Dam removal wasn't a realistic option in the twentieth century, and people who suggested it were dismissed as fringe environmentalists. Over the past twenty years, dam removal has become increasingly common, with dozens of removals now taking place each year in the US. Same River Twice tells the stories of three major Northwestern dam removals - the politics, people, hopes, and fears that shaped three rivers and their communities. Brewitt begins each story with the dam's construction, shows how its critics gained power, details the conflicts and controversies of removal, and explores the aftermath as the river re-established itself.

In the early eightiesm three extraordinary events interrupted Alice Walker's peaceful, reclusive life--the publication of the bestselling novel The Color Purple, the Pulitzer Prize, and an offer from Spielberg to make her novel into a film. This book chronicles that period of transition from recluse to public figure, and invites us to contemplate, along with her, the true significance of unanticipated gifts.

Ever since a childhood tragedy bonded Jessica Jensen to Oregon’s mighty Nesika River, she has seen herself as its guardian. Now a courageous field biologist, she has just finished gathering scientific evidence that could bring about the dismantling of the massive hydro dam that threatens to destroy her river. But then she discovers that her boss is suppressing her scientific evidence―leaving the dam’s fate at the mercy of a far-reaching corporate conspiracy—and she falls into a current of loss and desperation. As Jess’s life spirals out of control, she mysteriously starts to make contact with Piah, a member of the Native American Molalla tribe who lived on the riverbanks of the Nesika two hundred years before Jess. Piah, too, faces a terrible threat that could destroy all that’s left of her world. As the veil between their two worlds begins to lift, each woman learns important lessons from the other about how to love, and to rekindle their faith in the future—even in the face of tragic loss and uncertainty.

Acclaimed travel writer Pam Mandel's thrilling account of a life-defining journey from the California suburbs to Israel to the Himalayan peaks and back. Given the choice, Pam Mandel would say no and stay home. It was getting her nowhere, so she decided to say yes. Yes to hard work and hitch-hiking, to mean boyfriends and dirty travel, to unfolding the map and walking to its edges. Yes to unknown countries, night shifts, language lessons, bad decisions, to anything to make her feel real, visible, alive. A product of beige California suburbs, Mandel was overlooked and unexceptional. When her father ships her off on a youth group tour of Israel, he inadvertently catapults his seventeen-year-old daughter into a world of angry European backpackers, seize-the-day Israelis, and the fall out of cold war-era politics. Border violence hadn't been on the birthright tour agenda. But then neither had domestic violence, going broke, getting wasted, getting sick, or getting lost. With no guidance and no particular plan, utterly unprepared for what lies ahead, Mandel says yes to everything and everyone, embarking on an adventure across three continents and thousands of miles, from a cold water London flat to rural Pakistan, from the Nile River Delta to the snowy peaks of Ladakh and finally, back home to California, determined to shape a life that is truly hers. An extraordinary memoir of going away and growing up, The Same River Twice follows Mandel's tangled journey and shows how travel teaches and changes us, even while it helps us become exactly who we have been all along.

The first English translation of a major European literary figure and Nobel Prize nominee's most significant work of prose to date, this tense, cerebral, fascinating novel is the perfect introduction to Kaplinski A semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman, set in the early 1960s, this novel narrates the efforts of Kaplinski's youthful alter ego to lose his innocence and attain sexual and mystical knowledge. The 20-year-old protagonist finds an unofficial teacher in a retired theologian and poet, who is out of favor with the communist authorities. After a summer spent in intellectual and erotic soul-searching, the sexual and political intrigues finally overlap, leading to a quasi-solution. As KGB and university apparatchiks take a close interest in the relation of the two poets, the student outgrows his mentor, who despite accusing the human race of puerility, turns out to be a big and jealous child himself. This novel is seen by many as one of the crowning achievements of a long (and still-flourishing) career in Estonia, but this is the first time this unique work will be widely available in English.

A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • Odile Mével is a French clothing designer, her American husband, Max, an independent filmmaker. When Odile agrees to buy a selection of ceremonial May Day banners in the Soviet Union and deliver the contraband to Paris she earns a new job description: smuggler. Soon her fellow courier disappears, her apartment is ransacked, and her friend’s houseboat is firebombed. While Max has no inkling of Odile’s dealings, he finds himself embroiled in a baffling film world mystery of his own. As their escapades deepen and their deceptions multiply, Odile and Max discover their secrets are connected—endangering not only their marriage but their lives.

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An impressive new collection from a poet whose previous book was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award Taking its title from Heraclitus's most famous fragment, The River Twice is an elegiac meditation on impermanence and change. The world presented in these poems is a fluid one in which so much—including space and time, the subterranean realm of dreams, and language itself—seems protean, as the speaker's previously familiar understanding of the self and the larger systems around it gives way. Kathleen Graber’s poems wander widely, from the epistolary to the essayistic, shuffling the remarkable and unremarkable flotsam of contemporary life. One thought, one memory, one bit of news flows into the next. Yet, in a century devoted to exponentially increasing speed, The River Twice unfolds at the slow pace of a river bend. While the warm light of ideas and things flashes upon the surface, that which endures remains elusive—something glimpsed only for an instant before it is gone.

Rivers are essential to every aspect of civilization, yet how many understand how they work? Fleming takes readers on a journey along our planet's waterways, providing a scientist's reflections on the profound interrelationships that rivers have with landscapes, ecosystems, and societies.

Jay McInerney has written unique, witty, vinous essays for over a decade. Here, with his trademark flair and expertise, McInerney provides a master class in the almost infinite varieties of wine, creating a collage of the people and places that produce it all over the world, from historic past to the often confusing present. Stretching from France and South Africa to Australia and New Zealand, McInerney's tour is a comprehensive and thirst-inducing expedition that explores viticulture, investigates great champagne and delves into a vast array of styles, capturing the passion that so many people feel for the world of wine.