enduring works of American fiction, we rarely consider it a work of nature writing--or even a novel of the sea. Yet Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard avers Moby-Dick is the "best book ever written about nature," and nearly the entirety of the story is set on the waves, with scarcely a whiff of land. In fact, Ishmael's sea yarn is in conversation with the nature writing of Emerson and Thoreau, and Melville himself did much more than live for a year in a cabin beside a pond. He set sail: to the far remote Pacific Ocean, spending more than three years at sea before writing his masterpiece in 1851. A revelation for Moby-Dick devotees and neophytes alike, Ahab's Rolling Sea is a chronological journey through the natural history of Melville's novel. From white whales to whale intelligence, giant squids, barnacles, albatross, and sharks, Richard J. King examines what Melville knew from his own experiences and the sources available to a reader in the mid-1800s, exploring how and why Melville might have twisted what was known to serve his fiction. King then climbs to the crow's nest, setting Melville in the context of the American perception of the ocean in 1851--at the very start of the Industrial Revolution and just before the publication of On the Origin of Species. King compares Ahab's and Ishmael's worldviews to how we see the ocean today: an expanse still immortal and sublime, but also in crisis. And although the concept of stewardship of the sea would have been entirely foreign, if not absurd, to Melville, King argues that Melville's narrator Ishmael reveals his own tendencies toward what we would now call environmentalism. Featuring a coffer of illustrations and an array of interviews with contemporary scientists, fishers, and whale watch operators, Ahab's Rolling Sea offers new insight not only into a cherished masterwork and its author but also into our evolving relationship with the briny deep--from whale hunters to climate refugees.
Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, award-winning nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches National Park in Utah, braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the lives of all those who care about the West.
These two great westerners had very different ideas about what it meant to love the land and try to care for it, and they did so in distinctly different styles. Boozy, lustful, and irascible, Abbey was best known as the author of the novel The Monkey Wrench Gang (and also of the classic nature memoir Desert Solitaire), famous for spawning the idea of guerrilla actions--known to admirers as "monkeywrenching" and to law enforcement as domestic terrorism--to disrupt commercial exploitation of western lands. By contrast, Stegner, a buttoned-down, disciplined, faithful family man and devoted professor of creative writing, dedicated himself to working through the system to protect western sites such as Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado.
In a region beset by droughts and fires, by fracking and drilling, and by an ever-growing population that seems to be in the process of loving the West to death, Gessner asks: how might these two farseeing environmental thinkers have responded to the crisis?
Gessner takes us on an inspiring, entertaining journey as he renews his own commitment to cultivating a meaningful relationship with the wild, confronting American overconsumption, and fighting environmental injustice--all while reawakening the thrill of the words of his two great heroes.
Featuring some of America's greatest writers and poets, this landmark anthology is a one-of-a-kind field guide to the American literary imagination. Americans have always been fascinated by birds and from the beginning American writers have captured this keen interest in a variety of genres: poems, journals, memoirs, short stories, essays, and travel accounts. Here literature professor and avid birder Andrew Rubenfeld, in collaboration with acclaimed writer Terry Tempest Williams, who provides a foreword, gathers evocative and surprising writings on birds and our fascination with them from an astonishing array of American poets and writers. The result is a literature of singular depth and beauty, with occasional flights of fancy in the mix. Experience the exquisite beauty of Native American songs about birds. Accompany Lewis and Clark as they encounter new species, Audubon as he sketches near New Orleans, and Emerson and Thoreau birding together around Walden Pond. Delight in Sarah Orne Jewett's poignant tale of a snowy egret in the Maine woods and Florence Merriam's portrait of a winter wren in Central Park. Join Rachel Carson as she watches skimmers along the Atlantic coast and Roger Tory Peterson observing snail kites in the Everglades. And thrill to an impressive roster of modern and contemporary poets, including Robert Frost, Elizabeth Bishop, Sterling A. Brown, Cornelius Eady, Mary Oliver, Linda Hogan, Louise Erdrich, and David Tomas Martinez, as they evoke the magic and haunting beauty of America's birds.
As America and the world grapple with the consequences of global environmental change, writer and activist Bill McKibben offers this unprecedented, provocative, and timely anthology, gathering the best and most significant American environmental writing from the last two centuries. Classics of the environmental imagination, the essays of Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and John Burroughs; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Rachel Carson's Silent Spring - are set against the inspiring story of an emerging activist movement, as revealed by newly uncovered reports of pioneering campaigns for conservation, passages from landmark legal opinions and legislation, and searing protest speeches. Here are some of America's greatest and most impassioned writers, taking a turn toward nature and recognizing the fragility of our situation on earth and the urgency of the search for a sustainable way of life. Thought-provoking essays on overpopulation, consumerism, energy policy, and the nature of nature, join ecologists - memoirs and intimate sketches of the habitats of endangered species. The anthology includes a detailed chronology of the environmental movement and American environmental history, as well as an 80-page color portfolio of illustrations.
An Eternity of EaglesThe Human History of the Most Fascinating Bird in the World A compulsively readable natural and social history, An Eternity of Eagles is a profusely illustrated celebration of all things eagle, by a naturalist who has kept eagles himself and ridden with the eagle tribes of Central Asia. "His vivid description of an eagle, if it could imagine itself, is of a 'carnivorous Buddhist.' Through Bodio's insights we get a strange glimpse of these other minds that share the earth with us."--Annie Proulx, author of The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain From one of the foremost author/naturalists in the country, Stephen J. Bodio, comes a compulsively readable natural and social history of the most beautiful bird in the world -- the eagle, with a lengthy and admiring introduction by Annie Proulx.The Eagle's Shadow traces our love-hate relationship to these "living dinosaurs," from Neolithic rock art and Native American religion through the practices of Kazakh falconers who use them to hunt wolves, and to contemporary art and popular culture.Proulx sums up best the heart of this book: "Those of us who are interested in bird behavior beyond the feeder or the identification guide book find meager pickings when it comes to information. I am fortunate that my house faces a cliff with a river at the base where I can watch raptors, water fowl, and a hundred other species. The nests of a pair of bald eagles and another upriver inhabited by golden eagles are in sight from the breakfast table. I have plenty of books on birds, but the information on why the big eagles do what they do is hard to dig out. Eagle behavior is usually lumped together with the general behavior of the Accipitrids, but a single book focused on the rich lore and sweep of eagledom did not seem to exist... . Bodio's beautifully written and authoritative book, Eagles, is a primary source of information as well as an omnium gatherum from literature, film and mythology concerning these large, striking birds."Stephen Bodio was born and educated in Boston and has lived in a rural New Mexico village for over thirty years. He has traveled extensively in Europe, Africa, and Asia and has written five books.
An Inconvenient Truth--Gore's groundbreaking, battle cry of a follow-up to the bestselling Earth in the Balance--is being published to tie in with a documentary film of the same name. Both the book and film were inspired by a series of multimedia presentations on global warming that Gore created and delivers to groups around the world. With this book, Gore, who is one of our environmental heroes--and a leading expert--brings together leading-edge research from top scientists around the world; photographs, charts, and other illustrations; and personal anecdotes and observations to document the fast pace and wide scope of global warming. He presents, with alarming clarity and conclusiveness--and with humor, too--that the fact of global warming is not in question and that its consequences for the world we live in will be disastrous if left unchecked. This riveting new book--written in an accessible, entertaining style--will open the eyes of even the most skeptical.
We don't just live in the air; we live because of it. It's the most miraculous substance on earth, responsible for our food, our weather, our water, and our ability to hear. In this exuberant book, gifted science writer Gabrielle Walker peels back the layers of our atmosphere with the stories of the people who uncovered its secrets: - A flamboyant Renaissance Italian discovers how heavy our air really is: The air filling Carnegie Hall, for example, weighs seventy thousand pounds. - A one-eyed barnstorming pilot finds a set of winds that constantly blow five miles above our heads. - An impoverished American farmer figures out why hurricanes move in a circle by carving equations with his pitchfork on a barn door. - A well-meaning inventor nearly destroys the ozone layer. - A reclusive mathematical genius predicts, thirty years before he's proved right, that the sky contains a layer of floating metal fed by the glowing tails of shooting stars.
From the acclaimed author of Theft "A lyrical exploration of the timeless themes of nature, mortality, love, and family" in the American West (Kristen Iverson, author of Full Body Burden).
"Radical, before it meant a person who advocates strong political reform, meant getting to the root of things, the origin. It comes from the Latin radix, radicis, meaning radish, a root vegetable." --BK Loren
These meditative essays range in subject from a transcendental encounter with a pack of coyotes to the irony of a neighbor's claim that nature "has gone out of vogue"; from a mother's slow deterioration from Parkinson's disease to the unexpected way the Loma Prieta earthquake eroded the author's depression by offering her a sense of her small place in our wild and worthwhile world.
Award-winning writer and naturalist BK Loren takes an empathetic and gentle approach to the intricacies of human relationships and the nature of consciousness. Fear of death and time, cooperation born of clashing viewpoints, the beauty of tradition even when it's destructive, a love of language, a sense of loss amid the fast-paced materialistic world--through each of these subjects and more, Loren peels back the layers of her own life, revealing what it means to be a human being in these often inhumane times.
Beginning with Yuka, a 39,000 year old mummified woolly mammoth recently found in the Siberian permafrost, each of the 16 essays in Animals Strike Curious Poses investigates a different famous animal named and immortalized by humans. Modeled loosely after a medieval bestiary, these witty, playful, whipsmart essays traverse history, myth, science, and more, bringing each beast vibrantly to life.
Elena Passarello is an actor, a writer, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Fellowship in nonfiction. Her first collection with Sarabande Books, Let Me Clear My Throat, won the gold medal for nonfiction at the 2013 Independent Publisher Awards. She lives in Corvallis, Oregon.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning view of the continent, across the fortieth parallel and down through 4.6 billion years
Twenty years ago, when John McPhee began his journeys back and forth across the United States, he planned to describe a cross section of North America at about the fortieth parallel and, in the process, come to an understanding not only of the science but of the style of the geologists he traveled with. The structure of the book never changed, but its breadth caused him to complete it in stages, under the overall title Annals of the Former World. Like the terrain it covers, Annals of the Former World tells a multilayered tale, and the reader may choose one of many paths through it. As clearly and succinctly written as it is profoundly informed, this is our finest popular survey of geology and a masterpiece of modern nonfiction. Annals of the Former World is the winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.
In this invigorating mix of natural history and adventure, artist-naturalist Ellen Meloy uses turquoise--the color and the gem--to probe deeper into our profound human attachment to landscape. From the Sierra Nevada, the Mojave Desert, the Yucatan Peninsula, and the Bahamas to her home ground on the high plateaus and deep canyons of the Southwest, we journey with Meloy through vistas of both great beauty and great desecration. Her keen vision makes us look anew at ancestral mountains, turquoise seas, and even motel swimming pools. She introduces us to Navajo "velvet grandmothers" whose attire and aesthetics absorb the vivid palette of their homeland, as well as to Persians who consider turquoise the life-saving equivalent of a bullet-proof vest. Throughout, Meloy invites us to appreciate along with her the endless surprises in all of life and celebrates the seduction to be found in our visual surroundings.
2013 Orion Book Award Winner
2013 Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award Winner
Ours is not a stable planet. It is prone to sudden, violent natural disasters and extremes of climate. In this exhilarating exploration of our globe, Craig Childs goes to where the apocalypse can be seen now. From the driest deserts of Chile, through the genetic wasteland of central Iowa, to the site of the drowned land bridge of the Bering Sea, he uncovers cataclysms that tell us what could be next: forthcoming ice ages, super volcanoes, and the conclusion of planetary life cycles. Childs delivers a sensual feast in his descriptions of the natural world, and undeniable science that reveals both the earth's strengths and frailties. Bearing witness to the planet's sweeping and perilous changes, he shows how we can alter the future, and how the world will live on, though humans may not survive to see it.
The landscapes, cultures, and cuisines of deserts in the Middle East and North America have commonalities that have seldom been explored by scientists--and have hardly been celebrated by society at large. Sonoran Desert ecologist Gary Nabhan grew up around Arab grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins in a family that has been emigrating to the United States and Mexico from Lebanon for more than a century, and he himself frequently travels to the deserts of the Middle East. In an era when some Arabs and Americans have markedly distanced themselves from one another, Nabhan has been prompted to explore their common ground, historically, ecologically, linguistically, and gastronomically. Arab/American is not merely an exploration of his own multicultural roots but also a revelation of the deep cultural linkages between the inhabitants of two of the world's great desert regions. Here, in beautifully crafted essays, Nabhan explores how these seemingly disparate cultures are bound to each other in ways we would never imagine. With an extraordinary ear for language and a truly adventurous palate, Nabhan uncovers surprising convergences between the landscape ecology, ethnogeography, agriculture, and cuisines of the Middle East and the binational Desert Southwest. There are the words and expressions that have moved slowly westward from Syria to Spain and to the New World to become incorporated--faintly but recognizably--into the language of the people of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. And there are the flavors--piquant mixtures of herbs and spices--that have crept silently across the globe and into our kitchens without our knowing where they came from or how they got here. And there is much, much more. We also learn of others whose work historically spanned these deserts, from Hadji Ali ("Hi Jolly"), the first Moslem Arab to bring camels to America, to Robert Forbes, an Arizonan who explored the desert oases of the Sahara. These men crossed not only oceans but political and cultural barriers as well. We are, we recognize, builders of walls and borders, but with all the talk of "homeland" today, Nabhan reminds us that, quite often, borders are simply lines drawn in the sand.
Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why. With the same intelligence and insouciant charm he brought to How Proust Can Save Your Life, de Botton considers the pleasures of anticipation; the allure of the exotic, and the value of noticing everything from a seascape in Barbados to the takeoffs at Heathrow. Even as de Botton takes the reader along on his own peregrinations, he also cites such distinguished fellow-travelers as Baudelaire, Wordsworth, Van Gogh, the biologist Alexander von Humboldt, and the 18th-century eccentric Xavier de Maistre, who catalogued the wonders of his bedroom. The Art of Travel is a wise and utterly original book. Don't leave home without it.
The first people in the New World were few, their encampments fleeting. On a side of the planet no human had ever seen, different groups arrived from different directions, and not all at the same time. The land they reached was fully inhabited by megafauna--mastodons, giant bears, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, enormous bison, and sloths that stood one story tall. These Ice Age explorers, hunters, and families were wildly outnumbered and many would themselves have been prey to the much larger animals. In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs blends science and personal narrative to upend our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era, and reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Through it, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light.
With his books Landscapes of Wonder and Longing for Certainty, the American monk Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano led readers down literary trails, providing enlightening glimpses of the natural world. In Available Truth, he guides us further along the path. His unqualified embrace of the Buddha's worldview - in intelligent and deeply thoughtful prose - distinguishes his work from many other Western Buddhist books. Along with reflections on mindfulness, impermanence, and the end of suffering, Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano is not afraid to delve into the topics of rebirth, karma, nonvirtue, and the roles of reasoned faith, ritual, and monasticism, revealing their continuing relevance for today's seeker. His patient awareness of the workings of the mind and the natural world will enable readers to deepen both their practice and their lives. Available Truth will surely stand the test of time as both sound teaching and elegant writing.
Barrow's Boys is a spellbinding account of perilous journeys to uncharted areas under the most challenging conditions. Fergus Fleming captures the passion for exploration that led a band of men into situations that would humble today's bravest adventurers. After the Napoleonic wars, John Barrow, Second Secretary to the Admiralty, launched the most ambitious exploration program the world has ever seen. For the next thirty years, his teams of elite naval officers went on missions to fill the blanks that littered the atlases of the day. From the first disastrous trip down the Congo, Barrow maintained his resolve in the face of continuous catastrophes. His explorers often died of sickness or at the hands of unfriendly natives. They struggled under budgets that forced them to resort to pulling enormous ships across floating ice fields; to eating mice, or their own shoes; and even to horrifying acts of cannibalism. While many of the journeys failed, Barrow and his men ultimately opened Africa to the world, discovered Antarctica, and pried apart the mandibles of the Arctic. Many of the missions are considered the greatest in history, but have never before been collected into one volume that captures the full sweep of Barrow's program.
The author of Touching the Void reflects on his storied mountaineering career, relating what he's learned from the challenges, tragedies, and absurdities of the sport.
David Abram's first book, The Spell of the Sensuous has become a classic of environmental literature. Now he returns with a startling exploration of our human entanglement with the rest of nature.
As the climate veers toward catastrophe, the innumerable losses cascading through the biosphere make vividly evident the need for a metamorphosis in our relation to the living land. For too long we've ignored the wild intelligence of our bodies, taking our primary truths from technologies that hold the living world at a distance. Abram's writing subverts this distance, drawing readers ever closer to their animal senses in order to explore, from within, the elemental kinship between the human body and the breathing Earth. The shape-shifting of ravens, the erotic nature of gravity, the eloquence of thunder, the pleasures of being edible: all have their place in this book.
The fourth edition of publishing's only adventure annual offers another exhilarating collection of the year's most gripping and entertaining adventure stories--from the world's coldest waters to its scariest wildfire. Drawn from the year's most memorable adventure book titles, magazine pieces, and websites, these stories focus on men and women pushing beyond their limits--from the woman who swam to Antarctica to the seven snowboarders who tried to ride out an avalanche in British Columbia's untracked Selkirk Mountains, to the biologist trying to survive his search for a new species of bear. Including new work by David Roberts, Sy Montgomery, Peter Leschak, and Tim Cahill, these selections prove once again that today's best adventure literature ranks among the best writing anywhere.
"From the upper bunk where I write, a narrow window allows me a southern exposure of the desert beyond this prison. Saguaro cacti, residents here long before this rude concrete pueblo, fill the upper part of my frame. If I could open the window and reach out across the razed ground, sand traps, and shining perimeter fence, I might touch their fluted sides, their glaucous and waxen skins."
For some people, even prison cannot shut out the natural world.
A teacher and family man incarcerated in Arizona State Prison--the result of a transgression that would cost him a dozen years of his life--Ken Lamberton can see beyond his desert walls. In essays that focus on the natural history of the region and on his own personal experiences with desert places, the author of the Burroughs Medal-winning book Wilderness and Razor Wire takes readers along as he revisits the Southwest he knew when he was free, and as he makes an inner journey toward self-awareness. Whether considering the seemingly eternal cacti or the desolate beauty of the Pinacate, he draws on sharp powers of observation to re-create what lies beyond his six-by-eight cell and to contemplate the thoughts that haunt his mind as tenaciously as the kissing bugs that haunt his sleep.
Ranging from prehistoric ruins on the Colorado Plateau to the shores of the Sea of Cortez, these writings were begun before Wilderness and Razor Wire and serve as a prequel to it. They seamlessly interweave natural and personal history as Lamberton explores caves, canyons, and dry ponds, evoking the mysteries and rhythms of desert life that elude even the most careful observers. He offers new ways of thinking about how we relate to the natural world, and about the links between those relationships and the ones we forge with other people. With the assurance of a gifted writer, he seeks to make sense of his own place in life, crafting words to come to terms with an insanity of his own making, to look inside himself and understand his passions and flaws.
Whether considering rattlesnakes of the hellish summer desert or the fellow inmates of his own personal hell, Lamberton finds meaningful connections--to his crime and his place, to the people who remained in his life and those who didn't. But what he reveals in Beyond Desert Walls ultimately arises from language itself: a deep, and perhaps even frightening, understanding of a singular human nature.
For some people, even prison cannot shut out the natural world.
A teacher and family man incarcerated in Arizona State Prison--the result of a transgression that would cost him a dozen years of his life--Ken Lamberton can see beyond his desert walls. In essays that focus on the natural history of the region and on his own personal experiences with desert places, the author of the Burroughs Medal-winning book Wilderness and Razor Wire takes readers along as he revisits the Southwest he knew when he was free, and as he makes an inner journey toward self-awareness. Whether considering the seemingly eternal cacti or the desolate beauty of the Pinacate, he draws on sharp powers of observation to re-create what lies beyond his six-by-eight cell and to contemplate the thoughts that haunt his mind as tenaciously as the kissing bugs that haunt his sleep.
Ranging from prehistoric ruins on the Colorado Plateau to the shores of the Sea of Cortez, these writings were begun before Wilderness and Razor Wire and serve as a prequel to it. They seamlessly interweave natural and personal history as Lamberton explores caves, canyons, and dry ponds, evoking the mysteries and rhythms of desert life that elude even the most careful observers. He offers new ways of thinking about how we relate to the natural world, and about the links between those relationships and the ones we forge with other people. With the assurance of a gifted writer, he seeks to make sense of his own place in life, crafting words to come to terms with an insanity of his own making, to look inside himself and understand his passions and flaws.
Whether considering rattlesnakes of the hellish summer desert or the fellow inmates of his own personal hell, Lamberton finds meaningful connections--to his crime and his place, to the people who remained in his life and those who didn't. But what he reveals in Beyond Desert Walls ultimately arises from language itself: a deep, and perhaps even frightening, understanding of a singular human nature.
Why birds are smarter than we think
Birds have not been known for their high IQs, which is why a person of questionable intelligence is sometimes called a birdbrain. Yet in the past two decades, the study of avian intelligence has witnessed dramatic advances. From a time when birds were seen as simple instinct machines responding only to stimuli in their external worlds, we now know that some birds have complex internal worlds as well. This beautifully illustrated book provides an engaging exploration of the avian mind, revealing how science is exploding one of the most widespread myths about our feathered friends--and changing the way we think about intelligence in other animals as well. Bird Brain looks at the structures and functions of the avian brain, and describes the extraordinary behaviors that different types of avian intelligence give rise to. It offers insights into crows, jays, magpies, and other corvids--the "masterminds" of the avian world--as well as parrots and some less-studied species from around the world. This lively and accessible book shows how birds have sophisticated brains with abilities previously thought to be uniquely human, such as mental time travel, self-recognition, empathy, problem solving, imagination, and insight. Written by a leading expert and featuring a foreword by Frans de Waal, renowned for his work on animal intelligence, Bird Brain shines critical new light on the mental lives of birds.
Birds of Prey of the West and its companion volume, Birds of Prey of the East, are the most comprehensive and authoritative field guides to North American birds of prey ever published. Written and lavishly illustrated with stunning, lifelike paintings by leading field-guide illustrator, photographer, and author Brian Wheeler, the guides depict an enormous range of variations of age, sex, color, and plumage, and feature a significant amount of plumage data that has never been published before. The painted figures illustrate plumage and species comparisons in a classic field-guide layout. Each species is shown in the same posture and from the same viewpoint, which further assists comparisons. Facing-page text includes quick-reference identification points and brief natural history accounts that incorporate the latest information. The range maps are exceptionally accurate and much larger than those in other guides. They plot the most up-to-date distribution information for each species and include the location of cities for more accurate reference. Finally, the guides feature color habitat photographs next to the maps. The result sets a new standard for guides to North America's birds of prey.
The finest, most lavishly illustrated photographic guide to the birds of western North America
Combining informative and accessible text, up-to-date maps, and--above all--stunning color photographs, this is the best and most lavishly illustrated photographic guide to the birds of western North America. All of the images have been carefully selected to convey both the sheer beauty and the key identification features of each bird, and many of the photos are larger than those found in other guides. Wherever possible, a variety of plumages are pictured, providing visual coverage and usefulness matching any artwork-illustrated field guide. And many of the images are state-of-the-art digital photographs by Brian Small, one of North America's finest bird photographers. These pictures, many seen here for the first time, reproduce a previously unimaginable level of detail. Finally, the ranges of nearly all species are shown on maps from the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, the authority on North American birding. New and experienced birders alike will find this guide indispensable: the clear layout will help novices easily identify the birds they see, while the superb photographs will help seasoned birders confirm identifications.
What draws us to the beauty of a peacock, the flight of an eagle, or the song of a nightingale? Why are birds so significant in our lives and our sense of the world? And what do our ways of thinking about and experiencing birds tell us about ourselves? Birdscapes is a unique meditation on the variety of human responses to birds, from antiquity to today, and from casual observers to the globe-trotting twitchers who sometimes risk life, limb, and marriages simply to add new species to their life lists.
Drawing extensively on literature, history, philosophy, and science, Jeremy Mynott puts his own experiences as a birdwatcher in a rich cultural context. His sources range from the familiar--Thoreau, Keats, Darwin, and Audubon--to the unexpected--Benjamin Franklin, Giacomo Puccini, Oscar Wilde, and Monty Python. Just as unusual are the extensive illustrations, which explore our perceptions and representations of birds through images such as national emblems, women's hats, professional sports logos, and a Christmas biscuit tin, as well as classics of bird art. Each chapter takes up a new theme--from rarity, beauty, and sound to conservation, naming, and symbolism--and is set in a new place, as Mynott travels from his home patch in Suffolk, England, to his away patch in New York City's Central Park, as well as to Russia, Australia, and Greece.
Conversational, playful, and witty, Birdscapes gently leads us to reflect on large questions about our relation to birds and the natural world. It encourages birders to see their pursuits in a broader human context--and it shows nonbirders what they may be missing.
The New York Times bestselling examination of the worldwide movement for social and environmental change Paul Hawken has spent more than a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From billion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise the largest movement on earth, a movement that has no name, leader, or location and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Blessed Unrest explores the diversity of the movement, its brilliant ideas, innovative strategies, and centuries of hidden history. A culmination of Hawken's many years of leadership in the environmental and social justice fields, it will inspire all who despair of the world's fate, and its conclusions will surprise even those within the movement itself.
Why do people hunt? What possesses humans to kill their fellow creatures? In Bloodties, naturalist Ted Kerasote explores such provocative questions, taking readers on adventurous journeys to the ends of the earth while dramatizing the debate over our proper relationship to the animal kingdom. In Greenland, where Inuit haul harpoons on their dogsleds to hunt seals, Kerasote finds remnants of one of the planet's last hunter-gatherer peoples; they stalk their prey for subsistence, much as their ancestors did, despite their new love affair with VCRs. Then, in Siberia, newly opened to Western sportsmen, Kerasote accompanies trophy seekers, wealthy sportsmen intent on bagging record-sized snow sheep while engaged in questionable hunting practices. Finally, Kerasote recounts his own relationship with elks he shoots in Wyoming, the painful but albeit spiritual transaction that occurs when we consciously acknowledge the lives we take to feed us. These ethical paradoxes and moral dilemmas make Bloodties a critical book for anyone grappling with the humans' role on Earth. Part outdoors journal, part anthropology, Bloodties is a beautifully written, evocative work of contemporary ecology.
"There are no unsacred places," the poet Wendell Berry has written. "There are only sacred places and desecrated places." What might it mean to behold the world with such depth and feeling that it is no longer possible to imagine it as something separate from ourselves, or to live without regard for its well-being? To understand the work of seeing things as an utterly involving moral and spiritual act? Such questions have long occupied the center of contemplative spiritual traditions. In The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, Douglas E. Christie proposes a distinctively contemplative approach to ecological thought and practice that can help restore our sense of the earth as a sacred place. Drawing on the insights of the early Christian monastics as well as the ecological writings of Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, Annie Dillard, and many others, Christie argues that, at the most basic level, it is the quality of our attention to the natural world that must change if we are to learn how to live in a sustainable relationship with other living organisms and with one another. He notes that in this uniquely challenging historical moment, there is a deep and pervasive hunger for a less fragmented and more integrated way of apprehending and inhabiting the living world--and for a way of responding to the ecological crisis that expresses our deepest moral and spiritual values. Christie explores how the wisdom of ancient and modern contemplative traditions can inspire both an honest reckoning with the destructive patterns of thought and behavior that have contributed so much to our current crisis, and a greater sense of care and responsibility for all living beings. These traditions can help us cultivate the simple, spacious awareness of the enduring beauty and wholeness of the natural world that will be necessary if we are to live with greater purpose and meaning, and with less harm, to our planet.
Blues for Cannibals continues the quest Bowden began in Blood Orchid-to discover the headwaters of the sickness that seeps through the American soul, and to consider what it might mean to come fully alive in a time of exalted consumption, global pillage, gated communities, and wholesale destruction of the environment. Down, down he leads us, in intoxicating, nearly hallucinogenic prose-past the Yaqui, the Anasazi, and other ghosts of our collective history, past the hookers, winos, and assorted have-nots outside the prosperous circle by the fire. We meet a prisoner obsessed with painting presidents, sex offenders whose desires are not as alien as we wish, a murderer whose execution does not cure what ails us. I wound up looking at a world where cannibalism is life, Bowden writes, and of course, given the diet, a life without a future. He mourns a young artist who couldn't find a reason to keep living and tends a mesquite tree that won't die. And down among its metaphoric roots, he reacquaints us with the appetites-fierce, flawed, human-that might save us too. Blues for Cannibals is scripture for an age when bushes no longer burn.
From medieval bestiaries to Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings, we've long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer's song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology--they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don't. With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson's book--from the axolotl to the zebrafish--are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up--that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature's "extreme survivors," able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value--or fail to value--and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change.
The book that helped make Michael Pollan, the New York Times bestselling author of How to Change Your Mind, Cooked and The Omnivore's Dilemma, one of the most trusted food experts in America Every schoolchild learns about the mutually beneficial dance of honeybees and flowers: The bee collects nectar and pollen to make honey and, in the process, spreads the flowers' genes far and wide. In The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan ingeniously demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. He masterfully links four fundamental human desires--sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control--with the plants that satisfy them: the apple, the tulip, marijuana, and the potato. In telling the stories of four familiar species, Pollan illustrates how the plants have evolved to satisfy humankind's most basic yearnings. And just as we've benefited from these plants, we have also done well by them. So who is really domesticating whom?
A New York Times Bestseller
A Washington Post Bestseller
Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
A Washington Post Bestseller
Named a "Best Essay Collection of the Decade" by Literary Hub As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on "a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise" (Elizabeth Gilbert). Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.
A complete how-to guide on the art and techniques of canyoneering, written for every skill-level.
A personal exploration of wildness, territory, and the elusive nature of our lives
In this concise, richly contemplative book, Gary Thorp records his singularquest to see a mountain lion, or cougar--the "cat of one color"-- in the wild hills and mountains of northern California, where he lives. Using the traditional form of Japanese writing known as nikki bungaku (literary diary), Thorp recounts his meditations and adventures, from taking a one-day class on tracking animals, to visiting a mountain lion in the zoo, to his numerous forays into the hills during the day and night. The pursuit of one thing invariably leads him to discover many others: The tracks of a solitary mountain lion, for example, evoke a marvelous world of photographic imagery, literary events, dancing foxes, ocean voyages, and blind poets, all gathered together just beyond the limits of human vision. Thorp explores what it means to seek something you might not find and ponders the difference between seeing only darkness and being blind, offering as well bright glimpses into the Zen tradition. Combining an elusive and challenging pursuit with a centuries-old way of uncovering life's ultimate answers, Caught in Fading Light will give readers a new way of seeing, and will captivate nature lovers and Zen practitioners alike.
In his most personal book yet, Tim Flannery, the internationally acclaimed author of The Weather Makers, draws on three decades of travel, research, and field work to craft a love letter to his native land and one of its most unique and beloved inhabitants: the kangaroo. Crisscrossing the continent, Flannery shows us how the destiny of this extraordinary creature is inseparable from the environment that created it. Along the way he uses encounters with ancient aboriginal cultures and eccentric fossil hunters, farmers and scientists, kangaroo advocates and kangaroo hunters, to explore how Australia's deserts and rain forests have shaped human responses to the continent--and how kangaroos have evolved to handle the resulting challenges. Ultimately, Chasing Kangaroos is a captivating blend of memoir, travel, natural history, and evolutionary science--and further proof of Flannery's "offhand interdisciplinary brilliance" (Entertainment Weekly).
Dangling sweaty-palmed from a 3000-foot cliff for days on end, Jared Ogden taught himself to climb his first big wall by trial and error. Why should you have to do the same? The man who went on to free El Capitan and the Nose in less than twenty-four hours wants to jump-start your education. Whether you're a weekend warrior or a full-on wall addict, you'll learn the tools of the trade and how to use them; different leading and hauling scenarios and why some are better suited than others; multiple following set-ups for different terrain; how to choose your partners and routes; staying on route how to live on a wall; the steps involved in doing first ascents; big wall style and ethics; and more. Ogden will have you racked and ready for prime big wall climbing destinations in North America including Yosemite, Zion, Rocky Mountain, and the Black Canyon of Gunnison National Parks; the Alaskan Range; and the Bugaboos of British Columbia.
"These rough notes and our dead bodies must tell the tale." So penned Captain Robert Falcon Scott in 1912 as he confronted defeat and death in the crippling subzero temperatures of Antarctica. In this riveting book, Susan Solomon finishes the interrupted tale of Scott and his British expedition, depicting the staggering 900-mile trek to the South Pole and resolving the debate over the journey's failure. "An absorbing, fascinating read . . . a book that will appeal to the explorer in everyone."--Sally Ride "Solomon argues her case well, in exact and graceful prose."--Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World "Persuasive. . . . [Solomon] reaches important new conclusions about Scott's expedition."--Sara Wheeler, New York Times Book Review "Brilliant. . . . A marvelous and complex book: at once a detective story, a brilliant vindication of a maligned man, and an elegy both for Scott and his men and for the 'crystalline continent' on which they died."--Robert MacFarlane, Guardian "Solomon has crafted a smart, terrific book and an important addition to polar history."--Roberta MacInnis, Houston Chronicle
An eminent paleontologist with the soul and skill of a poet, Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) was among the twentieth century's greatest inheritors of the literary tradition of Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin, and John Muir, and a precursor to such later writers as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Carl Sagan. After decades of fieldwork and discovery as a "bone-hunter" and professor, Eiseley turned late in life to the personal essay, and beginning with the surprise million-copy seller The Immense Journey (1957) he produced an astonishing succession of books that won acclaim both as science and as art. Now for the first time, the Library of America presents his landmark essay collections in a definitive two-volume set. This first volume begins with Eiseley's debut collection, which displays his far-reaching knowledge and boundless curiosity about the mysteries of the natural world. Here are vivid accounts of prehistoric ecosystems, the origins of consciousness, the search for "living fossils" at the bottom of the sea, and the complexities of our evolutionary inheritance. Here too are literary qualities and aspirations that led many to hail Eiseley as a "modern Thoreau" his quest for the ultimate meanings and cosmological significance of natural phenomena, along with his immense expressive gifts.
The Firmament of Time (1960), a lyrical and meditative tour de force, looks back at the many ways in which the sciences have been shaped by the changing cultures in which they developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the "unconscious conformity" of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, Eiseley argues provocatively for the ongoing relevance to scientific progress of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational. In his wide-ranging collection The Unexpected Universe (1969), Eiseley turns to the theme of the voyage of discovery: accounts of the mythical and historic journeys of Odysseus, Captain Cook, and Darwin frame his own more modest wanderings in the environs of Philadelphia. Sometimes he travels no farther than the local dump: and yet, like Homer's hero or these great explorers, he continually finds a universe "not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." As an added feature, this volume presents a selection of Eiseley's uncollected prose, including early autobiographical sketches, vivid and haunting entries from his private notebooks, and his 1957 lecture "Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology." A companion volume presents The Invisible Pyramid (1970), The Night Country (1971), and the essays gathered after his death in The Star Thrower (1978). LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
The Firmament of Time (1960), a lyrical and meditative tour de force, looks back at the many ways in which the sciences have been shaped by the changing cultures in which they developed. Examining the role of metaphor in scientific thought, anticipations of scientific discoveries in the works of poets and novelists, and the "unconscious conformity" of scientific theory to prevailing orthodoxies, Eiseley argues provocatively for the ongoing relevance to scientific progress of dreams, the imagination, and the irrational. In his wide-ranging collection The Unexpected Universe (1969), Eiseley turns to the theme of the voyage of discovery: accounts of the mythical and historic journeys of Odysseus, Captain Cook, and Darwin frame his own more modest wanderings in the environs of Philadelphia. Sometimes he travels no farther than the local dump: and yet, like Homer's hero or these great explorers, he continually finds a universe "not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose." As an added feature, this volume presents a selection of Eiseley's uncollected prose, including early autobiographical sketches, vivid and haunting entries from his private notebooks, and his 1957 lecture "Neanderthal Man and the Dawn of Human Paleontology." A companion volume presents The Invisible Pyramid (1970), The Night Country (1971), and the essays gathered after his death in The Star Thrower (1978). LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
An eminent paleontologist with the soul and skill of a poet, Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) was among the twentieth century's greatest inheritors of the literary tradition of Henry David Thoreau, Charles Darwin, and John Muir, and a precursor to such later writers as Stephen Jay Gould, Richard Dawkins, and Carl Sagan. After decades of fieldwork and discovery as a "bone-hunter" and professor, Eiseley turned late in life to the personal essay, and beginning with the surprise million-copy seller The Immense Journey (1957) he produced an astonishing succession of books that won acclaim both as science and as art. Now for the first time, the Library of America presents his landmark essay collections in a definitive two-volume set. This second volume begins with The Invisible Pyramid (1970), a book of meditations on the origins and possible futures of humankind set against the backdrop of the Apollo 11 landings. As Western civilization attains new heights of scientific awareness and technological skill, is it also blind to its own limits, doomed to destroy itself like the lost civilizations of the ancients or other "spore-bearers" in our evolutionary past? Eiseley makes an urgent, environmentalist plea in these essays: we must protect the planet from which we emerged against our unchecked power to overpopulate and pollute and consume it. The essays in The Night Country (1971) look not to the stars but backward and inward: to the haunted spaces of Eiseley's lonely Nebraska childhood and to those moments, often dark and unexpected, when chance observations disturb our ordinary understandings of the universe. The naturalist here seeks neither "salvation in facts" nor solace in wild places: encountering an old bone, or a nest of wasps, he recognizes what he calls "the ghostliness of myself," his own mortality, and the paradoxes of the evolution of consciousness. Shortly before his death, Eiseley made plans for what would be his last book, published posthumously as The Star Thrower (1978). Here are late essays on the life and legacy of Henry David Thoreau, the writer to whom he turned more often than any other; thoughts on the "two cultures" he sought to bring together throughout his career; and on the relations between hard science and "awe before the universe." Of particular interest are two early stories discovered among his papers, "The Dance of the Frogs" and "The Fifth Planet." A companion volume gathers The Immense Journey (1957), The Firmament of Time (1960), The Unexpected Universe (1969), and a selection of Eiseley's uncollected prose. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
Famed travel writer Morris pens a unique, first-hand account of the 1953 Edmund Hillary expedition that first conquered Mount Everest. As James Morris, the author packed along with the climbers, reaching one camp below the summit. Includes a new Introduction by the author. 10 photos.
One of The Economist's Best Books of the Year
From the bestselling author of Oracle Bones and River Town comes the final book in his award-winning trilogy on the human side of the economic revolution in China.
Peter Hessler, whom the Wall Street Journal calls one of the Western world's most thoughtful writers on modern China, deftly illuminates the vast, shifting landscape of a traditionally rural nation that, having once built walls against foreigners, is now building roads and factory towns that look to the outside world.
In the mode of her bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman celebrates the sensory pleasures of her garden through the seasons. Whether she is deadheading flowers or glorying in the profusion of roses, offering sugar water to a hummingbird or studying the slug, she welcomes the unexpected drama and extravagance as well as the sanctuary her garden offers.
Written in sensuous, lyrical prose, Cultivating Delight is a hymn to nature and to the pleasure we take in it.
"A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures."
--San Francisco Chronicle For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature's strangest creatures-the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are-and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked. "Dark Banquet is an amazing account of all those creatures that most of us consider really creepy! But author Bill Schutt doesn't, and actually embraces these critters and their bloodthirsty lifestyles. It's great to see such wonderful animal research in a reader-friendly form. After finishing the book, you'll have a lot to discuss at your next dinner party!"
--Jack Hanna, director emeritus, Columbus Zoo, and host of television's Emmy Award--winning series Into the Wild "[A] passionate defense of bloodsuckers from the leech to the candiru."
--Discover
--San Francisco Chronicle For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature's strangest creatures-the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are-and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked. "Dark Banquet is an amazing account of all those creatures that most of us consider really creepy! But author Bill Schutt doesn't, and actually embraces these critters and their bloodthirsty lifestyles. It's great to see such wonderful animal research in a reader-friendly form. After finishing the book, you'll have a lot to discuss at your next dinner party!"
--Jack Hanna, director emeritus, Columbus Zoo, and host of television's Emmy Award--winning series Into the Wild "[A] passionate defense of bloodsuckers from the leech to the candiru."
--Discover
At the crossroads of philosophy and science, the sometimes-dry topics of evolution and ecology come alive in this new collection of essays--many never before anthologized. Learn how technology may be a sort of second nature, how the systemic human fungus Candida albicans can lead to cravings for carrot cake and beer, how the presence of life may be why there's water on Earth, and many other fascinating facts.
The essay "Metametazoa" presents perspectives on biology in a philosophical context, demonstrating how the intellectual librarian, pornographer, and political agitator Georges Bataille was influenced by Russian mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky and how this led to his notion of the absence of meaning in the face of the sun--which later influenced Jacques Derrida, thereby establishing a causal chain of influence from the hard sciences to topics as abstract as deconstruction and post-modernism.
In "Spirochetes Awake" the bizarre connection between syphilis and genius in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche is traced. The astonishing similarities of the Acquired-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome symptoms with those of chronic spirochete infection, it is argued, contrast sharply with the lack of evidence that "HIV is the cause of AIDS." Throughout these readings we are dazzled by the intimacy and necessity of relationships between us and our other planetmates. In our ignorance as "civilized" people we dismiss, disdain, and deny our kinship with the only productive life forms that sustain this living planet.
As Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness turns fifty, its iconic author, who has inspired generations of rebel-rousing advocacy on behalf of the American West, is due for a tribute as well as a talking to. In Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness, Amy Irvine admires the man who influenced her life and work while challenging all that is dated--offensive, even--between the covers of Abbey's environmental classic. Irvine names and questions the "lone male" narrative--white and privileged as it is--that still has its boots planted firmly at the center of today's wilderness movement, even as she celebrates the lens through which Abbey taught so many to love the wild remains of the nation. From Abbey's quiet notion of solitude to Irvine's roaring cabal, the desert just got hotter, and its defenders more nuanced and numerous. "A slim volume reminiscent of the mass-market paperback copies of Desert Solitaire that so many of us have stuffed into a dusty backpack or stowed in the glove compartment on national park road trips... Irvine tells Abbey about climate change, fossil fuel dependence, and the environmental pickle in which we've found ourselves."
--PACIFIC STANDARD "Abbey's self-claimed country, Irvine says, is at risk for exactly the reasons he said it would be: greed, gasoline, and a gaping well of apathy. Preserving wilderness is even more important now than it was half a century ago, but the stakes aren't as simple as he set them out to be. Desert Cabal has riled up some Abbey fans, but that's exactly what makes it an important read."
--OUTSIDE "A lyrical and raw conversation between Irvine and Abbey that is part tribute, part memoir, and part polemic. It'll get you thinking about the state of the desert, the fate of the wilderness movement and the actions we all need to take to save the places we love (including leaving them alone)."
--ADVENTURE JOURNAL "With humor, wisdom and a sense of urgency, Irvine uses Desert Solitaire as a jumping off point to assess the current state of the world, to expose the very human error of the literary heroes on dusty pedestals, and to reinsert many of us back into the narrative... No matter your feelings about Edward Abbey, Irvine's Desert Cabal adds necessary depth to the dialogue. Many of us have been waiting years for that."
--ALBUQUERQUE ALIBI "While Irvine shares the love Abbey, who died in 1989, had for Utah's public lands, she contends some views and sentiments from his time need to be challenged. She points out privileges Abbey enjoyed as a white male; she questions his use of 'Abbey's country.' From Abbey's first morning in the desert to his tale of a snake that guarded his campsite, Irvine questions and compares their experiences, including their failed marriages."
--THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE "The Abbey whom Irvine is talking to is neither the author himself nor a corpse; he's a literary ghost, one that has been living inside herself ever since she fell for his writing."
--CATALYST "Fierce and clear--Irvine's book effectively confronts the ritual of veneration and brings the reader closer to appreciating Abbey's work in a more constructive, relevant and productive frame than what has been allowed in the last five decades."
--THE UTAH REVIEW "This iconoclastic inner discussion with her predecessor, Abbey, is fascinating--wherein Irvine challenges Abbey to consider his myopic, privileged perspective without failing in her deference for his attempt to raise consciousness of an entire generation prior."
--SLUG MAGAZINE "At once intimate and expansive...a reminder that individuals, even titans like Abbey, can only do so much to save the 'best places.' It really does take a village (or cabal)."
--TELLURIDE INSIDE AND OUT "A lyrical, raw and vulnerable conversation."
--TELLURIDE DAILY PLANET "The news Irvine breaks graveside is that the world, and specifically 'Abbey's country, ' has changed... and there's no telling where [Abbey's] sentiments would place him in a landscape that now includes Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, a generation of female activists and the #MeToo movement."
--SANTA FE REPORTER "Irvine gradually builds to a ringing conclusion, stating simply and clearly that wilderness lovers 'need intimacy with people every bit as much as with place' and that 'going it alone is a failure of contribution and compassion.'"
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "While an admirer of Abbey, Irvine illuminates his dated attitudes as she writes a love letter to the Utah desert. This brief series of essays will be enjoyed by those who treasure the desert, environmental activists, and fans of Desert Solitaire."
--LIBRARY JOURNAL "A grief-stricken, heart-hopeful, soul song to the American Desert, a wail, a keening, a rant, a scolding, a tumult, a prayer, an aria, and a call to action. Amy Irvine implores us to trade in our solitude for solidarity, to recognize ourselves in each other and in the places we love, so that we might come together to save them. In this time of all out war being waged on America's Public Lands, I'm glad she's on my side."
--PAM HOUSTON, author of Contents May Have Shifted "Amy Irvine is Ed Abbey's underworld, her roots reaching into the dark, hidden water. In a powerful, dreamlike series of essays, she lays Desert Solitaire bare, looking back at the man who wrote the book and the desert left behind. This stream of consciousness, this conversation, this broadside is an alternate version of Abbey's country. It is another voice in the wilderness."
--CRAIG CHILDS, author of Atlas of a Lost World and Apocalyptic Planet
"Ed Abbey's rise to sainthood has been a bit awkward: here is an earth hero who guzzles gas in search of his personal Eden, a champion of the underdog who snubs Mexican and Native people, an anarchist rabble-rouser who utters not a peep about his perch atop the patriarchy. Finally someone--and it could be no better iconoclast than Amy Irvine--wrassles him off the pedestal back down to the red dirt where he belongs. Half riot, half tribute, this is a roadmap through a crisis that neither Abbey nor any of us imagined."
--MARK SUNDEEN, author of The Man Who Quit Money and The Unsettlers "If you've ever talked back to the canonical tomes of the environmental movement, this is a book for you. Here are the women, the people, the children, and the intimate dangers those old books so frequently erased. Here is a new and necessary ethic that might help us more openly love the land and the many living beings who share it. I found myself nodding--Yes! Yes! Thank you!--on nearly every page of Desert Cabal."
--CAMILLE T. DUNGY, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History and editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
--PACIFIC STANDARD "Abbey's self-claimed country, Irvine says, is at risk for exactly the reasons he said it would be: greed, gasoline, and a gaping well of apathy. Preserving wilderness is even more important now than it was half a century ago, but the stakes aren't as simple as he set them out to be. Desert Cabal has riled up some Abbey fans, but that's exactly what makes it an important read."
--OUTSIDE "A lyrical and raw conversation between Irvine and Abbey that is part tribute, part memoir, and part polemic. It'll get you thinking about the state of the desert, the fate of the wilderness movement and the actions we all need to take to save the places we love (including leaving them alone)."
--ADVENTURE JOURNAL "With humor, wisdom and a sense of urgency, Irvine uses Desert Solitaire as a jumping off point to assess the current state of the world, to expose the very human error of the literary heroes on dusty pedestals, and to reinsert many of us back into the narrative... No matter your feelings about Edward Abbey, Irvine's Desert Cabal adds necessary depth to the dialogue. Many of us have been waiting years for that."
--ALBUQUERQUE ALIBI "While Irvine shares the love Abbey, who died in 1989, had for Utah's public lands, she contends some views and sentiments from his time need to be challenged. She points out privileges Abbey enjoyed as a white male; she questions his use of 'Abbey's country.' From Abbey's first morning in the desert to his tale of a snake that guarded his campsite, Irvine questions and compares their experiences, including their failed marriages."
--THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE "The Abbey whom Irvine is talking to is neither the author himself nor a corpse; he's a literary ghost, one that has been living inside herself ever since she fell for his writing."
--CATALYST "Fierce and clear--Irvine's book effectively confronts the ritual of veneration and brings the reader closer to appreciating Abbey's work in a more constructive, relevant and productive frame than what has been allowed in the last five decades."
--THE UTAH REVIEW "This iconoclastic inner discussion with her predecessor, Abbey, is fascinating--wherein Irvine challenges Abbey to consider his myopic, privileged perspective without failing in her deference for his attempt to raise consciousness of an entire generation prior."
--SLUG MAGAZINE "At once intimate and expansive...a reminder that individuals, even titans like Abbey, can only do so much to save the 'best places.' It really does take a village (or cabal)."
--TELLURIDE INSIDE AND OUT "A lyrical, raw and vulnerable conversation."
--TELLURIDE DAILY PLANET "The news Irvine breaks graveside is that the world, and specifically 'Abbey's country, ' has changed... and there's no telling where [Abbey's] sentiments would place him in a landscape that now includes Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, a generation of female activists and the #MeToo movement."
--SANTA FE REPORTER "Irvine gradually builds to a ringing conclusion, stating simply and clearly that wilderness lovers 'need intimacy with people every bit as much as with place' and that 'going it alone is a failure of contribution and compassion.'"
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "While an admirer of Abbey, Irvine illuminates his dated attitudes as she writes a love letter to the Utah desert. This brief series of essays will be enjoyed by those who treasure the desert, environmental activists, and fans of Desert Solitaire."
--LIBRARY JOURNAL "A grief-stricken, heart-hopeful, soul song to the American Desert, a wail, a keening, a rant, a scolding, a tumult, a prayer, an aria, and a call to action. Amy Irvine implores us to trade in our solitude for solidarity, to recognize ourselves in each other and in the places we love, so that we might come together to save them. In this time of all out war being waged on America's Public Lands, I'm glad she's on my side."
--PAM HOUSTON, author of Contents May Have Shifted "Amy Irvine is Ed Abbey's underworld, her roots reaching into the dark, hidden water. In a powerful, dreamlike series of essays, she lays Desert Solitaire bare, looking back at the man who wrote the book and the desert left behind. This stream of consciousness, this conversation, this broadside is an alternate version of Abbey's country. It is another voice in the wilderness."
--CRAIG CHILDS, author of Atlas of a Lost World and Apocalyptic Planet
"Ed Abbey's rise to sainthood has been a bit awkward: here is an earth hero who guzzles gas in search of his personal Eden, a champion of the underdog who snubs Mexican and Native people, an anarchist rabble-rouser who utters not a peep about his perch atop the patriarchy. Finally someone--and it could be no better iconoclast than Amy Irvine--wrassles him off the pedestal back down to the red dirt where he belongs. Half riot, half tribute, this is a roadmap through a crisis that neither Abbey nor any of us imagined."
--MARK SUNDEEN, author of The Man Who Quit Money and The Unsettlers "If you've ever talked back to the canonical tomes of the environmental movement, this is a book for you. Here are the women, the people, the children, and the intimate dangers those old books so frequently erased. Here is a new and necessary ethic that might help us more openly love the land and the many living beings who share it. I found myself nodding--Yes! Yes! Thank you!--on nearly every page of Desert Cabal."
--CAMILLE T. DUNGY, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History and editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
* Techniques for traversing desert terrain -- by vehicle, by mountain bike, or on foot
* Strategies for comfort, safety, and survival in extreme conditions
* Selecting gear and equipment for this special environment Like any desert aficionado, Bruce Grubbs is obsessed with water: how much to bring, how to carry it, how to conserve it, and how to find it in the backcountry. But desert exploration involves much more. Grubbs provides the knowledge and skills you need to move through this landscape with confidence. In addition to hiking and mountain biking advice, Grubbs tells how to prepare your vehicle for remote desert roads and how to avoid getting stuck in sand or busting a tire. He discusses navigating in the desert, "dry camping" skills, and techniques for minimum impact on this starkly beautiful but fragile environment. There are tips for dealing with desert heat -- and cold -- and other challenges (sharp spiny plants and venomous snakes are easy to avoid with a little preparation and know-how). But just in case, Grubbs troubleshoots the worst-case scenarios. Throughout, he gives an understanding of desert climate and seasons, and the unique plants and creatures at home in it.
* Strategies for comfort, safety, and survival in extreme conditions
* Selecting gear and equipment for this special environment Like any desert aficionado, Bruce Grubbs is obsessed with water: how much to bring, how to carry it, how to conserve it, and how to find it in the backcountry. But desert exploration involves much more. Grubbs provides the knowledge and skills you need to move through this landscape with confidence. In addition to hiking and mountain biking advice, Grubbs tells how to prepare your vehicle for remote desert roads and how to avoid getting stuck in sand or busting a tire. He discusses navigating in the desert, "dry camping" skills, and techniques for minimum impact on this starkly beautiful but fragile environment. There are tips for dealing with desert heat -- and cold -- and other challenges (sharp spiny plants and venomous snakes are easy to avoid with a little preparation and know-how). But just in case, Grubbs troubleshoots the worst-case scenarios. Throughout, he gives an understanding of desert climate and seasons, and the unique plants and creatures at home in it.
Longtime residents of the Sonoran Desert, the Tohono O'odham people have spent centuries living off the land--a land that most modern citizens of southern Arizona consider totally inhospitable. Ethnobotanist Gary Nabhan has lived with the Tohono O'odham, long known as the Papagos, observing the delicate balance between these people and their environment. Bringing O'odham voices to the page at every turn, he writes elegantly of how they husband scant water supplies, grow crops, and utilize wild edible foods. Woven through his account are coyote tales, O'odham children's impressions of the desert, and observations on the political problems that come with living on both sides of an international border. Whether visiting a sacred cave in the Baboquivari Mountains or attending a saguaro wine-drinking ceremony, Nabhan conveys the everyday life and extraordinary perseverance of these desert people in a book that has become a contemporary classic of environmental literature.
Brings the narrow lanes of Dharamsala which echo with footfalls of seekers from various ober teh world. The author interacts with them - old and young, Tibetan and non Tibetan, and Guru and novice.
In this uplifting book, Louise Heydt weaves together a one-year cycle of nature in a small valley in the Tecolote Mountains east of Pecos, New Mexico, and an inspirational spiritual journey as taught by nature. The land and the spiritual path are interconnected; the outer landscape of nature is the guide for the journey through the inner landscape. The reader is shown how to find sacred places in the land, and how these places are a gateway or threshold for quiet observation and meditation. The realm of mystical experiences can be explored while in the embrace of nature. The book also shows that it is a contemporary delusion that humans and nature are separate, and how in the process of immersing oneself into experiences in nature one nourishes his or her inner nature. In the process of this nurturing, a spiritual awakening begins in which one also learns the power of prayer, thus bringing to light one's intimate relationship with the Divine. M. LOUISE HEYDT has lived in northern New Mexico for 28 years. She is a self-taught naturalist with a love for all things wild since childhood. With a Masters Degree in Eastern Studies from St. John's College in Santa Fe, New Mexico, she brings her academic knowledge of Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and the literary classics of China, India and Japan into her writing. She has studied under Joan Halifax Roshi for eight years at Upaya in Santa Fe. An artist and poet, she has traveled extensively in Asia.
"We want to live as if there is no other place," Hogan tells us, "as if we will always be here. We want to live with devotion to the world of waters and the universe of life." In offering praise to sky, earth, water, and animals, she calls us to witness how each living thing is alive in a conscious world with its own integrity, grace, and dignity. In Dwellings, Hogan takes us on a spiritual quest borne out of the deep past and offers a more hopeful future as she seeks new visions and lights ancient fires.