Sex, Death, and Fly-Fishing

    The first collection from the acclaimed Outside columnist.

    So he jumped into his fully alarmed Japanese S.U.V. and drove to American sports shrines for a year, everywhere from Larry Bird's boyhood home in French Lick, Indiana, to the cornfield just outside of Dyersville, Iowa, where Field of Dreams was filmed. Now in paperback, Road Swing is the story of his journey.

    An anthropologist traveling with an aboriginal people finds that, because of his aggressive desire to understand them, they remain always disturbingly unknowable. A successful financial consultant, failing to discover his roots in Africa, jogs from Connecticut to the Pacific Ocean in order to forge an indigenous connection to the American landscape. A paleontologist is haunted by visions of wildlife in a vacant lot in Manhattan. In simple, crystalline prose, Lopez evokes a sense of the magic and marvelous strangeness of the world, and a deep compassion for the human predicament.

    But it was a role he took up late in life, that of writer, that won him enduring fame and critical acclaim—as well as the devotion of readers worldwide. Though the 1976 collection A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was the only book Maclean published in his lifetime, it was an unexpected success, and the moving family tragedy of the title novella—based largely on Maclean’s memories of his childhood home in Montana—has proved to be one of the most enduring American stories ever written.The Norman Maclean Reader is a wonderful addition to Maclean’s celebrated oeuvre. Bringing together previously unpublished materials with incidental writings and selections from his more famous works, the Reader will serve as the perfect introduction for readers new to Maclean, while offering longtime fans new insight into his life and career. In this evocative collection, Maclean as both a writer and a man becomes evident. Perceptive, intimate essays deal with his career as a teacher and a literary scholar, as well as the wealth of family stories for which Maclean is famous. Complete with a generous selection of letters, as well as excerpts from a 1986 interview, The Norman Maclean Reader provides a fully fleshed-out portrait of this much admired author, showing us a writer fully aware of the nuances of his craft, and a man as at home in the academic environment of the University of Chicago as in the quiet mountains of his beloved Montana.Multifarious and moving, the works collected in The Norman Maclean Reader serve as both a summation and a celebration, giving readers a chance once again to hear one of American literature’s most distinctive voices.

    Written while Abbey was working as a ranger at Arches National Park outside of Moab, Utah, Desert Solitaire is a rare view of one man’s quest to experience nature in its purest form.Through prose that is by turns passionate and poetic, Abbey reflects on the condition of our remaining wilderness and the future of a civilization that cannot reconcile itself to living in the natural world as well as his own internal struggle with morality. As the world continues its rapid development, Abbey’s cry to maintain the natural beauty of the West remains just as relevant today as when this book was written.

    

    A stunning collection of personal observations that uses images of the American West to probe larger concerns in lyrical, evocative prose that is a true celebration of the region.

    Baseball Prospectus 2015 brings together an elite group of analysts to provide the definitive look at the upcoming season in critical essays and commentary on the thirty teams, their managers, and more than sixty players and prospects from each team.Baseball Prospectus 2015contains critical essays on each of the thirty teams and player comments for some sixty players for each of those teams; projects each player's stats for the coming season using the groundbreaking PECOTA projection system, which has been called "perhaps the game's most accurate projection model" (Sports Illustrated). Now in its twentieth edition, this New York Times bestselling insider's guide from Baseball Prospectus, America's leading provider of statistical analysis for baseball, remains hands down the most authoritative and entertaining book of its kind.

    Each year, the series editor and guest editor curate a truly exceptional collection. The only shared traits among all these diverse styles, voices, and stories are the extraordinarily high caliber of writing, and the pure passion they tap into that can only come from sports.

    But instead of taking off with his fishing buddy, James put down his rod and surrendered. It was a move that would change his life forever. Expecting a small fine and a lecture, James instead received enough knowledge about fishing and the great outdoors to last a lifetime.The story of an unlikely friendship, Joe and Me is a book for those who remember the mentor in their life, the one who changed the way they look at the world.

    Byrne wanted the book to be the size and shape of a portable Bible, and thus The New Sins resembles the sort of book a strange person in a robe would try to give you in an airport. Bizarre and profound, the book includes 80 color photographs taken by the author.

    Ian Frazier, long considered one of our most treasured humorists, proves that comedy can be just as smart as it is entertaining.

    In an upbeat and original way of thinking Quammen writes about beetles, bats, crows, snakes and other interesting animals.

    A star running back at the University of North Carolina in the late 1950s, he graces the covers of Time and LIFE magazines and appears on the "Ed Sullivan Show." Everyone wants a piece of him or to be around him to bask in his glory, including his nephew Donny, who narrates the story and is Gavin's only real confidant.After college, Gavin goes on to the NFL where he has a solid career. As his playing days wind down and the cheering stops, however, he finds the adjustment to life as an ex-athlete difficult to accept. His wife "Babs" goes off to work, becomes the primary breadwinner for the family while Gavin continues to trade on his memories of old times, when he was everybody's All-American.