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Wabanaki Homeland and the New State of Maine
The 1820 Journal and Plans of Survey of Joseph Treat
Micah A. Pawling
University of Massachusetts Press, 2017
In late September 1820, hoping to lay claim to territory then under dispute between Great Britain and the United States, Governor William King of the newly founded state of Maine dispatched Major Joseph Treat to survey public lands on the Penobscot and Saint John Rivers. Traveling well beyond the limits of colonial settlement, Treat relied heavily on the cultural knowledge and expertise of John Neptune, lieutenant governor of the Penobscot tribe, to guide him across the Wabanaki homeland. Along the way Treat recorded his daily experiences in a journal and drew detailed maps, documenting the interactions of the Wabanaki peoples with the land and space they knew as home.

Edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Micah Pawling, this volume includes a complete transcription of Treat's journal, reproductions of dozens of hand-drawn maps, and records pertaining to the 1820 treaty between the Penobscot Nation and the governing authorities of Maine. As Pawling points out, Treat's journal offers more than the observations of a state agent conducting a survey. It re-creates a dialogue between Euro-Americans and Native peoples, showing how different perceptions of the land were negotiated and disseminated, and exposing the tensions that surfaced when assumptions and expectations clashed. In large part because of Neptune's influence, the maps, in addition to detailing the location of Wabanaki settlements, reflect a river-oriented Native perspective that would later serve as a key to Euro-American access to the region's interior.

The groundwork for cooperation between Treat and Neptune had been laid during the 1820 treaty negotiations, in which both men participated and which were successfully concluded just over a month before their expedition departed from Bangor, Maine. Despite conflicting interests and mutual suspicions, they were able to work together and cultivate a measure of trust as they traveled across northern Maine and western New Brunswick, mapping an old world together while envisioning its uncertain future.
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The Wake of the Unseen Object
Travels through Alaska's Native Landscapes
Tom Kizzia
University of Alaska Press, 2020
A  journey to Alaska’s remote roadless villages, during a time of great historical transition, brings us this enduring portrait of a place and its people. Alutiiq, Yup’ik, Inupiaq, and Athabascan subjects reveal themselves as entirely contemporary individuals with deep longings and connection to the land and to their past. Tom Kizzia’s account of his travels off the Alaska road system, first published in 1991, has endured with a sterling reputation for its thoughtful, poetic, unflinching engagement with the complexity of Alaska’s rural communities. Wake of the Unseen Object is now considered some of the finest nonfiction writing about Alaska. This new edition includes an updated introduction by the author, looking at what remains the same after thirty years and what is different—both in Alaska, and in the expectations placed on a reporter visiting from another world.
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Walk of Ages
A Generational Journey from Mt. Whitney to Death Valley
Withanee Andersen
University of Nevada Press, 2024
Following in her father’s footsteps, Withanee Andersen begins the expedition of a lifetime when she and her comrades embark on a trek from Mt. Whitney to Death Valley, tracing the rugged path her father, Jim Andersen, traversed forty-three years earlier.

With hopes of being listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, Jim led the first documented walk from the highest to lowest point in the contiguous United States­ in 1974.  He lived, albeit just barely, to tell the tale to his daughter, sparking a desire in Withanee to retrace his steps in his honor. In 2017, she took on the incredible task of recreating Jim’s legacy trek of 131 miles with the help of divine intervention, ice-cold beer, and her parents, who were following along as the support party.

Walk of Ages humorously relates the parallel journey of an epic adventure told from two perspectives–a daughter’s difficult quest, and a father who supports her, through it while recalling his own experiences from four decades earlier. Throughout this momentous odyssey, readers will realize how a once-in-a-generation adventure leads to life-changing transformation, and that the bond between father and daughter knows no bounds. 
 
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Walking Distance
Pilgrimage, Parenthood, Grief, and Home Repairs
David Hlavsa
Michigan State University Press, 2015
In the summer of 2000, David Hlavsa and his wife Lisa Holtby embarked on a pilgrimage. After trying for three years to conceive a child and suffering through the monthly cycle of hope and disappointment, they decided to walk the Camino de Santiago, a joint enterprise—and an act of faith—they hoped would strengthen their marriage and prepare them for parenthood.

Though walking more than 400 miles across the north of Spain turned out to be more difficult than they had anticipated, after a series of misadventures, including a brief stay in a Spanish hospital, they arrived in Santiago. Shortly after their return to Seattle, Lisa became pregnant, and the hardships of the Camino were no comparison to what followed: the stillbirth of their first son and Lisa’s harrowing second pregnancy.

Walking Distance is a moving and disarmingly funny book, a good story with a happy ending—the safe arrival of David and Lisa’s second son, Benjamin. David and Lisa get more than they bargained for, but they also get exactly what they wanted: a child, a solid marriage, and a richer life.
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Walking East Harlem
A Neighborhood Experience
Christopher Bell
Rutgers University Press, 2025
This book comprises three walking tours that inform the visitor about East Harlem's cultural centers, institutions, and landmark buildings. Walking East Harlem also pays homage to the Latino residents who called Spanish Harlem/El Barrio home and acknowledges the contribution of blacks, Italians, Jews, and other ethnic groups who have lived in the neighborhood. Many tourists are unaware that many tenements and buildings were demolished both before and after World War II. Such destruction resulted in the loss of businesses, led to the residential relocation of thousands of people, and more importantly, eradicated part of East Harlem's history. But all was not lost. This book details the many buildings remaining intact despite the urban renewal that transpired in East Harlem in the 20th century. Ultimately, Bell argues, East Harlem remains a vibrant enclave, despite the threat of gentrification, and he underscores the ways in which the neighborhood's population continues to grow and thrive.
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Walking Harlem
The Ultimate Guide to the Cultural Capital of Black America
Taborn, Karen
Rutgers University Press, 2018
With its rich cultural history and many landmark buildings, Harlem is not just one of New York’s most distinctive neighborhoods; it’s also one of the most walkable. 

This illustrated guide takes readers on five separate walking tours of Harlem, covering ninety-one different historical sites. Alongside major tourist destinations like the Apollo Theater and the Abyssinian Baptist Church, longtime Harlem resident Karen Taborn includes little-known local secrets like Jazz Age speakeasies, literati, political and arts community locales. Drawing from rare historical archives, she also provides plenty of interesting background information on each location. 

This guide was designed with the needs of walkers in mind. Each tour consists of eight to twenty-nine nearby sites, and at the start of each section, readers will find detailed maps of the tour sites, as well as an estimated time for each walk. In case individuals would like to take a more leisurely tour, it provides recommendations for restaurants and cafes where they can stop along the way. 

Walking Harlem gives readers all the tools they need to thoroughly explore over a century’s worth of this vital neighborhood’s cultural, political, religious, and artistic heritage. With its informative text and nearly seventy stunning photographs, this is the most comprehensive, engaging, and educational walking tour guidebook on one of New York’s historic neighborhoods.
 
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Walking Home Ground
In the Footsteps of Muir, Leopold, and Derleth
Robert Root
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2017

When longtime author Robert Root moves to a small town in southeast Wisconsin, he gets to know his new home by walking the same terrain traveled by three Wisconsin luminaries who were deeply rooted in place—John Muir, Aldo Leopold, and August Derleth. Root walks with Muir at John Muir State Natural Area, with Leopold at the Shack, and with Derleth in Sac Prairie; closer to home, he traverses the Ice Age Trail, often guided by such figures as pioneering scientist Increase Lapham. Along the way, Root investigates the changes to the natural landscape over nearly two centuries, and he chronicles his own transition from someone on unfamiliar terrain to someone secure on his home ground.In prose that is at turns introspective and haunting, Walking Home Ground inspires us to see history’s echo all around us: the parking lot that once was forest; the city that once was glacier. "Perhaps this book is an invitation to walk home ground," Root tells us. "Perhaps, too, it’s a time capsule, a message in a bottle from someone given to looking over his shoulder even as he tries to examine the ground beneath his feet."

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Walking Pepys's London
Jacky Colliss Harvey
Haus Publishing, 2022
Brings to life the world of Samuel Pepys with five walks through London.

Samuel Pepys, the seventeenth century's best-known diarist, walked around London for miles, chronicling these walks in his diary. He made the two-and-a-half-mile trek to Whitehall from his house near the Tower of London on an almost daily basis. These streets, where many of his professional conversations took place while walking, became for him an alternative to his office.

With Walking Pepys’s London, we come to know life in London from the pavement up and see its streets from the perspective of this renowned diarist. The city was a key character in Pepys’s life, and this book draws parallels between his experience of seventeenth-century London and the lives of Londoners today. Bringing together geography, biography, and history, Jacky Colliss Harvey reconstructs the sensory and emotional experience of Pepys’s time. Full of fascinating details, Walking Pepys’s London is a sensitive exploration into the places that made the greatest English diarist of all time.
 
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Walking the Steps Of Cincinnati
A Guide to the Queen City’s Scenic and Historic Secrets
Mary Anna DuSablon
Ohio University Press, 2014

Walking the Steps of Cincinnati: A Guide to the Queen City’s Scenic and Historic Secrets is a revised and updated version of Mary Anna DuSablon’s original guidebook, first published in 1998. This new edition describes and maps thirty-four walks of varying lengths and levels of difficulty around the neighborhoods of Cincinnati, following scenic or historic routes and taking in many of the city’s more than four hundred sets of steps. Some of these walks follow the same routes laid out by DuSablon in the first edition of the guide; others have been revised to reflect changes in the city and its neighborhoods, the physical condition of the steps, and the scenic views of Cincinnati that they afford; and still others are altogether new.

In writing their descriptions of the walks, authors Connie J. Harrell and John Cicmanec have retraced each path and taken all new photographs of the steps as well as architectural and natural landmarks along the way. Cartographer Brian Balsley has drawn a fresh set of maps, and Roxanne Qualls, vice-mayor of Cincinnati, has graciously written a new foreword.

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Walking to the Sun
A Journey through America's Energy Landscapes
Tom Haines
University Press of New England, 2018
On a winter day in 2013, Tom Haines stood in front of his basement furnace and wondered about the source of the natural gas that fueled his insulated life. During the next four years, Haines, an award-winning journalist and experienced wanderer, walked hundreds of miles through landscapes of fuel—oil, gas, and coal, and water, wind, and sun—on a crucial exploration of how we live on Earth in the face of a growing climate crisis. Can we get from the fossil fuels of today to the renewables of tomorrow? The story Haines tells in Walking to the Sun is full not only of human encounters—with roustabouts working on an oil rig, farmers tilling fields beneath wind turbines, and many others—but also of the meditative range that arrives with solitude far from home. Walking to the Sun overcomes the dislocation of our industrial times to look closely at the world around us and to consider what might come next.
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Walking Trails of Eastern and Central Wisconsin
Bob Crawford
University of Wisconsin Press, 1997
    The sheer physical beauty and varied landscapes of eastern and central Wisconsin are best experienced on its walking trails. Walking Trails of Eastern and Central Wisconsin is a handy guide to trails that wind through the streets of old Milwaukee and the forests of the Kettle Moraine, across the Niagara Escarpment, along the shores of picturesque Door County, or up the sandstone mound at Lone Rock for a panoramic view of flatlands that once were the bed of glacial Lake Wisconsin.
     A companion to the popular Walking Trails of Southern Wisconsin, this book describes more than 200 trails in 72 locations throughout five of the state's major regions. Bob Crawford provides maps and detailed instructions to make the trails easy to locate.

 With each trail description you'll find:
* details about the route and terrain, as well as geographical, biological, or historical features of interest;
* regulations including open days and hours, and rules regarding dogs, trail bikes, cross-country skiing, and other activities;
* information about available restrooms, drinking water, nature centers, and other facilities at the site;
* a description assessing degree of difficulty—slope, width, maintenance, and other such factors—and a helpful rating of "walkability" on a scale from 1 to 5.

    The only comprehensive guide to hiking locations in the eastern part of the state, this book also provides lists of trail locations that include playground equipment for kids and picnic facilities for those who want to make a day trip of their hiking outing. Appendices spotlight trails that boast historical significance, ice age features, picnic areas, and cross-country skiing opportunities.
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Walking Trails of Southern Wisconsin
Bob Crawford
University of Wisconsin Press, 2000

Take a walk on the wild side with the completely updated version of this popular guide.
This edition now includes coverage of Lafayette and Vernon counties, plus new information on more trails, including ones at Avoca Prairie Savanna State Natural Area, Wildcat Mountain State Park, and Blackhawk Lake Recreational Area. Author Bob Crawford has also revised eleven trail maps in nine counties and updated material throughout the book, which now describes more than 150 trails at more than sixty locations.
 These trails wind across southern Wisconsin—into forests and along shores, over glacial formations and around Native American earthworks—and showcase some of the most beautiful and interesting walking trails in the nation. Walking Trails of Southern Wisconsin retains its handy, pocket-sized format plus all the other features that made the first edition so successful:

• details about routes and terrain plus geographical, biological, or historical features of interest
• regulations including open days and hours, and rules regarding dogs, trail bikes, cross-country skiing, and other activities
• information about available restrooms, drinking water, nature centers, and other facilities at the site
• a description assessing degree of difficulty—slope, width, maintenance, and other such factors—and a helpful rating of “walkability” on a scale from 1 to 5

Crawford also provides information about nearby parks, preserves, glacial formations, historical sites, tourist attractions, and other points of interest for those who want to turn a hike into a day trip or weekend outing. Staying fit was never so easy nor so much fun.

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Waltzing the Magpies
A Year in Australia
Sam Pickering
University of Michigan Press, 2004
Praise for Sam Pickering:

"The art of the essay as delivered by Mr. Pickering is the art of the front porch ramble."
---The New York Times Book Review


"Reading Pickering . . . is like taking a walk with your oldest, wittiest friend."
---Smithsonian

"What a joy it is to 'mess around' with Professor Sam Pickering!"
---The Chattanooga Times

"Pickering is a barefoot observer of the quotidian who revels in the spectacle and its gift for surprise, prefers the rumpled to the starched, has raised puttering and messing about to an art form, and wrings from it more than a pennyworth of happiness and a life well lived."
---Kirkus Reviews


The movie Dead Poets Society is where most Americans first met Sam Pickering, the University of Connecticut English professor. Robin Williams plays the lead character (loosely based on Pickering), an idiosyncratic instructor who employs some over-the-top teaching methods to keep his subjects fresh and his students learning.

Fewer know that Pickering is the author of more than 16 books and nearly 200 articles, or that he's inspired thousands of university students to think in new ways. And, while Williams may have captured Pickering's madcap classroom antics, he didn't uncover the other side of the author-Sam Pickering as one of our great American men of letters. Like the music of Mozart, the painting of Picasso, or the poetry of Emily Dickinson, you can spot Pickering's writing a mile away; there's no mistaking the Pickering pen. As an ample demonstration of the author's literary gifts, Waltzing the Magpies is his unabashedly lush and Technicolor travelogue from Down Under.

On the face of it, Waltzing is the chronicle of a sabbatical year spent with family in Australia. Yet beneath the surface Pickering's big themes-family, nature, seizing the moment-move in a powerful current that frequently bursts out in moments of ecstatic revelation and intense sensual flourish. Through it all Pickering weaves stories from his fictional Southern town of Carthage, Tennessee, especially when the goings of the outside world get rough.

Waltzing the Magpies is classic Pickering at the height of his literary powers, and places him in the company of such great American essayists as E. B. White and James Thurber, but with an irony and observational prowess that is pure Pickering.
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Wandering Time
Western Notebooks
Luis Alberto Urrea
University of Arizona Press, 1999

Fleeing a failed marriage and haunted by ghosts of his past, Luis Alberto Urrea jumped into his car and headed west. Driving cross-country with a cat named Rest Stop, Urrea wandered the West from one year’s spring through the next.

Hiking into aspen forests where leaves “shiver and tinkle like bells” and poking alongside creeks in the Rockies, he sought solace and wisdom. In the forested mountains he learned not only the names of trees—he learned how to live. As nature opened Urrea’s eyes, writing opened his heart. In journal entries that sparkle with discovery, Urrea ruminates on music, poetry, and the landscape. With wonder and spontaneity, he relates tales of marmots, geese, bears, and fellow travelers. He makes readers feel mountain air “so crisp you feel you could crunch it in your mouth” and reminds us all to experience the magic and healing of small gestures, ordinary people, and common creatures.

Urrea has been heralded as one of the most talented writers of his generation. In poems, novels, and nonfiction, he has explored issues of family, race, language, and poverty with candor, compassion, and often astonishing power. Wandering Time offers his most intimate work to date, a luminous account of his own search for healing and redemption.

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Wanderlust
The Amazing Ida Pfeiffer, the First Female Tourist
John van Wyhe
National University of Singapore Press, 2019
I found no one to accompany me, and was determined to do; so I trusted to fate, and went alone.

In 1797 in Vienna, Ida Pfeiffer was born into a world that should have been too small for her dreams. The daughter of an Austrian merchant, she made clear from an early age that she would not be bound by convention, dressing in boys’ clothing and playing sports. After her tutor introduced her to stories of faraway lands, she became determined to see the world first-hand. This determination led to a lifetime of travel—much of it alone—and made her one of the most famous women of the nineteenth century.
            Pfeiffer faced many obstacles, not least expectations of her gender. She was a typical nineteenth century housewife with a husband and two sons. She was not wealthy nor well connected. Yet after the death of her husband, and once her sons were grown and settled, at the age of forty-one she set off on her first journey, not telling anyone the true extent of her travel plans. Between that trip and her death in 1858, she would barely pause for breath, circling the globe twice—the first woman to do so—and publishing numerous popular books about her travels. Usually traveling solo, Pfeiffer faced storms at sea, trackless deserts, plague, malaria, earthquakes, robbers, murderers, and other risks.
In Wanderlust, John Van Wyhe tells Pfeiffer’s story, with generous excerpts from her published accounts, tell of her involvement with spies, international intrigue, and more. The result is a compelling portrait of the remarkable life of a pioneer unjustly forgotten.
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Wasatch Winter Trails
John Veranth
University of Utah Press, 1991

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Washington from the Ground Up
James H. S. McGregor
Harvard University Press, 2007

At the confluence of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, President Washington chose a diamond-shaped site for the city that would bear his name, along with the burdens and blessings of democracy. Situated midway between North and South, the capital was also a gateway to the West--a contested wilderness where rough frontiersmen were already carving a divided nation.

With Indians on their borders and black slaves in their midst, the country's white founders struggled to embody, in bricks and stone, the paradoxical republic they had invented. Inspired by Greek and Roman models, city planners and designers scoured the Western world--from Hadrian's Pantheon to Palladio's Vicenza to the French Royal Academy--for an architectural language to capture the elusive principles of liberty, equality, and union.

Washington from the Ground Up tells the story of a nation whose Enlightenment ideals were tested in the fires of rebellion, removal, and resistance. It is also a tale of two cities: official Washington, whose stately neoclassical buildings expressed the government's power and global reach; and DC, whose minority communities, especially African Americans, lived in the shadows of poverty. Moving chronologically and geographically throughout the District, James McGregor reads this complex history from monuments and museums, libraries and churches, squares and neighborhoods that can still be seen today. His lucid narrative, accompanied by detailed maps and copious illustrations, doubles as a visitor's guide to this uniquely American city.

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Washtenaw County Bike Rides
A Guide to Road Rides in and around Ann Arbor
Joel D. Howell
University of Michigan Press, 2009

Washtenaw County Bike Rides is ideal for people who are new to the county, are new to bike riding, or simply want to expand their repertoire of rides. All routes described in the book start or end in Washtenaw County and have been selected with a preference for rides outside of the city. All the routes are paved. Joel Howell details the roads, the areas that require caution, the difficulty of the rides, and routes that can be extended for longer rides.

Includes routes and maps for Dixboro, Dexter-Chelsea, Gallup Park, Hell, Huron River Drive, Manchester, Waterloo, East Lansing, and more, as well as an overview map and ride log.

Joel D. Howell is a physician, medical historian, and avid biker who has personally ridden all of the trails featured in the book. He lives in Ann Arbor.

"Two of the strongest predictors of an active lifestyle are convenient access to exercise opportunities, and pleasant and beautiful exercise environments. Joel Howell's book has solved both of these factors with a collection of some of the most beautiful and accessible biking (and running!) routes in the upper Midwest."
---Thomas L. Schwenk, M.D., Chair of Family Medicine, University of Michigan

"This book includes all the main biking routes making it a 'must have' for any cyclist new to the Ann Arbor area. There are also great tidbits of local lore and super photographs that make it a welcome addition to the libraries of cyclists who have ridden these roads countless times."
---Mark Lovejoy, President, Ann Arbor Velo Club

"Howell has performed a genuine service for county residents and visitors. Get moving, Washtenaw!"
---Kenneth Warner, Dean, University of Michigan School of Public Health

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Watching the River Run
A Photographic Journey Down the Youghiogheny
Tim Palmer
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2025

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The Way Home
Essays on the Outside West
James McVey
University of Utah Press, 2010

"A sense of place can be a complicated matter," writes James McVey in the prologue to his new collection of essays, The Way Home. Based on twenty years of living and traveling in the West, the collection includes essays on river running, backcountry skiing, fly fishing, and backpacking—all describing various attempts to engage in meaningful contact with the elements of wild nature, and to have a deep firsthand knowledge of a place. With an essayists breadth McVey engages ecology, geology, anthropology, psychology, and history as well as his own personal outdoor experiences to peer into the particulars of living in as complicated a place as the West. While the essays function within the tradition of western nature writing, they transcend regional issues insofar as they maintain a broader philosophical context that accounts for such global concerns as mass extinction and climate change.

The essays use backcountry experiences as occasions for reflection on such topics as nature and culture, conservation, and the human relation to the wild. They combine the naturalist’s commitment to landscape with the adventurer’s attention to technique and skill. The outdoor experiences function as ritualized activity, the purpose of which is to explore a specific relation with a place. As such, the essays consider certain nonrational ways of knowing the world, including a perception of aesthetics based on sensory participation with the more-than-human world. This gets to the heart of the essential connection in this work between its adventure themes and nature concerns--a connection very much concerned with issues of lifestyle and worldview. McVey describes his own journey in the West, traveling through the varying philosophical revelations wilderness presents—"a lifetime of questions"—finally landing on a conservation ethic, a feeling of home.

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Ways to the West
How Getting Out of Our Cars Is Reclaiming America's Frontier
Tim Sullivan
Utah State University Press, 2015

In Ways to the West, Tim Sullivan embarks on a car-less road trip through the Intermountain West, exploring how the region is taking on what may be its greatest challenge: sustainable transportation. Combining personal travel narrative, historical research, and his professional expertise in urban planning, Sullivan takes a critical yet optimistic and often humorous look at how contemporary Western cities are making themselves more hospitable to a life less centered on the personal vehicle.

The modern West was built by the automobile, but so much driving has jeopardized the West’s mystic hold on the American future. At first, automobility heightened the things that made the West great, but love became dependence, and dependence became addiction. Via his travels by bicycle, bus, and train through Las Vegas, Phoenix, Denver, Boise, Salt Lake City, and Portland, Sullivan captures the modern transportation evolution taking place across the region and the resulting ways in which contemporary Western communities are reinterpreting classic American values like mobility, opportunity, adventure, and freedom.

Finding a West created, lost, and reclaimed, Ways to the West will be of great interest to anyone curious about sustainable transportation and the history, geography, and culture of the American West.


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We Came Naked and Barefoot
The Journey of Cabeza de Vaca across North America
By Alex D. Krieger
University of Texas Press, 2002

Second place, Presidio La Bahia Award, Sons of the Republic of Texas, 2003

Perhaps no one has ever been such a survivor as álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. Member of a 600-man expedition sent out from Spain to colonize "La Florida" in 1527, he survived a failed exploration of the west coast of Florida, an open-boat crossing of the Gulf of Mexico, shipwreck on the Texas coast, six years of captivity among native peoples, and an arduous, overland journey in which he and the three other remaining survivors of the original expedition walked some 1,500 miles from the central Texas coast to the Gulf of California, then another 1,300 miles to Mexico City.

The story of Cabeza de Vaca has been told many times, beginning with his own account, Relación de los naufragios, which was included and amplified in Gonzalo Fernando de Oviedo y Váldez's Historia general de las Indias. Yet the route taken by Cabeza de Vaca and his companions remains the subject of enduring controversy. In this book, Alex D. Krieger correlates the accounts in these two primary sources with his own extensive knowledge of the geography, archaeology, and anthropology of southern Texas and northern Mexico to plot out stage by stage the most probable route of the 2,800-mile journey of Cabeza de Vaca.

This book consists of several parts, foremost of which is the original English version of Alex Krieger's dissertation (edited by Margery Krieger), in which he traces the route of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions from the coast of Texas to Spanish settlements in western Mexico. This document is rich in information about the native groups, vegetation, geography, and material culture that the companions encountered. Thomas R. Hester's foreword and afterword set the 1955 dissertation in the context of more recent scholarship and archaeological discoveries, some of which have supported Krieger's plot of the journey. Margery Krieger's preface explains how she prepared her late husband's work for publication. Alex Krieger's original translations of the Cabeza de Vaca and Oviedo accounts round out the volume.

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Wealth Woman
Kate Carmack and the Klondike Race for Gold
Deb Vanasse
University of Alaska Press, 2016
With the first headlines screaming “Gold! Gold! Gold!” in 1896, the Klondike Gold Rush was on—and it almost instantly became the stuff of legend. One of the key figures in the early discoveries that set off the gold rush was the Tagish wife of prospector George Carmack, Kate Carmack, whose fascinating story is told in full here for the first time.

In Wealth Woman, Deb Vanasse recounts Kate’s life from her early years on the frontier with George, through the history-making discovery of gold, and on to her subsequent fame, when she traveled alone down the West Coast through Washington and California, telling her story and fighting for her wealth, her family, and her reputation. Recovering the lost story of a true pioneer and a fiercely independent woman, Wealth Woman brings gold rush Alaska to life in all its drama and glory.
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Weaving a Way Home
A Personal Journey Exploring Place and Story
Leslie Van Gelder
University of Michigan Press, 2008

An inquiry into how we engage with the world, and how solutions to environmental challenges can be found in the heart of our emotional relationships with places

"No one with a working heart will fail to be moved by Van Gelder. With passion and intelligence, she explores the way we story places and places story all life."
---Patrick Curry, Lecturer in Religious Studies, University of Kent, and author of Ecological Ethics: An Introduction and Defending Middle-Earth

"With grace and passion Leslie Van Gelder weaves together stories of her own encounters with an amazing variety of places---riverside meadows of Oxford, racially sundered Cyprus, fly-tormented Canadian muskeg, caves stroked by Paleolithic fingertips, derelict Coney Island, grasslands through which lion cubs follow the black tip of their mother’s tail---to show us how Place and Story are the warp and weft of our being as earth-dwellers."
---Tim Robinson, Folding Landscapes, and author of Connemara: Listening to the Wind

"Travel narrative, memoir, literary criticism, and anthropology fuse in this highly original and moving exploration of place and home."
---John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home and Pilgrimage to Vallombrosa

"Van Gelder offers her most deeply personal stories as microcosmic examples of universal human experience, thus creating an empathic bond with her reader that conveys power and understanding simultaneously, and stimulates the reader's imagination toward reflection upon similarly personal stories of place. Van Gelder has modeled the relationship between story and place by telling placeful stories, and so has licensed the reader to do the same. Her writing throughout is rich and metaphoric. She is a gifted storyteller and a competent scholar, a combination to be treasured."
---Joseph W. Meeker, Professor Emeritus, College of Arts/Science, Union Institute and University, and author of The Spheres of Life, The Comedy of Survival, and Minding the Earth

Weaving a Way Home is an inquiry into the complex relationship between people, place, and story. In our memories and connections to a place, we are given one of the few opportunities to have deep relationships with place---relationships that cannot be described in words. Place can embody powerful emotions for us, and Leslie Van Gelder argues that we ourselves are places---geographical points possessing unique perspectives---that can feel displaced, replaced, or immovable. While the places of the external world can be accessed through maps and a good GPS system, our emotional landscapes are best reached through the sharing of stories.

In the tradition of writers Lewis Hyde, Barry Lopez, Peter Matthiessen, Joseph Meeker, Steven Mithen, Paul Shepard, Gary Snyder, and Terry Tempest Williams, Van Gelder uses both creative nonfiction narrative and evolutionary biological theory to explore complex terrain. Following Van Gelder's own travels, the book moves from the caves of the Dordogne lit only by the small beam of a flashlight, to an acacia thicket in Mozambique, to a black fly–infested bay inappropriately named Baie de Ha Ha in the inlands of Quebec, to the green line wrapped in barbed wire separating northern and southern Cyprus, to Abu Simbel's empty stone eyes in the Egyptian desert, and finally to the high road above Pelorus Sound on the rocky coasts of New Zealand. The author takes the reader to each place to create a storied landscape and explore new intellectual terrain. Van Gelder shows us that our collections of experiences, unique to us, can only be shared through the articulation of narrative.Weaving a Way Home will appeal to those deeply interested in knowing how we forge relationships with places and how that shapes who we are.

Jacket photographs: Garden gate: © iStockphoto.com/Richard Goerg. Iron fence: Christ Church Meadow in Oxford, Leslie Van Gelder.

Author photograph: Kevin Sharpe

[more]

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A Week in Yellowstone's Thorofare
A Journey Through the Remotest Place
Michael J. Yochim
Oregon State University Press, 2016
The remotest place in the country, outside of Alaska, is a region in Yellowstone National Park ironically named the Thorofare, for its historic role as a route traversed by fur trappers. A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare is a history and celebration of this wild place, set within a week-long expedition that the author took with three friends in 2014.
 
Drawing upon the first-person accounts of rangers who have patrolled the area, archival documents, and Michael Yochim’s personal experiences over almost three decades, A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare distinguishes between the notions of wildness and wilderness. Through historic vignettes, descriptions of natural resources, and the author’s own experiences, it argues that wildness is the most precious, and easily lost, attribute of wilderness.
 
The Thorofare is remote not only from roads, but also largely unexplored in the vast body of wilderness literature. A Week in Yellowstone’s Thorofare aims to fill that void. Recognizing both the value and the fragility of wildness, the rangers who manage the area have struggled through many eras to preserve it. This book chronicles many of the struggles through which it has remained protected for visitors today.
 
Yochim offers poignant insight into the passions that motivate those who manage, defend, and journey through the Thorofare. His story demonstrates the importance of wild places for touching and understanding a fundamental part of the human experience. Part history, memoir, travelogue, natural history, and reflection, the book will appeal to readers interested in preservation, the wilderness movement, the history of National Parks, or the natural treasures of Yellowstone.
[more]

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We'll Always Have Paris
American Tourists in France since 1930
Harvey Levenstein
University of Chicago Press, 2004
For much of the twentieth century, Americans had a love/hate relationship with France. While many admired its beauty, culture, refinement, and famed joie de vivre, others thought of it as a dilapidated country populated by foul-smelling, mean-spirited anti-Americans driven by a keen desire to part tourists from their money. We'll Always Have Paris explores how both images came to flourish in the United States, often in the minds of the same people.

Harvey Levenstein takes us back to the 1930s, when, despite the Great Depression, France continued to be the stomping ground of the social elite of the eastern seaboard. After World War II, wealthy and famous Americans returned to the country in droves, helping to revive its old image as a wellspring of sophisticated and sybaritic pleasures. At the same time, though, thanks in large part to Communist and Gaullist campaigns against U.S. power, a growing sensitivity to French anti-Americanism began to color tourists' experiences there, strengthening the negative images of the French that were already embedded in American culture. But as the century drew on, the traditional positive images were revived, as many Americans again developed an appreciation for France's cuisine, art, and urban and rustic charms.

Levenstein, in his colorful, anecdotal style, digs into personal correspondence, journalism, and popular culture to shape a story of one nation's relationship to another, giving vivid play to Americans' changing response to such things as France's reputation for sexual freedom, haute cuisine, high fashion, and racial tolerance. He puts this tumultuous coupling of France and the United States in historical perspective, arguing that while some in Congress say we may no longer have french fries, others, like Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca, know they will always have Paris, and France, to enjoy and remember.
[more]

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Wend Your Way
A Guide To Sites Along The Iowa Mormon Trail
L. Matthew Chatterley
University of Iowa Press, 2007
The exodus of the Mormon people from Illinois across the Great Plains to the Salt Lake Valley  was the most monumental movement of a people in the settlement of the American West. In 1846, the first pioneers, led by Brigham Young, crossed Iowa, and this proved to be the most difficult part of their journey. The weather, the terrain and emigrants' lack  of experience and preparation tested their faith and strength, but their single-minded desire to reach a safe home in the West forged them into a strong people.

Wend Your Way: A Guide to Sites Along the Mormon Trail tells the story of this great movement through Iowa. Tracing the trail from east to west through 12 counties the guide includes:

• Mormon Trail history for each county
•Directs visitors to the 27 interpretive roadside panels that were constructed on the trail by U.S. National Park Service and Iowa Mormon Trails Association
•Reproduces the poignant illustrations that author L. Matthew Chatterley drew for these wayside exhibits
•Provides a map and directions by county to guide travelers to the route of the Mormon Trail, sites of Mormon camps and settlements and the interpretive roadside panels
•Lists other locations in southern Iowa that visitors will want to explore
[more]

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The West and Central Florida Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore
Clarence Bloomfield Moore, edited and with an introduction by Jeffrey M. Mitchem
University of Alabama Press, 1999

This compilation of Moore's publications on western and central Florida provides all of his archaeological data on the region's mounds and prehistoric canals in a single volume.

The name Clarence B. Moore is familiar to every archaeologist interested in the southeastern United States. This amateur archaeologist's
numerous scientific expeditions to the region resulted in dozens of well-illustrated publications, the value of which increases daily as many of the sites he investigated continue to be destroyed by modern development.

Moore invested considerable time and effort exploring Florida's archaeological sites, devoting more pages of published reports and articles to Florida than to any other state. Because of the wealth of material on Florida, Moore's Florida expedition publications have been
collected in three separate volumes, all published within the Classics in Southeastern Archaeology series. The thirteen papers reproduced in this
volume present the results of Moore's research in West and Central Florida.

Moore's first and last expeditions were to Florida and spanned almost fifty years of archaeological investigations. Following the eastern river drainages to central and western Florida, in 1900 Moore concentrated his efforts along the Florida Gulf Coast, spurred by the exciting
discoveries of Frank Hamilton Cushing at Key Marco in 1896. Although this region is rich in mound sites, many sites located by Moore in the early
years of this century had already been destroyed by construction and lime processing. In addition to mound groupings—some containing masses of skeletal remains—Moore found a number of sites connected by a network of prehistoric canals. Several of the sites located by Moore contained European trade goods and have been used to trace the early wanderings of the conquistadores in the New World.

Moore's early work on the Florida Gulf Coast succeeded in preserving much of the archaeological record in this area. He is to be credited with remarkable insights concerning mound and earthwork construction, artifact trade networks, and chronology development.


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The Western Journals of Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, 1839–1846
Kenneth E. Lewis
Michigan State University Press, 2019
The late antebellum period saw the dramatic growth of the United States as Euro-American settlement began to move into new territories west of the Mississippi River. The journals and letters of businessmen Nehemiah and Henry Sanford, written between 1839 and 1846, provide a unique perspective into a time of dramatic expansion in the Great Lakes and beyond. These accounts describe the daily experiences of Nehemiah and his wife Nancy Shelton Sanford as they traveled west from their Connecticut home to examine lands for speculation in regions undergoing colonization, as well as the experiences of their son Henry who later came out to the family’s western property. Beyond an interest in business, the Sanfords’ journals provide a detailed picture of the people they encountered and the settlements and country through which they passed and include descriptions of events, activities, methods of travel and travel accommodations, as well as mining in the upper Mississippi Valley and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and a buffalo hunt on the Great Plains. Through their travels the Sanfords give us an intimate glimpse of the immigrants, settlers, Native Americans, missionaries, traders, mariners, and soldiers they encountered, and their accounts illuminate the lives and activities of the newcomers and native people who inhabited this fascinating region during a time of dramatic transition.
[more]

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Westwater Lost and Found
Expanded Edition
Mike Milligan
Utah State University Press, 2024
Westwater Lost and Found: Expanded Edition is the continuing story of Westwater—a relatively short, deep canyon near the Utah-Colorado state line that has become one of the most popular river-running destinations in the Southwest—and its lasting significance to the study of the Upper Colorado River. Thousands of recreational river runners have pushed this backwater place into the foreground of modern popular culture in the West. Westwater represents one common sequence in western history: the late opening of unexplored territories, the sporadic and ultimately often unsuccessful attempts to develop them, their renewed obscurity when development doesn’t succeed, their attraction to a marginal society of dreamers and schemers, and the modern rediscovery of them due to new cultural motives, especially outdoor recreation, which has brought many people into thousands of remote corners of the West.
 
This expanded edition brings to light historical events and explores how Westwater’s location greatly contributed to early Grand (Upper) Colorado River boaters’ knowledge and how the lush Westwater Valley and Cisco became critical stops for water, wood, and grass along the North Branch of the Old Spanish Trail. Other new additions include explorer Ellsworth Kolb’s unpublished manuscript describing his 1916–1917 boating experiences on the Grand and Gunnison Rivers; two stories relating to Outlaw Cave, one of which expands upon the mystery of the outlaw brothers; a letter from James E. Miller to Frederick S. Dellenbaugh in 1906 revealing new information about his boating excursion with Oro DeGarmo Babcock on the Grand River in 1897; and a portion of botanist Frederick Kreutzfeld’s little-known journal of 1853 that describes Captain John W. Gunnison’s railroad survey.
 
Loaded with extensive information and river-running history, Milligan’s guide is sure to enhance readers’ knowledge of the Upper Colorado River and Grand Canyon regions. Boaters, river guides, scholars of the American West, and historians of the Colorado, Green, and Gunnison Rivers or the Old Spanish Trail will gain much from this new edition.
[more]

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The Whales Know
A Journey through Mexican California
Pino Cacucci
Haus Publishing, 2014
Following in the footsteps of John Steinbeck, Cacucci travels through endless expanses of desert, salt mountains and rows of cacti with thorns so sharp that they can impale thirsty birds... Written with humour and heart, this is an insight into an ecosystem under threat and he describes the landscape and its inhabitants with compassion and respect.
[more]

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The Whaling Season
An Inside Account Of The Struggle To Stop Commercial Whaling
Kieran Mulvaney
Island Press, 2003

Despite a decades-long international moratorium on commercial whaling, one fleet has continued to hunt and kill whales in the waters surrounding Antarctica. Refusing to let this defiance go unchallenged, the environmental organization Greenpeace began dispatching expeditions to the region in an effort to intercept the whalers and use nonviolent means to stop their lethal practice.

Over the past decade, Kieran Mulvaney led four such expeditions as a campaigner and coordinator. In The Whaling Season, he recounts those voyages in all their drama, disappointments, strain, and elation, giving readers a behind-the-scenes look at the hazards and triumphs of life as an environmental activist on the high seas. The author also explores the larger struggles underlying the expeditions, drawing on the history of commercial whaling and Antarctic exploration, the development of Greenpeace, and broader scientific and political efforts to conserve marine life. He presents a rich portrait of the current struggles and makes an impassioned plea for protection of some of the world’s most spectacular creatures.

For armchair adventurers, polar enthusiasts, and anyone concerned about marine conservation and continued hunting of the world’s whales, The Whaling Season is an engrossing and informative tale of adventure set in one of the Earth’s last great wilderness areas.


[more]

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When Lincoln Came to Egypt
George W. Smith, with a Foreword by Daniel W. Stowell
Southern Illinois University Press, 2017
In When Lincoln Came to Egypt, George W. Smith provides a detailed record of Abraham Lincoln’s travel in the southernmost region of Illinois, commonly referred to as Egypt. These visits began in 1830, before Lincoln had held public office, and continued through 1858, when he debated Stephen A. Douglas in Jonesboro and Alton as they ran against each other for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln found in the southern third of Illinois a political climate very different from that of central Illinois, where his career had begun. Lincoln’s trips to Egypt thus broadened his experience and understanding of the state as well as the nation. Smith discusses the origins of the people of the region and Lincoln’s early public life and provides historical and political background for his detailed discussion of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. The culmination of fifty years of extensive research, When Lincoln Came to Egypt provides a glimpse into an often overlooked part of Lincoln’s development as a politician.
[more]

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Where the Strange Roads Go Down
Mary del Villar and Fred del Villar; Foreword by Susan Hardy Aiken
University of Arizona Press, 1999
Strange Roads is a small gem of travel literature in the tradition of works by John Van Dyke, Carl Lumholtz, Charles Lummus, Mary Austin, Edward Hoagland, and Bruce Chatwin. But for all its absorbing detail about topography, flora, and fauna, its keen observations of character, and its vivid re-creation of the sense of place, it is much more than a travel memoir. For on every page one senses the strength, character, and distinctive perspective of Mary del Villar herself. An uncommon woman by any standards, she seems all the more remarkable when one recalls the profoundly reactionary gender ideologies that prevailed in the postwar era in which she lived and wrote. Like other great female wanderers, she transcended the confining notions of woman her society would have imposed on her, living her life according to the dictates of her own intrepid spirit.” –From the foreword by Susan Hardy Aiken
[more]

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Where the Wind Dreams of Staying
Searching for Purpose and Place in the West
Eric Dieterle
Oregon State University Press, 2016
In his powerful memoir Where the Wind Dreams of Staying, Eric Dieterle captures the emotional storms of a boy, and then a man, who seeks meaning in a place, or a place with meaning. His restless search for purpose and identity in the American West moves through cycles of success and failure, love and loss.

Dieterle’s journey leads from the plateaus of eastern Washington through the landscapes of seven states, ending in the shadow of the San Francisco peaks in northern Arizona. In a series of interwoven essays, readers will find rich, detailed explorations of western landscapes, balanced with stories of personal reflection, determination, doubt, and fulfillment. Along the way, Dieterle grapples with anxiety and depression, substance abuse, and failed relationships. The interior life of the author is tightly bound to the external landscapes, ecosystems, and ecologies, so that person and place become lost in one another.

Ultimately a story of resilience, Where the Wind Dreams of Staying is a lyrical tribute to the richly varied landscapes and lifestyles of the inland West. It will be welcomed by readers of environmental literature and personal memoir, and anyone who has struggled against the odds in pursuit of a balanced life.
[more]

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White Waters and Black
Gordon MacCreagh
University of Chicago Press, 2001
With a wicked eye for absurdities, Gordon MacCreagh recounts his adventures with eight "Eminent Scientificos" as they set out to explore the Amazon in 1923 without any idea of what lies ahead of them: rapids, malaria, monkey stew, and "dangerous savages." A combination of Twain's The Innocents Abroad and a cautionary tale for explorers, this is one of the most honest accounts ever written of a scientific expedition.
[more]

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Wide Skies
Finding a Home in the West
Gary Holthaus
University of Arizona Press, 1997
"Like many other Americans, judging from the amount of predawn traffic, I am on the move, scurrying through the dark like a coyote, nose down in pursuit of something-my work, an ephemeral desire that has no name, a life, an end of restlessness, a true place in the world."

A true place in the world: how many people have looked for it and how many have finally found it in the American West? Here, with writer Gary Holthaus, readers will reflect upon their own sense of place as they travel the lands and enter the lives of people in small towns and on ranches all over the West from Utah to Oregon to Alaska. Farmers and merchants, writers and teachers, truckers and trappers: their stories ring with hope and fear as their wide-open spaces increasingly come under siege.

Here are reflections on a long journey, together with notes of a personal odyssey and a plea for preserving the West's natural beauty-its meadows and mountains, its bears and Golden Eagles, its antelope and wolverines. This is important, says Holthaus, because if the region is home for him and for others, too, then it is crucial for newcomers and old-timers alike not to "further foul a nest that is becoming increasingly crowded." As he finds his way and adjusts his eyes to modern realities of greed and indifference, he also comes to grips with loss and learns to balance "the harm one inevitably does" with acts of compassion and positive change.

Deep in the national consciousness, the mythical West of film and fiction continues to shape our vision of ourselves as Americans. This book is a view not from the media, not from think tanks or legislators or policy makers, but from Westerners themselves, who tell us about the circumstances of their lives. Their West is indisputably the real West, and only as we come to understand better its realities will we come to know ourselves both as individuals and as a nation.
[more]

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Wild Man
Tobias Schneebaum
University of Wisconsin Press, 2003

Part autobiographical journal, part social-historical novel, Wild Man tracks Tobias Schneebaum's fascinating and almost epic life story, from his earliest contemplation of homoerotic desire through his life in Peru, Borneo, and beyond. A young man from New York, Schneebaum "disappeared" in 1955 on the eastern slopes of the Andes. He was, in actuality, living for more than a year among the remote Harakhambut people, discovering a way of being that was strange, primitive, and powerfully attractive to him. This longing to find the "wild man" in other cultures—and in himself—eventually led him on an odyssey through South America, India, Tibet, Africa, Borneo, New Guinea, and Southeast Asia. He lived among isolated forest peoples, including headhunters and cannibals, in regions where few, if any, white men had ever been.

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Wild Nevada
Testimonies On Behalf Of The Desert
Roberta Moore
University of Nevada Press, 2005
For many people beyond Nevada’s borders, the state is no more than the nation’s desert dumping ground for dangerous waste. Others know it only for its hedonistic centers of gambling and entertainment. This scandal belies the extraordinary beauty and wonder of the state’s wilderness areas and the precious natural, aesthetic, and cultural resources to be found there.
In Wild Nevada, editors Roberta Moore and Scott Slovic have assembled twenty-nine writers who know and love the Nevada wilderness to testify on its behalf. Contributors include literary artists and scholars, environmental and community activists, leading politicians, ranchers, scientists, and park rangers. Some essays offer observations on the political and philosophical discussions of wilderness that heat up the halls of academia and Congress; others recount moving personal encounters with wild places within Nevada; and still others comment on the ambiguities of preserving wild places through wilderness designation. But despite the eclectic backgrounds of the writers and their varied perspectives on public policy, they are all united in their devotion to the ecological and aesthetic values of Nevada’s threatened wilderness areas. Foreword by Michael Frome.
[more]

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Wild New Jersey
Nature Adventures in the Garden State
David Wheeler
Rutgers University Press, 2011
The fastest animal on earth dive-bombs him from the skies. A young black bear bounds up a mountain trail a few yards away. Poisonous snakes swirl at his feet. A thousand bats careen past his head in a pitch-black roost. Pods of dolphins swim right past him by the scores. Who? Experienced naturalist David Wheeler. Where? In Wild New Jersey, of course. 

Wild New Jersey invites readers along Wheeler’s whirlwind year-long tour of the most ecologically diverse state for its size in America. Along with the expert guidance of charismatic wildlife biologists and local conservationists, he explores mountains, valleys, beaches, pine barrens, caves, rivers, marshlands, and more—breathtaking landscapes and the state’s Noah’s Ark of fascinating creatures.

This isn’t your ordinary ride on the Jersey Turnpike. Fasten your seatbelts and join Wheeler as he . . .

  • Kayaks through the Meadowlands under the watchful eye of the Empire State Building,
  • Pans for cretaceous fossils in a hidden brook once home to mastodons and giant sloths,
  • Rides a fishing boat in the frigid snows of winter on a high-seas quest for Atlantic puffins,
  • Trudges through the eerie darkness of a bog on a mysterious night hike,
  • Dogsleds across the windswept alpine slopes in the haunts of the porcupine and bobcat. 

With Wheeler’s compelling narrative, in-depth background details, and eye for revealing the offbeat, you can count this as the first nature book to paint the extraordinary picture of New Jersey’s unlikely wilderness in all its glory. Come along for all the adventure and insight in Wild New Jersey!

[more]

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Wild Shore
Exploring Lake Superior By Kayak
Greg Breining
University of Minnesota Press, 2002

front cover of The Wildest Place on Earth
The Wildest Place on Earth
Italian Gardens and the Invention of Wilderness
John Hanson Mitchell
University Press of New England, 2015
This is the ironic story of how Italian Renaissance and Baroque gardens encouraged the preservation of the American wilderness and ultimately fostered the creation of the world’s first national park system. Told via Mitchell’s sometimes disastrous and humorous travels—from the gardens of southern Italy up through Tuscany and the lake island gardens—the book is filled with history, folklore, myths, and legends of Western Europe, including a detailed history of the labyrinth, a common element in Renaissance gardens. In his attempt to understand the Italian garden in detail, Mitchell set out to create one on his own property—with a labyrinth.
[more]

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Wind River Trails
Finis Mitchell
University of Utah Press, 1999

Mitchell draws on decades of experience to describe the trails, routes, wildlife, glaciers, lakes, and streams in Wyoming's fabulous two-and-a-quarter million acre Wind River Range.

A short hike was the beginning of a long career in wilderness living for Finis Mitchell of Rock Springs, Wyoming. He has scaled 244 peaks, including four times to the trop of Gannett Peak, the highest mountain in the state. A vigorous supporter of wilderness, the mountain man pours out his philosophy at meetings and slide shows with amazing attention to detail. He has taken 105,345 pictures as a hobby and uses them in his slide shows to show people their own public lands.

He has drawn on his vast experience in the Wind Rivers to describe, in this guide book, the trails, routes, wildlife, glaciers, 4,000 lakes and 800 miles of streams in Wyoming’s fabulous two and a quarter million acre Wind River Range.
 

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The Windward Shore
A Winter on the Great Lakes
Jerry Dennis
University of Michigan Press, 2012

"Our country is lucky to have Jerry Dennis. A conservationist with the soul of a poet whose beat is Wild Michigan, Dennis is a kindred spirit of Aldo Leopold and Sigurd Olson. The Windward Shore---his newest effort---is a beautifully written and elegiac memoir of outdoor discovery. Highly recommended!"
---Douglas Brinkley, author of The Wilderness Warrior: Theodore Roosevelt and the Crusade for America
 
"Come for a journey; stay for an awakening. Jerry Dennis loves the Great Lakes, the swell of every wave, the curve of every rock. He wants you to love them too before our collective trashing of them wipes out all traces of their original character. Through his eyes, you will treasure the hidden secrets that reveal themselves only to those who linger and long. Elegant and sad at the same time, The Windward Shore is a love song for the Great Lakes and a gentle call to action to save them."
---Maude Barlow, author of Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

"In prose as clear as the lines in a Dürer etching, Jerry Dennis maps his home ground, which ranges outward from the back door of his farmhouse to encompass the region of vast inland seas at the heart of our continent. Along the way, inspired by the company of water in all its guises---ice, snow, frost, clouds, rain, shore-lapping waves---he meditates on the ancient questions about mind and matter, time and attention, wildness and wonder. As in the best American nature writing---a tradition that Dennis knows well---here the place and the explorer come together in brilliant conversation."
---Scott Russell Sanders, author of A Conservationist Manifesto

If you have been enchanted by Jerry Dennis’s earlier work on sailing the Great Lakes, canoeing, angling, and the natural wonders of water and sky—or you have not yet been lucky enough to enjoy his engaging prose—you will want to immerse yourself in his powerful and insightful new book on winter in Great Lakes country.

Grounded by a knee injury, Dennis learns to live at a slower pace while staying in houses ranging from a log cabin on Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Peninsula to a $20 million mansion on the northern shore of Lake Michigan. While walking on beaches and exploring nearby woods and villages, he muses on the nature of time, weather, waves, agates, books, words for snow and ice, our complex relationship with nature, and much more.

From the introduction: “I wanted to present a true picture of a complex region, part of my continuing project to learn at least one place on earth reasonably well, and trusted that it would appear gradually and accumulatively—and not as a conventional portrait, but as a mosaic that included the sounds and scents and textures of the place and some of the plants, animals, and its inhabitants. Bolstered by the notion that a book is a journey that author and reader walk together, I would search for promising trails and follow them as far as my reconstructed knee would allow.”

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Winter Notes on Summer Impressions
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Northwestern University Press, 1997
Winter Notes on Summer Impressions (Зимние заметки о летних впечатлениях) is an early book-length essay by Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky which he composed while traveling in western Europe. Many commentators believe that in the themes it explores, the essay anticipates his later work Notes from the Underground.

In June 1862, Dostoevsky left Petersburg on his first excursion to Western Europe. Ostensibly making the trip to consult Western specialists about his epilepsy, he also wished to see firsthand the source of the Western ideas he believed were corrupting Russia. Over the course of his journey he visited a number of major cities, including Berlin, Paris, London, Florence, Milan, and Vienna. He recorded his impressions in Winter Notes on Summer Impressions, which were first published in the February 1863 issue of Vremya (Time), the periodical of which he was the editor.

Among other themes, Dostoevsky reveals his Pan-Slavism, rejecting European culture as corrupt and exhorting Russians to resist the temptation to emulate or adopt European ways of life.
[more]

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The Winter Sailor
Francis R. Stebbins on Florida's Indian River, 1878-1888
Edited by Carolyn Frances Baker Lewis
University of Alabama Press, 2004

A unique guide to Florida's frontier history along Indian River.

The Winter Sailor is a historical adventure that details the yearly winter travels of Francis R. Stebbins to Florida's Indian River. Stebbins, a writer from Michigan, visited Florida in March of 1878 and became entranced by its pristine beauty. Subsequently, Stebbins and his traveling companions made annual visits to Indian River—until 1888 when tragedy struck and ended Stebbins' yearly journeys.

Being an observant traveler, Stebbins began a series of descriptive articles for his hometown newspaper that chronicled his journeys to the Indian River area. Stebbins's articles tell of his own personal experiences during his leisurely visits, which included such activities as hunting and fishing, studying the natural surroundings, and excavating Indian mounds. What Stebbins enjoyed most was sailing down the river interviewing townspeople and examining local attractions as he went. His articles also detail the lifestyle of the region, food, fashion, industry, history, environment, and changes that occurred over time. Stebbins's articles not only entertained and informed but also became a travelogue for his readers. He inspired northern travelers to go south and visit Florida, which contributed to the beginnings of large-scale tourism in the region.

The Winter Sailor combines Stebbins's 49 articles along with three by his companions, to provide an enjoyable, historical guide. Unique among 19th-century travelogues, this fascinating look into Florida's past documents a decade of change to the Indian River wilderness and becomes Stebbins's gift to the present.

[more]

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Wisconsin Cocktails
Jeanette Hurt
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
Cocktails have always had a stronghold in America’s Dairyland. This highly illustrated volume uncovers the true stories behind the state’s obsession with brandy, ice cream drinks, and a smorgasbord of garnishes.

Beyond delving into mythic origins of several classic creations, Jeanette Hurt introduces a new generation of cocktails that offer a spin on standard concoctions. She explores the state’s unique farm-to-table ethos influenced by an abundance of locally sourced ingredients. Also included are a wealth of interviews with notable mixologists, sharing numerous favorite recipes for specialty pick-me-ups that connoisseurs and home bartenders alike will be clamoring to try. A definitive account of the beverages we love, Wisconsin Cocktails insists we order our Old Fashioneds the right way—with brandy.
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Wisconsin Lighthouses
A Photographic and Historical Guide, Revised Edition
Ken Wardius
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2013

“Lighthouses are a reflection of the human spirit and a mirror to our past.”—from the Introduction

No symbol is more synonymous with Wisconsin’s rich maritime traditions than the lighthouse. These historic beacons conjure myriad notions of a bygone era: romance, loneliness, and dependability; dedicated keepers manning the lights; eerie tales of haunted structures and ghosts of past keepers; mariners of yesteryear anxiously hoping to make safe haven around rocky shorelines. If these sentinels could talk, imagine the tales they would tell of ferocious Great Lakes storms taking their toll on vessels and people alike.
In this fully updated edition of Wisconsin Lighthouses, Ken and Barb Wardius tell those tales, taking readers on an intimate tour of lighthouses on Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, and Lake Winnebago. Both delightful storytellers and accomplished photographers, the couple complement their engaging text with more than 100 stunning color photographs, along with dozens of archival photos, maps, documents, and artifacts. Detailed “how to get there” directions, up-to-the-minute status reports on each light, and sidebars on everything from lighthouse vocabulary to the often lonely lives of lightkeepers make this the definitive book on Wisconsin’s lighthouses.

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Wisconsin State Parks
Extraordinary Stories of Geology and Natural History
Scott Spoolman
Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018
Hit the trail for a dramatic look at Wisconsin’s geologic past.

The impressive bluffs, valleys, waterfalls, and lakes of Wisconsin’s state parks provide more than beautiful scenery and recreational opportunities. They are windows into the distant past, offering clues to the dramatic events that have shaped the land over billions of years. 

Author and former DNR journalist Scott Spoolman takes readers with him to twenty-eight parks, forests, and natural areas where evidence of the state’s striking geologic and natural history are on display. In an accessible storytelling style, Spoolman sheds light on the volcanoes that poured deep layers of lava rock over a vast area in the northwest, the glacial masses that flattened and molded the landscape of northern and eastern Wisconsin, mountain ranges that rose up and wore away over hundreds of millions of years, and many other bedrock-shaping phenomena. These stories connect geologic processes to the current landscape, as well as to the evolution of flora and fauna and development of human settlement and activities, for a deeper understanding of our state’s natural history.

The book includes a selection of detailed trail guides for each park, which hikers can take with them on the trail to view evidence of Wisconsin’s geologic and natural history for themselves.
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Wisconsin's Best Breweries and Brewpubs
Searching for the Perfect Pint
Robin Shepard
University of Wisconsin Press, 2001

    This information-packed guidebook introduces you to more than sixty breweries and brewpubs—from the Shipwrecked Brew Pub in Egg Harbor, to smaller craft breweries like Capital Brewery west of Madison, to the world-famous Miller Brewing Company of Milwaukee. Robin Shepard includes descriptions and his personal ratings of some 600 local beers, plus a taster’s chart you can use to record your own preferences.

For each brewpub and brewery site you’ll find:
    •  a description and brief history, plus any "Don’t miss" features
    •  names, comments, and ratings for all their specialty beers
    •  notes on the pub food, with recommendations
    •  suggestions of other sites to see and activities in the local area
    •  information about bottling and distribution
    •  availability of tours, tastings, gift shops, mug clubs, and "growlers"
    •  address and contact data, including Web sites and GPS coordinates!

Shepard also introduces novices to the brewing process and a wide variety of beer styles. And, you’ll find a list of helpful books and Web sites, as well as information on Wisconsin beer tastings and festivals. As we say in Wisconsin, "So, have a couple a two, three beers, hey?"

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Wisconsin's Natural Communities
How to Recognize Them, Where to Find Them
Randy Hoffman
University of Wisconsin Press, 2002

    Cattails grow in a marsh, pitcher plants grow in a bog, jewelweed grows in a swamp, right? Do sandhill cranes live among sandy hills? Frogs live near lakes and ponds, but can they live on prairies, too? What is a pine barrens, an oak opening, a calcareous fen?
    Wisconsin’s Natural Communities is an invitation to discover, explore, and understand Wisconsin’s richly varied natural environment, from your backyard or neighborhood park to stunning public preserves.Part 1 of the book explains thirty-three distinct types of natural communities in Wisconsin—their characteristic trees, beetles, fish, lichens, butterflies, reptiles, mammals, wildflowers—and the effects of geology, climate, and historical events on these habitats. Part 2 describes and maps fifty natural areas on public lands that are outstanding examples of these many different natural communities: Crex Meadows, Horicon Marsh, Black River Forest, Maribel Caves, Whitefish Dunes, the Blue Hills, Avoca Prairie, the Moquah Barrens and Chequamegon Bay, the Ridges Sanctuary, Cadiz Springs, Devil’s Lake, and many others.
    Intended for anyone who has a love for the natural world, this book is also an excellent introduction for students. And, it provides landowners, public officials, and other stewards of our environment with the knowledge to recognize natural communities and manage them for future generations.

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With the Lapps in the High Mountains
A Woman among the Sami, 1907–1908
Emilie Demant Hatt; Edited and translated by Barbara Sjoholm; Foreword by Hugh Beach
University of Wisconsin Press, 2013
With the Lapps in the High Mountains is an entrancing true account, a classic of travel literature, and a work that deserves wider recognition as an early contribution to ethnographic writing. Published in 1913 and available here in its first English translation, it is the narrative of Emilie Demant Hatt's nine-month stay in the tent of a Sami family in northern Sweden in 1907–8 and her participation in a dramatic reindeer migration over snow-packed mountains to Norway with another Sami community in 1908. A single woman in her thirties, Demant Hatt immersed herself in the Sami language and culture. She writes vividly of daily life, women's work, children's play, and the care of reindeer herds in Lapland a century ago.
            While still an art student in Copenhagen in 1904, Demant Hatt had taken a vacation trip to northern Sweden, where she chanced to meet Sami wolf hunter Johan Turi. His dream of writing a book about his people sparked her interest in the culture, and she began to study the Sami language at the University of Copenhagen. Though not formally trained as an ethnographer, she had an eye for detail. The journals, photographs, sketches, and paintings she made during her travels with the Sami enriched her eventual book, and in With the Lapps in the High Mountains she memorably portrays people, dogs, reindeer, and the beauty of the landscape above the Arctic Circle. This English-language edition also includes photographs by Demant Hatt, an introduction by translator Barbara Sjoholm, and a foreword by Hugh Beach, author of A Year in Lapland: Guest of the Reindeer Herders.
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Working Time
Essays on Poetry, Culture, and Travel
Jane Miller
University of Michigan Press, 1992
Working Time collects essays by prize-winning poet Jane Miller on the subjects of poetry, travel, and culture. The discussions of contemporary poetry begin with excursions into geography, where language literally “takes shape.” Each essay is set in a landscape, where the notion of travel as a poetic experience, from the American Southwest to places in Italy, France, and Spain, is explored.
 
The essays consider notions of time, duration, narrative, documentary, and history in American poetry, and view poetry in the light of developments in feminism, postmodern theory, and contemporary poetic practice. In addition to poetry, Miller investigates a range of cultural products and art forms, including film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, music, and the Madonna phenomenon.
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A World Between Waves
Edited by Frank Stewart
Island Press, 1992

A World Between Waves is a collection of essays on the natural history of Hawaii by some of America's most renowned writers. It is a testament to the biological and geological wealth of this unique and threatened island landscape, and a passionate call to action on behalf of what may soon be gone.

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World Film Locations
Barcelona
Edited by Helio San Miguel and Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Intellect Books, 2013
Barcelona is one of the world’s most beautiful cities. A permanent showcase of the work of acclaimed architect Antoni Gaudí, it also has a long and rich cinematic legacy. Great directors from all over the world—among them Woody Allen, Pedro Almodóvar, and Michelangelo Antonioni—have set their films there. World Film Locations: Barcelona is the first book of its kind to explore the rich cinematic history of this seductive Catalonian city.
The illuminating essays collected here cover essential themes of the city’s cinematic history, including the origins of cinema in Barcelona; the role of Ciutat Vella (old quarter) as a film set; the influential Barcelona School of the 1960s; the film presence of Gaudí and his work; changing attitudes and urban renewal before and after the 1992 Olympics; and the emergence of a new generation of female filmmakers that have made Barcelona the center of their cinematic explorations. This book will be a welcome addition to the libraries of anyone enchanted by the beauty of Barcelona, whether in person on the big screen.

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World Film Locations
Dublin
Edited by Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
Intellect Books, 2011
With its rich political and literary history, Dublin is a sought after destination for cinematographers who have made use of the city’s urban streetscapes and lush pastoral settings in many memorable films—among them Braveheart, The Italian Job, and the 2006 musical drama Once. World Film Locations: Dublin offers an engaging look at the many incarnations of the city onscreen through fifty synopses of the key scenes—either shot or set in Dublin—accompanied by a generous selection of full-color film stills.
 
Throughout the book, a series of essays by leading film scholars spotlight familiar actors, producers, and directors as well as some of the themes common to films shot in Dublin, including literature, politics, the city’s thriving music scene, and its long history of organized crime. Also included is a look at the representations of Dublin before, during, and after the Celtic Tiger era. Sophisticated yet accessible, this volume will undoubtedly take its place on the shelves of film buffs and those interested in Irish culture.
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World Film Locations
Hong Kong
Edited by Linda Chiu-Han Lai and Kimburley Wing-Yee Choi
Intellect Books, 2013
The rapid development of Hong Kong has occasioned the demolition of buildings and landscapes of historic significance, but film acts as a repository for memories of lost places, vanished vistas, and material objects. Location shoots in Hong Kong have preserved many disappearing landmarks of the city, and the resulting films function as valuable and irreplaceable archives of the city’s evolution.
Far more than a simple collection of movie locations, this book delivers a rare glimpse into the history of film production practices in Hong Kong. The locations described here are often not the most iconic; rather, they are the anonymous streets and back alleys used by local film studios in the 1960s and 70. They are the garden cafes with outdoor seating near the Chinese University of Hong Kong where moments of conflict in romantic comedies erupt and dissipate. They are the old Kai Tak Airport, which channels rage and desire, and the tenement housing, which splits citizens into greedy landlords and the diligent working class and embodies old-day communal values. Modern Hong Kong horror films draw their power from the material character of home-grown convenient stores, shopping arcades, and lost mansions found under modern high rises.
As in the films of Wong Kar-wai and Johnnie To, readers will drift and dash through the streets of Central to the district’s periphery, almost recklessly, automatically, or for the sheer pleasure of roaming. The first of its kind in English, this book is more than a city guide to Hong Kong through the medium of film; it is a unique exploration of relationship between location and place and genre innovations in Hong Kong cinema. 

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World Film Locations
Istanbul
Edited by Özlem Köksal
Intellect Books, 2012
From Head-On to Murder on the Orient Express, World Film Locations: Istanbul offers a compelling look at the many films shot on location in this multicultural metropolis on the Black Sea. Central to this volume are the film industry’s changing representations of Istanbul, which have ranged from progressive cultural center to the authoritarian police state of Alan Parker’s Midnight Express. Evident in both in films made in the West and throughout Turkey over time, these divergent accounts are analyzed with regard to their role in continually reshaping our perception of the city. Essays explore this topic and many others, including the significance of Istanbul to the works of critically-acclaimed directors, among them Nuri Bilge Ceylan.
 
Illustrated throughout with film stills as well as photographs of featured locations as they appear today, World Film Locations: Istanbul visits all of the important cinematic landmarks, including the Topkapi Palace and the Haydarpasa train station and offers a vivid picture of this historic and culturally stimulating city.
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World Film Locations
Liverpool
Edited by Jez Conolly and Caroline Whelan
Intellect Books, 2013
Outside of the capital London, no other British city has attracted more filmmakers than Liverpool. Sometimes standing in for London, New York, Chicago, Paris, Rome, or Moscow, and sometimes playing itself—or a version of its own past in Beatles biopics—Liverpool is an adaptable filmic backdrop that has attracted filmmakers to its ports for decades. A place of passion, humor, and pride, Liverpool evokes caverns and cathedrals, ferries and football grounds; it is a city so vivid we see it clearly even if we’ve never been there. From the earliest makers of moving images—among them the Mitchell & Kenyon film company, the Lumière brothers, and pioneering early cinematographer Claude Friese-Greene—who preserved the city, the river, the docks, the streets, and the people, Liverpool has endured as a cinematic destination. This collection celebrates that survival instinct and will be welcomed by enthusiasts of British cities, films, and culture.

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World Film Locations
London
Edited by Neil Mitchell
Intellect Books, 2011

An exciting and visually focused tour of the diverse range of films shot on location in London, World Film Locations: London presents contributions spanning the Victorian era, the swinging ’60s, and the politically charged atmosphere following the 2005 subway bombings. Essays exploring key directors, themes, and historical periods are complemented by reviews of important scenes that offer particular insight into London's relationship to cinema. The book is illustrated throughout with full-color film stills and photographs of cinematic landmarks as they appear now—as well as city maps to aid those keen to investigate them.

From Terror on the Underground to Thames Tales to Richard Curtis's affectionate portrayal of the city in Love Actually, this user-friendly guide explores the diversity and distinctiveness of films shot in location in London.

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World Film Locations
Los Angeles
Edited by Gabriel Solomons
Intellect Books, 2011
The heart of Hollywood’s star-studded film industry for more than a century, Los Angeles and its abundant and ever-changing locales—from the Santa Monica Pier to the infamous and now-defunct Ambassador Hotel—have set the scene for a wide variety of cinematic treasures, from Chinatown to Forrest Gump, Falling Down to the coming-of-age classic Boyz n The Hood. This volume marks an engaging citywide tour of the many films shot on location in this birthplace of cinema and the screen spectacle.
 
World Film Locations: Los Angeles pairs fifty incisive synopses of carefully chosen film scenes—both famous and lesser-known—with an accompanying array of evocative full-color film stills, demonstrating how motion pictures have contributed to the multifarious role of the city in our collective consciousness, as well as how key cinematic moments reveal aspects of its life and culture that are otherwise largely hidden from view. Insightful essays throughout turn the spotlight on the important directors, thematic elements, and historical periods that provide insight into Los Angeles and its vibrant cinematic culture. Rounding out this information are city maps with information on how to locate key features, as well as photographs showing featured locations as they appear now.
 
A guided tour of the City of Angels conducted by the likes of Robert Altman, Nicholas Ray, Michael Mann, and Roman Polanski, World Film Locations: Los Angeles is moreover a concise and user-friendly guide to how Los Angeles has captured the imaginations of both filmmakers and those of us sitting transfixed in theatres worldwide.
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World Film Locations
Madrid
Edited by Lorenzo J. Torres Hortelano
Intellect Books, 2011
From Death of a Cyclist to Open Your Eyes to The Limits of Control, Madrid has graced the big screen countless times across a wide variety of genres enacted by a similarly eclectic array of directors, including Carlos Saura, Luis Buñuel, and Pedro Almodovar. With the aim of capturing the full range of portrayals of the city onscreen, this volume pairs short synopses of scenes from fifty films with an accompanying array of dynamic full-color film stills. These scenes are set in context through a series of incisive essays that examine significant periods from Madrid’s rich film history, as well as its key industry figures and recurring themes.
 
Packed with fun facts, World Film Locations: Madrid offers a fascinating—and often surprising—tour of the many film representations of Madrid. For jetsetters planning a jaunt to this richly cinematic city, the book also includes photographs of locations as they appear now and city maps with information on how to locate key features.
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World Film Locations
New York
Edited by Scott Jordan Harris
Intellect Books, 2011

Be they period films, cult classics, or elaborate directorial love letters, New York City has played—and continues to play—a central role in the imaginations of filmmakers and moviegoers worldwide. The stomping grounds of King Kong, it is also the place where young Jakie Rabinowitz of The Jazz Singer realizes his Broadway dream. Later, it is the backdrop against which taxi driver Travis Bickle exacts a grisly revenge.

The inaugural volume in an exciting new series from Intellect, World Film Locations: New York pairs incisive profiles of quintessential New York filmmakers—among them Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Sidney Lumet, and Spike Lee—with essays on key features of the city’s landscape that have appeared on the big screen, from the docks to Coney Island, Times Square to the Statue of Liberty. More than forty-five location-specific scenes from films made and set in New York are separately considered and illustrated with screen shots and photographs of the locations as they appear now. For film fans keen to follow the cinematic trail either physically or in the imagination, this pocket-sized guide also includes city maps with information on how to locate key features.
 
Presenting a varied and thought-provoking collage of the city onscreen—from the silent era to the present—World Film Locations: New York provides a fascinating and historic look back at the rich diversity of locations that have provided the backdrop for some of the most memorable films.
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World Film Locations
Paris
Edited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2011
“We’ll always have Paris,” Humphrey Bogart assures Ingrid Bergman in the oft-quoted farewell scene from Casablanca in which Bogart’s character, hard-hearted restaurateur Rick Blaine, bids former lover Ilsa Lund goodbye. The backdrop against which they first fell in love, Paris later serves as a reminder of their deep mutual longings. And with a host of different realizations by filmmakers from Philip Kaufman to Julien Leclercq to Woody Allen, there is no question that Paris has likewise endured in the memories of cinephiles worldwide.
 
World Film Locations: Paris takes readers on an unforgettable tour of the City of Lights past and present through the many films that have been set there. Along the way, we revisit iconic tourist sites from the Eiffel Tower—whose stairs and crossbars inspired more than one famous chase scene—to the Moulin Rouge overlooking the famously seedy Place Pigalle. Other films explore lesser-known quartiers usually tucked away from the tourist’s admiring gaze. Handsomely illustrated with full-color film stills and contemporary photographs, more than fifty scenes are individually considered with special attention to their use of Paris’s topography as it intersects with characters, narrative, and plot. A host of important genres and cinematic movements are featured, including poetic realism, the New Wave, cinéma-verité, the literary works of the Left Bank Group, and Luc Besson’s slickly stylized cinéma du look. Meanwhile, essays foreground contributions from Francophone African directors and émigré filmmakers.
 
For centuries, Paris has reigned over the popular imagination. For those who have visited or those who have only imagined it through art, literature, and film, World Film Locations: Paris presents a wonder-filled cinematic exploration of the mythical city that fans of French cinema—and new initiates—will appreciate.
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World Film Locations
Prague
Edited by Marcelline Block
Intellect Books, 2013
Prague, the “Hollywood of the East,” has played an important role in the history of cinema and World Film Locations: Prague traverses the city’s topography to examine an internationally diverse range of movies made in the Czech capital: landmark early films such as Ecstasy, controversial due to the female nudity that catapulted Hedy Lamarr into stardom in the United States; Steven Soderbergh’s biopic Kafka, starring Jeremy Irons; adaptations of Kafka’s literary works such as The Trial, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter and starring Anthony Hopkins; and action blockbusters like Mission Impossible, The Bourne Identity, and Casino Royale. Exploring legendary Prague landmarks as they appear onscreen—including the Charles Bridge, Old Town, Malá Strana, Liechtenstein Palace, Wenceslas Square, and Prague Castle—the book also discusses the intersection of the capital city and its cinematic representations; Prague and the Czech New Wave; the iconic Barrandov Studios; and the impact of political events such as the Prague Spring, the Soviet Invasion of 1968, and the Velvet Revolution on the city’s film industry. 
An invaluable resource for scholars, students, and aficionados of film and cinematic psychogeography, this collection will be heralded by students of East European literary, cultural, and sociopolitical history.

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World Film Locations
San Francisco
Edited by Scott Jordan Harris
Intellect Books, 2013
An extraordinarily beautiful city that has been celebrated, criticized, and studied in many films, San Francisco is both fragile and robust, at once a site of devastation caused by 1906 earthquake but also a symbol of indomitability in its effort to rebuild afterwards. Its beauty, both natural and manmade, has provided filmmakers with an iconic backdrop since the 1890s, and this guidebook offers an exciting tour through the film scenes and film locations that have made San Francisco irresistible to audiences and auteurs alike.
Gathering more than forty short pieces on specific scenes from San Franciscan films, this book includes essays on topics that dominate the history of filmmaking in the city, from depictions of the Golden Gate Bridge, to the movies Alfred Hitchcock, to the car chases that seem to be mandatory features of any thriller shot there. Some of America’s most famous movies—from Steven Spielberg’s Raiders of the Lost Ark to Hitchcock’s Vertigo to Don Siegel’s Dirty Harry —are celebrated alongside smaller movies and documentaries, such as The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, to paint a complete picture of San Francisco in film. A range of expert contributors, including several members of the San Francisco Film Critics Circle, discuss a range of films from many genres and decades, from nineteenth-century silents to twentieth-century blockbusters

Audiences across the world, as well as many of the world’s greatest film directors—including Buster Keaton, Orson Welles, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, David Fincher, and Steven Soderbergh—have been seduced by San Francisco. This book is the ideal escape to the city by the bay for arm chair travelers and cinephiles alike.

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World Film Locations
São Paulo
Edited by Natália Pinazza and Louis Bayman
Intellect Books, 2013
São Paulo is the largest city in South America and the powerhouse of Brazil’s economy. A multi-racial metropolis with a diverse population of Asian, Arabic, and European immigrants as well as migrants from other parts of Brazil, it is a global city with international reach. Films set in São Paulo often replace the postcard images of beautiful tropical beaches and laidback lifestyles with working environments and the search for better opportunities. Bikinis and flip flops give way to urban subcultures, sport, entertainment, and artistic movements. The ability to transcend national boundaries, and its resistance to stereotypical images of an “exotic” Brazil, make São Paulo a fascinating location in which to explore Brazil’s changing economic and cultural landscapes. 
The first comprehensive guide to filmic representations of São Paulo, this book serves as an introduction to the city for film enthusiasts, visitors, and tourists while simultaneously opening scholarly debates on global concerns such as marginalization, rapid urbanization, and child poverty.

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World Film Locations
Tokyo
Edited by Chris MaGee
Intellect Books, 2011

From Tokyo Story to Godzilla, You Only Live Twice to Enter the Void, World Film Locations: Tokyo presents a kaleidoscopic view of one of the world’s most exciting cities through the lens of cinema. Illustrated throughout with dynamic screen shots, this volume in Intellect’s World Film Locations series spotlights fifty key scenes from classic and contemporary films shot in Tokyo, accompanied by insightful essays that take us from the wooden streets of pre-nineteenth-century Edo to the sprawling “what-if” megalopolis of science fiction and fantasy anime. Important themes and players—among them Akira Kurosawa, Samuel Fuller, and Sofia Coppola—are individually considered. For the film scholar, or for all those who love Japanese cinema and want to learn more, World Film Locations: Tokyo will be an essential guide.

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World Film Locations
Vienna
Edited by Robert Dassanowsky
Intellect Books, 2012

Vienna appears in cinema as, among other things, a historical crossroads, a source of great music, and a site of world-famous architecture ranging from gothic cathedrals and baroque palaces to landmark modern structures. A panorama that encompasses all these perspectives, World Film Locations: Vienna sheds new light on the movies shot in the former imperial capital—and on the city itself.

The first English-language book to explore Vienna’s relationship with film beyond the waltz fantasies once shot in studios around the world, this volume shows how specific urban sites contribute to films that, in turn, play a role in our changing ideas about the city. In addition to reviews of key scenes from forty-six films from the silent era to the present, contributors explore such wide-ranging topics as the Austro-Hungarian Empire as cinematic myth; the Viennese film and Golden Age Hollywood; Jewish filmmakers and their take on lost cultural imagery; postwar nation building through film: and the startling “other Vienna” in the New Wave films of Michael Haneke, Barbara Albert, Ulrich Seidl, and Götz Spielmann. Illuminating the rich multicultural cinematic history that eventually gave rise to the new Austrian films that began to capture international attention more than a decade ago, World Film Locations: Vienna will fascinate readers interested in film, art, architecture, literature, music, Jewish studies, or Central European history.
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The Wounds That Bind Us
Kelley Shinn
West Virginia University Press, 2023

The improbable and powerful true story of a single mother with prosthetics for both legs who travels the globe with her young daughter in a Land Rover.

“A harrowing memoir. . . . Readers may not want to follow in [Shinn’s] footsteps, but they will never be bored with her as a companion.” ​—Kirkus Reviews

The Wounds That Bind Us is the improbable true story of Kelley Shinn, an orphan at birth who loses her legs at the age of sixteen to a rare bacterial pathogen. She becomes an avid off-road racer and, as a single mother, attempts to drive around the globe in a Land Rover with her three-year-old daughter in tow to bring light to the plight of land mine survivors. With unflinching honesty, exceptional lyricism, and biting humor, Shinn (“that’s two Ns and no shins”) takes readers on a wild journey—literal and emotional—filled with striking characters and landscapes, heartbreaks, and hard-won insights, ultimately arriving at a place of profound redemption.

Told with the energy and intensity of the adventure story it is, this terrifically rich and nuanced examination of a life is also a careful meditation on renewal—a remapping of the world. Guided by the narrator’s keen introspection and her ability to look resolutely at harrowing sorrows and still find hope, joy, and meaning, The Wounds That Bind Us will resonate deeply, long after the last page.

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WPA Guide to 1930s Nevada
Writer's Program
University of Nevada Press, 1991

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Writing Abroad
A Guide for Travelers
Peter Chilson and Joanne B. Mulcahy
University of Chicago Press, 2017
“Tell me all about your trip!” It’s a request that follows travelers as they head out into the world, and one of the first things they hear when they return. When we leave our homes to explore the wider world, we feel compelled to capture the experiences and bring the story home. But for those who don’t think of themselves as writers, putting experiences into words can be more stressful than inspirational.
Writing Abroad is meant for travelers of all backgrounds and writing levels: a student embarking on overseas study; a retiree realizing a dream of seeing China; a Peace Corps worker in Kenya. All can benefit from documenting their adventures, whether on paper or online. Through practical advice and adaptable exercises, this guide will help travelers hone their observational skills, conduct research and interviews, choose an appropriate literary form, and incorporate photos and videos into their writing.
Writing about travel is more than just safeguarding memories—it can transform experiences and tease out new realizations. With Writing Abroad, travelers will be able to deepen their understanding of other cultures and write about that new awareness in clear and vivid prose.
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Writing America
Literary Landmarks from Walden Pond to Wounded Knee (A Reader's Companion)
Fishkin, Shelley Fisher
Rutgers University Press, 2015
Winner of the John S. Tuckey 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award for Mark Twain Scholarship from The Center for Mark Twain Studies

American novelist E.L. Doctorow once observed that literature “endows places with meaning.” Yet, as this wide-ranging new book vividly illustrates, understanding the places that shaped American writers’ lives and their art can provide deep insight into what makes their literature truly meaningful.
 
Published on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Historic Preservation Act, Writing America is a unique, passionate, and eclectic series of meditations on literature and history, covering over 150 important National Register historic sites, all pivotal to the stories that make up America, from chapels to battlefields; from plantations to immigration stations; and from theaters to internment camps. The book considers not only the traditional sites for literary tourism, such as Mark Twain’s sumptuous Connecticut home and the peaceful woods surrounding Walden Pond, but also locations that highlight the diversity of American literature, from the New York tenements that spawned Abraham Cahan’s fiction to the Texas pump house that irrigated the fields in which the farm workers central to Gloria Anzaldúa’s poetry picked produce. Rather than just providing a cursory overview of these authors’ achievements, acclaimed literary scholar and cultural historian Shelley Fisher Fishkin offers a deep and personal reflection on how key sites bore witness to the struggles of American writers and inspired their dreams. She probes the global impact of American writers’ innovative art and also examines the distinctive contributions to American culture by American writers who wrote in languages other than English, including Yiddish, Chinese, and Spanish.   
 
Only a scholar with as wide-ranging interests as Shelley Fisher Fishkin would dare to bring together in one book writers as diverse as Gloria Anzaldúa, Nicholas Black Elk, David Bradley, Abraham Cahan, S. Alice Callahan, Raymond Chandler, Frank Chin, Elizabeth Cook-Lynn, Countee Cullen, Frederick Douglass, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Jessie Fauset, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Allen Ginsberg, Jovita González, Rolando Hinojosa, Langston Hughes,  Zora Neale Hurston, Lawson Fusao Inada,  James Weldon Johnson,  Erica Jong, Maxine Hong Kingston, Irena Klepfisz, Nella Larsen, Emma Lazarus, Sinclair Lewis, Genny Lim, Claude McKay, Herman Melville, N. Scott Momaday, William Northup, John Okada, Miné Okubo, Simon Ortiz, Américo Paredes, John P. Parker, Ann Petry, Tomás Rivera, Wendy Rose, Morris Rosenfeld, John Steinbeck, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Henry David Thoreau, Mark Twain, Yoshiko Uchida, Tino Villanueva, Nathanael West, Walt Whitman, Richard Wright, Hisaye Yamamoto, Anzia Yezierska, and Zitkala-Ša.
 
Leading readers on an enticing journey across the borders of physical places and imaginative terrains, the book includes over 60 images, and extended excerpts from a variety of literary works. Each chapter ends with resources for further exploration. Writing America reveals the alchemy though which American writers have transformed the world around them into art, changing their world and ours in the process.
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