Through The Howling Wilderness

A great military history about the early days of the American Revolution, Thomas A. Desjardin's Through a Howling Wilderness is also a timeless adventure narrative that tells of heroic acts, men pitted against nature's fury, and a fledgling nation's fight against a tyrannical oppressor. Before Benedict Arnold was branded a traitor, he was one of the colonies' most valuable leaders. In September 1775, eleven hundred soldiers boarded ships in Massachusetts, bound for the Maine wilderness. They had volunteered for a secret mission, under Arnold's command to march and paddle nearly two hundred miles and seize British Quebec. Before they reached the Canadian border, hundreds died, a hurricane destroyed canoes and equipment and many deserted. In the midst of a howling blizzard, the remaining troops attacked Quebec and almost took Canada from the British simultaneously weakening the British hand against Washington. With the enigmatic Benedict Arnold at its center, Desjardin has written one of the great American adventure stories.

Through the Howling Wilderness is replete with in-depth coverage on the geography of the region, the Congressional hearings after the Campaign, and the Confederate defenses in the Red River Valley.

A major new account of Pākehā and the land in New Zealand. During the nineteenth century European settlers transformed the environment of New Zealand’s South Island. They diverted streams and drained marshes, burned native vegetation and planted hedges and grasses, stocked farms with sheep and cattle and poured on fertiliser. In Home in the Howling Wilderness Peter Holland undertakes a deep history of that settlement to answer key questions about New Zealand’s ecological transformation. Did the settlers pursue farming regardless of the ecological consequences? Did they impose European plants, animals and farming methods on a very different environment? And did their efforts lead to the erosion, rabbit plagues and declining soil fertility of the late nineteenth century? Drawing on letter books and ledgers, diaries and journals, Peter Holland reveals how the first European settlers learned about their new environment: talking to Māori and other Pākehā, observing weather patterns and the shifting populations of rabbits, reading newspapers and going to lectures at the Mechanics’ Institute. Examining the knowledge they built up by these routes, Holland lays out how the settlers grappled with droughts and floods, worked out which plants and animals made sense, and worked out how to beat erosion and rabbits. As the New Zealand environment threw up surprise after surprise, the settlers who succeeded in farming were those who listened closely to the environment. They learned to predict weather more accurately, to farm differently with different soil types, to use different techniques of land management. In its depth and breadth of research, and with a visual component of 16 photographs and 22 figures, Home in the Howling Wilderness is a major new account of Pākehā and the land in New Zealand. --Publisher's information.

Years after losing his lower right leg in a motorcycle crash, Robert Kull traveled to a remote island in Patagonia's coastal wilderness with equipment and supplies to live alone for a year. He sought to explore the effects of deep solitude on the body and mind and to find the spiritual answers he'd been seeking all his life. With only a cat and his thoughts as companions, he wrestled with inner storms while the wild forces of nature raged around him. The physical challenges were immense, but the struggles of mind and spirit pushed him even further. Solitude: Seeking Wisdom in Extremes is the diary of Kull's tumultuous year. Chronicling a life distilled to its essence, Solitude is also a philosophical meditation on the tensions between nature and technology, isolation and society. With humor and brutal honesty, Kull explores the pain and longing we typically avoid in our frantically busy lives as well as the peace and wonder that arise once we strip away our distractions. He describes the enormous Patagonia wilderness with poetic attention, transporting the reader directly into both his inner and outer experiences.