In Trouble Again: A Journey Between the Orinoco and the Amazon


Redmond O'Hanlon - 1988
    O'Hanlon takes us into the bug-ridden rain forest between the Orinoco and the Amazon--infested with jaguars and piranhas, where men would kill over a bottle of ketchup and where the locals may be the most violent people on earth (next to hockey fans).

Should the Tent Be Burning Like That?: A Professional Amateur's Guide to the Outdoors


Bill Heavey - 2017
    In feature stories and his Field & Stream column "A Sportsman's Life," as well as other publications, he has taken readers across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. Should the Tent Be Burning Like That? gathers together a wide range of Heavey's best work. He nearly drowns attempting to fish the pond inside the cloverleaf off an Interstate Highway four miles from the White House. He rents and crashes a forty-four-foot houseboat on a river in Florida. On a manic weeklong deer archery hunt in Ohio, he finds it necessary to practice by shooting arrows into his motel room's phonebook (the blunt penetrates all the way to page 358, "KITCHEN CABINET--REFACING & REFINISHING"). Accompanying a shaggy steelhead fanatic--Mikey, who has no job or fixed address but owns four boats--on a thousand-mile odyssey up and down the California coast in search of fishable water, he comes to see Mikey as a purer soul than almost anyone he has ever met.Whatever the subject, Heavey's tales are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill, and a testament to the enduring power of the natural world. Whether he's hunting mule deer in Montana, draining cash on an overpriced pistol, or ruminating on the joys and agonies of outdoor gear, Heavey always entertains and enlightens with honesty and wit.

Upstream: Selected Essays


Mary Oliver - 2016
     As she contemplates the pleasure of artistic labor, finding solace and safety within the woods, and the joyful and rhythmic beating of wings, Oliver intimately shares with her readers her quiet discoveries, boundless curiosity, and exuberance for the grandeur of our world. This radiant collection of her work, with some pieces published here for the first time, reaffirms Oliver as a passionate and prolific observer whose thoughtful meditations on spiders, writing a poem, blue fin tuna, and Ralph Waldo Emerson inspire us all to discover wonder and awe in life's smallest corners.

The Salt Path


Raynor Winn - 2018
    With nothing left and little time, they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the sea-swept South West Coast Path, from Somerset to Dorset, via Devon and Cornwall.They have almost no money for food or shelter and must carry only the essentials for survival on their backs as they live wild in the ancient, weathered landscape of cliffs, sea and sky. Yet through every step, every encounter, and every test along the way, their walk becomes a remarkable journey.The Salt Path is an honest and life-affirming true story of coming to terms with grief and the healing power of the natural world. Ultimately, it is a portrayal of home, and how it can be lost, rebuilt, and rediscovered in the most unexpected ways.

I Miss You When I Blink: Essays


Mary Laura Philpott - 2019
    Mary Laura Philpott thought she’d cracked the code: Always be right, and you’ll always be happy. But once she’d completed her life’s to-do list (job, spouse, house, babies—check!), she found that instead of feeling content and successful, she felt anxious. Lost. Stuck in a daily grind of overflowing calendars, grueling small talk, and sprawling traffic. She’d done everything “right,” but she felt all wrong. What’s the worse failure, she wondered: smiling and staying the course, or blowing it all up and running away? And are those the only options? In this memoir-in-essays full of spot-on observations about home, work, and creative life, Philpott takes on the conflicting pressures of modern adulthood with wit and heart. She offers up her own stories to show that identity crises don’t happen just once or only at midlife; reassures us that small, recurring personal re-inventions are both normal and necessary; and advises that if you’re going to faint, you should get low to the ground first. Most of all, Philpott shows that when you stop feeling satisfied with your life, you don’t have to burn it all down and set off on a transcontinental hike (unless you want to, of course). You can call upon your many selves to figure out who you are, who you’re not, and where you belong. Who among us isn’t trying to do that? Like a pep talk from a sister, I Miss You When I Blink is the funny, poignant, and deeply affecting book you’ll want to share with all your friends, as you learn what Philpott has figured out along the way: that multiple things can be true of us at once—and that sometimes doing things wrong is the way to do life right.

We Are the Baby-Sitters Club: Essays and Artwork from Grown-Up Readers


Marisa CrawfordFrankie Thomas - 2021
    In 1986, the first-ever meeting of the Baby-Sitters Club was called to order in a messy bedroom strewn with Ring-Dings, scrunchies, and a landline phone. Kristy, Claudia, Stacey, and Mary Anne launched the club that birthed an entire generation of loyal readers. The Baby-Sitters Club series featured a diverse, complex cast of characters and touched on an impressive range of issues that were underrepresented at the time: divorce, adoption, childhood illness, class division, and racism, to name a few. In We Are the Baby-sitters Club, writers and a few visual artists from Generation BSC will reflect on the enduring legacy of Ann M. Martin's beloved series, thirty-five years later—celebrating the BSC's profound cultural influence. Contributors include author Gabrielle Moss, illustrator Siobhán Gallagher, and filmmaker Sue Ding, as well as New York Times bestselling author Kristen Arnett, Lambda Award–finalist Myriam Gurba, Black Girl Nerds founder Jamie Broadnax, and Paris Review contributor Frankie Thomas. The first anthology of its kind from editors Marisa Crawford and Megan Milks, We Are the Baby-Sitters Club will look closely at how Ann M. Martin's series shaped our ideas about gender politics, friendship, fashion and beyond—and what makes the series still a core part of many readers' identities so many years later.

Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs


Beth Ann Fennelly - 2017
    Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Beth Ann Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys.Some pieces are wistful, some wry, and many reveal the humor buried in our everyday interactions. Heating Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs shapes a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments, and awakens us to these moments as they appear in the margins of our lives.

Of Time and Place


Sigurd F. Olson - 1982
    In this, his last book completed just before his death, Sigurd F. Olson guides readers through his wide-ranging memories of a lifetime dedicated to the preservation of the wilderness.

The Good Rain: Across Time & Terrain in the Pacific Northwest


Timothy Egan - 1990
    Here is a blend of history, anthropology and politics.

By the Seat of My Pants: Humorous Tales of Travel and Misadventure


Don George - 2005
    Whether they take the form of unexpected detours, unintended adventures, unidentifiable dinners or unforgettable encounters, these experiences can give birth to our most profound travel lessons and illuminations, and our most memorable - and hilarious - travel stories. This collection presents 31 globe-girdling tales that run the gamut from close-encounter safaris to loss-of-face follies, hair-raising rides to culture-leaping brides, eccentric expats to mind-boggling repasts, wrong roads taken to agreements mistaken. The collection brings together some of the world's most renowned travelers and storytellers with previously unpublished writers.

The Most of Nora Ephron


Nora Ephron - 2013
    Everything you could possibly want from Nora Ephron is here—from her writings on journalism, feminism, and being a woman (the notorious piece on being flat-chested, the clarion call of her commencement address at Wellesley) to her best-selling novel, Heartburn, written in the wake of her devastating divorce from Carl Bernstein; from her hilarious and touching screenplay for the movie When Harry Met Sally . . . (“I’ll have what she’s having”) to her recent play Lucky Guy (published here for the first time); from her ongoing love affair with food, recipes and all, to her extended takes on such controversial women as Lillian Hellman and Helen Gurley Brown; from her pithy blogs on politics to her moving meditations on aging (“I Feel Bad About My Neck”) and dying. Her superb writing, her unforgettable movies, her honesty and fearlessness, her nonpareil humor have made Nora Ephron an icon for America’s women—and not a few of its men.

The Next Everest: Surviving the Mountain's Deadliest Day and Finding the Resilience to Climb Again


Jim Davidson - 2021
    It was the largest earthquake in Nepal in eighty-one years and killed about 8,900 people. That day also became the deadliest in the history of Everest, with eighteen people losing their lives on the mountain.After spending two unsettling days stranded on Everest, Davidson's team was rescued by helicopter. The experience left him shaken, and despite his thirty-three years of climbing and serving as an expedition leader, he wasn't sure that he would ever go back. But in the face of risk and uncertainty, he returned in 2017 and finally achieved his dream of reaching the summit.Suspenseful and engrossing, The Next Everest portrays the experience of living through the biggest disaster to ever hit the mountain. Davidson's background in geology and environmental science makes him uniquely qualified to explain how this natural disaster unfolded and why the seismic threats lurking beneath Nepal are even greater today. But this story is not about "conquering" the world's highest peak. Instead, it reveals how embracing change, challenge, and uncertainty prepares anyone to face their "next Everest" in life.

The Animal Dialogues: Uncommon Encounters in the Wild


Craig Childs - 2007
    But the glory of each essay lies in Childs's ability to portray the sometimes brutal beauty of the wilderness, to capture the individual essence of wild creatures, to transport the reader beyond the human realm and deep inside the animal kingdom.

The Witches Are Coming


Lindy West - 2019
    From the moment powerful men started falling to the #MeToo movement, the lamentations began: this is feminism gone too far, this is injustice, this is a witch hunt. In The Witches Are Coming, firebrand author of the New York Times bestselling memoir and now critically acclaimed Hulu TV series Shrill, Lindy West, turns that refrain on its head. You think this is a witch hunt? Fine. You’ve got one.In a laugh-out-loud, incisive cultural critique, West extolls the world-changing magic of truth, urging readers to reckon with dark lies in the heart of the American mythos, and unpacking the complicated, and sometimes tragic, politics of not being a white man in the twenty-first century. She tracks the misogyny and propaganda hidden (or not so hidden) in the media she and her peers devoured growing up, a buffet of distortions, delusions, prejudice, and outright bullsh*t that has allowed white male mediocrity to maintain a death grip on American culture and politics-and that delivered us to this precarious, disorienting moment in history.West writes, “We were just a hair’s breadth from electing America’s first female president to succeed America’s first black president. We weren’t done, but we were doing it. And then, true to form—like the Balrog’s whip catching Gandalf by his little gray bootie, like the husband in a Lifetime movie hissing, ‘If I can’t have you, no one can’—white American voters shoved an incompetent, racist con man into the White House.”We cannot understand how we got here-how the land of the free became Trump’s America—without examining the chasm between who we are and who we think we are, without fact—checking the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and each other. The truth can transform us; there is witchcraft in it. Lindy West turns on the light.

The Big Year: A Tale of Man, Nature, and Fowl Obsession


Mark Obmascik - 2003
    For three men in particular, 1998 would become a grueling battle for a new North American birding record. Bouncing from coast to coast on frenetic pilgrimages for once-in-a-lifetime rarities, they brave broiling deserts, bug-infested swamps, and some of the lumpiest motel mattresses known to man. This unprecedented year of beat-the-clock adventures ultimately leads one man to a record so gigantic that it is unlikely ever to be bested. Here, prize-winning journalist Mark Obmascik creates a dazzling, fun narrative of the 275,000-mile odyssey of these three obsessives as they fight to win the greatest -- or maybe worst -- birding contest of all time.