As an autobiographical approach to a life out of Santa Barbara, California, this narrative offers coverage of the California condor in Santa Barbara's backcountry. With extensive coverage of the California gray whale, from its breeding lagoons in Mexico to its feeding grounds in Alaska, it includes catching Soviet whalers "red" handed illegally killing that "protected" species. A fortuitous opportunity includes coverage of Apollo 17 astronauts training for our last expedition to the moon. With an "insider's" knowledge from a broad background in forest fire suppression and a decade in fire protection and public safety with Fire Departments, this book is a must as a handbook for wilderness protection and the surprising failure of the U. S. Forest Service in that regard. The loss of 40%% of free flying condors over a period of a few months, including the breakup of all breeding pairs, left the Forest Service mystified as a result of turning unpoliced, well armed dimwits loose on the condor's habitat.

The six mean Herdman kids lie, steal, smoke cigars (even the girls) and then become involved in the community Christmas pageant.

On a gray winter day in 1958, the body of a man washes up on Santa Barbara's breakwater. Trevor Westin, a young local writer, sees murder where the local press sees only a simple case of drowning. Trevor goes on a dangerous search for answers. Along the way he will cross paths with beatniks, beach bums, Aldous Huxley, Dennis Hopper, and the CIA.

Diana Markosian's Santa Barbara brings together staged scenes, film stills, and family pictures in an innovative and compelling hybrid of personal and documentary storytelling. In 1996, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Markosian's mother, Svetlana, placed a classified ad in a Los Angeles newspaper: "I want to see America, and meet a kind man who can show me the country," she wrote. One man who responded was from Santa Barbara, California, and their correspondence led to Svetlana becoming a mail-order bride, fleeing her increasingly dreary prospects in post-Soviet Moscow with seven-year-old Markosian and her older brother in tow. This book is a retelling of the family's first years in the US, imagined as an episode from the soap opera Santa Barbara--the first American show allowed on Russian television in the 1990s. For many families, including Markosian's, this soap opera symbolized the opportunities of America and the West; for her project, Markosian wrote a script in collaboration with one of the original Santa Barbara writers and hired actors to reenact moments from her personal history. A major exhibition of this work, including a three-channel film presentation, will open at Rencontres d'Arles in July 2020, in advance of a fall 2020 exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

BOOKER PRIZE WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A novel that follows a middle-aged man as he contends with a past he never much thought about—until his closest childhood friends return with a vengeance: one of them from the grave, another maddeningly present. A novel so compelling that it begs to be read in a single setting, The Sense of an Ending has the psychological and emotional depth and sophistication of Henry James at his best, and is a stunning achievement in Julian Barnes's oeuvre. Tony Webster thought he left his past behind as he built a life for himself, and his career has provided him with a secure retirement and an amicable relationship with his ex-wife and daughter, who now has a family of her own. But when he is presented with a mysterious legacy, he is forced to revise his estimation of his own nature and place in the world.