Lovesick sheep, rumors of war, storms at sea, whisky galore - a midlife escape from an 'empty nest' in America to start afresh in the wilds of Scotland.When their children grow up and leave home, authors Jack and Barbara Maloney sell their house in a midwest suburb and run off to the Highlands. Following a one-lane track called "The Wee Mad Road," they discover an isolated remnant of traditional Gaelic culture, peopled by characters as unique and memorable as the surrounding mountains. The Maloneys settle into an old stone cottage and spend two years in repeated collisions with quaint Highland ways. Entries from Barbara's diary detail the realities of village life, while Jack recounts tales of poachers, crofters and lairds in one of mainland Britain's most scenic and isolated corners.The Wee Mad Road is a warm and witty account of two years in the Highlands, with illustrations of everyday life in the wildest reaches of the United Kingdom. It's a 'how to' book for anyone who dreams of escaping the doldrums of suburban midlife and starting over.

Bryan Sykes, the world's first genetic archaeologist, takes us on a journey around the family tree of Britain and Ireland, to reveal how our tribal history still colours the country today. In 54BC Julius Caesar launched the first Roman invasion of Britain. His was the first detailed account of the Celtic tribes that inhabited the Isles. But where had they come from and how long had they been there? When the Romans eventually left five hundred years later, they were succeeded by invasions of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Did these successive invasions obliterate the genetic legacy of the Celts, or have very little effect? After two decades tracing the genetic origins of peoples from all over the world, Bryan Sykes has now turned the spotlight on his own back yard. In a major research programme, the first of its kind, he set out to test the DNA of over 10,000 volunteers from across Britain and Ireland with the specific aim of answering this very question: what is our modern genetic make-up and what does it tell us of our tribal past? Are the modern people of the Isles a delicious genetic cocktail? Or did the invaders keep mostly to themselves forming separate genetic layers within the Isles? As his findings came in, Bryan Sykes discovered that the genetic evidence revealed often very different stories to the conventional accounts coming from history and archaeology. Blood of the Isles reveals the nature of our genetic make-up as never before and what this says about our attitudes to ourselves, each other, and to our past. It is a gripping story that will fascinate and surprise with its conclusions.

This volume gathers nineteen of the most representative and defining essays from the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment over the course of its first ten years. Following an introduction that traces the stages of ecocriticism's development, The ISLE Reader is organized into three sections, each of which reflects one of the general goals the journal has sought to accomplish. The section titled "Re-evaluations" provides new readings of familiar environmental writers and new environmental perspectives on authors or literary traditions not usually considered from a green perspective. The writings in "Reaching Out to Other Disciplines" promote cross-pollination among various disciplines and methodologies in the environmental arts and humanities. The writings in the final section, "New Theoretical and Practical Paradigms," are especially significant for the conceptual and methodological terrain they map. The ISLE Reader documents the state of research in ecocriticism and related interdisciplinary fields, provides a survey of the field, and points to new methodologies and possibilities for the future.

In this exhilarating installment of the award-winning Scientists in the Field series, journey to the isolated islands of Isle Royale National Park where the longest predator/prey study in the world is being conducted along with a controversial genetic rescue to save not only the wolves and moose, but the entire island ecosystem. On Isle Royale, a unique national park more than fifty miles from the Michigan shore and about fifteen miles from Minnesota, a thrilling drama is unfolding between wolves and moose, the island’s ultimate predator and prey. For over sixty years, in what has been known as the longest study of predator and prey in the world, scientists have studied the wolves and moose of Isle Royale and the island’s ecology to observe and investigate wildlife populations. But due to illness and underlying factors, the population of wolves on the island has dropped while the number of moose has increased, putting the Isle Royale ecosystem in jeopardy. Now, for the first time ever, scientists are intervening. Join celebrated author Nancy Castaldo in this exciting journey to Isle Royale to document the genetic rescue experiment scientists there are embarking on. If they can successfully relocate twenty to thirty wolves from the mainland to Isle Royale, scientists can potentially restore the balance among wolves, moose, and trees of the island's ecosystem. Now the living laboratory experiment begins.