Book picks similar to
The National Parks: Our American Landscape by Ian Shive
nonfiction
earth-friendly
national-parks
read-nonfiction
America's Wilderness: The Photographs Of Ansel Adams With The Writings Of John Muir
John Muir - 1990
Adams's breathtaking images are accompanied by excerpts from the writings of Sierra Club founder John Muir, the renowned conservationist who devoted his life to celebrating and preserving the American wildnerness.
Your Guide to the National Parks
Michael Joseph Oswald - 2012
This guide provides step-by-step itineraries, kid-friendly activities, and the most popular ranger programs to help plan your family vacation. Thousands of hotels, restaurants, and attractions beyond the parks and 11 suggested road trips make it the ultimate dashboard companion. Exhaustive activity information, including hiking tables, easy-to-find trailhead markers, outfitter details, and backpacking essentials, serves as blueprint for an adventure of a lifetime. With something from everyone this is "Your Guide to the National Parks."
Vanlife Diaries: Finding Freedom on the Open Road
Kathleen Morton - 2019
More than 200 photographs feature the vanlifers, their pets, and their converted vans and buses--VWs, Sprinters, Toyotas, and more--with the interiors uniquely customized and decorated for their work and hobbies, as well as the stunning natural locations that are the movement's inspiration. Interviews and narrative captions share the stories of these nomads and how they decided to pursue vanlife, and provide practical tips and inspiration for downsizing, finding and converting your vehicle, and working and living on the road.
Philip Guston: Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations
Philip Guston - 2010
Over the course of his life, Guston’s wide reading in literature and philosophy deepened his commitment to his art—from his early Abstract Expressionist paintings to his later gritty, intense figurative works. This collection, with many pieces appearing in print for the first time, lets us hear Guston’s voice—as the artist delivers a lecture on Renaissance painting, instructs students in a classroom setting, and discusses such artists and writers as Piero della Francesca, de Chirico, Picasso, Kafka, Beckett, and Gogol.
Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers
Glen Simmons - 1998
. . should have strong, immediate interest for the ecologists engaged in efforts to restore the Everglades."--William B. Robertson, research biologist for Everglades National ParkFrom the book--Pa built our house out of rough lumber that they got from Frazier’s sawmill . . . a one-room house about 16 to 18 feet long and 12 feet wide. We all slept on cots and sat on boxes or a trunk. The kitchen was in the corner, and Ma cooked on a four-hole stove, which cost six dollars. Me and my middle brother, Alvin, sat on a trunk to eat at the table. That trunk had some long cracks in it. My brother knew just how to move so the crack would pinch . . . .Years before the Park was established, when all the land and marsh seemed to belong to me, we would help ourselves to whatever we could see or trade for survival. Mostly we would sell gator and otter hides. . . . On this particular trip, after grunting awhile at the gator hole, I gave up and made tracks to the camp since I wanted to return by dark. . . . I was lying under my skeeter bar with a small tarp stretched between two cabbage palms. About midnight, I heard the dried cabbage fronds breaking in the path toward my camp. The night was pitch black . . .Few people today can claim a living memory of Florida's frontier Everglades. Glen Simmons, who has hunted alligators, camped on hammock-covered islands, and poled his skiff through the mangrove swamps of the glades since the 1920s, is one who can. Together with Laura Ogden, he tells the story of backcountry life in the southern Everglades from his youth until the establishment of the Everglades National Park in 1947. During the economic bust of the late ‘20s, when many natives turned to the land to survive, Simmons began accompanying older local men into Everglades backcountry, the inhospitable prairie of soft muck and mosquitoes, of outlaws and moonshiners, that rings the southern part of the state. As Simmons recalls life in this community with humor and nostalgia, he also documents the forgotten lifestyles of south Florida gladesmen. By necessity, they understood the natural features of the Everglades ecosystem. They observed the seasonal fluctuations of wildlife, fire, and water levels. Their knowledge of the mostly unmapped labyrinth of grassy water enabled them to serve as guides for visiting naturalists and scientists. Simmons reconstructs this world, providing not only fascinating stories of individual personalities, places, and events, but an account that is accurate, both scientifically and historically, of one of the least known and longest surviving portions of the American frontier.Glen Simmons has lived in the south Florida Everglades since his birth in 1916 in Homestead. In 1995 he was awarded a State of Florida Heritage Award for his unique contribution to Florida's history and folk culture. He has demonstrated and taught glades skiff building for the Florida Department of State, Bureau of Folklife, and the South Florida Historical Society; his boats are on permanent display at the Florida Folklife Museum in White Springs, Florida, and at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, Miami.Laura Ogden, also born in Homestead and a life-long friend of Glen Simmons, is assistant professor of anthropology at Florida International University.
Ink: The Not-Just-Skin-Deep Guide to Getting a Tattoo
Terisa Green - 2005
For anyone who's considered joining the tribe of the tattooed.This fun, fact-filled, fascinating guide includes information on choosing the perfect tattoo, finding a tattoo artist, staying health-conscious, long-term effects, and much more.
There and Back: Photographs from the Edge
Jimmy Chin - 2021
Filmmaker, photographer, and world-class mountaineer Jimmy Chin goes where few can follow to capture stunning images in death-defying situations. There and Back draws from his breathtaking portfolio of photographs, captured over twenty years during cutting-edge expeditions on all seven continents—from skiing Mount Everest, to an unsupported traverse of Tibet’s Chang Tang Plateau on foot, to first ascents in Chad’s Ennedi Desert and Antarctica’s Queen Maud Land.Along the way, Chin shares behind-the-scenes details about how he captured such astounding images in impossible conditions, and tells the stories of the legendary adventurers and remarkable athletes he has photographed, including Alex Honnold, the star of his Academy Award–winning documentary film Free Solo; ski mountaineer Kit DesLauriers; snowboarder Travis Rice; and mountaineers Conrad Anker and Yvon Chouinard. These larger-than-life images, coupled with stories of outsized drive and passion, of impossible goals with life or death stakes, of partnerships forged through incredible hardship, are sure to inspire wonder and awe.
Billionaire Wilderness: The Ultra-Wealthy and the Remaking of the American West
Justin Farrell - 2020
Justin Farrell spent five years in Teton County, Wyoming, the richest county in the United States, and a community where income inequality is the worst in the nation. He conducted hundreds of in-depth interviews, gaining unprecedented access to tech CEOs, Wall Street financiers, and other prominent figures in business and politics. He also talked with the rural poor who live among the ultra-wealthy and often work for them. The result is a penetrating account of the far-reaching consequences of the massive accrual of wealth and a troubling portrait of a changing American West where romanticizing rural poverty and conserving nature can be lucrative, socially as well as financially.
Girl on the Rocks: A Woman's Guide to Climbing with Strength, Grace, and Courage
Katie Brown - 2008
Written for any woman interested or involved in the sport, Girl on the Rocks will inspire, instruct, and empower women of all ages and ability to get psyched and climb on.
The Midnight Assassin: Panic, Scandal, and the Hunt for America's First Serial Killer
Skip Hollandsworth - 2016
But beginning in December 1884, Austin was terrorized by someone equally as vicious and, in some ways, far more diabolical than London's infamous Jack the Ripper. For almost exactly one year, the Midnight Assassin crisscrossed the entire city, striking on moonlit nights, using axes, knives, and long steel rods to rip apart women from every race and class. At the time the concept of a serial killer was unthinkable, but the murders continued, the killer became more brazen, and the citizens' panic reached a fever pitch.Before it was all over, at least a dozen men would be arrested in connection with the murders, and the crimes would expose what a newspaper described as "the most extensive and profound scandal ever known in Austin." And yes, when Jack the Ripper began his attacks in 1888, London police investigators did wonder if the killer from Austin had crossed the ocean to terrorize their own city.With vivid historical detail and novelistic flair, Texas Monthly journalist Skip Hollandsworth brings this terrifying saga to life.
Green: A Field Guide to Marijuana: (Books about Marijuana, Guide to Cannabis, Weed Bible)
Dan Michaels - 2015
Presented in an eye-popping package and filled with hyperdetailed photography of individual buds, this essential guide to marijuana is smart, practical, and exceedingly beautiful. The "Primer" section explores the culture of this complex flower and explains the botany that makes each strain unique. The "Buds" section describes the variations of lineage, flavor, and mental or physical high that define 170 exceptional strains. Poised to become the go-to marijuana guide for recreational and medicinal users alike, Green is easy to pick up and impossible to put down.
Queenspotting: Meet the Remarkable Queen Bee and Discover the Drama at the Heart of the Hive
Hilary Kearney - 2019
Since her well-being is linked to the well-being of the entire colony, the ability to find her among the residents of the hive is an essential beekeeping skill. In QueenSpotting, experienced beekeeper and professional "swarm catcher" Hilary Kearney challenges readers to 'spot the queen' with 48 fold-out queenspotting puzzles - vivid up-close photos of the queen hidden among her many subjects. QueenSpotting celebrates the unique, fascinating life of the queen bee chronicles of royal hive happenings such as The Virgin Death Match, The Nuptual Flight - when the queen mates with a cloud of male drones high in the air - and the dramatic Exodus of the Swarm from the hive. Readers will thrill at Kearney's adventures in capturing these swarms from the strange places they settle, including a Jet Ski, a couch, a speed boat, and an owl's nesting box. Fascinating, fun, and instructive, backyard beekeepers and nature lovers alike will find reason to return to the pages again and again.
The Sense of Wonder
Rachel Carson - 1965
Stunning new photographs by Nick Kelsh beautifully complement Carson's intimate account of adventures with her young nephew, Roger, as they enjoy walks along the rocky coast of Maine and through dense forests and open fields, observing wildlife, strange plants, moonlight and storm clouds, and listening to the "living music" of insects in the underbrush. "If a child is to keep alive his inborn sense of wonder." Writes Carson, "he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in." The Sense of Wonder is a refreshing antidote to indifference and a guide to capturing the simple power of discovery that Carson views as essential to life.In her insightful new introduction, Linda Lear remembers Rachel Carson's groundbreaking achievements in the context of the legendary environmentalist's personal commitment to introducing young and old to the miracles of nature.Kelsh's lush photographs inspire sensual, tactile reactions: masses of leaves floating in a puddle are just waiting to be scooped up and examined more closely. An image of a narrow path through the trees evokes the earthy scent of the woods after a summer rain. Close-ups of mosses and miniature lichen fantasy-lands will spark innocent'as well as more jaded'imaginations. Like a curious child studying things underfoot and within reach, Kelsh's camera is drawn to patterns in nature that too often elude hurried adults'a stand of beech trees in the springtime, patches of melting snow and the ripples from a pebble tossed into a slow-moving stream.The Sense of Wonder is a timeless volume that will be passed on from children to grandchildren, as treasured as the memory of an early-morning walk when the song of a whippoorwill was heard as if for the first time.
Subway
Bruce Davidson - 1980
Originally published in 1986, this dark, democratic environment provided the setting for photographer Bruce Davidson's first extensive series in color. Subway riders are set against a gritty, graffiti-strewn background, displayed in tones Davidson described as "an iridescence like that I had seen in photographs of deep-sea fish." Never before has the subway been portrayed in such detail, revealing the interplay of its inner landscape and out vistas. The images include lovers, commuters, tourists, families, and the homeless. From weary straphangers to languorous ladies in summer dresses to stalking predators, Davidson's compassionate vision illuminates the stubborn survival of humanity. From the spring of 1980 to 1985, Davidson explored and shot six hundred miles of subway tracks. In his own words, "I wanted to transform this subway from its dark, degrading, and impersonal reality into images that open up our experience again to the color, sensuality, and vitality of the individual souls that ride it each day." Now nearly 25 years later, and on the eve of the subway's 100th anniversary, St. Ann's Press is publishing a new edition of Davidson's classic book. This edition adds forty unseen images to the original book, and includes a new introduction by Arthur Ollman of the Museum of Photographic Art in San Diego, and a foreword by Fred Braithwaite (aka Fab Five Freddy), the original graffiti artist. It also includes Bruce Davidson and Henry Geldzahler's original essays.
The Colorado Trail
Colorado Trail Foundation - 1994
Spanning 486 miles from the Denver suburbs to Durango, the trail passes through six national forests and six wilderness areas, traverses five major river systems, and crosses eight mountain ranges. The ninth edition of The Colorado Trail has all the information a day hiker, thru-hiker, mountain biker, or equestrian needs to plan and complete a trip on the trail. New to this edition are five chapters on the 80-mile Collegiate West trail addition. Maps and written descriptions for all twenty-eight segments of the Colorado Trail have also been updated throughout the guide. Each chapter provides essential logistical information for Colorado Trail hikers: trailhead directions; road access points; detailed trail descriptions including distance and elevation gain; color maps and elevation profiles; and information on water sources, campsite locations, and resupply towns. Additional town maps and mountain bike detour maps (around Wilderness Areas) have been included throughout the book. An extensive introduction includes information on planning, supplying, safety, equipment, navigation, mountain biking, horseback riding, regulations, and backcountry ethics—plus chapters on the heritage of The Colorado Trail, natural history, and geology. At the back of the book you will find useful contact information and an index.