From the National Book Award-winning author of the now-classic Arctic Dreams, a vivid, poetic, capacious work that recollects the travels around the world and the encounters—human, animal, and natural—that have shaped an extraordinary life.Taking us nearly from pole to pole—from modern megacities to some of the most remote regions on the earth—and across decades of lived experience, Barry Lopez, hailed by the Los Angeles Times Book Review as "one of our finest writers," gives us his most far-ranging yet personal work to date, in a book that moves indelibly, immersively, through his travels to six regions of the world: from Western Oregon to the High Arctic; from the Galápagos to the Kenyan desert; from Botany Bay in Australia to finally, unforgettably, the ice shelves of Antarctica. As he takes us on these myriad travels, Lopez also probes the long history of humanity's quests and explorations, including the prehistoric...

In his critically acclaimed, award-winning study, Barry Lopez offers a stunning examination of one tolerance and a community that mirrors our ownWhen John Fowles reviewed Of Wolves and Men, he called it A remarkable book, both biologically absorbing and humanly rich, and one that should be read by every concerned American. In this National Book Award–shortlisted work, literary master Barry Lopez guides us through the world of the wolf and our often-mistaken perceptions of another species' place on our shared planet. Throughout the centuries, the wolf has been a figure of fascination and mystery, and a major motif in literature and myth. Inspiring fear and respect, the creature has long exerted a powerful influence on the human imagination. Of Wolves and Men takes the reader into the world of the Canis lupus and its relationship to humankind through the ages. Lopez draws on science, history, mythology, and his own field research to present a compelling portrait of wolves...

The acclaimed National Book Award winner gives us a collection of spellbinding new essays that, read together, form a jigsaw-puzzle portrait of an extraordinary man. With the publication of his best-selling Of Wolves and Men, and with the astonishing originality of Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez established himself as that rare writer whose every book is an event, for both critics and his devoted readership. Now, in About This Life, he takes us on a literal and figurative journey across the terrain of autobiography, assembling essays of great wisdom and insight. Here is far-flung travel (the beauty of remote Hokkaido Island, the over-explored Galápagos, enigmatic Bonaire); a naturalist's contention (Why does our society inevitably strip political power from people with intimate knowledge of the land small-scale farmers, Native Americans, Eskimos, cowboys?); and pure adventure (a dizzying series of around-the-world journeys with air freight everything from penguins to pianos). And here, too, are seven exquisite memory pieces hauntingly lyrical yet unsentimental recollections that represent Lopez's most personal work to date, and which will be read as classics of the personal essay for years to come.In writing about nature and people from around the world, by exploring the questions of our age, and, above all, by sharing a new openness about himself, Barry Lopez gives us a book that is at once vastly erudite yet intimate: a magically written and provocative work by a major American writer at the top of his form.From the Hardcover edition.

In his National Book Award–winning masterwork about imagination and desire in a northern landscape, revered writer Barry Lopez carries readers on a breathtaking journey into the heart of one of the world’s last frontiersIn this award-winning classic, Barry Lopez explores the ways the human imagination engages with a landscape at once barren and beautiful, perilous and alluring, austere yet teeming with vibrant life, and shot through with human history. The Arctic has for centuries been a destination for the most ambitious explorers—a place of dreams, fears, and awe-inspiring spectacle.Based on Lopez’s years spent traveling the Arctic regions in the company of Eskimo hunting parties and scientific expeditions alike, Arctic Dreams investigates the unique terrain of the human mind, thrown into relief against the vastness of the tundra and the frozen ocean. Eye-opening and profoundly moving, it is a magnificent appreciation of how wilderness challenges and inspires us.This ebook features an illustrated biography of Barry Lopez including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s personal collection.

The six stories in Outside show Barry Lopez's majestic talent as a fiction writer. Lopez writes in spare prose, but his narratives resonate with an uncanny power. With a reverence for our exterior and interior landscapes, these stories offer profound insight into the relationships between humans and animals, creativity and beauty, and ultimately, life and death.In “Desert Notes," the narrator says, “All my life I have wanted to trick blood from a rock." The story proceeds to instruct the visitor on how to experience the desert but continues like no ordinary field guide. At stake here is what is at the furthest edge of our grasp. “You will think you have hold of the idea when you have only the hold of its clothing." Rattlesnakes, the shell of a beetle, a few twigs, silence—out of these spare elements Lopez conjures a realm that shimmers with an elusive but palpable presence.“The Search for the Heron" and “Within Birds' Hearing"...

Moving from fable and historical fiction to contemporary realism, this book of stories from Barry Lopez is erotic and wise, full of irresistible characters doing things they shouldn't do for reasons that are mysterious and irreducible. In "The Letters of Heaven," a packet of recently discovered 17th-century Peruvian love letters presents a 20th-century man with the paralyzing choice of either protecting or exposing their stunning secret. When some young boys on the lookout for easy money get caught with a truckload of stolen horses, thievery quickly turns into redemption. For a group of convicts, a gathering of birds in the prison yard may be the key to transcendence, both figurative and literal. And, with the title story, Lopez enters a territory of unmitigated evil reminiscent of Conrad. Here are saints who shouldn't touch, but do; sinners who insist on the life of the spirit; a postcard paradise that turns into nightmare.Light Action in the Caribbean has...