According to the Blackfoot creation myth, the spirits first rolled moist earth in their hands and threw the magic symbol to the ground to make men and women. “Next they made earthen images of buffalo, blowing on them to bring them to life.” And it is the profound interrelationship of earth, animal, and human being that underlies Tom McHugh’s rich, comprehensive—indeed definitive—portrait of the American buffalo.The book is alive with resonant detail: hunting ways, buffalo products,...

•Finalist, Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Non-FictionWhen Candace Savage and her partner buy a house in the romantic little town of Eastend, she has no idea what awaits her. At first she enjoys exploring the area around their new home, including the boyhood haunts of the celebrated American writer Wallace Stegner, the back roads of the Cypress Hills, the dinosaur skeletons at the T.Rex Discovery Centre, the fossils to be found in the dust-d...

Part autobiography, part natural history, Bird Cloud is the glorious story of the American West landscape and building a home there by Annie Proulx, winner of a PEN/Faulker Award, Pulitzer Prize, and National Book Award and author of the short story “Brokeback Mountain.”“Bird Cloud” is the name Annie Proulx gave to 640 acres of Wyoming wetlands and prairie and four-hundred-foot cliffs plunging down to the North Platte River. On the day she...

An exciting journey seen through the eyes of the Algonquin people.This book paints a vivid picture of the original peoples of North America before the arrival of Europeans. The novel follows the story of Mahingan and his family as they live the traditional Algonquin way of life in what is now Ontario in the early fourteenth century. Along the way we learn about the search for moose and the dramatic rare woodland buffalo hunt, conflicts with other Native nations, an...

Wallace Stegner weaves together fiction and nonfiction, history and impressions, childhood remembrance and adult reflections in this unusual portrait of his boyhood. Set in Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where Stegner's family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920, Wolf Willowbrings to life both the pioneer community and the magnificent landscape that surrounds it.For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-spea...

"Unexpectedly delightful reading—there is much to learn from the buck-toothed rodents of yore" ( National Post).Beavers, those icons of industriousness, have been gnawing down trees, building dams, shaping the land, and creating critical habitat in North America for at least a million years. Once one of the continent's most ubiquitous mammals, they ranged from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Rio Grande to the edge of the northern tundra. Wherever...

From the host of the Travel Channel’s “The Wild Within.”A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination.In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the Alaskan wilderness. Despite the odds—there’s only a 2 percent chance of drawing the permit, and fewer than 20 percent of those hunters are successful—Rinella managed to kill a buf...

An expert’s step-by-step guide to authentic Native American crafts from clothing and headdresses to weapons and musical instruments.W. Ben Hunt, whose Sioux name was Tasunka Witko, traveled throughout the Midwest, living with several Native American tribes, finally settling near the site of the last Sioux uprising. In Native American Survival Skills, Hunt provides step-by-step instructions and exact dimensions to make Sioux ghost shirts, Plains Indian shie...

Drawing on vivid oral histories, Joseph M. Marshall’s intimate biography introduces a never-before-seen portrait of Crazy Horse and his Lakota communityMost of the world remembers Crazy Horse as a peerless warrior who brought the U.S. Army to its knees at the Battle of Little Bighorn. But to his fellow Lakota Indians, he was a dutiful son and humble fighting man who—with valor, spirit, respect, and unparalleled leadership—fought for his people’s land, livelihood, a...

John Wesley Powell was a U.S. soldier, geologist, explorer of the American West, and director of major scientific and cultural institutions. He is famous for the 1869 Powell Geographic Expedition, a three-month river trip down the Green and Colorado rivers that included the first passage of European Americans through the Grand Canyon. Powell served as second director of the US Geological Survey (1881-1894), and was also the director of the Bureau of Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution...

A finalist for the 1995 Governor General's Literary Award for English-language non-fictionWinner of the Mountain Environment and Culture Award at the 1995 Banff Mountain Book FestivalLeaning on the Wind is a love song of the west, sung to the tune of the wild chinook wind. Sid Marty skilfully weaves together the prehistory of Alberta with the experiences of First Nations, miners, early homesteaders and his own family. At the centre...

If you have ever wished you could escape to your own Walden Pond, consider creating a unique wilderness haven with the instructions found in this book! While woodcraft usually brings furniture to mind, this book is a guide to the craft of extended camping and travel in the woods. First published in 1919, this wilderness book, complete with illustrations, teaches you how to construct a simple log cabin, live off the land, build different types of fires, make snowshoes, and use outdoor tools...