This must have coffee table book is a photographic exploration of 1200 miles following the Snake River from its source in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming, across the Snake River Plain of Idaho, into North America's deepest gorge, Hells Canyon, bordering Oregon and eventually crossing the fertile plains of Washington State to its confluence with the Columbia River, Kirk chases the elusive elements of weather, season, and breathtaking locations through four states and over four years to produce a photographic monologue celebrating the largest river in the American West.

Photographs and text document the largest gathering of bears in the world at the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary in Alaska

Robert Stuart saw the American West a few years after Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and, like them, kept a journal of his epic experience. A partner in John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company, the Scotsman shipped for Oregon aboard the Tonquin in 1810 and helped found the ill-fated settlement of Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River. In 1812, facing disaster, Stuart and six others slipped away from Astoria and headed east. His journal, edited and annotated by Philip Ashton Rollins, describes their hazardous 3,700-mile journey to St. Louis. Crossing the Rockies in winter, they faced death by cold, starvation, and hostile Indians. But they made history by discovering what came to be called the Oregon Trail, including South Pass, over which thousands of emigrants would travel west in mid-century. Besides Stuart’s narrative, this volume contains important material about Astoria and the fate of the Tonquin, as well as the harrowing account of Wilson Price Hunt, who headed a party of overlanders traveling east to join the Astorians.

Although he reluctantly agrees to accompany his little brother on a canoe trip, eighteen-year-old Eric finally gains new respect for this younger sibling whose ingenuity rescues him.

"Unforgettable" is the word best used to describe Time Like a River by Randy Perrin and his young daughters, Hannah and Tova. This book has several themes. The first illustrates the friendship between 13-year-old Margie, who is Jewish, and her best friend, Isabel, who is Catholic. The second is about Margie's mom who has become dangerously ill with an unknown disease. The third is about a school history project the girls are working on which takes them to an historical archive where they find a diary written by a Chinese man 100 years beforeMargie travels back in time to visit the Chinese man who recently lost his father to a mysterious malady. Through this experience Margie figures out the disease her mother has and helps the doctors save her life. Social Studies teachers can also learn how much more important it is to emphasize how people lived, thought, and felt in the past, rather than make children memorize isolated facts. -Independent Publisher

"I don't realize I'm crying until he glances at me. For a moment, I see the look of anguish in his eyes, then he blinks it away and slips off into the water. I immediately think of the gator. It's still down there somewhere. . . ." A science-class field trip to the Everglades is supposed to be fun, but Sarah's new at Glades Academy, and her fellow freshmen aren’t exactly making her feel welcome. When an opportunity for an unauthorized side trip on an air boat presents itself, it seems like a perfect escape—an afternoon without feeling like a sore thumb. But one simple oversight turns a joyride into a race for survival across the river of grass. Sarah will have to count on her instincts—and a guy she barely knows—if they have any hope of making it back alive.