Books for the Nature Lover in Your Life

"John Charles Frémont--popularly known as "The Pathfinder" during his times--played a major role in opening up the American West to settlement by pioneers. His reliable accounts, including published maps, narrations, and scientific documentations of his expeditions, guided emigrants overland into the West starting in the mid-1840s.

Frémont was born illegitimate to a Québécois father and a Virginian mother. Through the lucky circumstance of obtaining highly influential patrons at his parents' adopted home city of Charleston, South Carolina, he was appointed second lieutenant in the United States Topographical Corps and quickly rose within its ranks. Through the influence of his father-in-law, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri--the powerful chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Affairs--he led his first expedition to the Rocky Mountains in 1842. With his party of 25 men, including Kit Carson, he embarked from the Kansas River on June 15, 1842, followed the Platte River to the South Pass, and starting from Green River he explored the Wind River mountain range. He climbed a 13,745-foot mountain, Frémont's Peak, planted an American flag, and claimed the Rocky Mountains and the West for the United States.

His second expedition--the subject of a separate book--succeeded in charting all of the way to California, mapping and confirming the Oregon Trail as the route for pioneers heading toward the West."

The story of the Blue Ridge Parkway--America's Favorite Drive--has been called awe-inspiring. Beginning with the inception of design work done during the early 1930s through its construction and final completion, the parkway--the longest road planned as a single unit in the United States and also an elongated park, protecting significant mountain landscapes far beyond the shoulders of the road itself--was completed with the contributions of many talented individuals. The National Park Service, which oversees it, informs that a Blue Ridge Parkway experience is unlike any other: a slow-paced and relaxing drive revealing stunning long-range vistas and close-up views of the rugged mountains and pastoral landscapes of the Appalachian Highlands. The parkway meanders for 469 miles, protecting a diversity of plants and animals, and providing opportunities for enjoying all that makes this region of the country so special.

This book presents tales of an eager and idealistic young wildlife biologist's four summers in the wilds of Alaska among Kodiak bears and sockeye salmon. Readers will enjoy the details of exhilarating and sometimes dangerous field research on sockeye salmon when there seemed to be infinite possibilities for scientific discovery, and of pioneering live trapping studies of Kodiak bears when the tools of study were wolf traps, rope lassos, and ether-soaked cotton for sedating decidedly impatient trapped bears. Read about discoveries, adventures, narrow escapes, bear attacks, struggles with the rigours and politics of scientific research, and life in a far northern camp (a man cave with real bears). This is the classic story of a man in the wilderness--a coming of age book with a bang!

The decades after World War II were a golden age for roadside attractions in the Sunshine State. The advent of the family automobile put Florida's exotic flora and fauna within easy reach for millions of curious Americans. Entrepreneurs were happy to meet that demand, setting up for-profit nature parks around four of Florida's most splendid natural springs--at Silver Springs, Homosassa, Rainbow Springs, and Weeki Wachee.

To distinguish themselves in a crowded field, these roadside operators upped the ante on weird, sweetening nature's majesty with theme park fantasy in the form of hippos, macaques, and mermaids, oh my!

Though these gimmicky roadside parks ultimately fell out of favor as commercial ventures, this truly wooly and weird chapter in Florida's history lives on, fully-integrated by popular demand into the state park system.

Lovingly documented across more than 135 full-color photographs, Nature's Own Attraction: A History of Florida's Roadside Springs presents a living history of Florida's bygone roadside era--a special kind of man-made Florida wildness vying for attention alongside the native, natural Florida wilderness that we all know and love.