Accidental Wilderness showcases how the removal of city rubble and its displacement can result in new urban parklands with significant ecological importance for the health of the city and its residents.

Conuel skillfully provides an overview of the region, a discussion of its people, the reasons for the construction of the reservoir, and the impact of the project on human settlements and natural resources. -- Historical Journal of Massachusetts

The path to an adventurous life seems straightforward: Crush at an outdoor sport; amass a legion of followers who drool at your hero shots on Instagram; host TED talks exhorting people to live their best life, brah. But there is another way: the way of the Wilderness Idiot. Author Ted Alvarez built a career and an outdoor lifestyle by simply not being smart enough to say no to things that will probably kill him, or at least embarrass him severely. From nearly drowning in pro kayak races to hallucinating on solo trips across bear-and-bug-infested wildernesses, his work exists to show that the outsider Everywoman and -man can have the spotlight. In a series of hilarious and insightful essays, Alvarez shows that you don’t need to shred sick lines to find adventure—you just have to embrace the blank spots beyond your comfort zone. That way lies self-knowledge, soul-quieting confidence, and the soul of wilderness. More than most, Alvarez knows outsiders belong outside—and he wants to welcome them into the tribe. The Wilderness Idiot airlifts readers to the world’s most remote places (in reality and in the mind) and make them feel so at home they’ll start dreaming about adventures of their own.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY ESQUIRE, THE IRISH TIMES AND THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A provocative history of men who were worshipped as gods that illuminates the connection between power and religion and the role of divinity in a secular age Ever since 1492, when Christopher Columbus made landfall in the New World and was hailed as a heavenly being, the accidental god has haunted the modern age. From Haile Selassie, acclaimed as the Living God in Jamaica, to Britain’s Prince Philip, who became the unlikely center of a new religion on a South Pacific island, men made divine—always men—have appeared on every continent. And because these deifications always emerge at moments of turbulence—civil wars, imperial conquest, revolutions—they have much to teach us. In a revelatory history spanning five centuries, a cast of surprising deities helps to shed light on the thorny questions of how our modern concept of “religion” was invented; why religion and politics are perpetually entangled in our supposedly secular age; and how the power to call someone divine has been used and abused by both oppressors and the oppressed. From nationalist uprisings in India to Nigerien spirit possession cults, Anna Della Subin explores how deification has been a means of defiance for colonized peoples. Conversely, we see how Columbus, Cortés, and other white explorers amplified stories of their godhood to justify their dominion over native peoples, setting into motion the currents of racism and exclusion that have plagued the New World ever since they touched its shores. At once deeply learned and delightfully antic, Accidental Gods offers an unusual keyhole through which to observe the creation of our modern world. It is that rare thing: a lyrical, entertaining work of ideas, one that marks the debut of a remarkable literary career.

Terrific, amusing, poignant account of 25 years in Zimbabwe as a wildlife conservationist, saving Rhinos and cheetahs, mapping out elephant corridors, and flying over wilderness to track animals.

When Trace Riley finds the smoldering ruins of a small wagon train, he recognizes the hand behind the attack as the same group who left him as sole survivor years ago. Living off the wilderness since then, he'd finally carved out a home and started a herd--while serving as a self-appointed guardian of the trail, driving off dangerous men. He'd hoped those days were over, but the latest attack shows he was wrong. Deborah Harkness saved her younger sister and two toddlers during the attack, and now finds herself at the mercy of her rescuer. Trace offers the only shelter for miles around, and agrees to take them in until she can safely continue. His simple bachelor existence never anticipated kids and women in the picture and their arrival is unsettling--yet enticing. Working to survive the winter and finally bring justice to the trail, Trace and Deborah find themselves drawn together--yet every day approaches the moment she'll leave forever.

Ben Fogle has had a life for which the word extraordinary is barely adequate. He has rowed across the Atlantic, walked to the South Pole, run the Sahara and skated across Sweden. He has encountered WWII plane wrecks in deepest darkest Papua New Guinea, flesh-eating diseases in Peru and snakes in Venezuela. He has repatriated East Timorese refugees back from West Timor and filmed in refugee camps in Sudan. He got lost in a minefield in Argentina and caused a 747 to dump 200k of fuel before making an emergency landing in Rio de Janeiro.

A first person account of a fateful solo hiking trip into California's Sierra Nevada mountains.

Eleven-year-old Barclay Thorne yearns for the quiet life of a mushroom farmer, but after unwittingly bonding with a beast in the forbidden Woods, he must seek Lore Keepers to break the bond and return home.

In these acclaimed essays, Sherry Simpson recounts her experiences as an ordinary woman confronting the vast expanses of water and wilderness of her home state. Her adventures include a harrowing bear encounter and a near-death experience falling into a glacial river, but she also finds an Alaska of surpassing, almost supernatural beauty and power. These lyrical essays thoughtfully explore one woman's effort to map both a sense of place and a sense of self in a world at once comforting and unforgiving.