Although the concept of “matching the hatch” has been central to flyfishing for 150 years, it has been used almost exclusively for dry flyfishing. With Common Nymphs of Eastern North America: A Primer for Flyfishers and Flytiers, Caleb Tzilkowski and Jay Stauffer Jr. take trout enthusiasts in another hatch-matching direction—to the year-round underwater nymph “hatch,” which, in most cases, constitutes 90 percent of trout diets. Successful flyfishers have at least rudimentary knowledge of the organisms that artificial flies imitate. The relatively few and very best anglers are expert at identifying and imitating nymph appearances and habits. A major hurdle to becoming expert at nymph matching is overcoming two major limitations that make these animals difficult to locate, capture, and identify: first, nymphs live underwater, sometimes burrowed into the stream bottom, and second, many nymphs are nearly microscopic in size. Common Nymphs addresses those challenges by including habitat and life history information regarding the nymphs, tips for their identification, and representative high-resolution photographs of more than thirty types of aquatic organisms and their imitations. In the seemingly saturated flyfishing literature, this book offers something truly groundbreaking. With state-of-the-art microscopy and their years of scientific and practical experience, Tzilkowski and Stauffer provide readers an innovative close-up look at identifying and imitating nymphs that have been historically underrepresented in the flyfishing and flytying literature.

In the mid-nineties, Russell Frank left a peaceful life in rural California to raise three kids in a town saturated with fraternities, late-night undergrad fast food haunts, and rowdy football crowds. Among the Woo People recounts his two decades living—and surviving—in State College, Pennsylvania, the often-chaotic home of Penn State University. This humorous peek at life in a college town smack-dab in the middle of rural Pennsylvania chronicles a changing community over the course of two eventful decades. A professor of journalism, former columnist for the Centre Daily Times, and contributor to StateCollege.com, Frank has a unique perspective on living in the shadow of a university—especially on the tribe of nomadic young adults known as the “Woo people,” so named for their signature mode of celebratory communication. He invites readers into the routines of his hectic household as they embrace their new home, skewers the culture of intercollegiate sports, relates the challenges and peculiarities of teaching at one of the nation’s largest universities, and, most important, teaches us to be amused at college-kid antics and to appreciate their academic and real-world accomplishments, even as we anxiously tick off the days until semester’s end. From tales of missing porch furniture and red plastic cups in the bushes to a “Nude Year’s Eve” run by an octet of forty-somethings to the sweet relief of summer, Frank’s hilarious, insightful essays are indispensable for anyone who wants to survive, appreciate, and enjoy college-town life.

Outside of major metropolitan areas, the fight for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights has had its own unique and rich history—one that is quite different from the national narrative set in New York and California. Out in Central Pennsylvania highlights one facet of this lesser-known but equally important story, immersing readers in the LGBTQ community building and social networking that has taken place in the small cities and towns in the heart of Pennsylvania from the 1960s to the present day. Drawing from oral histories and the archives of the LGBT Center of Central PA History Project, this book recounts the innovative ways that LGBTQ central Pennsylvanians organized to demand civil rights and to improve their quality of life in a region that often rejected them. Full of compelling stories of individuals seeking community and grappling with inequity, harassment, and discrimination, and featuring a distinctive trove of historical photographs, Out in Central Pennsylvania is a local story with national implications. It brings rural and small-town queer life out into the open and explores how LGBTQ identity and social advocacy networks can form outside of a large urban environment.

Grasses are among the most ubiquitous plants on the planet. They inhabit a wide geographic range and are found in a variety of natural habitats. The small parts of the grass flower and specialized terminology, however, can make identifying grasses a challenging endeavor. Sarah Chamberlain’s Field Guide to Grasses of the Mid-Atlantic makes identification simpler for everyone—regardless of their previous botanical knowledge. Featuring an easy-to-use dichotomous key, this is a user-friendly guide to more than 300 types of grasses found from the Blue Ridge Mountains and southern plains to the Appalachians and the Allegheny Plateau. Each major entry contains detailed species diagrams as well as common names, habitats, and distribution. The book’s opening sections outline the parts of grass flowers and describe stem, leaf, and sheath characteristics. With a wealth of illustrations, instructions on how to use the key, and a glossary of terms, Field Guide to Grasses of the Mid-Atlantic is an indispensable reference for naturalists and conservationists, botanists, land management professionals, and students and scholars of mid-Atlantic flora.

Most aquatic ecosystems have variable water levels. These water-level fluctuations (WLF) have multiple effects on the organisms above and below the waterline. Natural WLF patterns in lakes guarantee both productivity and biodiversity, while untimely floods and droughts may have negative effects. Human impacts on WLF have led to a stabilization of the water levels of many lakes by hydraulic regulation, untimely drawdown due to water use, or floods due to water release from hydropower plants in the catchments. This book provides a first review in this field. It presents selected papers on the ecological effects of WLF in lakes, resulting from a workshop at the University of Konstanz in winter 2005. Issues addressed here include the extent of WLF, and analyses of their effects on different groups of biota from microorganisms to vertebrates. Applied issues include recommendations for the hydrological management of regulated lakes to reduce negative impacts, and a conceptual framework is delivered by an extension of the floodpulse concept for lakes. Current impacts on water use, including increasing demands on drinking and irrigation water, hydropower etc., and climate change effects on WLF make this book an essential resource for aquatic ecologists, engineers, and decision-makers dealing with the management of lake ecosystems and their catchments.