Yearning Wild

Tells how the author, who moved to Alaska to pursue his childhood dream of living in the wilds of the last American frontier, became committed to the cause of wilderness preservation after witnessing environmental depredation there and in his subsequent travels around the world.

Tucked away in the northeastern corner of Alaska is one of the most contested landscapes in all of North America: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Considered sacred by Indigenous peoples in Alaska and Canada and treasured by environmentalists, the refuge provides life-sustaining habitat for caribou, polar bears, migratory birds, and other species. For decades, though, the fossil fuel industry and powerful politicians have sought to turn this unique ecosystem into an oil field. Defending the Arctic Refuge tells the improbable story of how the people fought back. At the center of the story is the unlikely figure of Lenny Kohm (1939–2014), a former jazz drummer and aspiring photographer who passionately committed himself to Arctic Refuge activism. With the aid of a trusty slide show, Kohm and representatives of the Gwich'in Nation traveled across the United States to mobilize grassroots opposition to oil drilling. From Indigenous villages north of the Arctic Circle to Capitol Hill and many places in between, this book shows how Kohm and Gwich'in leaders and environmental activists helped build a political movement that transformed the debate into a struggle for environmental justice. In its final weeks, the Trump administration fulfilled a long-sought dream of drilling proponents: leasing much of the Arctic Refuge coastal plain for fossil fuel development. Yet the fight to protect this place is certainly not over. Defending the Arctic Refuge traces the history of a movement that is alive today—and that will continue to galvanize diverse groups to safeguard this threatened land.

Now Read On brings together literatures in English from around the world, combining an excellent choice of texts with sound methodological guidance.It contains approximately eighty texts and extracts from countries andcontinents including: *Africa *Australia *Great Britain *India *Malaysia *New Zealand *Philippines *Singapore Designed as course for both native and non-native English-speakers in how to read literature, this anthology begins with shorter starter texts and questions, and develops in complexity as the reader progresses through the book. Now Read On provides the user with *hands-on experience of working with a plurality of texts from around the world *questions, exercises, pointers and commentary, accompanying all the passages of literature, and providing the student with the tools and confidence to critically evaluate any text *an understanding of the major genres - poetry, short stories, drama and novels.

Digging into vivid moments within the metaphor of archaeology, Bruce Mill's remarkable memoir maps the artifacts of life as a father of a boy with autism, and as a boy himself growing up in rural Iowa. An Archaeology of Yearning is not ultimately about autism; instead it reaches into the world of human connection and illuminates how storytelling and an understanding of language keep that connection alive. On some nights, I awake as if in a cave and think of the future. Mary and I will exist as memories: a quick glimpse of arms reaching toward another's shoulders or face, an image of a hand upon a book, the scent of our bodies after the sweat of sleep, the tone of our young and old voices calling our daughter or son from distant rooms or down a stair. Eventually I arrive on the image of my son, in some new home. No matter how much I have written or catalogued or kept in images, I know that the site of his life and mine will inevitably remain fragments and that only a visitor can bring us to life. Bruce Mills has published scholarly books and articles on nineteenth-century American writings and co-edited a collection of essays by siblings of those on the autism spectrum. His creative nonfiction has appeared in The Georgia Review and New England Review. He teaches in the English Department at Kalamazoo College.

Americans have had an enduring yet ambivalent obsession with the West as both a place and a state of mind. Michael L. Johnson considers how that obsession originated, how it has determined attitudes toward and activities in the West, and how it has changed over the centuries.