Even his metal tools melted. Friends loaned him a tent, but after just a month it began to break down—which Warren vowed not to do. Instead, he decided to follow a childhood dream and live in a tipi. Excitement stirred in his chest, and so began a two-year adventure of struggle, contemplation, and achievement that brought him even closer to the land that he called home. More than just the story of one man, Two Winters in a Tipi gives the history and use of the native structure, providing valuable advice, through Warren’s trial and error, about the confrontations that march toward a tipi dweller. It shows, without thumping the drum of environmental doom, how you can go back to the land for two days or two years. The wild plants that Natives harvested for food and medicine still grow nearby. The foods still nourish; the medicines still heal. As Warren beautifully reveals, the wild places of the past still exist in our everyday lives, and living that wilderness is still a possibility. It’s as close as the river running through your city, the woods in your neighborhood, or even the edges of your own backyard.

    She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it. In this graphic and yet surprisingly funny account of her and others’ extraordinary careers, Lankford unveils a world in which park rangers struggle to maintain their idealism in the face of death, disillusionment, and the loss of a comrade killed while holding that thin green line between protecting the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from each other. Ranger Confidential is the story behind the scenery of the nation’s crown jewels—Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smokies, Denali. In these iconic landscapes, where nature and humanity constantly collide, scenery can be as cruel as it is redemptive.

    Aspirin, the world's most widely used drug, is based on compounds originally extracted from the bark of a willow tree, and more than a quarter of medicines found on pharmacy shelves contain plant compounds. Now Western medicine, faced with health crises such as AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, and cancer, has begun to look to the healing plants used by indigenous peoples to develop powerful new medicines. Nowhere is the search more promising than in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical forest, home to a quarter of all botanical species on this planet—as well as hundreds of Indian tribes whose medicinal plants have never been studied by Western scientists. In Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice, ethnobotanist Mark J. Plotkin recounts his travels and studies with some of the most powerful Amazonian shamans, who taught him the plant lore their tribes have spent thousands of years gleaning from the rain forest.For more than a decade, Dr. Plotkin has raced against time to harvest and record new plants before the rain forests' fragile ecosystems succumb to overdevelopment—and before the Indians abandon their own culture and learning for the seductive appeal of Western material culture. Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice relates nine of the author's quests, taking the reader along on a wild odyssey as he participates in healing rituals; discovers the secret of curare, the lethal arrow poison that kills in minutes; tries the hallucinogenic snuff epena that enables the Indians to speak with their spirit world; and earns the respect and fellowship of the mysterious shamans as he proves that he shares both their endurance and their reverence for the rain forest. Mark Plotkin combines the Darwinian spirit of the great writer-explorers of the nineteenth century—curious, discursive, and rigorously scientific—with a very modern concern for the erosion of our environment and the vanishing culture of native peoples.

    He never left. With an assortment of birds, dogs, snakes, and books, he took up residence in a ramshackle two-story house along US 60 and set out to live in the way of country people. "Querencia"--the Zen-like Spanish term means something like the tiny pocket of one's inner life where one is truly at home--details a decade of life there. Throughout the early pages of his memoir, Stephen finds himself tested by the locals for his knowledge of raptor birds, of snakes, of dogs. When he begins to pass the tests, his transformation is complete, earning him a home, a place in the heart. Querencia offers a fine brief on rural living, alternately reveling in country matters and acknowledging the difficulties involved in such exercises as luring cows home from the mountain wilderness into which they've strayed while steering clear of venomous reptiles and combative bull elk. It's a treasure. --Greg McNamee

    The bad guys here are illegal deer hunters, law-breaking drag-boat fishermen who pilfer the ocean depths, poachers who kill elk, anglers who disrupt historic salmon spawning grounds and other miscreants who feed the flourishing illicit wildlife trade. Grosz has seen them all -- and arrested many -- in his 32 years as a special agent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and as a California state fish and game warden. A bear of a man -- six-foot-four, over 300 pounds -- Grosz relates his exploits in adventures full of slam-bang action and bravado tempered by a coolheaded sense of humor. Motivated by reverence for God's creation, he comes off as a mixture of guts and heart. In one episode, he sleeps overnight in a California rice field with a feeding flock of several thousand mallard ducks to protect them from commercial hunters. Full of gumption and guile, Grosz readily admits to failings that render him more likably human. He gets seasick and retches while making on-board boat inspections, and in one bust gone bad, a duck hunter sprays his backside with 189 shotgun pellets. Overall, these offbeat tales effectively dramatize the underfunded, underappreciated, dangerous and heroic activities of wildlife agents. (Oct.)

    For 70 days he and his rowing partner ate, slept and rowed in a boat seven metres long and two metres wide, in one of the world's most extreme environments. This is his story of adventure, endurance and self-discovery.They were following in the wake of pioneers. In 1896 a pair of Norwegian fisherman crossed the 2,500 miles in a wooden fishing dory - and their record stood for 114 years. John Fairfax, a smuggler, gambler and shark hunter, was the first to complete the feat single-handedly in 1969. Others have followed; some have not survived the attempt. This is their story, too.

    Surrounded by the terraced hills of the Yangtze River valley, Fuling has long been a place of continuity, far from the bustling political centers of Beijing and Shanghai. But now Fuling is heading down a new path, and gradually, along with scores of other towns in this vast and ever-evolving country, it is becoming a place of change and vitality, tension and reform, disruption and growth. As the people of Fuling hold on to the China they know, they are also opening up and struggling to adapt to a world in which their fate is uncertain.Fuling's position at the crossroads came into remarkably sharp focus when Peter Hessler arrived as a Peace Corps volunteer in 1996, marking the first time in more than half a century that the city had an American resident. He found himself teaching English and American literature at the local college, discovering how Shakespeare and other classics look when seen through the eyes of students who have been raised in the Sichuan countryside and educated in Communist Party doctrine. His students, though, are the ones who taught him about the ways of Fuling — and about the complex process of understanding that takes place when one is immersed in a radically different society.As he learns the language and comes to know the people, Hessler begins to see that it is indeed a unique moment for Fuling. In its past is Communist China's troubled history — the struggles of land reform, the decades of misguided economic policies, and the unthinkable damage of the Cultural Revolution — and in the future is the Three Gorges Dam, which upon completion will partly flood thecity and force the resettlement of more than a million people. Making his way in the city and traveling by boat and train throughout Sichuan province and beyond, Hessler offers vivid descriptions of the people he meets, from priests to prostitutes and peasants to professors, and gives voice to their views. This is both an intimate personal story of his life in Fuling and a colorful, beautifully written account of the surrounding landscape and its history. Imaginative, poignant, funny, and utterly compelling, River Town is an unforgettable portrait of a city that, much like China itself, is seeking to understand both what it was and what it someday will be.

    In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement’s history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today’s global effort to defend life on a larger scale.She describes the vital role of scientists and activists such as Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson as well as lesser-known figures in conservation history; she reveals the origins of vital organizations like the Audubon Society and the World Wildlife Fund; she explores current efforts to protect species such as the whooping crane and the black rhinoceros; and she confronts the darker side of conservation, long shadowed by racism and colonialism.As the destruction of other species continues and the effects of climate change escalate, Beloved Beasts charts the ways conservation is becoming a movement for the protection of all species—including our own.

    It can decapitate with a single swipe or grotesquely disfigure a person in rapid order. Within the last wilderness areas where they dwell, they are the undisputed king of all beasts. I know this very well. My name is Timothy Treadwell, and I live with the wild grizzly. . . ."After Timothy Treadwell nearly died from a heroin overdose, he sought healing far from the trappings of civilization--among wild grizzlies on the remote Alaskan coast. Without gun, two-way radio, or experience living in the wild, armed only with the love and respect he felt for these majestic animals, Treadwell set up camp surrounded by one of nature's most terrifying and fascinating forces of nature.Here is the story of his astonishing adventures with grizzlies: soothing aggressive adolescents, facing down thousand-pound males, swimming with mothers and cubs, surviving countless brushes with death, earning their trust and acceptance. In these incredible pages, Treadwell lives a life no human has ever attempted, and ultimately saves his own. To share his experience is awesome, harrowing, and unforgettable.                                                         "LIKE AFRICA NATURALIST JANE GOODALL, TREADWELL GIVES PERSONAL NAMES TO HIS SUBJECTS. . . . Bears have distinct personalities, Treadwell shows, and as a group, individual roles become clearly defined by gender, size, and age."--The Seattle TimesWith twenty-nine photographs

    The unmarried, and childless Briggs is the object of mirth and pity of the Sinhalese,she journeys around the Teardrop Island, inadvisably for her, but entertainingly for us on public transport. With the civil war recently ended and the effects of the devastating tsunami as ever present context Briggs entertains and educates. Her hapless inability to select decent guides or drivers results in her taking us vicariously to places we would never reach otherwise.Not to be read if your offspring are contemplating a gap year in Ceylon.

    The expedition was described by the two men in Sea of Cortez, published in 1941. The day-to-day story of the trip is told here in the Log, which combines science, philosophy and high-spirited adventure.Log from the Sea of Cortez includes the narrative of the journey and the essay “About Ed Ricketts.” It does not include pictures and detailed descriptions of the species collected by Steinbeck and Ricketts. (See also Sea of Cortez.)

    This is the book he wrote about that journey -- a classic account of the reawakening of his faith in himself and his country."I started out searching for myself and my country," Peter Jenkins writes, "and found both." In this timeless classic, Jenkins describes how disillusionment with society in the 1970s drove him out onto the road on a walk across America. His experiences remain as sharp and telling today as they were twenty-five years ago -- from the timeless secrets of life, learned from a mountain-dwelling hermit, to the stir he caused by staying with a black family in North Carolina, to his hours of intense labor in Southern mills. Many, many miles later, he learned lessons about his country and himself that resonate to this day -- and will inspire a new generation to get out, hit the road and explore.

    As a child, Sandy had been told Bob was “crazy,” that he had spent time in mental hospitals while growing up in Berkeley in the 60s and 70s. But Bob had lived a hermetic life in a remote part of California for longer than Sandy had been alive, and what little Sandy knew of him came from rare family reunions or odd, infrequent phone calls. Then in 2009 Bob mailed Sandy his autobiography. Typewritten in all caps, a stream of error-riddled sentences over sixty, single-spaced pages, the often-incomprehensible manuscript proclaimed to be a “true story” about being “labeled a psychotic paranoid schizophrenic,” and arrived with a plea to help him get his story out to the world.In A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise: A True Story about Schizophrenia, Sandy translates Bob’s autobiography, artfully creating a gripping coming-of-age story while sticking faithfully to the facts as he shared them. Lacing Bob’s narrative with chapters providing greater contextualization, Sandy also shares background information about their family, the culturally explosive time and place of their uncle’s formative years, and the vitally important questions surrounding schizophrenia and mental healthcare in America more broadly. The result is a heartbreaking and sometimes hilarious portrait of a young man striving for stability in his life as well as his mind, and an utterly unique lens into an experience that, to most people, remains unimaginable.Called “an act of radical empathy” by Anne Fadiman and “a truly original piece of work” by Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, A Kind of Mirraculas Paradise is a propulsive, stunning book that’s poised to change conversation about schizophrenia and mental illness generally.

    One weekend, Mark escapes to Moganshan, a dilapidated mountaintop village built by foreigners in the early 1900s as a summer retreat. Mark falls in love with the place and decides to restore one of the villas, as if he were in Tuscany or Provence.

    From alpacas to exotic pigs, puppies to rabbits, Julian has treated them all and his book is packed with stories about his loveable patients and will prove a firm favourite with all animal lovers. Dealing with unexpected exotic pets – and handling excitable humans too – Julian has seen all sides of the veterinary world and writes about it all with humour and affection. Just as happy calving a cow, treating a dehydrated chameleon or tending to the overgrown teeth of a rabbit, his passion for his work shines through on every page, as does his love for Yorkshire.Julian Norton also stars in Channel 5’s fly-on-the-wall documentary series The Yorkshire Vet, one of the channel’s highest rated shows (with series four set to return in 2017). Warm, evocative always compassionate and often funny, Julian’s tales bring to life the world of the working vet and the highs and lows he and his colleagues face on a daily basis.