Saturday, July 14, 2012

Nature Pages: The Natural Navigator


British expeditionist Tristan Gooley has sailed across oceans, flown  between continents, and climbed many of the world's tallest mountains using the natural navigation skills described in this book.

While humans have been making their way from place to place for a millenia, there is no record of how the earliest travelers navigated, or how often they got lost. Accounts of navigation methods don't show up in anyone's literature until about a thousand years ago.

Gooley's obsession with the art of navigation began as an empowered 10-year-old sailing a dinghy. "I had garnered the skills to go wherever I wanted. Not where my teachers told me to go, not where my parents wanted me to go, but where I wanted to go."

This book explains how to find your way without GPS or even compasses, but with shadows, stars, tides, plants, clouds, the moon, the sun and wild animals. Also known as ‘wayfinding,’ natural navigation techniques can be used on land, sea or in mid-air.

The Rediscovered Art of Letting Nature Be Your Guide
by Tristan Gooley
Linden Publishing, 2012 
Nature Writing and Natural Histories
The Nature Pages
Science Writing
Guidebooks and How-to Titles

Friday, July 13, 2012

New Guides: Llewellyn's 2013 Herbal Almanac


Spice up your favorite dishes with French tarragon. Chase away stress with delicious soup. There are hundreds of ways to benefit from nature’s most versatile plants inside Llewellyn’s Herbal Almanac.

This treasury of innovative herbal ideas spans five categories: gardening, cooking, crafts, health/ beauty, and myth/lore.

Learn about endangered herbs, hyssop, and the apple in Nordic ritual. Discover how to whip up antioxidant-rich purple passion parfait, use herbs in energetic healing, relieve dry skin with a borage face pack, treat your feet to a wormwood bath, turn your garden into a wildlife paradise with minimal effort and cost, and much more.

Herbs for Growing & Gathering, Cooking & Crafts, Health & Beauty, History,
Myth & Lore
by Llewellyn
Llewellyn Publications, 2012



Thursday, July 12, 2012

Review: A Montana Table


Montana's famed resort, Chico Hot Springs, is celebrated in this volume with 100 of the most popular recipes from its well respected kitchen . Following a brief history of Chico, the book presents recipes from caramel rolls at breakfast to a Beef Wellington dinner and a Flaming Orange dessert. Special dinners are profiled and the sauces, stocks and dressings used by the chefs are detailed.

Located in Paradise Valley, just north of Yellowstone National Park, Chico Hot Springs is a remote resort most noted for its natural hot water pools. Only in the last 15 years or so has Chico's restaurant, now upscale with a classic and regional menu, begun to rival the popularity of its baths.

Recipes from Chico Hot Springs Resort 
by Seabring Davis 
Globe Pequot Press, 2003

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Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Review ~ Forks Over Knives

This book is a companion to the documentary "Forks Over Knives," which makes the claim that the most serious diseases of our time - cancer, diabetes, angina - can be controlled or prevented by not eating animal-based and processed foods. 


Forks Over Knives, and the recipes in this book, promote a plant-based diet using whole foods. The diet is a life-long commitment to minimally processed fruits, vegetables, whole grains, tubers, and legumes. Animal-based foods such as meat (including poultry and fish), dairy, and eggs are excluded or minimized along with refined foods such as bleached flour, refined sugar, and most oils.

The documentary and the diet are based on the research of two Drs. T. Colin Campbell and Caldwell B. Esselstyn, who believe a diet of plant-based food and grains can both prevent and reverse heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and various cancers. Both doctors contribute to this book along with a half dozen other medical professionals. The editor, Gene Stone, authored The Secrets of People Who Never Get Sick.

The Plant-Based Way to Health
by Gene Stone
The Experiment, 2011
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Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Nature Pages: The Mountain and the Fathers



The Mountain and The Fathers explores the life of boys and men in the
unforgiving, harsh world north of the Bull Mountains of eastern Montana in
a drought afflicted area called the Big Dry, a land that chews up old and
young alike.

Joe Wilkins was born into this world, raised by a young mother and elderly
grandfather following the untimely death of his father. That early loss
stretches out across the Big Dry, and Wilkins uses his own story and those
of the young boys and men growing up around him to examine the violence,
confusion, and rural poverty found in this distinctly American landscape.

Growing Up on The Big Dry
by Joe Wilkins
Counterpoint, 2012





Saturday, June 30, 2012

Now Cooking with The Farmer's Market Guide


Eat fresh, seasonal, and locally-grown produce. That is what a farmers market encourages you to do and so does this new cookbook. With 251 color images, it is filled with lots of traditional, time-tested, and delicious recipes for everything from corn and brussels sprouts to tomatoes and rutabaga.

Small and portable, you can take this book to the market, identify the item by photograph, read a brief description, and see at a glance the most common ways for preparing the vegetable.

With Identification Guide and Recipes
by Jennifer Loustau
Schiffer Publishing, 2012

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Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Now exploring Schelling's Game Theory


Now reading with the Outrider Reading Group ~
Schelling's Game Theory: How to Make Decisions by Robert Dodge

Thomas Schelling, who wrote the foreword for this book, won the Nobel Prize in economics for "having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis." This came after he had taught a course in game theory and rational choice to advanced students and government officials for 45 years.

In this book, Robert Dodge provides in language for a broad audience, the concepts that Schelling taught.

How to Make Decisions
by Robert Dodge
Oxford University Press, 2012