In 1958 two teen-age boys acquire a war surplus raft in San Francisco, hop freight trains to Idaho where they've never been, and launch on the Snake River, intent on paddling hundreds of miles to its confluence with the Columbia River. Along the way: they upset, go hungry, hitchhike, meet farm families, invade small Idaho towns, and now and then write their worried parents. After capsizing and losing their shoes and meager food supply in remote Hells Canyon, they grapple with a comeuppance. Theirs is a saga of humor and history and survival and a friendship still intact after sixty years.

Meyer narrates a madcap adventure of hand-to-hand combat with nature when her earth-loving sensibilities take her to Montana where she and her farrier spouse purchased an 82-year-old barn.

A New York Times bestseller 'A sensation ... a rollicking tale well told' - The Times At the heart of Born to Run lies a mysterious tribe of Mexican Indians, the Tarahumara, who live quietly in canyons and are reputed to be the best distance runners in the world; in 1993, one of them, aged 57, came first in a prestigious 100-mile race wearing a toga and sandals. A small group of the world's top ultra-runners (and the awe-inspiring author) make the treacherous journey into the canyons to try to learn the tribe's secrets and then take them on over a course 50 miles long. With incredible energy and smart observation, McDougall tells this story while asking what the secrets are to being an incredible runner. Travelling to labs at Harvard, Nike, and elsewhere, he comes across an incredible cast of characters, including the woman who recently broke the world record for 100 miles and for her encore ran a 2:50 marathon in a bikini, pausing to down a beer at the 20 mile mark.

For readers of Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, The Barefoot Running Book lends practical advice on the minimalist running phenomenon Ditch those cushiony running shoes—they’re holding you back and hurting your feet! You’ve heard about barefoot running and how it can reduce injury and allow for better form. Maybe you’ve even tried it and learned how shedding those heavy, overly- manufactured shoes can make running more enjoyable. Regardless of your expertise level, Jason Robillard—a leading expert on barefoot running education and director of the Barefoot Running University—synthesizes the latest research to ease you from barefoot walking to slow running to competitive and trail running vis-à-vis simple drills, training plans, and useful hints from fellow barefoot runners. Practical, easy-to-follow, and illustrated with black-and-white photographs throughout, The Barefoot Running Book shows how everyone can transition to barefoot and minimalist shoe running—safely and optimally.

There is a ranch that runs for several miles along the last free-flowing stretch of the Snake River. A beautiful but harsh environment, hellishly hot in the summer and cut off from the outside world for much of the winter, the area is also in the middle of two equally harsh controversies: one over the breaching of the dams on the lower Snake and the other concerning new land management plans in Hells Canyon. T. Louise Freeman-Toole, a sixth-generation Californian, moves to a small Idaho town, little suspecting how profoundly she will be affected by her new life and surroundings. Her frequent visits to the last homestead ranch on the middle Snake River and her friendship with the eighty-year-old ranch owner and his daughter lead her to discover the spirit of the West and her own place there. ø With deft and evocative prose, Freeman-Toole takes us along as she and her son round up cattle, fix fences, hike, kayak, meet bears, elk, and sturgeon, and encounter rural traditions and values that force her to reexamine her own views on environmentalism, the treatment of animals, property rights, child rearing, and death. Whether investigating her family's roots in Los Angeles, exploring the threats that tourism, recreation, population growth, and sprawl pose for Hells Canyon, or chronicling her ten-year romance with the rugged and spectacular landscape, Freeman-Toole is an able guide to the fraught territory where old ways and new realities, fierce loyalties and political passions, and memory and longing uneasily meet.

Backroads of the Great American West describes and details with full-color photos and maps the most scenic routes in the Rocky Mountains, Texas, Desert Southwest, California, and Pacific Northwest.

The very strange but nevertheless true story of the dark underbelly of a 1960s hippie utopia. Laurel Canyon in the 1960s and early 1970s was a magical place where a dizzying array of musical artists congregated to create much of the music that provided the soundtrack to those turbulent times. Members of bands like the Byrds, the Doors, Buffalo Springfield, the Monkees, the Beach Boys, the Turtles, the Eagles, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Steppenwolf, CSN, Three Dog Night and Love, along with such singer/songwriters as Joni Mitchell, Judy Collins, James Taylor and Carole King, lived together and jammed together in the bucolic community nestled in the Hollywood Hills. But there was a dark side to that scene as well. Many didn’t make it out alive, and many of those deaths remain shrouded in mystery to this day. Far more integrated into the scene than most would like to admit was a guy by the name of Charles Manson, along with his murderous entourage. Also floating about the periphery were various political operatives, up-and-coming politicians and intelligence personnel – the same sort of people who gave birth to many of the rock stars populating the canyon. And all the canyon’s colorful characters – rock stars, hippies, murderers and politicos – happily coexisted alongside a covert military installation.