Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon by Melissa L. Sevigny. This is a great true story of two female botonists at the Univ. of Michigan, who in 1938 chartered with a river rafter to go through the Grand Canyon on the Colorado river. The aim was to catalog the botony of the canyon, which had not been done previously. They assumed they would find new species in this isolated area and they were right. The 2 women and 4 men started at the Green river and then went down the Colorado to Lake Mead. This was long before the Glen Canyon damn was built so this is a great story of the wild Colorado. At that time only a handful of people had rafted the Colorado, and they were the first women to do so.

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

Vesper Flights by Helen Macdonald

Here latest after the amazing best seller H is for Hawk, this collection of essays continues to provide excellent nature writing and allows the author to explore themes beyond birds, though that is mostly what she focuses on. While H dealt specifically with how she dealt with the grief of her father's passing, this collection allows her to explore many tangents of the natural world. She also addresses some pressing issues of our natural environment that are now important; the disapearance of many natural habitats and the effects of climate change.

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel

The amazing story of one of the greatest art thiefs in history. This takes place in the 1990s and 2000s and I guess was a big story in Europe, where it all took place, but some how never made it into US media stories, at least that I remember. The 'thief' got away with the most amazing crimes for years, until stupid mistakes tripped him up. A complicated family psychology adds to the story, and an amazing reaction from the authorities. The fact that he never stole for profit helps to illustrate the uniqueness of this story.

Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent...and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong by Bob Thompson

Revolutionary Roads: Searching for the War That Made America Independent...and All the Places It Could Have Gone Terribly Wrong by Bob Thompson

In a similar vein to Travels with George, this books takes the reader to what are the present day situation of the geography that was the American Revolution. Told in a friendly style the author examines many of the personalities of the revolution, Benedict Arnold, Lafayette etc.

Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer

Capote's Women: A True Story of Love, Betrayal, and a Swan Song for an Era by Laurence Leamer The accounting of the women that Capote called his 'swans', glamorous trend setting women of the 50s through the 80s that he was friends with and that set the tone for a certain segment of society. These women were alos the subject of the unfinished Capote book about them and was going to be dishy and blast open their world, which did not need blasting. The women are names that you know, Babe Paley, Lee Radziwell, Joanna Carson etc their real story is one of not glamor but trying to get by in the sexist world the lived in while keeping a front of Vogue cover sophistication. A narrow slice of society by an easy one to read about.

Dry River (essay)

The Gila river runs from east to west, just south of Phoenix. At one time in history the river ran water into the Colorado river, on its way to the Sea of Cortez. However, it was mostly seasonal, and rarely has water in the river for the past 100 years. During WW2 in the early 1940s there was a large POW camp just south of Phoenix. There were several thousand German and Italian prisoners being kept at this camp. A few of the prisoners got their hands on a map of Arizona, and saw that just south of them was something called the Gila River. The assumed where there is a river there are boats, so they came up with a scheme to escape the camp, make it to the river and steal a boat where they could go west on the Gila River and meet up with the Colorado and navigate to the Sea of Cortez. About 6 of them escaped and they made it to the river, of course only to find that they were at a dry sandy ditch. The prisoners were rather quickly apprehended and returned to the camp.

Each year all Fulbright scholars who are coming to the US come to the Univ. of AZ in August for an orientation. This is run by the Center for English as a Second Lanuage. They aks for volunteers to help out with social events for the scholars, so that on weekends they can have some non academic experiences. These scholars are from all over the world, south america, europe, asia. One year on a Sunday I volunteered to go with the group to the farmer's market at St. Phillips which is right on the Rillito river. This was right at a time when we were having a big monsoon season, the Rillito was running bank to bank with water. Those of us who live in Tucson were freaking out at how much water was in the river. The scholars from all over the world thought we were nuts, they couldn't understand why it was a big deal to have water in a river.

Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears

Oscar Wars: A History of Hollywood in Gold, Sweat, and Tears by Micahel Schulman. As the title says, a history of the Oscars. Interesting enough when the Academy of Motion pictures began it was more of a guild, and the Oscars were a very minor part of the organization. This was all overshadowed by SAG and the Writers Guild as time went on, and the Oscars became a force of its own. Any fan of movies will find something interesting in this book. Many stories of the films that everyone thought should have won best picture but didn't, and the many personalities that were of course involved.