Book Description

Natural History/Regional

A fascinating depiction of the lives led along this major American river-now back in print!

Starting at Big Stone Lake on the eastern edge of South Dakota, the Minnesota River cuts through southern Minnesota, breaks into waterfalls at Granite Falls, and joins the mighty Mississippi at Fort Snelling in St. Paul. Evan Jones provides a detailed history of the river and its legends in The Minnesota.

The river has provided the scenery for many of Minnesota's most fascinating events-the Dakota Conflict (also known as the Sioux Uprising of 1862); the only blunder of Jesse James's career; and the origin of selling goods on credit by Sears, Roebuck and Company-and hosted many famous faces, including Dred Scott, Zebulon Pike, and Henry David Thoreau. Illustrated with line drawings by Harry Heim, The Minnesota weaves an unforgettable history.

"Evan Jones grew up along the bank of the Minnesota. . . . he is steeped in that region's song and story. His book is a sentimental journey down the Minnesota's past, but the sympathy is well spent. This prose is as supple and strong as the river itself and the Jones eye scans the epoch-making nineteenth-century scene with colorful insight and loving care." Kirkus

Evan Jones (1915-1996) was born in LeSueur, Minnesota.A writer of American history and cookbooks, he is the author of Trappers and Mountain Men, Epicurean Delight: The Life and Times of James Beard, and The L. L. Bean Book of New New England Cookery. ... Read more

Book Description

Historically, it is the land of the bison. But the land across which these powerful herds once thundered has been transformed. We know it today by such names as Montana, Wyoming, Dakota, western Iowa, and Nebraska-but it is really buffalo country, the land of the big sky rivers.

This book is a tale of two rivers, a history of the majestic Missouri and how it was once wedded to the Yellowstone. Though quite different today-one dammed into reservoirs, the other unregulated with a semblance of wildness-they were once linked ecologically, geographically, and historically. Then in the twentieth century, Euro-Americans dismantled many of these connections and attempted to uncouplethe streams.

Viewing the rivers and their surrounding lands as a living system, Robert Kelley Schneiders focuses on four components within the Upper Missouri bioregion-the Missouri River valley, the Yellowstone River valley, Homo sapiens, and bison-to show the significance of their interaction over the past two hundred years.

To frame his story, Schneiders goes back to the nineteenth-century journals of fur traders and settlers, and in the record of flora, fauna, floods, and human activity he finds evidence of rapid and disruptive change. Bison once had the greatest influence on the land, and Schneiders depicts an original bison and Indian trail network on which were overlaid the first forts and towns and then the railroads, highways, and reservoirs that reconfigured the region forever.

Schneiders explains how these geographical constructs interacted with larger demographic and economic trends in the twentieth-century West, as dams and their resultant reservoirs enhanced the federal presence in the Dakotas and eastern Montana. He describes human encroachment on the rivers and tells why the Corps of Engineers dammed the Missouri but spared the Yellowstone. The engineers and their backers have so completely engineered the Missouri that few people today think of it as anything other than water. But we can reestablish our bonds to the river if we decide to let it flow once again, argues Schneiders. Removing the dams on the Missouri is the first step toward reasserting localism and grassroots democracy.

In what was once buffalo country, a dormant ecology awaits rebirth. A major work of environmental history, Big Sky Rivers offers a challenging vision for the future of the Upper Missouri bioregion. ... Read more

Book Description

The exploration of Canadas national river conservationsystem in its first ten years.Their spirit of place is captured in river songs, folktales and Canadian literature, with colour photographs and hand-drawn maps. Recipient of the 1996 Natural Resources Council of America Award (first time ever awarded in Canada). ... Read more

Book Description

pages (all in color), 9 7/8 x 7 1/2.
... Read more

Reviews (1)

A wonderful evocation of flyfishing and landscape.
NORTH BANK explores the patterns and the feelings of recreating a home place. After the author and his wife buy a home beside the Rogue River, he sets about discovering the locale--the hillsides, the neighbors, the rivers, the fly-fishing riffles. What began as strange landscape gradually takes on a familiar and valued quality. This book engages the process of rediscovery that we all experience, in some form, when we move from one place to another and set about putting down new roots. Because the author loves rivers and flyfishing, his particular process has much to do with the rivers and smaller coastal streams of the region. But there is more than fishing here. A wonderful read. ... Read more

Reviews (3)

The beauty and mystery of the river...
"Wildstream", an up to date, thorough volume of the natural history of streams and rivers, is colorfully and articulately written by Dr. Thomas F. Waters, professor emeritus of the University of Minnesota.

Clearly a lifetime of work exhibits here his passion for understanding the history of the free flowing river and his passion for preserving natural resources. He has gone beyond his calling as a scientist, biologist, naturalist, writer, teacher ... and has proven his expertise by now sharing this wealth of knowledge with others.

This book is for all who appreciate the beauty of the river and desire to quench their thirst for understanding those "lovely living silver strands we call rivers"

Wildstream, A Natural History ......
I reviewed this book before and the rating is wrong. It should be 5 Stars.

Informative and Inspirational
This book will delight both the angler and scientist. He talks about the ecology of streams, the setting, types of fish and the challenges facing rivers today. He also, in a series of Sketches, explores river lore. This book fosters an understanding and appreciation for rivers and is useful for high school biology students to postgraduates. An excellent book for those who love rivers. ... Read more

Book Description

In 1996 award-winning author and photographer Michael Collier set out in his forty-year-old Cessna seeking an expanded understanding and perspective on the Colorado River Basin - a region spanning the states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and California - which he had come to know intimately through twenty-five years of river running.Twelve thousand photographs and more than a year later, Collier hadlearned another way of knowing that magnificent landscape and now shares his altered vision. For the first time, through this astonishing collection of aerial photographs, the 244,000 square miles of the basin, including its tributaries and the lands adjacent to them, can be seen for what they are: an integrated bioregion with a natural history fascinating in its complexity and a majestic beauty astounding in its diversity.These are images that provide unforgettable lessons in transcending our often delimiting cultural, political, and scientific worldviews. Flying over the Painted Desert at 150 miles per hour, Collier observes and photographs the entire life span of a thunderstorm: the weighty anvil cloud emptying itself on a parched redrock escarpment and, a few miles downstream, the ensuing flash flood, an erosive tumult of water and detritus.Above the Escalante Canyon, he captures the sinuous, incised meanders of the river, the choreography of a dance twenty million years old between relentless water and uplifting bedrock.The waters of the Colorado River now rarely reach the Sea of Cortez, depleted as they are by hundreds of upstream reservoirs and diversions - and Collier documents this as well: the stark, muddy delta of the river; the feathery channels that remain as the tides withdraw back to the sea. One hundred forty captivating images are accompanied by six essays, written by experts in various fields of natural history and ecology, that illuminate chosen aspects of the landscape: the life cycle of a razorback sucker; the conditions that shape the meanders of a river; the sensory feast of rock, air, water, leaf, and bird that may nourish the human soul.WATER, EARTH, AND SKY is a mosaic of splendid parts, a unique and dynamic assemblage like the Colorado River basin itself, which, viewed from the right distance, resolves itself into the patterns that make it a marvelous and inspiring whole. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

A drop-dead gorgeous book
This is one of the most beautiful books I've ever seen. I wish they would have given details on the printing process for this book. I've never seen such vibrant, sharp, photographs in a book. They look almost as good as professionally done prints on photographic paper. As for the artistic merit of the photographs themselves, they are wonderful, something to get lost in. ... Read more

Publisher

This issue follows the course of the Yukon from Fortymile, nearthe Canadian border, down river to Holy Cross, where the interior givesway to the delta and the land of the Athabascan blends with that of theEskimo. With fold-out map and index.96 pages. ... Read more

Book Description

A handbook that offers a practical understanding of how to influence government decisions about hydropower development on the nation's rivers. ... Read more

Reviews (1)

465 Miles of Beauty
From the Columbia's mouth on the Pacific to the rock-trimmed canyons of the Lower Snake River, the Columbia-Snake River Inland Waterway is 465 miles of spectacular scenery and historic attractions. Authors Sharlene and Ted Nelson take you to the most interesting and beautiful places along the river, offering anecdotes and stories as well as information about driving, cruise ships, boating, and accommodations. Includes photos and maps. ... Read more