In this collection of essays about well-known (and some not-so-well-known) Western waters, author Tom Alkire blends how-to, where-to, and natural history with lyrical prose and a deep insight that only comes with knowing a place well. From rainforest rivers to desert rivers, from tidal rivers to those along the Continental Divide, the author has waded and fished these waters over the decades. Along with his fishing adventures, the book also looks at the geography, the early explorers of, and the modern-day impacts on the rivers themselves.

Insight to the prolific marine life and ecosystems in the temperate waters off the coast of south-western Australia.

Stories heard as child by author, backed up by documentation, of voyage taken by his sister and her husband, Nicholas J. Roosevelt in 1811.

This book tells the story of river boating in the West before the invention of the steamboat. In a deft combination of thorough research and interesting narrative, Baldwin recreates life on the keelboats and flatboats that plied the Ohio, Mississippi, and other rivers from revolutionary days until about 1820. No one knows who put the first keel along the bottom of one big, clumsy river craft used by the pioneers. but the change made the boats far easier to manage, and travel in both directions became practical all the way to New Orleans.Baldwin examines the many types of craft in use, the different methods of locomotion, and the art of navigation on uncharted rivers full of hidden obstacles. But he never loses sight of the picturesque aspects of his subject, especially the boatmen themselves-a tribe of rugged and fearless men whose colorful lives are described in great detail.The Keelboat Age is a segment cut from the history of the frontier, showing the overwhelming importance of river transportation in the development of the West. The rivers were great arteries, carrying a restless people into a new land. The keelboatman and his craft did much to build a nation.

Between 1850 and 1950, experts and entrepreneurs in Britain and the United States forged new connections between the nutrition sciences and the commercial realm through their enthusiasm for new edible consumables. The resulting food products promised wondrous solutions for what seemed to be both individual and social ills. By examining creations such as Gail Borden's meat biscuit, Benger's Food, Kellogg's health foods, and Fleischmann's yeast, Wonder Foods shows how new products dazzled with visions of modernity, efficiency, and scientific progress even as they perpetuated exclusionary views about who deserved to eat, thrive, and live. Drawing on extensive archival research, historian Lisa Haushofer reveals that the story of modern food and nutrition was not about innocuous technological advances or superior scientific insights, but rather about the powerful logic of exploitation and economization that undergirded colonial and industrial food projects. In the process, these wonder foods shaped both modern food regimes and how we think about food.

This collection of short stories is rich in detail and utterly absorbing. Each story is a fictitious, fairy-tale account of adventures, romance, daring and magic. The book is also filled with beautiful full-colour illustrations to help the stories come to life. The stories include: The Brave Grenadier, The Palace of The night, The Enchanted Bay, The Two Millers, The adamant door, The City of the Winter Sleep, Aileel and Alinda, The Wonderful Tune, The Man of the Wildwood, The Maiden of the Mountain, The Bell of the Earth and the Bell of the Sea, The Wood Beyond the World

According to James Lloyd, the 1856 publisher of this guide, "The price of this volume is so small, that every man, woman and child, should have a copy for reference..." However true that may have been, they might not have wanted to refer to it while ACTUALLY RIDING ON A STEAMBOAT. The largest portion of the book is taken up with detailed accounts of horrific steamboat accidents involving boiler explosions, collisions with other ships, capsizing, and damage from river detritus. In one instance he records a conflagration that consumed twenty-three steamboats in New Orleans in 1849. It reads extremely well and a modern equivalent might be 1955 classic, "A Night to Remember" about Titanic, only with scores of wrecks instead of one. In some of the cases, criminal charges were brought against crew members for negligence or because they blew up a boiler while racing another steamboat while carrying 300 passengers. It makes fascinating reading of an era long gone and Lloyd did a very creditable job of cataloging scores of accidents. Why he felt this would be appropriate reading for children while traveling is something we can never know. For the first time, this long-out-of-print book is available as an affordable, well-formatted book for e-readers and smartphones. Be sure to LOOK INSIDE or download a sample.

In 1822, before Jedediah Smith entered the West, it was largely an unknown land, “a wilderness,” he wrote, “of two thousand miles diameter.” During his nine years as a trapper for Ashley and Henry and later for the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, “the mild and Christian young man” blazed the trail westward through South Pass; he was the first to go from the Missouri overland to California, the first to cross the length of Utah and the width of Nevada, first to travel by land up through California and Oregon, first to cross the Sierra Nevada. Before his death on the Santa Fe Trail at the hands of the Comanches, Jed Smith and his partners had drawn the map of the west on a beaver skin.