Lentfer's storytelling achieves its joys and universality not via grand summations but via grounded self-giving, familial intimacy, funny friendships, attentive griefs, and full-bodied immersion in the Alaskan rainforest. The writing is honest, intensely lived, and overflowing with heart: broken, mended, and whole."a "David James Duncan, author of The Brothers K and God Laughs & PlaysHank Lentfer listened to cranes passing over his home in southeast alaska for twenty years before bothering to figure out where they were going. On a very visceral level, he didn't want to know. After all, cranes gliding through the wide skies of Alaska are the essence of wildness. But the same animals, pecking a living between the cornfields and condos of California's Central Valley, seem trapped and diminished. A former wildlife biologist and longtime conservationist, Lentfer had come to accept that no number of letters to the editor or trips to D.C. could stop the spread of clear cuts, alter the course of climate change, or ensure that his beloved cranes would always appear. And he had no idea that following the paths of cranes would lead him to the very things he was most afraid of: parenthood, responsibility, and actions of hope in a frustrating and warming world. Faith of Cranes is Lentfer's quiet, lyrical memoir of his home and community near Glacier Bay that reveals a family's simple acts -- planting potatoes, watching cranes, hunting deer -- as well as a close and eccentric Alaskan community. It shows how several thousand birds and one little girl teach a new father there is no future imaginable that does not leave room for compassion and grace.

    In Rome, she indulges herself and gains nearly two stone. In India, she finds enlightenment through scrubbing temple floors. Finally, in Bali a toothless medicine man reveals a new path to peace, leaving her ready to find love again. Despite vowing in EAT PRAY LOVE never to go near marriage again, in COMMITTED we find Gilbert about to wed the man she fell in love with at the end of EAT, PRAY, LOVE. Once again approaching with this most ancient of institutions, with wit and intelligence Gilbert explores marriage on a personal & global level to discover what it really means. In THE LAST AMERICAN MAN, Gilbert presents a fascinating, intimate portrait of the American naturalist and brilliant modern hero Eustace Conway, who at the age of seventeen ditched the comforts of his suburban existence to escape into the wild. Attempting to instil in people a deeper appreciation of nature, Conway stops at nothing in pursuit of bigger, bolder adventures. In Gilbert's first novel STERN MEN, the eighteen-year-old irredeemably unromantic Ruth Thomas returns home from boarding school determined to join the 'stern-men'. Throwing her education overboard, this feisty and unforgettable American heroine helps work the lobster boats and brushes up on her profanity, eventually falling for a handsome young lobsterman. In PILGRIMS, Gilbert's sharply drawn and tenderly observed collection of twelve short stories, tough heroes and heroines, hardened by their experiences, struggle for their epiphanies and seek companionship as fiercely as they can.

    White, the author of The Once and Future King and Mistress Masham's Repose, was a young writer who found himself rifling through old handbooks of falconry. A particular sentence — "the bird reverted to a feral state" — seized his imagination, and, White later wrote, "A longing came to my mind that I should be able to do this myself. The word 'feral' has a kind of magical potency which allied itself to two other words, 'ferocious' and 'free.'" Immediately, White wrote to Germany to acquire a young goshawk. Gos, as White named the bird, was ferocious and Gos was free, and White had no idea how to break him in beyond the ancient (and, though he did not know it, long superseded) practice of depriving him of sleep, which meant that he, White, also went without rest. Slowly man and bird entered a state of delirium and intoxication, of attraction and repulsion that looks very much like love. White kept a daybook describing his volatile relationship with Gos — at once a tale of obsession, a comedy of errors, and a hymn to the hawk. It was this that became The Goshawk, one of modern literature's most memorable and surprising encounters with the wilderness — as it exists both within us and without.

    For nearly three decades they created a deliberate life using no running water or electricity. It was an extreme that most of us can only imagine sustaining for a week or two.The end of their marriage came on a frigid day, February 6, 2000 when Guy climbed to the summit of Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire’s White Mountains and sat down among the rocks to die. Losing the Garden is the memoir of a woman who was compelled to ask herself "How could I support my husband's plan to commit suicide?" It is an intimate examination of dark family histories and a marriage that tried to transcend them.Laura’s father was the pre-eminent scholar of Emily Dickinson, Thomas H. Johnson, whose brilliance was muddied by alcoholism. Guy Waterman lost two sons (one son was a subject of Jon Krakauer’s bestselling book Into the Wild). Finally, Laura Waterman comes to terms with her husband’s long depression and his complex nature. Her awakening and affirmation of life after loss is a love story, a portrait of an intense and unusual marriage.

    As the forerunner of such important books as Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Edward Abbey's Desert Solitaire, and Robert Finch's The Primal Place, this classic work remains as relevant today as it was sixty-five years ago.

    Among them were Pete and Linda Dunne, who set off from there on a year-long odyssey. Dunne has poured the most remarkable stories, birds, and characters into this unforgettable book about their once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

    With fewer people and resources than any of the top competitors, the only way they were going to win was to push the limit, go for broke, and hope for more than a little luck. By the time they got to the racetrack, they knew: In the fog of fierce competition, whether you win or lose, you learn the hardest lessons about engineering, teamwork, friendship, and yourself.

    Ben Law's incredible sense of the land and his respect for age old traditions offers a wonderful insight into the life of Prickly Nut Wood.

    When he was seventeen years old, his demons led him to a Massachusetts mental institution where he confronted them the only way he knew how, by writing his first songs. Thirty years later, Taylor's songs are among the most popular in the annals of music, but the demons are still with him. But unlike many of his contemporaries who faced a similar struggle, Taylor managed to emerge as an inspirational figure. Fire and Rain traces this remarkable path, including his troubled marriage to pop star Carly Simon and the premature alcoholism-related death of his brother: Taylor's ten-month stay in the exclusive private psychiatric institution where he finished high school; His self-imposed exile to England where he submitted some of his music to the Beatles' Apple Records, which signed him to his first record contract in 1968. Paul McCartney mentored Taylor's early career; The story behind his second album, Sweet Baby James, which contained the song "Fire and Rain" about the hopelessness of mental illness and suicide; As Taylor's fame increased, so did his problems with heroin, alcohol, and mental illness. In the seventies, the singer nearly fell over the edge many times.

    The book is full of many personal stories never told or published before. 16-page photo insert.

    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.

    From witnessing homelessness in the United States to struggles for social change in Haiti, El Salvador, and Brazil, Puleo used photography and interviews to be a bridge between poverty and affluence, the First World and the Third World. Puleo's familiarity with suffering, however, was dramatically intensified when she was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor at the age of thirty-one. She died twenty-one months later.

    Each included adventure has been selected to show the extent to which Muir courted and faced danger, i.e. lived "wildly, " throughout his life. From the famous avalanche ride off the rim of Yosemite Valley to his night spent riding out a windstorm at the top of a tree to death-defying falls on Alaskan glaciers, the renowned outdoorsman's exploits are related in passages that are by turns exhilarating, unnerving, dizzying and outrageous.

    It was the start of many journeys to prove that ancient man had traveled far and wide, and was far more daring, sophisticated, and wise than had been thought. 24 photos.

    Her book also offers guidance to parents who have children with FASD. By the time Bonnie's daughter Colette hit first grade, her parents were coping with her frequent stealing and lying, and the necessity of special education. At fourteen, she discovered drugs and sex; by eighteen, she was a crack addict living on the streets. After many frustrating years consulting numerous therapists, a TV news story gave Bonnie the answer she was looking for — and sent her on a quest for a diagnosis and help for Colette. Damaged Angels can aid and comfort all those affected by FASD — the most common cause of intellectual impairments in most industrialized nations — and reduce the number of babies born with this disorder in the future. The most important book on fetal alcohol disorder since Michael Dorris's The Broken Cord, Damaged Angels is a book for every parent, practitioner, and teacher working with a child with FASD.