The Daily Coyote: Story of Love, Survival, and Trust In the Wilds of Wyoming


Shreve Stockton - 2008
    A lavishly illustrated journal based on the author's experiences of raising an orphaned coyote documents the first year of their relationship, during which the author, the pup, and her cat shared an unusual life in a Wyoming log cabin.

A Language Older Than Words


Derrick Jensen - 2000
    This chronicle of a young man's drive to transcend domestic abuse offers a challenging look at our worldwide sense of community and how we can make things better.

Wolfer


Carter Niemeyer - 2010
    But events conspired to fling Carter Niemeyer westward and straight into the jaws of wolves. From his early years wrangling ornery federal trappers, eagles and grizzlies, to winning a skinning contest that paved the way for wolf reintroduction in the Northern Rockies, Carter Niemeyer reveals the wild and bumpy ride that turned a trapper - a killer - into a champion of wolves.

Dog Medicine


Julie Barton - 2015
    She was one year out of college and severely depressed. Summoned by Julie's incoherent phone call, her mother raced from Ohio to New York and took her home.Psychiatrists, therapists and family tried to intervene, but nothing reached her until the day she decided to do one hopeful thing: adopt a Golden Retriever puppy she named Bunker.Dog Medicine captures in beautiful, elegiac language the anguish of depression, the slow path to recovery, and the astonishing way animals can heal even the most broken hearts and minds.

Long Shot: My Bipolar Life and the Horses Who Saved Me


Sylvia Harris - 2011
    A single mother of three, Harris was crippled by bipolar depression, until she discovered the miraculous healing and calming effect of horses—a revelation that ultimately enabled her to manage her illness, conquer the sexism of her field, and triumph as a champion jockey in the male-dominated world of horse racing. A fascinating, courageous, and ultimately redemptive true story, Long Shot has won high praise from Phyllis Chesler Ph.D., author of Women and Madness, who says, “[Harris’s] attempt to find balance, joy, connectedness, and purpose in life constitutes a great adventure story.”

My Lives


Roseanne Barr - 1994
    She's written the book that no star at the top ever dares write: she blows the lid off what it's like to make it in Hollywood from the unique perspective of being a powerful player herself. As a woman who's seen it all, who created the life she wanted without much help from anybody, Roseanne Arnold tells the unvarnished, uncensored, raw and raunchy truth about what has happened to her since "Roseanne" became a hit. The transition from stand-up stardom, when everyone knew her jokes were hers, to the world of producers and writers who thought nothing of taking credit for her material. The battles to make "Roseanne" a show about a three-dimensional woman who's in control, not a woman who's a victim. The difference between how much power everyone on the outside assumed she had, how little she did have, and how hard she had to fight to get more. Roseanne talks unflinchingly about the painful side of being who she is: dealing with her family, her past, drugs, the attacks in the press. And just like any woman who's raising children, getting a divorce, getting married, or just trying to keep it together, Roseanne talks about her personal life and her relationship with her soulmate, Tom Arnold, in ways that many of us will recognize - though even Roseanne's most mundane day ends up being unlike anyone else's. That's because there is no one else like her. And no one else could have captured on the page the tough, wise, take-no-prisoners truth that Roseanne finally tells in My Lives.

The Outrun: A Memoir


Amy Liptrot - 2015
    Approaching the land that was once home, memories of her childhood merge with the recent events that have set her on this journey.Amy was shaped by the cycle of the seasons, birth and death on the farm, and her father’s mental illness, which were as much a part of her childhood as the wild, carefree existence on Orkney. But as she grew up, she longed to leave this remote life. She moved to London and found herself in a hedonistic cycle. Unable to control her drinking, alcohol gradually took over. Now thirty, she finds herself washed up back home on Orkney, standing unstable at the cliff edge, trying to come to terms with what happened to her in London.Spending early mornings swimming in the bracingly cold sea, the days tracking Orkney’s wildlife—puffins nesting on sea stacks, arctic terns swooping close enough to feel their wings—and nights searching the sky for the Merry Dancers, Amy slowly makes the journey toward recovery from addiction.The Outrun is a beautiful, inspiring book about living on the edge, about the pull between island and city, and about the ability of the sea, the land, the wind, and the moon to restore life and renew hope.A Guardian Best Nonfiction Book of 2016Sunday Times Top Ten BestsellerNew Statesman Book of the Year

Last Chance to See


Douglas Adams - 1990
    Join author Douglas Adams and zoologist Mark Carwardine as they take off around the world in search of exotic, endangered creatures.

One Man's Wilderness: An Alaskan Odyssey


Sam Keith - 1973
    Thousands have had such dreams, but Richard Proenneke lived them. He found a place, built a cabin, and stayed to become part of the country. One Man's Wilderness is a simple account of the day-to-day explorations and activities he carried out alone, and the constant chain of nature's events that kept him company. From Proenneke's journals, and with first-hand knowledge of his subject and the setting, Sam Keith has woven a tribute to a man who carved his masterpiece out of the beyond.

Family Secrets: The scandalous history of an extraordinary family


Derek Malcolm - 2017
    The secret, though, that surrounded my parents’ unhappy life together, was divulged to me by accident . . .’ Hidden under some papers in his father’s bureau, the sixteen-year-old Derek Malcolm finds a book by the famous criminologist Edgar Lustgarten called The Judges and the Damned. Browsing through the Contents pages Derek reads, ‘Mr Justice McCardie tries Lieutenant Malcolm – page 33.’ But there is no page 33. The whole chapter has been ripped out of the book. Slowly but surely, the shocking truth emerges: that Derek’s father, shot his wife’s lover and was acquitted at a famous trial at the Old Bailey. The trial was unique in British legal history as the first case of a crime passionel, where a guilty man is set free, on the grounds of self-defence. Husband and wife lived together unhappily ever after, raising Derek in their wake. Then, in a dramatic twist, following his father’s death, Derek receives an open postcard from his Aunt Phyllis, informing him that his real father is the Italian Ambassador to London . . . By turns laconic and affectionate, Derek Malcolm has written a richly evocative memoir of a family sinking into hopeless disrepair. Derek Malcolm was chief film critic of the Guardian for thirty years and still writes for the paper. Educated at Eton and Merton College, Oxford, he became first a steeplechase rider and then an actor after leaving university. He worked as a journalist in the sixties, first in Cheltenham and then with the Guardian where he was a features sub-editor and writer, racing correspondent and finally film critic. He directed the London Film Festival for a spell in the 80s and is now President of both the International Film Critics Association and the British Federation of Film Societies. He lives with his wife Sarah Gristwood in London and Kent and has published two books – one on Robert Mitchum and another on his favourite 100 films. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and a veteran of film festival juries all over the world.

Into Great Silence: A Memoir of Discovery and Loss among Vanishing Orcas


Eva Saulitis - 2013
    With the intellectual rigor of a scientist and the heart of a poet, Saulitis gives voice to these vital yet vanishing survivors and the place they are so loyal to. Both an elegy for one orca family and a celebration of the entire species, Into Great Silence is a moving portrait of the interconnectedness of humans with animals and place—and of the responsibility we have to protect them.

Leave Only Footprints: My Acadia-to-Zion Journey Through Every National Park


Conor Knighton - 2020
    But, after a broken engagement and a broken heart, he desperately needed a change of scenery. The ambitious plan he cooked up went a bit overboard in that department; Knighton set out to visit every single one of America's National Parks, from Acadia to Zion. Leave Only Footprints is the memoir of his year spent traveling across the United States, a journey that yielded his "On the Trail" series, which quickly became one of CBS Sunday Morning's most beloved segments. In this smart, informative, and often hilarious book, he'll share how his journey through these natural wonders, unchanged by man, ended up changing his worldview on everything from God to politics to love and technology. Whether it's waking up early for a naked scrub in an Arkansas bathhouse or staying up late to stargaze along our loneliest highway, Knighton goes behind the scenery to provide an unfiltered look at America. In the tradition of books like A Walk in the Woods or Turn Right at Machu Picchu, this is an irresistible mix of personal narrative and travelogue-some well-placed pop culture references, too-and a must-read for any of the 331 million yearly National Parks visitors.

A Helluva High Note: Surviving Life, Love, and American Idol


Kara DioGuardi - 2011
    But success wouldn’t have happened for this songwriter, artist and producer without the darker times of defeat. Now, in this daringly honest memoir, DioGuardi reveals everything she’s learned about living, creating, loving, stumbling, picking herself up again and ultimately succeeding.  And, of course, she hares behind-the-scenes stories from her years on American Idol, including the real truth about her departure from the show.  Passionate, wide and funny, A Helluva High Note inspires readers to find, develop and follow their own true voice.

Kingbird Highway: The Biggest Year in the Life of an Extreme Birder


Kenn Kaufman - 1997
    Maybe not all that unusual a thing to do in the seventies, but what Kenn was searching for was a little different: not sex, drugs, God, or even self, but birds. A report of a rare bird would send him hitching nonstop from Pacific to Atlantic and back again. When he was broke he would pick fruit or do odd jobs to earn the fifty dollars or so that would last him for weeks. His goal was to set a record - most North American species seen in a year - but along the way he began to realize that at this breakneck pace he was only looking, not seeing. What had been a game became a quest for a deeper understanding of the natural world. Kingbird Highway is a unique coming-of-age story, combining a lyrical celebration of nature with wild, and sometimes dangerous, adventures, starring a colorful cast of characters.

The Fish's Eye: Essays about Angling and the Outdoors


Ian Frazier - 2002
    He sees the angler's environment all around him--in New York's Grand Central Station, in the cement-lined pond of a city park, in a shimmering bonefish flat in the Florida Keys, in the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains. He marvels at the fishing in the turbid Ohio River by downtown Cincinnati, where a good bait for catfish is half a White Castle french fry. The incidentals of the angling experience, the who and the where of it, interest him as much as what he catches and how. The essays contain sharply focused observations of the American outdoors, a place filled with human alterations and detritus that somehow remain defiantly unruined. Frazier's simple love of the sport lifts him to a straight-ahead angling description that's among the best contemporary writing on the subject. The Fish's Eye brings together twenty years of heartfelt, funny, and vivid essays on a timeless pursuit where so many mysteries, both human and natural, coincide.