front cover of Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The English Experience, 1853-1864
Raymona Hull
University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980

In 1853, when he was forty-nine and at the height of his literary career, Nathaniel Hawthorne accepted the post of U.S. consul at Liverpool, England, as a reward for writing the campaign biography of his college friend President Franklin Pierce. Hawthorne’s departure for Europe marked a turning point in his life. While Our Old Home, shrewd essays on his observations in England, The Marble Faun, a romance set in Italy, and the English Notebooks and French and Italian Notebooks were all results of his European residence, he returned to Concord in 1860 frustrated, depressed, and sick. He died in 1864.

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Natural and Moral History of the Indies
José de Acosta
Duke University Press, 2002
The Natural and Moral History of the Indies, the classic work of New World history originally published by José de Acosta in 1590, is now available in the first new English translation to appear in several hundred years. A Spanish Jesuit, Acosta produced this account by drawing on his own observations as a missionary in Peru and Mexico, as well as from the writings of other missionaries, naturalists, and soldiers who explored the region during the sixteenth century. One of the first comprehensive investigations of the New World, Acosta’s study is strikingly broad in scope. He describes the region’s natural resources, flora and fauna, and terrain. He also writes in detail about the Amerindians and their religious and political practices.
A significant contribution to Renaissance Europe's thinking about the New World, Acosta's Natural and Moral History of the Indies reveals an effort to incorporate new information into a Christian, Renaissance worldview. He attempted to confirm for his European readers that a "new" continent did indeed exist and that human beings could and did live in equatorial climates. A keen observer and prescient thinker, Acosta hypothesized that Latin America's indigenous peoples migrated to the region from Asia, an idea put forth more than a century before Europeans learned of the Bering Strait. Acosta's work established a hierarchical classification of Amerindian peoples and thus contributed to what today is understood as the colonial difference in Renaissance European thinking.
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Natural History Mount Le Conte
Kenneth Wise
University of Tennessee Press, 1998

Widely regarded as the crown jewel of the Great Smoky Mountains, Mount Le Conte harbors the greatest concentration of notable geological features in all of the Smokies. This unique book tells the history of the mountain, offering visitors a greater appreciation of its scenic splendor. 

Kenneth Wise and Ron Petersen combine their intimate knowledge of Le Conte with a wealth of scientific and historical information. Following introductory coverage of the mountain’s geologic history and human exploration, they follow the six main trails up the mountain—Alum Cave, Bullhead, Rainbow Falls, Trillium Gap, Brushy Mountain, and the Boulevard—and reveal each one to be not merely a path but also a rich source of historical and personal testimony. A final chapter covers the distinguishing features of the summit itself.

Along each route, the authors explain how the trail was developed and provide background for well-known landmarks, from Inspiration Point to Huggins Hell. They offer informative descriptions of the plants and wildlife indigenous to Mount Le Conte as well as observations on the effects of environmental changes on the landscape.

The book is illustrated with dozens of photographs, many of historic interest.

Kenneth Wise is an associate professor at the John C. Hodges Library and the author of Hiking Trails of the Great Smoky Mountains. Ron Petersen is a distinguished professor in the Department of Botany at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.

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Natural Landmarks of Arizona
David Yetman
University of Arizona Press, 2021
Natural Landmarks of Arizona celebrates the vast geological past of Arizona’s natural monuments through the eyes of a celebrated storyteller who has called Arizona home for most of his life. David Yetman shows us how Arizona’s most iconic landmarks were formed millions of years ago and sheds light on the more recent histories of these landmarks as well. These peaks and ranges offer striking intrusions into the Arizona horizon, giving our southwestern state some of the most memorable views, hikes, climbs, and bike rides anywhere in the world. They orient us, they locate us, and they are steadfast through generations.

Whether you have climbed these peaks many times, enjoy seeing them from your car window, or simply want to learn more about southwestern geology and history, reading Natural Landmarks of Arizona is a fascinating way to learn about the ancient and recent history of beloved places such as Cathedral Rock, Granite Dells, Kitt Peak, and many others. With Yetman as your guide, you can tuck this book into your glove box and hit the road with profound new knowledge about the towering natural monuments that define our beautiful Arizona landscapes.

 
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A Natural State
Essays on Texas
By Stephen Harrigan
University of Texas Press, 1994

In this remarkable collection of essays, Stephen Harrigan explores, with an unfailing depth of feeling, the human longing to feel at home in the world of nature. In vivid and convincing prose, he evokes the landscape of his home territory, Texas, and his own reactions, sometimes droll, sometimes haunted, to the extraordinary power of place that Texas projects.

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The Naturalist in Nicaragua
Thomas Belt
University of Chicago Press, 1985
"The best of all natural history journals which have ever been published."—Charles Darwin, 1874. Beautifully illustrated and a pleasure to read, this classic book describes the geography, geology, ecology, flora, fauna, and native inhabitants of Nicaragua in the nineteenth century. Many of Belt's detailed and accurate observations were not confirmed until decades later—for example, the fact that certain plants have "standing armies" of ants that defend them.
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Nature in Translation
Japanese Tourism Encounters the Canadian Rockies
Shiho Satsuka
Duke University Press, 2015
Nature in Translation is an ethnographic exploration in the cultural politics of the translation of knowledge about nature. Shiho Satsuka follows the Japanese tour guides who lead hikes, nature walks, and sightseeing bus tours for Japanese tourists in Canada's Banff National Park and illustrates how they aspired to become local "nature interpreters" by learning the ecological knowledge authorized by the National Park. The guides assumed the universal appeal of Canada’s magnificent nature, but their struggle in translating nature reveals that our understanding of nature—including scientific knowledge—is always shaped by the specific socio-cultural concerns of the particular historical context. These include the changing meanings of work in a neoliberal economy, as well as culturally-specific dreams of finding freedom and self-actualization in Canada's vast nature. Drawing on nearly two years of fieldwork in Banff and a decade of conversations with the guides, Satsuka argues that knowing nature is an unending process of cultural translation, full of tensions, contradictions, and frictions. Ultimately, the translation of nature concerns what counts as human, what kind of society is envisioned, and who is included and excluded in the society as a legitimate subject.
 
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Never a City So Real
A Walk in Chicago
Alex Kotlowitz
University of Chicago Press, 2019
“Chicago is a tale of two cities,” headlines declare. This narrative has been gaining steam alongside reports of growing economic divisions and diverging outlooks on the future of the city. Yet to keen observers of the Second City, this is nothing new. Those who truly know Chicago know that for decades—even centuries—the city has been defined by duality, possibly since the Great Fire scorched a visible line between the rubble and the saved. For writers like Alex Kotlowitz, the contradictions are what make Chicago. And it is these contradictions that form the heart of Never a City So Real.

The book is a tour of the people of Chicago, those who have been Kotlowitz’s guide into this city’s – and by inference, this country’s – heart.  Chicago, after all, is America’s city. Kotlowitz introduces us to the owner of a West Side soul food restaurant who believes in second chances,  a steelworker turned history teacher, the “Diego Rivera of the projects,” and the lawyers and defendants who populate Chicago’s Criminal Courts Building.  These empathic, intimate stories chronicle the city’s soul, its lifeblood.

This new edition features a new afterword from the author, which examines the state of the city today as seen from the double-paned windows of a pawnshop. Ultimately, Never a City So Real is a love letter to Chicago, a place that Kotlowitz describes as “a place that can tie me up in knots but a place that has been my muse, my friend, my joy.”
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Never Leaving Laramie
Travels in a Restless World
John W. Haines
Oregon State University Press, 2020
John Haines spent the better part of two decades traveling the world: biking through Tibet, kayaking the length of the Niger River, taking the Trans-Siberian Express from Beijing to East Berlin. Various friends and compatriots—frequently from his hometown of Laramie, Wyoming—accompanied Haines on his trips. In 1999, everything changed. While leaping from a moving train in the Czech Republic—something he’d done many times in many places—Haines fell and broke his neck. Damage to his spine left him without use of his legs and radically changed his life.
 
In the years since, Haines has added writer to a resume that already included baker and banker. In Never Leaving Laramie, he pulls stories about traveling into an exploration of home: How a rural home fueled and sustained a worldview. How beauty and danger blend together with humility and ego. How itchy feet combine with the comfort of home in Laramie, a tough railroad town turned college town and a launchpad for wanderers. Throughout, Haines returns to ideas of rivers and movement. He ends with a chapter on a different kind of travel, reflecting on how his accident did and did not change him and the varied ways that people can move through the world.
 
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front cover of Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital
Never Trust a Thin Cook and Other Lessons from Italy’s Culinary Capital
Eric Dregni
University of Minnesota Press, 2024

The food-obsessed chronicle of an American’s three years in Italy—now available in paperback

 

I simply want to live in the place with the best food in the world. This dream led Eric Dregni to Italy, first to Milan and eventually to a small, fog-covered town to the north: Modena, the birthplace of balsamic vinegar, Ferrari, and Luciano Pavarotti. Never Trust a Thin Cook is a classic American abroad tale, brimming with adventures both expected and unexpected, awkward social moments, and most important, very good food.

 

Parmesan thieves. Tortellini based on the shape of Venus’s navel. Infiltrating the secret world of the balsamic vinegar elite. Life in Modena is a long way from the Leaning Tower of Pizza (the south Minneapolis pizzeria where Eric and his girlfriend and fellow traveler Katy first met), and while some Italians are impressed that “Minnesota” sounds like “minestrone,” they are soon learning what it means to live in a country where the word “safe” doesn’t actually exist—only “less dangerous.” Thankfully, another meal is always waiting, and Dregni revels in uncorking the secrets of Italian cuisine, such as how to guzzle espresso “corrected” with grappa and learning that mold really does make a good salami great.

 

What begins as a gastronomical quest soon becomes a revealing, authentic portrait of how Italians live and a hilarious demonstration of how American and Italian cultures differ. In Never Trust a Thin Cook, Eric Dregni dishes up the sometimes wild experiences of living abroad alongside the simple pleasures of Italian culture in perfect, complementary portions.

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front cover of The New Desert Reader
The New Desert Reader
Wild, Peter
University of Utah Press, 2006
The New Desert Reader brings together a historical cross section of writing about the American Southwest in selections that demonstrate how thinking about American deserts has changed from the earliest times to the present day. Beginning with the centuries-old legends of the Tohono O’Odham Indians, it moves through the foresighted observations of John Wesley Powell, one-armed explorer of the Grand Canyon; continues with the delicate appreciations of Mary Austin and Joseph Wood Krutch; includes examples of the keen activist writings of Wallace Stegner and Edward Abbey; and finishes with such contemporary desert writers as Tony Hillerman and others.
A slow change in outlook dominates the book, as attitudes shift from viewing the desert as a place to be despised or exploited to an appreciation of it as a special place, an arena of highly complex natural communities, and a wild refuge for the human body and soul. Comprehensive and brightly informative, The New Desert Reader will be invaluable to anyone interested in the history, literature, and beauty of North America’s treasured desert places. 
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New Jersey for Kids
Sarver, Patrick
Rutgers University Press, 2012

Many parents in the Garden State are familiar with Great Adventure in Jackson, the boardwalk at Point Pleasant, and the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, but do they know about Kindermusik in Teaneck, the Young Chef’s Academy in Hillsborough, or the Buehler Challenger and Science Center in Paramus?

In New Jersey for Kids, Patrick Sarver provides parents with a handy reference guide offering hundreds of educational and entertaining ideas for children and their parents to explore and enjoy. Activities are designed specifically for kids ages 12 and under and cover a wide array of fun ways to enrich their intellectual lives, build their athletic skills, express themselves creatively, or just have room to play. The activities covered include:

  • Robotics workshops
  • Themed tea parties
  • Plays and performances for children
  • Museum tours, special exhibits, and programs for kids
  • Pony rides and horseback riding lessons
  • Specialized summer camps
  • Arts and crafts classes
  • Gymnastics classes
  • Zoos and nature activities
  • Hockey, soccer, and baseball clinics
  • Acting and dancing lessons
  • Play centers with slides, ball pits, and bounce castles

Busy parents no longer need to spend hours surfing the Web and scouting out resources to find nearby activities their kids might enjoy. New Jersey for Kids puts this information right in the palms of their hands. Chapters are organized by category so it is easy to locate just the right activities to suit an individual child’s interests, whether it’s a fun way to spend an afternoon or a class that might inspire a lifelong passion. Along with descriptions and commentary, listings include recommended age ranges, handicap accessibility, and estimated durations of activities as well as practical information on hours, price ranges, Web sites, and phone numbers.

 

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New Jersey State of Mind
Peter Genovese
Rutgers University Press, 2020
No state has been so frequently mocked, maligned, or misunderstood as New Jersey. Yet the state is filled with amazing places and people who rarely receive the media attention they deserve. For the past twenty years Star-Ledger columnist Peter Genovese has been one of the rare voices singing the praises of his state’s hidden wonders and gritty charms.

For this new book, Genovese spent months scouring the state for rich stories and fascinating locations. New Jersey State of Mind takes us on a journey to over twenty-five of these places and introduces us to the colorful characters who live and work there, from a demolition derby driver to a female craft brewer, and from a Cuban celebrity chef to a Portuguese pig breeder. He also reveals the many natural wonders that have earned New Jersey its “Garden State” nickname, from cranberry bogs to river tours to wild bird sanctuaries.

Collectively, these pieces paint a picture of a diverse state full of hard-working individuals who care for their communities. This book cuts through the myths and stereotypes surrounding the state and reveals the proud beating heart of the real New Jersey.
 
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front cover of News from Tartary
News from Tartary
A Journey from Peking to Kashmir
Peter Fleming
Northwestern University Press, 1999
Originally published in 1936, News from Tartary is the story of a journey from Peking through the mysterious province of Sinkiang, to India. Fleming tells the story in his inimitable manner, dismissing the difficulties with irony and describing events and developments with humor and brilliant color, and his account is a classic of travel writing as well as a brilliant description of a vanished time and way of life.
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front cover of Nobody Rich or Famous
Nobody Rich or Famous
A Family Memoir
Richard Shelton
University of Arizona Press, 2016
Once in a while, a book comes along that redefines the concept of family. Frank McCourt did it with Angela’s Ashes; Annie Dillard did it with An American Childhood. In Nobody Rich or Famous, author Richard Shelton (b. 1933) immerses us in the hardscrabble lives of his Boise, Idaho, clan during the 1930s and ’40s. Using a framework of journals, road trips, and artful storytelling, Shelton traces three generations of women. We meet his mother, Hazel, a model of western respectability, who carefully dresses in her finest clothes before walking into a bar and emptying a loaded handgun in the general direction of her husband. We meet his great-grandmother, Josephine, who homesteads a sod shanty and dies too young on the Kansas prairie. We follow his grandmother, Charlotte, as she grows from a live-in servant girl to a fiddle-playing schoolteacher who burns through two marriages before taking up with the iceman.

Known for his storytelling, Shelton crafts a tale of poverty and its attendant sorrows: alcoholism, neglect, and abuse. But the tenacity of the human spirit shines through. This is an epic tale of Steinbeckian proportions, but it is not fiction. This is memoir in its finest tradition, illuminating today’s cultural chasm between the haves and have-nots. In the author’s words, Nobody Rich or Famous is “the story of a family and how it got that way.”
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front cover of Noel Wien
Noel Wien
Alaska Pioneer Bush Pilot
Ira Harkey
University of Alaska Press, 1999
From his days as one of Alaska's earliest bush pilots through the years spent developing Wien Air Alaska with his brothers, Noel Wien built up a long list of firsts: he was first to fly commercially from Fairbanks to Nome and from Fairbanks to Seattle, first to fly from Anchorage to Fairbanks, first to fly and land beyond the Arctic Circle, and first to make a round-trip flight between Alaska and Asia.
 
Wien shared a vision to bring commercial aviation to the Far North, and he acted on it.  He had 538 hours of barnstorming and aerial circus stunt flying behind him when he arrived in Alaska in 1924.  At that time, Alaska's rugged terrain permitted little more than primitive means of communication and transportation.  There were no air charts and no radio communication.  Navigation depended solely on a pilot's use of natural features of checkpoints, but the innumerable rivers and mountains too easily could look identical.  Safe landing sites were scarce.  Wien embraced the challenge presented by these obstacles with courage tempered by his native caution - not to mention exceptional talent and a boundless love of flying.  Before long, supplies could be taken to settlements previously serviced only by dog sled and sick persons could be transported quickly to hospitals.
 
In this dramatic account of a flying hero, Pulitzer Prize winning author Ira Harkey describes Wien's experiences in an engaging style, and he establishes Wien's place in Alaska history.  In the process, Harkey makes a valuable contribution towards an understanding of the Alaska of the recent past and the people who lived there.
 
This commemorative edition marks the 75th anniversary of Noel Wien's arrival in Alaska as well as his pioneering flight between Anchorage and Fairbanks.  It includes additional photographs and an informative new foreword by Cole.
 
Noel Wien pursued his vision through decades of wild experiences in an unyielding land.  His aviation milestones brought the people of Alaska closer and helped open Alaska to the outside world.
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front cover of Northern Arcadia
Northern Arcadia
Foreign Travelers in Scandinavia, 1765 - 1815
H. Arnold Barton
Southern Illinois University Press, 1998

Northern Arcadia is a comparative study of the accounts of foreign visitors to the Nordic lands during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Before the late eighteenth century, few foreigners ventured as far as Scandinavia. The region seemed a cold hyperborean wilderness and a voyage there a daring adventure. From the mid-1760s on, however, foreigners arrived in the Nordic lands in increasing numbers, leaving numerous accounts that became increasingly popular, satisfying a growing curiosity about regions beyond the traditional grand tour.

The pre-Romantic mood of the period—with its predilection for untamed nature and for peoples uncorrupted by overrefined civilization—further stimulated fascination with the North. European titerati discovered the Nordic sagas, finding them exhilarating, passionate, imaginative, and original. The French Revolution and the ensuing European wars effectively closed off much of the Continent to foreign travel, turning attention to the still neutral northern kingdoms.

Travel literature about Scandinavia thus illuminates the shift in the European intellectual climate from the enlightened rationalism and utilitarianism of the earlier travelers in this period to the pre-Romantic sensibility of those who followed them. In a Europe torn by war and revolution, sensitive souls could find their new Arcadia in the North—at least until the Scandinavian kingdoms themselves became engulfed by the Napoleonic wars after 1805.

The first scholar to examine as a whole the travel literature dealing with Denmark, Schleswig-Holstein, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland, and the Færø Islands, H. Arnold Barton discusses accounts left by both the celebrated and the obscure. Well-known travelers include Vittorio Alfieri, Francisco de Miranda, Mary Wollstonecraft, Thomas Malthus, and Aaron Burr. Literary travelers of the day included Nathanael Wraxall, William Coxe, Charles Gottlob Küttner, Edward Daniel Clarke, and John Carr.

Northern Arcadia brings out contrasts: among the various Nordic lands and regions; among the reactions of travelers of differing nationality; between the earlier as opposed to the later travelers of the time; between native Scandinavian and foreign perceptions of the North; between conditions in Scandinavia and those in other parts of the Western world; between then and now. It incorporates continuity and change, reality and mentality.

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front cover of The Nude Beach Notebook
The Nude Beach Notebook
Barbara J. Scot
Oregon State University Press, 2014
In this engaging new memoir, a loose sequel to her earlier Prairie Reunion, Barbara Scot explores her reluctance and longing to reconnect with a much-loved brother, lost to alcoholism for thirty years.

Scot uses long, meditative walks on the “clothing optional” beach of the idyllic Sauvie Island near Portland, Oregon, to explore family responsibility, time’s passage, and faith. She weaves entries from her notebook—a record of the island’s wildlife, descriptions of the “Odd Ones” she encounters on the beach, and stories about the native people who once lived on the river—with the main narrative, tracing her search for her brother, her close friendship with a fellow writer, and daily life on the houseboat moorage where she lives.

The Nude Beach Notebook highlights the importance of place as a means for exploring and interpreting one’s own story. In the end, Scot’s walks on Sauvie Island lead to her own redemptive journey. She considers the uses of fiction and non-fiction in memory and in writing, the brevity and beauty of human existence, and the inscrutable, enduring mystery of death.
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