Tree Tops


Jim Corbett - 1991
    Although containing vivid descriptions of the area's wildlife, Corbett concentrates on the visit of Princess Elizabeth to Tree Tops, where she learned of George VI's death.

Mark of the Grizzly


Scott McMillion - 2011
    Sometimes grizzlies kill people, and in exceptionally rare cases they even eat them. Those incidents are the focus of this book because that's what makes bears so interesting, such a huge part of our culture and our collective imagination.

The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.


Jennifer Baggett - 2010
    Three friends, each on the brink of a quarter-life crisis, make a pact to quit their high pressure New York City media jobs and leave behind their friends, boyfriends, and everything familiar to embark on a year-long backpacking adventure around the world in The Lost Girls.

Among the Elephants


Iain Douglas-Hamilton - 1975
    With 16 pages of extraordinary photographs.

The Wild Trees: A Story of Passion and Daring


Richard Preston - 2007
    From the #1 bestselling author of The Hot Zone comes an amazing account of scientific and spiritual passion for the tallest trees in the world, the startling biosystem of Rthe canopy, S and those who are committed to the preservation of this astonishing and largely unknown world.

The Same River Twice: A Memoir of Dirtbag Backpackers, Bomb Shelters, and Bad Travel


Pam Mandel - 2020
    Given the choice, Pam Mandel would say no and stay home. It was getting her nowhere, so she decided to say yes. Yes to hard work and hitch-hiking, to mean boyfriends and dirty travel, to unfolding the map and walking to its edges. Yes to unknown countries, night shifts, language lessons, bad decisions, to anything to make her feel real, visible, alive. A product of beige California suburbs, Mandel was overlooked and unexceptional. When her father ships her off on a youth group tour of Israel, he inadvertently catapults his seventeen-year-old daughter into a world of angry European backpackers, seize-the-day Israelis, and the fall out of cold war-era politics. Border violence hadn't been on the birthright tour agenda. But then neither had domestic violence, going broke, getting wasted, getting sick, or getting lost. With no guidance and no particular plan, utterly unprepared for what lies ahead, Mandel says yes to everything and everyone, embarking on an adventure across three continents and thousands of miles, from a cold water London flat to rural Pakistan, from the Nile River Delta to the snowy peaks of Ladakh and finally, back home to California, determined to shape a life that is truly hers. An extraordinary memoir of going away and growing up, The Same River Twice follows Mandel's tangled journey and shows how travel teaches and changes us, even while it helps us become exactly who we have been all along.

Uncharted: A Couple's Epic Empty-Nest Adventure Sailing from One Life to Another


Kim Brown Seely - 2019
    This is an adventure story about a voyage from one life chapter to another that involves a too-big sailboat, a narrow and unknown sea, and an appetite to witness a mythical blonde bear that inhabits a remote rainforest.Kim Brown Seely and her husband had been damn good parents for more than 20 years. That was coming to an end as their youngest son was about to move across the country. The economy was in freefall and their jobs stagnant, so they impulsively decided to buy a big broken sailboat, learn how to sail it, and head up through the Salish Sea and the Inside Passage to an expanse of untamed wilderness in search of the elusive blonde Kermode bear that only lives in a secluded Northwest forest. Theirs was a voyage of discovery into who they were as individuals and as a couple at an axial moment in their lives. Wise and lyrical, this heartfelt memoir unfolds amid the stunningly wild archipelago on the far edge of the continent.

Wild Life: Dispatches from a Childhood of Baboons and Button-Downs


Keena Roberts - 2019
    In Africa, she slept in a tent, cooked over a campfire, and lived each day alongside the baboon colony her parents were studying. She could wield a spear as easily as a pencil, and it wasn't unusual to be chased by lions or elephants on any given day. But for the months of the year when her family lived in the United States, this brave kid from the bush was cowed by the far more treacherous landscape of the preppy, private school social hierarchy.Most girls Keena's age didn't spend their days changing truck tires, baking their own bread, or running from elephants as they tried to do their schoolwork. They also didn't carve bird whistles from palm nuts or nearly knock themselves unconscious trying to make homemade palm wine. But Keena's parents were famous primatologists who shuttled her and her sister between Philadelphia and Botswana every six months. Dreamer, reader, and adventurer, she was always far more comfortable avoiding lions and hippopotamuses than she was dealing with spoiled middle-school field hockey players. In Keena's funny, tender memoir, Wild Life, Africa bleeds into America and vice versa, each culture amplifying the other. By turns heartbreaking and hilarious, Wild Life is ultimately the story of a daring but sensitive young girl desperately trying to figure out if there's any place where she truly fits in.

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals


Laurie Zaleski - 2022
    But from girlhood, Laurie was determined to make the dream come true. Thirty years later as a successful businesswoman, she did it, buying a 15-acre farm deep in the Pinelands of South Jersey. She was planning to relocate Annie and her caravan of ragtag rescues--horses and goats, dogs and cats, chickens and pigs--when Annie died, just two weeks before moving day. In her heartbreak, Laurie resolved to make her mother's dream her own. In 2001, she established the Funny Farm Animal Rescue outside Mays Landing, New Jersey. Today, she carries on Annie's mission to save abused and neglected animals.Funny Farm is Laurie's story: of promises kept, dreams fulfilled, and animals lost and found. It's the story of Annie McNulty, who fled a nightmarish marriage with few skills, no money and no resources, dragging three kids behind her, and accumulating hundreds of cast-off animals on the way. And lastly, it's the story of the brave, incredible, and adorable animals that were rescued.

Safari Ants, Baggy Pants And Elephants: A Kenyan Odyssey


Susie Kelly - 2017
     With her husband Terry, Susie sets off for a holiday touring the game reserves, but what she finds far exceeds her expectations. In this, her seventh, travelogue, she takes readers from five star hotels to luxury tents in the wilderness, and to poverty in Nairobi's slums, describing a journey of joy, excitement, discovery, nostalgia, of new friendships and encounters of the very close kind with Kenya’s majestic wildlife. Forgotten memories come flooding back as she revisits the scenes of her childhood and adolescence, so movingly portrayed in her popular memoir I Wish I Could Say I Was Sorry, many of them changed beyond recognition. Written in her characteristic laid back style, this is a travel tale that will appeal to all those readers who have enjoyed Susie's previous books, as well as anybody who has lived in or dreams of visiting Kenya, the magical land Susie still thinks of as ‘home’. 'Vivid, moving, entertaining. Anybody thinking of taking a safari holiday in Kenya, or who would like to take an armchair safari to Kenya, should read this book.' "Hemingway wrote: 'I never knew of a morning in Africa when I woke up that I was not happy.' That is how I feel about Kenya. You feel at once insignificant and amazing, just for being here. This magnificent, beautiful country, birthplace of mankind, owner of my heart." Susie Kelly, 2017 WHAT READERS ARE SAYING: 'I’ve just been on a wonderful safari trip to Kenya! At least that’s how it felt. As a lover of all wildlife this was a trip that I could only ever dream about, but this book more than satisfied my curiosity and thirst for knowledge about African wildlife.' MRS BLOGGS BOOKS 'A wonderful & poignant African safari. Being an animal fanatic I enjoyed learning so much about African wildlife from this book and also the incredible people who care for, and protect it' SUSAN KEEFE 'Susie is a great ambassador for Kenya. It’s the best safari experience you are likely to get, without going on safari!' FRENCH VILLAGE DIARIES 'I consider myself rather knowledgeable about wildlife, yet I still found plenty here that was new to me about the animals and the Masai Mara in particular.' ANDREW IVES 'Susie Kelly's books are always a delight to read. The descriptions were informative, insightful and at times hilarious.' 'Wonderful read. I have avidly read each of Susie's previously published books.' 'One of my best reads ever. Cannot recommend this book enough - beautifully written (as always) and having lived in Kenya myself during the same period empathise totally with every word she writes.' 'Personal, Funny, Informative and Memorable! It's so very well-written, so easy to read, so funny and entertaining, so informative and educational.' 'I'm a big fan of Susie Kelly and her travels. Susie - where you going next? I'll be in my armchair right there with you!' 'What a fabulous trip. Delightful.' 'Thoroughly enjoyable as well as being informative. Certainly made me look forward to such a journey some day!' 'Susie Kelly has a wonderful way with words and descriptions and a fantastic sense of humour.' 'More than your average safari. I pre-ordered the book, received it on 6th June and read it the same day...phone off the hook and cup of tea at hand.

Cry of the Kalahari


Mark Owens - 1984
    Here they met and studied unique animals and were confronted with danger from drought, fire, storms, and the animals they loved. This best-selling book is for both travelers and animal lovers.

Clearly Now, the Rain: A Memoir of Love and Other Trips


Eli Hastings - 2013
    She wore saris and ate delicately from plates of curry at family events; elsewhere she wore a lip ring, designer shades, and a cowboy hat and ordered bloody steaks. She wrote volumes of poetry, made amateur films, singlehandedly ran a chapter of Food Not Bombs, and ended up as a fierce advertising agency executive. She often slept less than five hours per week and would, at the slightest excuse, drive from L.A. to New York in a cool 50 hours. In some moments of danger, she split the lips of menacing strangers. And she gave herself over to the casual knives and fists of others for nothing more than another bag of heroin that she had plenty of money for anyway. Clearly Now, the Rain traces the decade-long relationship of Eli Hastings and his friend Serala: from ill-advised quests for narcotics in Mexican border towns through summer road trips, from southern California to Tennessee and on to New York City and Seattle, from 1996 to the very last days of 2004, when Serala’s journey concluded tragically at age 27.

Playing with Water


James Hamilton-Paterson - 1987
    "A wonderful inner journey in the outer light and color of a remote coast, uncommonly well written."--Peter Matthiessen

The Unexpected Truth About Animals: A Menagerie of the Misunderstood


Lucy Cooke - 2017
    See ISBN 9780465094646History is full of strange animal stories invented by the brightest and most influential, from Aristotle to Disney. But when it comes to understanding animals, we’ve got a long way to go.Whether we’re watching a viral video of romping baby pandas or looking at a picture of penguins ‘holding hands’, we often project our own values – innocence, abstinence, hard work – onto animals. So you’ve probably never considered that moose get drunk and that penguins are notorious cheats.In The Unexpected Truth About Animals Zoologist Lucy unravels many such myths – that eels are born from sand, that swallows hibernate under water, and that bears gave birth to formless lumps that are licked into shape by their mothers – to show that the stories we create reveal as much about us as they do about the animals.Astonishing, illuminating and laugh-out-loud funny.

This Is Your Mind on Plants


Michael Pollan - 2021
    Exploring and participating in the cultures that have grown up around these drugs while consuming (or, in the case of caffeine, trying not to consume) them, Pollan reckons with the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants. Why do we go to such great lengths to seek these shifts in consciousness, and then why do we fence that universal desire with laws and customs and fraught feelings?