BASE jumping in Europe. Climbing big walls in Yosemite. Riding bulls in Texas. These first-person stories from acclaimed climber and adventurer John Long may be vastly different in content, but they share an identifiable emotional texture, tone and delivery, and fundamentally are of one piece. This is storytelling at its best--nonfiction that reads like fiction. In Stories from the Dirt, the action leaves you breathless, but it's the characters that really leave a lasting mark. Like all stories worth a damn, this collection is all about the people.

    Half-digested pieces of eel and water vole skull on your head is not a good look. Just so you know.'Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to British Birds is all about comedian Bailey's love of birds. A visual feast - it is packed with illustrations, sketches and notes by Bailey - as well as informative, it is funny and insightful, and positively crackles with energy, knowledge and wit as he takes us on a journey around the British isles, zooming in on those birds that enthuse him the most. Whether it's what they eat, where they fly to or how they communicate, these birds are always fascinating, and Bailey introduces us to their weird and wonderful ways in a manner that is always entertaining. If you're a parent who'd like to appear a bit clever when your child asks you the name of a bird; if you want to find a new and healthy hobby that takes you outdoors; or whether, quite simply, you want to understand a bit more about our natural environment and have a laugh at the same time, this is the perfect companion book to have.Alongside music and stand-up, one of Bailey's favourite pastimes is birdwatching, which he has been doing since he was a child in the West Country. His fondest memories are of family outings with parents, grandparents and cousins, ticking the birds off in his little Observer's Book of Birds. As he has said about those formative years, 'birdwatching gave a purpose to the day and a love of the natural world which has carried on into my adult life'. A beautifully and originally designed hardback, it will delight Bailey's fans as well as those who like a bit of armchair escapism.

    The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

    Barbara Rolls, one of America's leading authorities on weight management, comes a much-anticipated lifestyle guide and cookbook that empowers and encourages her readers to quit "dieting" for good, to feel full on fewer calories, and to lose weight and keep it off while eating satisfying portions of delicious, nutritious foods. The Volumetrics Eating Plan doesn't eliminate food groups or overload you with rules. It's a commonsense approach to eating based on Dr. Rolls's hugely popular Volumetrics Weight-Control Plan and her respected research on satiety that shows you how to choose foods that control hunger while losing weight. Along with menu planners, charts, and sidebars on healthy food choices, the 125 recipes put her revolutionary research into real and tangible instructions for every meal. The full-color photographs make these delicious recipes irresistible. With this important new guide to healthy eating and living, everyone can enjoy tasty and satisfying meals that will help them maintain their weight or lose those extra pounds while learning the pleasures of cooking the Volumetrics way. Volumetrics, Dr. Rolls's rigorously tested and proven system for weight management, incorporates sound research findings from around the world into a nutritious plan and shows you how to personalize it to suit your preferences and goals. It's all about choices, and The Volumetrics Eating Plan helps you choose the right foods for every meal and every lifestyle, without giving up flavor or diversity in your diet. No more "forbidden foods" or monotonous meals -- The Volumetrics Eating Plan will revolutionize the way you think about managing your weight and will guide you to a lifetime of healthy food choices.

    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.

    What exactly is the meaning of all those stone walls in the middle of the forest? Why do beech and birch trees have smooth bark when the bark of all other northern species is rough? How do you tell the age of a beaver pond and determine if beavers still live there? Why are pine trees dominant in one patch of forest and maples in another? What happened to the American chestnut? Turn to this book for the answers, and no walk in the woods will ever be the same.

    Creatures that fear little, bears compete for survival with the only other animals that can threaten their existence: Humans. Bear Attacks is a thorough and unflinching study of attacks made on humans. This is the sometimes horrific, yet always instructive, story of Bear and Human, written by the leading scientific authority in the field. This book is for everyone who camps, hikes, or visits bear country -and for anyone who wants to learn more about these fearsome but always fascinating wild creatures.

    In Make Ink, Logan delves into the history of inkmaking and the science of distilling pigment from the natural world. Readers will learn how to forage for materials such as soot, rust, cigarette butts, peach pits, and black walnut, then how to mix, test, and transform these ingredients into rich, vibrant inks that are sensitive to both place and environment. Organized by color, and featuring lovely minimalist photography throughout, Make Ink combines science, art, and craft to instill the basics of ink making and demonstrate the beauty and necessity of engaging with one of mankind’s oldest tools of communication.

    It is a hands-on guide to learning about the natural environment of California. Subjects covered include California natural history and geology, native plants and animals, California's freshwater resources and ecosystems, forest and rangeland resources, conservation biology, and the effects of global warming on California's natural communities. The Handbook also discusses how to create and use a field notebook, natural resource interpretation, citizen science, and collaborative conservation and serves as the primary text for the California Naturalist Program.

    You can live in an architectural masterpiece, but if you can’t see the floor, it is hard to appreciate it. How to Organize Your Life (At Home) takes you room-by-room through your house and shows you how to organize and enjoy your home again.The first book in this series, How to Organize Your Life (Every Day), provided detailed steps for organizing your daily routine. This sequel helps you bring that kind of order to your home space. Both books are for people who want to live an organized life, but are not sure exactly where to start.How to Organize Your Life (At Home) also includes tips for people who live in small spaces, have limited time, or have roommates. So whether you own a mansion or rent a room, this book can help you take your home from chaos to order.

    He has journeyed to the remote corners of the earth in search of wild things, weathering treacherous terrain, plane crashes, and hostile governments. Life in the Valley of Death recounts his most ambitious and dangerous adventure yet: the creation of the world's largest tiger preserve.The tale is set in the lush Hukaung Valley of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. An escape route for refugees fleeing the Japanese army during World War II, this rugged stretch of land claimed the lives of thousands of children, women, and soldiers. Today it is home to one of the largest tiger populations outside of India—a population threatened by rampant poaching and the recent encroachment of gold prospectors.To save the remaining tigers, Rabinowitz must navigate not only an unforgiving landscape, but the tangled web of politics in Myanmar. Faced with a military dictatorship, an insurgent army, tribes once infamous for taking the heads of their enemies, and villagers living on less than one U.S. dollar per day, the scientist and adventurer most comfortable with animals is thrust into a diplomatic minefield. As he works to balance the interests of disparate factions and endangered wildlife, his own life is threatened by an incurable disease.The resulting story is one of destruction and loss, but also renewal. In forests reviled as the valley of death, Rabinowitz finds new life for himself, for communities haunted by poverty and violence, and for the tigers he vowed to protect.

    You'll also learn about more than 130 plants that accept reduced light and moisture levels-long-blooming woodland gems like epimediums and hellebores, and even lush foliage plants like evergreen ferns and hardy gingers, shrubs, climbers, perennials, ground covers, bulbs, annuals, and perennials- there is an entire palette to help you transform challenging spaces into rich, rewarding gardens.

    The pictorial models are useful in understanding relationships. The models also abound in descriptive detail.

    Shows and describes more than eight hundred species, and provides information on distribution, characteristics, and behavior.

    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.