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Seeking a closer connection with nature than the manicured lawns of suburbia, naturalist Fred Gehlbach and his family built a house on the edge of a wooded ravine in Central Texas in the mid-1960s. On daily walks over the hills, creek hollows, and fields of the ravine, Gehlbach has observed the cycles of weather and seasons, the annual migrations of birds, and the life cycles of animals and plants that also live in the ravine.

In this book, Gehlbach draws on thirty-five years of journal entries to present a composite, day-by-day almanac of the life cycles of this semiwild natural island in the midst of urban Texas. Recording such events as the hatching of Eastern screech owl chicks, the emergence of June bugs, and the first freeze of November, he reminds us of nature's daily, monthly, and annual cycles, from which humans are becoming ever more detached in our unnatural urban environments. The long span of the almanac also allows Gehlbach to track how local and even global developments have affected the ravine, from scars left by sewer construction to an increase in frost-free days probably linked to global warming.

This long-term record of natural cycles provides one of only two such baseline data sets for North America. At the same time, the book is an eloquent account of one keen observer's daily interactions with his wild and human neighbors and of the lessons in connectedness and the "play of life" that they teach.

From the mountainous area bordering Arizona and New Mexico, the western range of the Sierra Madres reaches south into Mexico to the state of Jalisco. The eastern range stretches from the Texas border down to Morelia and the Valley of Mexico. Ben Tinker spent years exploring this rugged wilderness and the vast deserts of Sonora and Baja California. Mexican Wilderness and Wildlife condenses a lifetime of outdoor lore and learning.

Tinker provides detailed life sketches of Mexico's Desert Bighorn Sheep, Pronghorn Antelope, Mule Deer, Whitetail Deer, Peccary, Grizzly and Black Bears, Wild Turkey, Jaguar, Mountain Lion, Timber Wolf, Coyote, and Bobcat. Each is illustrated by wildlife artist Doris Tischler, and Tinker describes their habitats, habits, reproduction, and peculiarities. Information is supplied on the physical measurements of several species of major wildlife. Tinker's observations are laced with anecdotes about his experiences in Mexico's remote backcountry—encounters with bandits, survival in the desert mountains, and the chance discovery of archaeological ruins.

The book describes the terrain and flora of the four life zones inhabited by major game and predatory animals. The section on desert water is a fascinating account of how animals thrive among cacti, thorn trees, and creosote bush remote from streams and waterholes. There is also a brief discussion of conservation efforts in Mexico, chapters on trout fishing in the Sierra Madre Occidental and Baja California, and a guide to big game habitats. This volume will be valuable to hunters, conservationists, naturalists, and others interested in the wilderness and wildlife of Mexico.

Ben Tinker collected much of the material for this book during the years he roamed northern Mexico as Federal Game Guardian. Though an American, Tinker had long been familiar with Mexican wildlife through his Sonoran ranching operation and was known for his interest in conservation when he was appointed by Alvaro Obregón in 1922.

Praise for Mezcal:

"Mezcal is also a lyrical meditation upon the ultimate strength of the land, specifically the desert Southwest, and how that land prevails and endures despite every effort of modern industry and development to rape and savage it in the name of progress. Mezcal lingers in the mind as only the very best books manage to do."—Harry Crews

"The author . . . excavates his own tormented life—and its relation to the land he loves—in a series of powerful, imagistic autobiographical essays. Like the desert he cherishes, this memoir is harsh yet lovely, full of sour self-truth. . . . A potent presentation of the wounds of one man's life, packed with indelible impressions; but there's little healing here, making this a bitter if beautiful read."—Kirkus Review

"In Mezcal . . . Bowden drops the journalistic veil, exploring the ecology of his interior landscape at least as thoroughly as the changing scenery that surrounds him. . . . Others—Aldo Leopold, Edward Abbey—have already staked inviolate claims on the Southwestern deserts. But Bowden owns the complex terrain where, like a mezcal-inspired mirage, the Sonoran sun-belt overlaps the gray convolutions of the American mind."—Los Angeles Times

    Mice in the Freezer, Owls on the Porch is in many ways a love story—about a quiet scientist and his flamboyant wife, but also about their passions for hunting, for wild lands, and for the grouse and raptor species that they were instrumental in saving from destruction.
    From the papers and letters of Frederick and Frances Hamerstrom, the reminiscences of contemporaries, and her own long friendship with this extraordinary couple who were her neighbors, Helen Corneli draws an intimate picture of Fran and "Hammy" from childhood through the genesis and maturation of a romantic, creative, and scientific relationship. Following the Hamerstroms as they give up a life of sophisticated convention and comfort for the more "civilized" (as Aldo Leopold would have it) pleasures of living and conducting on-the-spot research into diminishing species, Corneli captures the spirit of the Hamerstroms, their profession, and the natural and human environments in which they worked. A nuanced account of the labors, adventures, and achievements that distinguished the Hamerstroms over the years—and that inspired a generation of naturalists—this book also provides a dramatic account of conservation history over the course of the twentieth century, particularly in Wisconsin during the eventful years from the 1920s through the 1970s.

Now in its tenth decade of publication, Michigan Trees has been, since it was first introduced in 1913, the must-have reference book for anyone who wants to know about the trees of this unique North American region.

In this new and updated edition, several new species have been added to the lineup, as well as sections on tree ecology and fall color. Written and illustrated in a style that appeals at once to academic botanists and armchair arborphiles alike, Michigan Trees gives readers everything they need to know for identifying trees in the Great Lakes state. Included with each description are fascinating notes and asides (for example, this tidbit on the jack pine: "Parklike or savanna stands in north-central Michigan are prime habitat for the rare Kirtland's warbler that breeds nowhere else in the world."). Also includes a tree key and identification section illustrated with elegantly simple line drawings that reveal the tiny, signature details that make each tree unique.

Burton V. Barnes is Professor of Forestry at the University of Michigan. Formerly a research forester, he is best known for his research and publications in forest ecology and forest genetics.

Warren H. Wagner, Jr. was a world authority on ferns. He had been Professor Emeritus of Botany and Natural Resources at the University of Michigan before his death at the age of 80 in 2000.

Montana has been the "last best place" for so many people. A century ago, Native Americans gathered here to perform the Ghost Dance—a last, doomed attempt to make white settlers vanish and bring back the old ways of life. Today, people are still pouring into Montana, looking for the pristine wilderness they saw in A River Runs through It.

The reality of Montana—indeed, of all the West—has never matched the myths, but this book eloquently explores how the search for a perfect place is driving growth, development, and resource exploitation in Big Sky country. In ten personal essays, John Wright looks at such things as Montana myths; old-timers; immigrants; elk; ways of seeing the landscape; land conservation and land trusts; the fate of the Blackfoot, Bitterroot, and Paradise valleys; and some means of preserving the last, best places.

These reflections offer a way of understanding Montana that goes far beyond the headlines about militia groups and celebrities' ranches. Montana never was or will be a pristine wilderness, but Wright believes that much can be saved if natives and newcomers alike see what stands to be lost. His book is a wake-up call, not a ghost dance.

2022 Art in Service to the Environment Award, Sierra Club Lone Star Chapter
Honorable Mention, 2022 Nonfiction Prize, Writers' League of Texas

Writers explore a city’s relationship with chronic catastrophic flooding.

Shortly after Hurricane Harvey dumped a record 61 inches of rain on Houston in 2017, celebrated writer and Bayou City resident Lacy M. Johnson began collecting flood stories. Although these stories attested to the infinite variety of experience in America’s most diverse city, they also pointed to a consistent question: What does catastrophic flooding reveal about this city, and what does it obscure?

More City than Water brings together essays, conversations, and personal narratives from climate scientists, marine ecologists, housing activists, urban planners, artists, poets, and historians as they reflect on the human geography of a region increasingly defined by flooding. Both a literary and a cartographic anthology, More City than Water features striking maps of Houston’s floodplains, waterways, drainage systems, reservoirs, and inundated neighborhoods. Designed by University of Houston seniors from the Graphic Design program, each map, imaginative and precise, shifts our understanding of the flooding, the public’s relationship to it, and the fraught reality of rebuilding. Evocative and unique, this is an atlas that uncovers the changing nature of living where the waters rise.

More Tales of a Low-Rent Birder brings together twenty-five essays that originally appeared in major birding publications. In these pieces, Pete Dunne ranges from wildly humorous to sadly elegiac, as he describes everything from the "field plumage" of the dedicated birder to the lingering death of an accidentally injured golden plover. Running like a thread through all the essays is Dunne's love and respect for the birds he watches, his concern over human threats to their survival, and his tolerance, even affection, for the human "odd birds" that birding attracts. Truly, these essays offer something for everyone interested in birds and the natural habitats our species share.

Each autumn, millions of men and increasing numbers of women don camouflage or blaze orange outfits and go afield in pursuit of game. For much of American history, there was no need to explain why they did this. Hunting was simply another aspect of the annual cycle of planting, breeding, and harvesting. But modern hunting began separating from its agrarian roots well over a century ago, and although it has retained its connection to the metaphor of the harvest, the self-perceptions and motives of hunters today are no longer transparent, especially to nonhunters. Indeed, hunting—and those who hunt—have become targets of a vocal and growing array of critics. 

In Mortal Stakes, Jan E. Dizard examines the place of hunting in contemporary America. Drawing on detailed interviews with hunters as well as opinion surveys and demographic statistics, he analyzes the meanings these men and women attach to hunting and situates this traditional activity in its current setting. He looks at who hunts, how they compare socially and politically with nonhunters, and how they see themselves and are seen by others. 

With fewer and fewer Americans closely linked to the land, hunting seems less ordinary and less necessary. As the gulf between hunters and nonhunters widens, hunters have begun to think of themselves as a minority group which, like other minorities, suffers from prejudice and stereotyping. As a result, Dizard argues, hunting is fast becoming one more front in an expanding “culture war” over what it means to be an American.

The definitive guide to the Southeast’s most persistent—and medically important—tiny predators.

Mosquitoes of the Southeastern United States is a full-color, highly illustrated guide to the sixty-four known species of mosquitoes in eleven genera that populate the South—from the Gulf Coastal states to the Carolinas. In addition to detailed and fully illustrated identification keys for both larvae and adults, it includes information on the mosquito’s lifecycle, interaction with humans, and biological diversity in the southeast.

This area of the country has a rich mosquito fauna with diverse species ranging from the tiny pitcher plant mosquito to the brilliantly colored cannibal mosquito. Close-up photographs of live adults showcase their widely varied and beautiful bodies while remarkable images made with the aid of a microaquarium reveal the differences in larval stages of the subjects. For each species described, Nathan D. Burkett-Cadena provides biological information including distribution maps, habitat associations of the larvae and adults, range of animals fed upon, and importance from a medical standpoint.

This book’s usefulness to mosquito control programs in the Southeast and beyond cannot be overstated. Not only for native species, but for new species introduced from exotic locales, mosquitoes must be properly identified in order to know how best to control them. This volume will also be valuable to medical and public health specialists working on mosquito-borne diseases, such as malaria, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and filariasis. Mosquitoes of the Southeastern United States is the first guide to integrate full-color photography, illustrated keys, and current information on the biology of mosquitoes into one definitive resource.

This comprehensive and richly illustrated account of the mosses found throughout the Great Lakes Basin and St. Lawrence River Valley is tailored for use in much of eastern North America. Detailed descriptions, keys, and a glossary are provided. 592 pages, frontispiece, hard cover.

In this compelling study, Rena Steinzor highlights the ways in which the government, over the past twenty years, has failed to protect children from harm caused by toxic chemicals. She believes these failures—under-funding, excessive and misguided use of cost/benefit analysis, distortion of science, and devolution of regulatory authority—have produced a situation in which harm that could be reduced or eliminated instead persists.

Steinzor states that, as a society, we are neglecting our children's health to an extent that we would find unthinkable as individual parents, primarily due to the erosion of the government's role in protecting public health and the environment. At this pace, she asserts, our children will inherit a planet under grave threat. We can arrest these developments if a critical mass of Americans become convinced that these problems are urgent and the solutions are near at hand.

By focusing on three specific case studies—mercury contamination through the human food chain, perchlorate (rocket fuel) in drinking water, and the effects of ozone (smog) on children playing outdoors—Steinzor creates an analysis grounded in law, economics, and science to prove her assertions about the existing dysfunctional system.

Steinzor then recommends a concise and realistic series of reforms that could reverse these detrimental trends and serve as a blueprint for restoring effective governmental intervention. She argues that these recommendations offer enough material to guide government officials and advocacy groups toward prompt implementation, for the sake of America's—and the world's—future generations.

From pony to airplane, from medicine dance to Christian worship, Mountain Wolf Woman, Sister of Crashing Thunder is the life story of a Winnebago woman, told in her own words to her adopted kinswoman, Nancy Lurie. This retelling of more than seventy-five years of Native American life is both a candid and compelling account of how one woman lived through a period of cultural crisis.

Mountain Wolf Woman tells of her childhood in Wisconsin, her brief stay at a mission school, her marriage to "Bad Soldier," and her religious experiences with peyote. Her struggle to maintain her family against many hardships---odds that would have defeated a less vigorous and self-confident person---underscores her perseverance and tenacity. Whether she is describing her wanderings as a child or her misfortunes later in life, Mountain Wolf Woman sets forth her views in honest and perceptive terms, adding all the more power to her narrative.

This book is a valuable companion to the story of Mountain Wolf Woman's brother, immortalized by Paul Radin in Crashing Thunder, a classic of anthropological literature. It will also be of interest to those interested in ethnographic records, the role of women in native cultures, and Midwestern Native Americans, in general.

" . . . a superb human document."
---Chicago Sun-Times

" . . . one of those rare books . . . ."
---Saturday Review

". . . a notable contribution to the literature of culture change and culture and personality."
---American Anthropologist