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Walking the High Desert

Encounters with Rural America along the Oregon Desert Trail

By Ellen Waterston

Former high desert rancher Ellen Waterston writes of a wild, essentially roadless, starkly beautiful part of the American West. Following the recently created 750-mile Oregon Desert Trail, she embarks on a creative and inquisitive exploration,...

Birds of the Pacific Northwest

A Photographic Guide

By Richard Cannings, Tom Aversa, and Hal Opperman

In this updated edition of their best-selling field guide, renowned bird experts Richard Cannings, Tom Aversa, and Hal Opperman illuminate the key identification traits, vocalizations, seasonal statuses, habitat preferences, and feeding behaviors of bird species...

The Great Quake Debate

The Crusader, the Skeptic, and the Rise of Modern Seismology

By Susan Hough

In the first half of the twentieth century, when seismology was still in in its infancy, renowned geologist Bailey Willis faced off with fellow high-profile scientist Robert T. Hill in a debate with life-or-death consequences...

After the Blast

The Ecological Recovery of Mount St. Helens

By Eric Wagner

On May 18, 1980, people all over the world watched with awe and horror as Mount St. Helens erupted. Fifty-seven people were killed and hundreds of square miles of what had been lush forests and...

The Snow Leopard and the Goat

Politics of Conservation in the Western Himalayas

By Shafqat Hussain. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Following the downgrading of the snow leopard’s status from “endangered” to “vulnerable” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2017, debate has renewed about the actual number of snow leopards in the wild...

Pacific

An Ocean of Wonders

By Philip J. Hatfield

If you center a globe on Kiritimati (Christmas Island), all you see around it is a vast expanse of ocean. Islands of various sizes float in view while glimpses of continents encroach on the fringes,...

Stories in Stone

Travels through Urban Geology

By David B. Williams

Most people do not think to observe geology from the sidewalks of a major city, but all David B. Williams has to do is look at building stone in any urban center to find a...

The Last Wilderness

By Murray Morgan. Introduction by Tim McNulty

Murray Morgan’s classic history of the Olympic Peninsula, originally published in 1955, evokes a remote American wilderness “as large as the state of Massachusetts, more rugged than the Rockies, its lowlands blanketed by a cool...

Working with the Ancestors

Mana and Place in the Marquesas Islands

By Emily C. Donaldson. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

Throughout the Marquesas Islands of French Polynesia, forest spirits share space with ancestral ruins and active agricultural plots, affecting land use and heritage preservation. As Marquesans continue their efforts to establish UNESCO World Heritage status,...

Gardening with Native Plants of the Pacific Northwest

By Arthur R. Kruckeberg and Linda Chalker-Scott

The Pacific Northwest abounds with native plants that bring beauty to the home garden while offering food and shelter to birds, bees, butterflies, and other wildlife. Elegant trilliums thrive in woodland settings. Showy lewisias stand...

Witness Tree

Seasons of Change with a Century-Old Oak

By Lynda V. Mapes

Seasonal changes in nature are among the most readily observable clues to the biological effects of climate change. “It came to me,” writes acclaimed environment reporter Lynda Mapes, “You could tell the story of climate...

Climate Change and the Art of Devotion

Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550-1850

By Sugata Ray

In the enchanted world of Braj, the primary pilgrimage center in north India for worshippers of Krishna, each stone, river, and tree is considered sacred. In Climate Change and the Art of Devotion, Sugata Ray...

Mountain Temples and Temple Mountains

Architecture, Religion, and Nature in the Central Himalayas

By Nachiket Chanchani

From approximately the third century BCE through the thirteenth century CE, the remote mountainous landscape around the glacial sources of the Ganga (Ganges) River in the Central Himalayas in northern India was transformed into a...

Living with Oil and Coal

Resource Politics and Militarization in Northeast India

By Dolly Kikon. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan

The nineteenth-century discovery of oil in the eastern Himalayan foothills, together with the establishment of tea plantations and other extractive industries, continues to have a profound impact on life in the region. In the Indian...

Defending Giants

The Redwood Wars and the Transformation of American Environmental Politics

By Darren Frederick Speece. Foreword by Paul S. Sutter

Giant redwoods are American icons, paragons of grandeur, exceptionalism, and endurance. They are also symbols of conflict and negotiation, remnants of environmental battles over the limits of industrialization, profiteering, and globalization.

Since the middle of...

Razor Clams

Buried Treasure of the Pacific Northwest

By David Berger

In this lively history and celebration of the Pacific razor clam, David Berger shares with us his love affair with the glossy, gold-colored Siliqua patula and gets into the nitty-gritty of how to dig, clean,...

The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout

By Thomas P. Quinn

The Behavior and Ecology of Pacific Salmon and Trout combines in-depth scientific information with outstanding photographs and original artwork to fully describe the fish species critical to the Pacific Rim. This completely revised and updated...

The Spokane River

By Paul Lindholdt

From Lake Coeur d’Alene to its confluence with the Columbia, the Spokane River travels 111 miles of varied and often spectacular terrain—rural, urban, in places wild. The river has been a trading and gathering place...

Forest Under Story

Creative Inquiry in an Old-Growth Forest

By Nathaniel Brodie, Charles Goodrich, Frederick J. Swanson

Two kinds of long-term research are taking place at the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a renowned research facility in the temperate rain forest of the Oregon Cascades. Here, scientists investigate the ecosystem’s trees, wildlife,...

Warnings against Myself

Meditations on a Life in Climbing

By David Stevenson

From his youthful second ascent of the north ridge of Mount Kennedy in the Yukon’s Saint Elias Range, an in-and-out on skis for which he had not entirely learned how to ski, to a recent...