In the visionary tradition of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, One Square Inch of Silence alerts us to beauty that we take for granted and sounds an urgent environmental alarm. Natural silence is our nation’s fastest-disappearing resource, warns Emmy-winning acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton, who has made it his mission to record and preserve it in all its variety—before these soul-soothing terrestrial soundscapes vanish completely in the ever-rising din of man-made...

New York Times Bestseller • Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award • Winner of the Saroyan International Prize for Writing • Winner of the Pacific Northwest Book Award • “The best outdoors book of the year.” —Sierra ClubFrom a talent who’s been compared to Annie Dillard, Edward Abbey, David Quammen, and Jared Diamond, On Trails is a wondrous exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from invisible ...

Spanning an extraordinary range of subjects and locations, these ten gripping essays show why Jon Krakauer is considered a standard-bearer of modern journalism.His pieces take us from a horrifying avalanche on Mount Everest to a volcano poised to obliterate a big chunk of Seattle; from a wilderness teen-therapy program run by apparent sadists to an otherworldly cave in New Mexico, studied by NASA to better understand Mars; from the notebook of one Fred Beckey, who ...

**NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A delightful sampler plate of our national parks, written with charisma and erudition.”—Nick Offerman, author of Paddle Your Own CanoeFrom CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton, a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America's National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people our country has to offer**NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY ...

"Carlsen sees a world of wonder hiding in plain sight and may just change how you look at the world around you." —TODAY ShowA simple walk around the block set journalist Spike Carlsen, bestselling author of A Splintered History of Wood, off to investigate everything he could about everything we take for granted in our normal life—from manhole covers and recycling bins to bike lanes and stoplights.In this celebration of the seemingly mundane, Carlsen opens our...

A lively and lyrical account of one woman’s unlikely apprenticeship on a national-park trail crew and what she discovers about nature, gender, and the value of hard workChristine Byl first encountered the national parks the way most of us do: on vacation. But after she graduated from college, broke and ready for a new challenge, she joined a Glacier National Park trail crew as a seasonal “traildog” maintaining mountain trails for the millions of visitors Glacier dr...

From the longtime host of The Weather Network comes a behind-the-scenes look at Canada’s biggest weather events and climate phenomena.For more than twenty-five years, Chris St. Clair was on the frontline of Canada’s biggest weather events as a popular presenter on The Weather Network*.* For the first time, he shares his never-before-told stories covering the country’s most astounding weather events.From the flooding of the Red River in Winnipeg to the ice s...

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this quest that would span two decades and two continents, the young man took a vow of silence that endured for 17 years. It began as a silent environmental protest, but as a young African-American man, walking across the country in...

"A nature book unlike any other…peppered with gritty, anti-romantic, all-too-real tales of cops 'n' bad guys in the great outdoors."— The San Diego Union-TribuneJordan Fisher Smith's startling account of fourteen years as a park ranger thoroughly dispels our idealized visions of life in the great outdoors. Instead of scout troops and placid birdwatchers, Smith's beat—a stretch of land that has been officially condemned to be flooded—brings him into contact ...

An extraordinarily insightful and thought-provoking look at how our society and culture are going to change, and change rapidly, as the price of gasoline, heating oil, and all other everyday consumer products that are derived from oil continue to escalate.Imagine an everyday world in which the price of gasoline (and oil) continues to go up, and up, and up. Think about the immediate impact that would have on our lives.Of course, everybody already knows how a...

Selected by New York Times Book Review as one of their “Great Road Trip Books”NATIONAL BESTSELLERBest Book of the Year —NPR, Vulture, Book Riot, B&N"America the Beautiful? is so funny and special and illuminating that it makes even me, a person who cannot tolerate trees or weather, wish I could've tagged along in the back seat." — Samantha Irby, author of Wow, No Thank You. and We Are Never Meeting in Real Life.The author of How to Date Men When You Hate Men...

Karen Solie launched to prominence with her first collection of poems, Short Haul Engine (2001), finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and winner of many other awards and citations. She continued her upward trajectory with Modern and Normal (2005), and is now considered one of Canada's best poets. Pigeon is yet another leap forward for this singer of existential bewilderment. These poems are X-rays of our delusions and mistaken perceptions, explorations of violence, bad luck, fate, creepin...