Click on the book jacket to link to a full description, excerpts and reviews
Monkey Dancing: A Father, Two Kids, and a Journey to the Ends of the Earth
(PublicAffairs)
After his fifteen-year marriage ended in divorce and his ex-wife moved out of state to begin a relationship with her new girlfriend, Daniel Glick found himself raising two decidedly spirited children by himself. A year later, his older brother died of breast cancer. These dual shockes inspired Glick to proceed onhis journey into single parenting in an admittedly unusual way: by embarking with his children onan extended trip around the world. He wanted, as he writes, “to forge a new family of three, using adventure as our crucible.”
Powder Burn: Arson, Money and Mystery on Vail Mountain
(PublicAffairs)
In the pre-dawn hours of October 19, 1998, a commando-style arson destroyed or damaged $12 million worth of chair lifts and mountaintop buildings at Vail, Colorado, the largest ski resort in the United States. The timing of the fires indicated a calculated attack, since the fires were set on the same day the ski area’s owners were about to begin construction for a controversial expansion into an old-growth forest on federally owned land. Within days, an email arrived from a little-known radical environmental group known as the Earth Liberation Front, claiming credit for the arson “in the name of the lynx,” a reclusive animal whose habitat was rapidly disappearing in Colorado. Those claims were not immediately substantiated and the number of potential suspects grew in direct proportion to the number of enemies that the ski area’s owners had made — providing perfect fodder for this “alpine Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” as Outside Magazine put it.
The Last Polar Bear: Facing the Truth of a Warming World
A Photographic Journey by Steven Kazlowski (Braided River)
A formidable hunter and powerful swimmer, the polar bear is perfectly adapted to the harsh demands of the wild Arctic landscape. But a rapidly warming climate has placed this fragile land — and the polar bear — in peril. The effects of global warming are distilled in the delicate balance of the Arctic ecosystem, and the continued survival of the charismatic white bear is uncertain. The Last Polar Bear places the reality of climate change — and the fate of the polar bear — in our hands.
I Wanna Be Sedated: 30 Writers on Parenting Teenagers
Edited by Faith Conlon and Gail Hudson (Seal Press)
Raising a teen is perhaps the most challenging phase of child-rearing, a time when kids push every known hot button and weak havoc with carefully thought-out strategies. I Wanna Be Sedated brings humor and perspective to some of the deepest worries of parents. Includes essays by Barbara Kingsolver, Anna Quindlen, Dave Barry, Joyce Maynard. A hilarious and touching collection.
Wild Moments: Adventures with Animals of the North
Edited by Michael Englehard (University of Alaska Press)
Even in our high-tech age, encounters with wildlife — whether in urban or wilderness settings — tend to remind us that we, too, are animals. Wild Moments is a collection of accounts from some of the best of contemporary nature writers that showcase and capture the magic and unpredictability, the humor, the pathos and the curiosity of bears, crows, seals, goshawks, insects and more. It also reminds us of the awesome responsibility we have to leave some room for our fellow travelers on the planet.
Far From Home: Father-Daughter Travel Adventures
Edited by Wendy Knight (Seal Press)
Raising a daughter isn’t easy — it ain’t all “sugar and spice and everything nice” — not all the time. That said, fathers and daughters have beautifully complicated and deeply moving opportunities to cross the cultural boundaries that separate them — and heading off on an adventure together can lead to the most remarkable insights.