“Know thy gadgets; first step in restoring some kind of wholeness to one’s life.” So observes John Jerome about his purpose for rebuilding a 1950 Dodge pickup. Yes, he needs the truck to haul manure, but Jerome also hopes that “by knowing every nut, lockwasher, and cotter pin I could have a machine that had some meaning to me.” Thus his year-long odyssey under the hood, among the brake shoes and valves, becomes more than a mechanic’s memoir; it is a meditation on machines, metaphysics, and the moral universe. Long after its publication in 1977, the essential dilemma of Truck still rings true: as Jerome dismantles the aged straight six, he also disassembles our reliance on “two-hundred-dollar appliances that sport flaws in thirty-five-cent parts” and decries the “deliberate encapsulation, impenetrability, of the overtechnologized things with which we furnish our lives.” Despite gouged knuckles, a frigid New Hampshire winter, frustrating and inexplicable assemblies, and a close call when the truck rolls off its jacks, he perseveres. In the end, he admits, “I did not find God out there in the barn among the cans of nuts and bolts.” What he does find, however, is that he must make peace with technology; it’s a mistake, he says, to “assume there is a point on that line between the caveman’s club and the moon shot that marks the moral turnaround, before which technology was somehow benign, after which it is malign.” While Jerome gains a truck that runs—sometimes—we gain new insight into a technology that continues to encroach upon our lives.

In the golden age of polar exploration (from the mid-1800s to the early 1900s), many an expedition set out to answer the big question—was the Arctic a continent, an open ocean beyond a barrier of ice, or an ocean covered with ice? No one knew, for the ice had kept its secret well; ships trying to penetrate it all failed, often catastrophically. Norway’s charismatic scientist-explorer Fridtjof Nansen, convinced that it was a frozen ocean, intended to prove it in a novel if risky way: by building a ship capable of withstanding the ice, joining others on an expedition, then drifting wherever it took them, on a relentless one-way journey into discovery and fame . . . or oblivion. Ice Ship is the story of that extraordinary ship, the Fram, from conception to construction, through twenty years of three epic expeditions, to its final resting place as a museum. It is also the story of the extraordinary men who steered the Fram over the course of 84,000 miles: on a three-year, ice-bound drift, finding out what the Arctic really was; in a remarkable four-year exploration of unmapped lands in the vast Canadian Arctic; and on a two–year voyage to Antarctica, where another famous Norwegian explorer, Roald Amundsen, claimed the South Pole. Ice Ship will appeal to all those fascinated with polar exploration, maritime adventure, and wooden ships, and will captivate readers of such books as The Endurance, In the Heart of the Sea, and The Last Place on Earth. With more than 100 original photographs, the book brings the Fram to life and light.

What makes bogs so interesting yet so misunderstood? This generously illustrated book presents many of the exciting, almost enthralling, facets of bogs--unusual plants, intricate ecological relationships, animals, myths and folklore, and the myriad history recorded in the peats. Despite the fascinating bogs hold, until now there has been no popular book that deals with them in a comprehensive yet authoritative manner. The Northeastern United States has a wonderful diversity of bogs: some are southern in nature, others are very arctic, and still others maritime. And although this is a book primarily about peatlands in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and the six New England states, it will interest a much wider audience seeking an exciting and attractive approach to these often-neglected areas of our natural heritage.

This unique book celebrates and documents the incredible and colorful biodiversity of the mountain landscapes of eastern North America, covering all of the major alpine ecosystems in New England, New York, Québec, Newfoundland, and Labrador. Twenty scientists, explorers, naturalists, and land managers from the United States and Canada have collaborated to create this definitive and beautiful account of the flora and fauna of the eastern alpine tundra.