In the summer of 1904, thirty-two men lined up in St. Louis to run twenty-four miles through choking dust and 90-degree heat, past automobiles that nearly killed them and a single water station that failed them entirely. Fourteen finished. One was disqualified for hitching a ride in a car. Another nearly died from the very "medicine" his own trainers gave him to keep him standing. A third, a Cuban postman who'd never trained a day in his life, stopped mid-race to eat green peaches from an ...

'Will keep you on the edge of your seat from its first page to its last page' -Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and SteelFrom ancient megalodons to fearsome Great Whites, this book tells the complete, untold story of how sharks emerged as Earth's ultimate survivors, by world-leading paleontologist John Long.Sharks have been fighting for their lives for 500 million years and today are under dire threat. T...

In a guest room at a hotel in Columbus Ohio two haggard business men in suits, walk in and throw down their briefcases on the bed, stretching and removing their coats. They turn on the T.V. and surf the news channels. They notice their hotel is on live news channels across the country and quickly find out they are stuck in the middle of a hostage crisis. Things start to go down hill after that !

We all know about the birds and the bees, but what about the ancient placoderm fishes and the dinosaurs?The history of sex is as old as life itself-and as complicated and mysterious. And despite centuries of study there is always more to know. In 2008, paleontologist John A. Long and a team of researchers revealed their discovery of a placoderm fish fossil, known as "the mother fish," which at 380 million years old revealed the oldest vertebrate embryo-the earliest known example of ...

For most of the past 300 million years, the world’s continents were interlinked as the supercontinents Pangaea and then Gondwana. Around 50 million years ago, Australia tore itself free from Antarctica to become the huge, splendidly isolated island it is today. Over time, its creatures began to evolve in ways not seen anywhere else on Earth, with tree-climbing crocodiles, gigantic venomous lizards, walking omnivorous bats and flesh-eating kangaroos roaming the continent.Prehist...

Year after year, in spite of monumental dangers, climbers return to the world's most difficult mountains, whether it's the cliffs of Yosemite or the peaks of the Himalaya. At these places, even the most cautious climber must accept the possibilities of moving unroped to save time, braving terrain vulnerable to rockfall, trusting afternoon thunderstorms to hold off long enough to get below treeline. Mistakes, bad weather and bad luck often lead to death. This collection offers harrowing acc...

'Will keep you on the edge of your seat from its first page to its last page' -Jared Diamond, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and SteelFrom ancient megalodons to fearsome Great Whites, this book tells the complete, untold story of how sharks emerged as Earth's ultimate survivors, by world-leading paleontologist John Long.Sharks have been fighting for their lives for 500 million years and today are under dire threat. T...

Riding tubes in Venezuela. BASE jumping in Europe. Climbing big walls in Yosemite. Riding bulls in Texas.These first-person stories from acclaimed climber and adventurer John Long may be vastly different in content, but they share an identifiable emotional texture, tone and delivery, and fundamentally are of one piece. This is storytelling at its best—nonfiction that reads like fiction. In Stories from the Dirt, the action leaves you breathless, but it’s the characters that really ...

What happens when we let robots play the game of life?The challenge of studying evolution is that the history of life is buried in the past -- we can't witness the dramatic events that shaped the adaptations we see today. But biorobotics expert John Long has found an ingenious way to overcome this problem: he creates robots that look and behave like extinct animals, subjects them to evolutionary pressures, lets them compete for mates and resources, and mutates thei...

Jeff Rand, a feared and vengeful gunslinger since his family were murdered, is persuaded by Jim Miller to give up his gunning and join him in peaceful gold-mining. All goes well until one day Jeff returns to camp to find Miller murdered and the gold stolen. Jeff rides off in a black mood of revenge. But after a saloon fracas, he is forced by gunmen to take part in a bank raid. Then the raiders are ambushed and though Jeff escapes with half the gang, they accuse him of informing and beat hi...

This completely revised and updated edition with all new color photos brings together in a single volume the anchoring systems most popular among climbers. Most climbers today learn their craft on artificial climbing walls and on sport routes with fixed protection. Their first efforts to lead on trad routes often come as a rude shock--they find that they haven't the skills and training to safeguard the climb or to set up solid belays. This new edition of Climbing Anchors is the climber's c...

This completely revised and updated edition, illustrated with 359 color photographs and drawings, brings together in a single volume the anchoring systems most popular among climbers. If you’re new to trad climbing, this book details the necessary skills needed to make safe gear placements and build solid and efficient anchor systems, based on simple guidelines. This new edition of Climbing Anchors is the climber’s complete and authoritative source of information on placement and evaluatio...