Originally published in 1906 as one volume, Camping and Woodcraft was expanded into a two-volume edition in 1916-17. Camping and Woodcraft ranks sixth among the ten best-selling sporting books of all time. A standard manual for campers and a veritable outdoor enthusiast’s bible for over four decades, this book reflects Horace Kephart’s practical knowledge and covers, in depth, any problem that campers might confront.
Kephart lived in the Great Smoky Mountains and spent most of his time in the wild. Consequently, he became an expert on all aspects of camp life from living in a semi-permanent lean-to to traveling with only the bare essentials in a backpack. More than simply a hunting or fishing guide, Kephart’s book covers a wide variety of subjects from how to dress game and fish to how to shoot accurately. Every chapter is filled with tips that remain useful even after fifty years of improvements in equipment and technology.

Jim Casada, who has provided an informative introduction to this edition, is professor of history at Winthrop College. He has written numerous articles on sporting figures and outdoor literature and is editor-at-large for Sporting Classics and contributing editor for Fly Fishing Heritage.

In the increasingly popular sport of parkour, athletes run, jump, climb, flip, and vault through city streetscapes, resembling urban gymnasts to passersby and awestruck spectators. In Parkour and the City, cultural sociologist Jeffrey L. Kidder examines the ways in which this sport involves a creative appropriation of urban spaces as well as a method of everyday risk-taking by a youth culture that valorizes individuals who successfully manage danger.
 
Parkour’s modern development has been tied closely to the growth of the internet. The sport is inevitably a YouTube phenomenon, making it exemplary of new forms of globalized communication. Parkour’s dangerous stunts resonate, too, Kidder contends, with a neoliberal ideology that is ambivalent about risk. Moreover, as a male-dominated sport, parkour, with its glorification of strength and daring, reflects contemporary Western notions of masculinity. At the same time, Kidder writes, most athletes (known as “traceurs” or “freerunners”) reject a “daredevil” label, preferring a deliberate, reasoned hedging of bets with their own safety—rather than a “pushing the edge” ethos normally associated with extreme sports.