The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt's Darkest Journey
by Candice Millard
from Broadway
At once an incredible adventure narrative and a penetrating biographical portrait, The River of Doubt is the true story of Theodore Roosevelt’s harrowing exploration of one of the most dangerous rivers on earth.
The River of Doubt—it is a black, uncharted tributary of the Amazon that snakes through one of the most treacherous jungles in the world. Indians armed with poison-tipped arrows haunt its shadows; piranhas glide through its waters; boulder-strewn rapids turn the river into a roiling cauldron.
After his humiliating election defeat in 1912, Roosevelt set his sights on the most punishing physical challenge he could find, the first descent of an unmapped, rapids-choked tributary of the Amazon. Together with his son Kermit and Brazil’s most famous explorer, Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon, Roosevelt accomplished a feat so great that many at the time refused to believe it. In the process, he changed the map of the western hemisphere forever.
Along the way, Roosevelt and his men faced an unbelievable series of hardships, losing their canoes and supplies to punishing whitewater rapids, and enduring starvation, Indian attack, disease, drowning, and a murder within their own ranks. Three men died, and Roosevelt was brought to the brink of suicide. The River of Doubt brings alive these extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived.
From the soaring beauty of the Amazon rain forest to the darkest night of Theodore Roosevelt’s life, here is Candice Millard’s dazzling debut.
Tropical Nature: Life and Death in the Rain Forests of Central and South America
by Adrian Forsyth
from Touchstone
Rainforest
by Ben Morgan
from DK ADULT
Over the past 16 years Swiss photographer Thomas Marent has traveled all over the world photographing rainforests, from Peru and Ecuador to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. Usually traveling alone, Marent has been known to spend extraordinary lengths of time to get the perfect shot--sometimes 12 days. You can see the results in his first book, Rainforest. The book is his testament--an intimate collection of more than 500 breathtaking animal and plant portraits, and the fascinating stories behind them.
Questions for Thomas Marent
Amazon.com: What inspired you to start taking pictures?
Marent: I used to be a birdwatcher in Switzerland--and soon I was also interested in amphibians, insects, and plants. After a while I thought it would be nice to have pictures of all these beautiful animals.
Amazon.com: Waiting for the perfect shot takes patience and time. How do you decide what images are worth waiting for?
Marent: I mostly focus on the colorful and spectacularly shaped creatures. Sometimes it is a matter of luck to find them, but sometimes I have to know where and when to look for them.
Amazon.com: What photo in Rainforest is your favorite?
Marent: I don't have one favorite--there are many favorites! I especially like the photos of frogs, butterflies, fungi, birds and weird insects.
Amazon.com: What would people find most surprising about the world's rainforests?
Marent: When people think of the rainforest, it's the monkeys, birds, and wild cats that first come to mind. But there are so many small and beautiful creatures. We need to see and appreciate them too--they're just a little harder to find! Many of these smaller creatures have never been seen by most people.
Amazon.com: Do you consider yourself a rainforest activist?
Marent: With the book I want to show to the people the endless beauty of the rainforests. I do hope that it might open the eyes of some people, so that they'll agree that it's worth protecting this fantastic environment.
Amazon.com: Some of the photos in the book, especially some of the insect photos, are really strange and otherworldly. What's your favorite exotic rainforest animal?
Marent: Some of my favorites always were frogs and butterflies, but birds and monkeys as well. And of course the weird-looking insects.
Amazon.com: What's your favorite rainforest?
Marent: In Asia it is Borneo. In Africa it is Madagascar. In Latin America it is Costa Rica and Peru/Colombia. But I also like the Australian and New Zealand rainforests.
Amazon.com: Do you have any advice for amateur nature photographers?
Marent: A tripod is an absolutely must. Try to move to the animals slowly and quietly--it takes some patience. Whenever possible try taking your pictures at the animal's eye level. And it's always important to think about the background when you compose the picture.
Thomas Marent, a self-taught photographer who has dedicated half his life to capturing images of rainforest life, tells the story of his journey through these spectacular photographs. Join him as he travels across five continents for an up-close view of the astonishing variety and fascinating behavior of rainforest plants and trees, reptiles, birds, amphibians, insects, and mammals.
The Healing Power of Rainforest Herbs: A Guide to Understanding and Using Herbal Medicinals
by Leslie Taylor
from Square One Publishers
Rainforest Home Remedies: The Maya Way To Heal Your Body and Replenish Your Soul
by Rosita Arvigo
from HarperOne
Rainforest Healing from Your Home and Garden
- Find alternatives to chemical anti-depressants and painkillers in your spice rack.
- Learn about natural anti-itch salves for insect bites.
- Soothe and relieve envy, grief, sadness, and fear the Maya way.
- Rid your house of negative energy with a Maya cleansing ritual.
- Try the easy-to-make bronchitis remedy.
Lost Worlds: Adventures in the Tropical Rainforest
by Bruce M. Beehler
from Yale University Press
Perhaps it is not possible to experience all the mysterious sounds, the unfamiliar smells, and the spectacular sights of a tropical rainforest without ever visiting one. But this exhilarating and honest book comes wondrously close to taking the reader on such a journey. Bruce M. Beehler, a widely traveled expert on birds and tropical ecology, recounts fascinating details from twelve field trips he has taken to the tropics over the past three decades. As a researcher, he brings to life the exotic rainforests and the people who inhabit them; as a conservationist, he makes a plea for better ways of managing rainforests—“a resource that the world cannot do without.”
Drawing on his experiences in Papua New Guinea, India, Madagascar, Indonesia, the Philippines, Panama, and the Ivory Coast, Beehler describes the surprises—both pleasant and unpleasant—of doing science and conservation in the field. He explains the role that rainforests play in the lives of indigenous peoples and the crucial importance of understanding local cultures, customs, and politics. The author concludes with simple but tough solutions for maintaining rainforest health, expressing fervent hope that his great-grandchildren and others may one day also hear the rainforest whisper its secrets.
Neotropical Rainforest Mammals: A Field Guide
by Louise H. Emmons
from University Of Chicago Press
In this completely revised and updated second edition:
A total of 226 species are treated in full (206 were included in the first edition).
All species accounts retained from the first edition have been updated to include the most recent research.
All 195 maps showing the distribution and geographic range of each species have been revised to reflect the most current information.
Twenty-nine beautiful color plates illustrate more than 220 species (including significant color variants between males and females or adults and young). Seven black-and-white plates contain more than 60 images of individual species, mainly bats.
A compact disc of mammal vocalizations—crucial to identifying nocturnal and otherwise cryptic animals that sometimes may be heard rather than seen—will be available for purchase separately.
Praise for the first edition:
"If you can't go to the Central and South American rain forests to see firsthand their threatened ecosystems, here is the next best thing."—Washington Post Book World
"A large amount of information is presented concisely and in a way that is easy to use."—Choice
"The presentation and wealth of information contained in this field guide is outstanding and will satisfy the needs of both the 'tourist' and 'researcher' traveling to the Neotropics."—Canadian Field-Naturalist
Monkeys Are Made Of Chocolate: Exotic And Unseen Costa Rica
by Jack Ewing
from Pixyjack Press
Discover the mysterious and fascinating ways in which animals and plants—and people—interact with one another in the rainforests of Costa Rica. Author and naturalist Jack Ewing shares a wealth of observations and experiences, gathered from more than three decades of living in southwestern Costa Rica, home to some of the most prolific and diverse ecosystems on Earth. More than just a simple collection of essays, Monkeys are Made of Chocolate is a testament to the wonder of life in all its countless guises, as seen through the eyes of a man with a gift for subtle discernment and a natural flair for storytelling.
Breakfast Of Biodiversity: The Political Ecology of Rain Forest Destruction
by John Vandermeer
from Food First
Unweaving the Web of Destruction
The continuing devastation of the world's tropical rain forest affects us all—spurring climate change, decimating biodiversity, and wrecking our environment's resiliency. Millions of worried people around the world want to do whatever it takes to save the forest that is left.
But halting rain forest destruction means understanding what is driving it.
In Breakfast of Biodiversity, John Vandermeer and Ivette Perfecto insightfully describe the ways in which such disparate factors as the international banking system, modern agricultural techniques, rain forest ecology, and the struggles of the poor interact to bring down the forest. They weave an alternative vision in which democracy, sustainable agriculture, and land security for the poor are at the center of the movement to save the tropical environment.
This new, fully updated edition of Breakfast of Biodiversity discusses important new developments in our understanding of rain forest biology and assesses the impacts of a decade of "free" trade on the rain forest and on those who live in and around it.
The Burning Season: The Murder of Chico Mendes and the Fight for the Amazon Rain Forest
by Andrew Revkin
from Island Press
"In the rain forests of the western Amazon," writes author Andrew Revkin, "the threat of violent death hangs in the air like mist after a tropical rain. It is simply a part of the ecosystem, just like the scorpions and snakes cached in the leafy canopy that floats over the forest floor like a seamless green circus tent."
Violent death came to Chico Mendes in the Amazon rain forest on December 22, 1988. A labor and environmental activist, Mendes was gunned down by powerful ranchers for organizing resistance to the wholesale burning of the forest. He was a target because he had convinced the government to take back land ranchers had stolen at gunpoint or through graft and then to transform it into "extractive reserves," set aside for the sustainable production of rubber, nuts, and other goods harvested from the living forest.
This was not just a local land battle on a remote frontier. Mendes had invented a kind of reverse globalization, creating alliances between his grassroots campaign and the global environmental movement. Some 500 similar killings had gone unprosecuted, but this case would be different. Under international pressure, for the first time Brazilian officials were forced to seek, capture, and try not only an Amazon gunman but the person who ordered the killing.
In this reissue of the environmental classic The Burning Season, with a new introduction by the author, Andrew Revkin artfully interweaves the moving story of Mendes's struggle with the broader natural and human history of the world's largest tropical rain forest. "It became clear," writes Revkin, acclaimed science reporter for The New York Times, "that the murder was a microcosm of the larger crime: the unbridled destruction of the last great reservoir of biological diversity on Earth." In his life and untimely death, Mendes forever altered the course of development in the Amazon, and he has since become a model for environmental campaigners everywhere.
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