Kirjahaku

To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero - or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story - an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.

THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES tells of Craig Childs' own chilling experiences among the grizzlies of the Arctic, sharks off the coast of British Columbia and in the turquoise waters of Central America, jaguars in the bush of northern Mexico, mountain lions, elk, Bighorn Sheep, and others. More than chilling, however, these stories are lyrical, enchanting, and reach beyond what one commonly assumes an "animal story" is or should be. THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES is a book about another world that exists alongside our own, an entire realm of languages and interactions that humans rarely get the chance to witness. "The author has a talent for bringing his encounters home and fashioning them into chromatic, immediate accounts. Some of the experiences chronicled here are quite simply breath-catching and heart-gladdening...Each of these pieces is a personal invitation to get outdoors and celebrate all things furred, feathered and scaled."-Kirkus Reviews "Eloquent...Childs's captivating essays, rich in sensuous imagery...are hauntingly beautiful and replete with evocative observations of animal life."-Publishers Weekly (starred)

A naturalist's physical and philosophical exploration of the American Southwest considers such regions as the Sierra Madre Mountains, the canyons of Utah, the White Mountain Apache Reservation, and a deserted island in the Sea of Cortez. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.

From the author of Apocalyptic Planet comes a vivid travelogue through prehistory, that traces the arrival of the first people in North America at least twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that tell of their lives and fates. In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era. The lower sea levels of the Ice Age exposed a vast land bridge between Asia and North America, but the land bridge was not the only way across. Different people arrived from different directions, and not all at the same time. The first explorers of the New World were few, their encampments fleeting. The continent they reached had no people but was inhabited by megafauna--mastodons, giant bears, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, five-hundred-pound panthers, enormous bison, and sloths that stood one story tall. The first people were hunters--Paleolithic spear points are still encrusted with the proteins of their prey--but they were wildly outnumbered and many would themselves have been prey to the much larger animals.Atlas of a Lost World chronicles the last millennia of the Ice Age, the violent oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans' chances for survival. A blend of science and personal narrative reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Across unexplored landscapes yet to be peopled, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light.

"Sumptuous and vivid in every instance. Childs writes with enviable concision and richness of depth in these miniature essays."--THE UTAH REVIEWWriter and adventurer Craig Childs dwells upon desert icons--human, animal, and otherwise--in these contemplative and visceral essays. From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons--a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, white seashells in dry desert sand, boulders impossibly balanced. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more-than-human.

2023 Southwest Books of the Year winner, 2023 Reading the West Nonfiction Award winner, Foreword INDIES Silver Award winner, and Colorado Book Award finalist"Childs guides readers through a long lived in landscape and helps us see more clearly what's been drawn upon the ancient stones."--CAMILLE T. DUNGYCraig Childs bears witness to rock art of the Colorado Plateau--bighorn sheep pecked behind boulders, tiny spirals in stone, human figures with upraised arms shifting with the desert light, each one a portal to the open mouth of time. With a spirit of generosity, humility, and love of the arid, intricate landscapes of the desert Southwest, Childs sets these ancient communications in context, inviting readers to look and listen deeply.

"Few writers can better express the strange vitality of desert landscapes than Childs."--PUBLISHERS WEEKLYOriginally published over twenty-five years ago, Stone Desert brings the wonder and wildness of one of our nation's most geologically and culturally unique national parks to readers everywhere. With a new introduction by the author, this edition includes Craig Childs's original journal--written over a winter in Canyonlands National Park and complete with pen-and-ink sketches--from which Stone Desert originated. Join Childs as he hikes the high mesas, navigates the winding canyons, and witnesses the ancient rock art of Utah's most inscrutable and remote slickrock desert.