CLICK HERE to download the first chapter from Small Feet, Big Land * Sequel to 2009’s top-selling A Long Trek Home: 400 Miles by Boot, Raft, and Ski * Unique narrative combination of thrilling adventure with the challenges of bringing small children along * An accessible window into life on America’s “Last Frontier” Small Feet, Big Land follows the expeditions and daily life of a family of four: Erin McKittrick and her husband, Hig, lifelong adventure trekkers, set out to explore the vast and remote wild corners of Alaska with their two young children in tow. After trekking thousands of miles through harsh and beautiful wilderness together, Erin and Hig must adjust to the short attention span — and short legs — of a toddler and the weight of a newborn baby, as they walk Alaska’s rapidly changing coastline. While visiting remote Arctic villages, touring a zinc mine, and exploring for two months on one of Alaska’s largest glaciers, Erin sees the dramatic effects of climate change on the landscape around her, and considers the very different world in which her children may live one day. Whether huddling in the pelting rain, facing a curious grizzly bear, eating whale blubber with new friends, or picking berries on the sunny tundra their unconventional adventures draw Erin’s family — and readers — closer together as they explore the intersection of wilderness and industry in America’s wildest state. Erin McKittrick and her husband, Hig, have walked over 7,000 miles through Alaska’s trackless wilderness. Their journey from Seattle to the Aleutians is chronicled in Erin’s first book, A Long Trek Home: 4,000 Miles by Boot, Raft, and Ski. In between expeditions, they are raising their children a stone’s throw from the wilderness in a yurt in Seldovia, Alaska. They are the founders of ground truth trekking, a nonprofit that uses science and adventure to further the conversation about Alaska environment issues: www.groundtruthtrekking.org/blog.

CLICK HERE to download a free sample from Swallowed by the Great Land “Seth Kantner illuminates an Alaska most of us will never know.” –Andrea Barrett, author of Ship Fever and The Voyage of the Narwhal • Nonfiction short stories that pull you into the lives of those living in an otherworldly place • Seth Kantner received a Whiting Award naming him one of the nation's top-ten emerging writers • Publisher’s Weekly called the author’s 2004 debut novel, Ordinary Wolves, "a tour de force" When Seth Kantner’s novel, Ordinary Wolves, was published 10 years ago, it was a literary revelation of sorts. In a raw, stylized voice it told the story of a white boy growing up with homesteading parents in Arctic Alaska and trying to reconcile his largely subsistence and Native-style upbringing with the expectations and realities tied to his race. It hit numerous bestseller lists, was critically acclaimed, and won a number of awards. Seth’s nonfiction second book, the memoir Shopping for Porcupine, was even more compelling for many readers—the same raw details of a homesteading upbringing, but intensely personal. Now, in Swallowed by the Great Land, he once again brings us into his lyrical wilderness existence. Swallowed by the Great Land features slice-of-life essays that further reveal the duality in the author’s own life today, and also in the village and community that he inhabits—a mosaic of all life on the tundra. Unique characters, village life, wilderness and the larger landscape, a warming Arctic, and hunting and other aspects of subsistence living are all explored in varied yet intimate stories.

“Not only are readers given the opportunity to experience the sheer beauty and at times frightening dangers of the trail, but they also watch two children grow and learn to call the trail their home. Well written, captivating, and incredibly educational, this adventure is a lesson in the simplicity of life and the beauty of accomplishment.” —Publishers Weekly "This is both an epic adventure of the first order and the heartwarming story of the family who accomplished it." —San Francisco Chronicle Now available for the first time in paperback and ebook, Scraping Heaven is the story of a family’s adventurous trek over the rooftop of North America—a warm and heartfelt account with a powerful message for parents, long-distance hikers, and outdoor adventurers alike. The Continental Divide Trail, a rugged 3100-mile footpath running along the crest of the Rocky Mountains from Canada to Mexico, is infamous for its tricky mountain passes and snowy traverses. In 1993, Cindy Ross, her husband, and their two toddlers set out together on the Trail. Using llamas as kid-carriers and packers, they successfully hiked the entire route over the next five summers, covering the last 700 miles on tandem mountain bikes in 1998. A keenly observant storyteller, Ross deftly interweaves evocative descriptions of the landscape with dramatic accounts of sudden snowstorms, gale-force winds strong enough to lift a child, and heart-pounding wildlife encounters. Through it all, her intimate reflections on marriage, family, and children provide depth and interest far beyond the high Rocky Mountain peaks. Scraping Heaven features a new afterword by the author.

There is no question more fundamental to human existence than that posed by the nature-versus-nurture debate. For much of the past century, it was widely believed that there was no essential human nature and that people could be educated or socialized to thrive in almost any imaginable culture. Today, that orthodoxy is being directly and forcefully challenged by a new science of the mind: evolutionary psychology. Like the theory of evolution itself, the implications of evolutionary psychology are provocative and unsettling. Rather than viewing the human mind as a mysterious black box or a blank slate, evolutionary psychologists see it as a physical organ that has evolved to process certain types of information in certain ways that enables us to thrive only in certain types of cultures. In On Our Minds, Eric M. Gander examines all sides of the public debate between evolutionary psychologists and their critics. Paying particularly close attention to the popular science writings of Steven Pinker, Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, and Stephen Jay Gould, Gander traces the history of the controversy, succinctly summarizes the claims and theories of the evolutionary psychologists, dissects the various arguments deployed by each side, and considers in detail the far-reaching ramifications—social, cultural, and political—of this debate. Gander's lucid and highly readable account concludes that evolutionary psychology now holds the potential to answer our oldest and most profound moral and philosophical questions, fundamentally changing our self–perception as a species.

Experiences of a family that opened its front door to walk 800 miles in the wilderness Alaska holds a mythical place in the American imagination as our wildest, coldest, largest, and farthest frontier. It is also the home of writer Erin McKittrick, who lives in a yurt on the shore of Cook Inlet with her husband and two preschool-age children. Mudflats and Fish Camps chronicles McKittrick’s journey, along with her family, as they set out to hike and paddle the entire coastline of Cook Inlet, a distance of 800 miles. This is unconventional parenting in the extreme, bringing kids not just into the woods, but into quicksand, snow, and the realm of grizzlies! And while their story includes all the stubbornness, excitement, and sleet-in-the-eyes awfulness that comes from walking their way through the world, it also provides an intimate history of a wild and fascinating place and the people who call it home. While many adventure tales spring from the restless quest of someone seeking to find themselves—whether floundering in the possibilities of youth or in the throes of a midlife crisis—McKittrick’s story is about a person who has already found her purpose in life. It’s an adventure that happens right in the author’s backyard, providing her an unusual depth and connection. And it’s not a story of record-breaking speed, hopeless under-preparedness, or a radical transformation of the soul. Instead, it describes the journey of an ordinary family stepping into the wild outside their home. The wonder of the landscape, the exuberant joy of children outdoors, and the magic of exploration make Mudflats and Fish Camps an inspiring tale of choosing to walk—literally—a more adventurous path.

In this study the author analyses similarities, differences and contradictions in the cultural norms about gender expressed in proverbs she has found in oral and written sources from over 150 countries. Grouping the proverbs into categories as the female body, love, sex, childbirth and the female power, the author examines shared patterns in ideas about women and how men see them.

Fay Risner has brought Stringbean Hooper to life again with the second story in the Stringbean Hooper series about his adventures in the West. Looking forward to a journey across country to San Jose, California, Stringbean and his wife, Theo, have no idea just how much trouble they can get into. Mishaps, upset Indians, a flood, a mad bear, and more happen to the Hoopers. Through it all, Stringbean meets the challenges with his usual sense of humor, but he notices as the journey drags out that Theo is getting crankier by the minute. He sure hopes she lightens up by the time they get to her brother's wedding in San Jose. It didn't help to have warning advice freely handed out to Theo, known as Small Feet, by Indian shaman Matilda Vinci about being careful around Stringbean, Sioux name Walking Dead, so he doesn't get her killed.

Kongjian Yu and his office Turenscape are beyond doubt the foremost landscape architecture practice in China today. The vast scale of China and her apparently boundless growth have enabled Yu to test many ideas that are still largely theories in the Western world. His work – increasingly valued and appreciated in Europe and North America - has attained an extremely high and elegant level in both conception and execution. Kongjian Yu is known for his ecological stance, often against the resistance of local authorities. His guiding design principles are the appreciation of the ordinary and a deep embracing of nature, even in its potentially destructive aspects, such as floods. Among his most acclaimed projects are Houtan Park for Shanghai Expo, the Red Ribbon Park in Qinhuangdao, and Shipyard Park in Zhongshan. This book explores Yu’s work in 11 essays by noted authors and documents 22 major projects extensively.

You may know much about World War II, but did you ever wonder how children lived through this man-made disaster that killed twenty-nine million civilians in Europe? Read about eighteen ordinary children whose childhood changed due to extraordinary events not of their making. How did they make sense of their world? They collected and traded bomb shrapnel instead of baseball cards; instead of watching cartoons, they ran out in the morning to see what last night's bombs had destroyed; and boys played with live ammunition like your sons do with Fourth of July firecrackers. Read these true stories and share them with a friend. Ponder the bravery of the ten-year old girl traveling alone to her faraway home. Worry about the three-year-old watching her house burn. Cheer for the fearless boy who provides food for his family or wonder how it was possible that, in the middle of a large bombed-out city, a four-year-old brings a live chicken to her mother. These stories also talk about overwhelming fear, bottomless sadness, the heartwarming kindness of strangers and enemy soldiers, as well as childhood joys. At the end you may agree with the motto of the last chapter "Never Again War."