Hunting nourishes human bodies, minds, and, in some cases, careers.Like many rural Texas youths in the 1940s, Jack Ward Thomas learned to hunt early on. It provided food for his family and a lifetime of enjoyment. But hunting also brought Thomas to his life’s work in conservation, highlighted by his tenure as chief of the U.S. Forest Service.Hunting Around the World offers the best accumulated stories, nostalgia, and wisdom of a quintessential hunter-conservationis...

When Jack Ward Thomas was named chief of the U.S. Forest Service in 1993, only twelve men had ever known the staggering responsibility, political pressure—and extraordinary opportunities to influence the future of America’s natural resources—that came with the job.Theodore Roosevelt had created the agency in 1905, appointing Gifford Pinchot as its first chief. Now Thomas would shoulder the load once borne by two icons of the conservation movement.Forks in the Trail...

Wilderness is smooth sippin’-whiskey for the outdoorsman’s soul. But it’s also espresso for those determined to keep America’s wildest places untrammeled by man.For Jack Ward Thomas, it was both.Wilderness Journals tells the story of how Thomas came to know the “high lonesome” and how his experiences packing into rough country with fine horses and good friends would fuel his passion and vision as chief of the U.S. Forest Service.A true journal-style memoir,...

This book explores the changes that are leading to a new century of natural resources management. It places the current situation in historical perspective, analyzes the forces that are propelling change, and describes and examines the specific changes in goals, policy, and practice that are transforming all aspects of natural resources management.The book is an important overview for wildlife biologists, foresters, and others working for public land agencies; professors and students of na...

"Among the many pleasures of rereading Gary Ferguson's Hawks Rest, is finding the prose even more accomplished than remembered, the wit more agile, the observations more revelatory, its stance in the world proved once again so precisely wise. Hawks Rest is a book I will return to again and again."-MARK SPRAGG, author of Where Rivers Change Direction and An Unfinished Life"Gary Ferguson is one of the preeminent historians ...

The Horse in My Garage and Other Stories is a hilarious addition to Patrick F. McManus’s existing work in humor. The author weighs in on his childhood, everyday life, and outdoor tales with his typical exaggerated commentary that will elicit a belly laugh from all types of readers.Read about the antics of Patrick’s friends Rancid Crabtree and Retch Sweeney in such stories as “Shaping Up for the Hunt” and “Bear Hunters.” McManus plays off the recent obsession with hoarders i...

**“I’ve been thinking a lot about Cadillac Desert in the past few weeks, as the rain fell and fell and kept falling over California, much of which, despite the pouring heavens, seems likely to remain in the grip of a severe drought. Reisner anticipated this moment. He worried that the West’s success with irrigation could be a mirage — that it took water for granted and didn’t appreciate the precariousness of our capacity to control it.” – Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times...

This book is a celebration of life. Its astonishing view is from the perspective of someone living a simple, isolated life in the Rocky Mountains as a mountain man. Sylvan Ambrose Hart was born in the Oklahoma Territory in 1906. In the 1930's, while still a young man, he walked into the Rocky Mountains and designed a unique life for himself in the wilds - hunting, fishing, trapping, panning gold, crafting his own tools, weapons, shelter, and clothes. For almost fifty years he lived the lif...

**Grand Prize Winner of the 2024 Banff Mountain Book CompetitionWinner of the Rachel Carson Award for Excellence in Environmental JournalismFinalist for the NYPL Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in JournalismFinalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing AwardFinalist for the Reading the West Book Award in NonfictionFinalist for the Colorado Book AwardNamed a Best Book of the Year by the New York Times, The New Yor...

**“Wonderfully written…Mr. Owen writes about water, but in these polarized times the lessons he shares spill into other arenas. The world of water rights and wrongs along the Colorado River offers hope for other problems.” —Wall Street JournalAn eye-opening account of where our water comes from and where it all goes.**The Colorado River is an essential resource for a surprisingly large part of the United States, and every gallon that flows down it is owned or claim...

Slade’s Glacier is a tale of discovery and destruction, betrayal and revenge, set in the rugged Great Land” of Alaska. Jack Slade and Sam Healey, flying partners during World War II, establish a bush pilot business in Alaska after the war. When their C-47 Dakota is forced down on a glacier by a wolverine in the cargo deck that breaks out of its cage, they discover a valley that offers the realization each man's dreams. To Jack Slade, it’s the ideal place to homestead, raise a fam...

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.