The New York Times best-selling account of how coyotes--long the target of an extermination policy--spread to every corner of the United States Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award "A masterly synthesis of scientific research and personal observation." -Wall Street Journal Legends don't come close to capturing the incredible story of the coyote. In the face of centuries of campaigns of annihilation employing gases, helicopters, and engineered epidemics, coyotes didn't just survive, they thrived, expanding across the continent from Alaska to New York. In the war between humans and coyotes, coyotes have won, hands-down. Coyote America is the illuminating five-million-year biography of this extraordinary animal, from its origins to its apotheosis. It is one of the great epics of our time.

From the villainous beast of “Little Red Riding Hood” and “The Three Little Pigs,” to the nurturing wolves of Romulus and Remus and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, the wolf has long been a part of the landscape of children’s literature. Meanwhile, since the 1960s and the popularization of scientific research on these animals, children’s books have begun to feature more nuanced views. In Picturing the Wolf in Children’s Literature, Mitts-Smith analyzes visual images of the wolf in children’s books published in Western Europe and North America from 1500 to the present. In particular, she considers how wolves are depicted in and across particular works, the values and attitudes that inform these depictions, and how the concept of the wolf has changed over time. What she discovers is that illustrations and photos in works for children impart social, cultural, and scientific information not only about wolves, but also about humans and human behavior. First encountered in childhood, picture books act as a training ground where the young learn both how to decode the “symbolic” wolf across various contexts and how to make sense of “real” wolves. Mitts-Smith studies sources including myths, legends, fables, folk and fairy tales, fractured tales, fictional stories, and nonfiction, highlighting those instances in which images play a major role, including illustrated anthologies, chapbooks, picture books, and informational books. This book will be of interest to children’s literature scholars, as well as those interested in the figure of the wolf and how it has been informed over time.

A National Wild Turkey Federation and U.S. Forest Service book Standard reference for all subspecies Extensive, new information on all aspects of wild turkey ecology and management The standard reference for all subspecies--Eastern, Gould's, Merriam's, Florida and Rio Grande--The Wild Turkey summarizes the new technologies and studies leading to better understanding and management. Synthesizing the work of all current experts, The Wild Turkey presents extensive, new data on restoration techniques; population influences and management; physical characteristics and behavior; habitat use by season, sex, and age; historic and seasonal ranges and habitat types; and nesting ecology. The book is designed to further the already incredible comeback of America's wild turkey.

"Humans understand at least some of what it means to be human, both literally and figuratively, in reference to wild animals. Our relationships with wildlife have traditionally been expressed in terms of hunting; more recently, these relationships have also been manifest as efforts to prevent hunting. Hunting and fishing traditions are, in fact, under fire by critics at the same time that they are receding of their own accord - perhaps becoming even more endangered than any of the pursued animals. These traditions form the major focus of Wild Games, a new collection of essays that looks at the folklore and culture of various hunting and fishing practices, documenting the central importance of hunting to many rural societies, even in modern times." "Editors Dennis Cutchins and Eric Eliason contend that hunters often don't perceive of themselves as separate from the wild but, rather, identify strongly with a natural order - integrated with, rather than standing apart from, the fluctuation of ecosystems. And they frequently don't see wild animals as "set apart" but understand them as food sources, competitors, friendly rivals, and even equals." "Featuring contributions from a variety of distinguished scholars and writers - including an essay by the noted folklorist Simon Bronner on the culture of the deer camp, a fascinating account of coyote tracking by Eric Eliason, and an examination of the role of gender in outdoor life by Diane Humphrey Lueck - this book shows how the traditions of hunting and fishing tend to bind hunter and prey into ancient patterns that often defy contemporary culture." --Book Jacket.

This collection of qualitative case studies demonstrates how social groups create opposing symbolic meanings of Nature during conflict over wildlife issues. It highlights the untapped utility of constructionist approaches for understanding how different meanings can ultimately affect wildlife and people.

A compelling and innovative exploration of how animals shaped the field of natural history and its ecological afterlives Can corals build worlds? Do rattlesnakes enchant? What is a raccoon, and what might it know? Animals and the questions they raised thwarted human efforts to master nature during the so-called Enlightenment--a historical moment when rigid classification pervaded the study of natural history, people traded in people, and imperial avarice wrapped its tentacles around the globe. Whitney Barlow Robles makes animals the unruly protagonists of eighteenth-century science through journeys to four spaces and ecological zones: the ocean, the underground, the curiosity cabinet, and the field. Her forays reveal a forgotten lineage of empirical inquiry, one that forced researchers to embrace uncertainty. This tumultuous era in the history of human-animal encounters still haunts modern biologists and ecologists as they struggle to fathom animals today. In an eclectic fusion of history and nature writing, Robles alternates between careful historical investigations and probing personal narratives. These excavations of the past and present of distinct nonhuman creatures reveal the animal foundations of human knowledge and show why tackling our current environmental crisis first requires looking back in time.

A collection of essays that examine how foods express American cultural values.

Jacket.

For many Southern men living in or close to rural landscapes, hunting is a passion. But it is not a timeless activity in a cultural void. Whether pursuers of fox or raccoon, deer or rabbits, quail or dove, Southern hunters reveal for Stuart Marks complex patterns of male bonding, social status, and relationships with nature. Marks, who has written two outstanding books on hunting in Africa, was born and has long lived in the South. Examining Southern hunting from frontier times through the antebellum era to the present day, he shows it to be a litmus test of rural identity. "Drawing on the latest anthropological theory, statistical sources, extensive interviews, and historical research, [Marks] has crafted a multifaceted account of Southern hunting. Relations of race, property, gender, and region appear in fresh guises in this innovative and intriguing study. The portrayal of the contemporary state of hunting is especially interesting, revealing both the continuities with the past and the new pressures on the sport."--Virginia Quarterly Review