Peter J. Marchand

Peter J. Marchand's Life in the Cold, remains the one book that offers a comprehensive picture of the interactions of plants and animals-including humans-with their cold-weather environment. Focusing on the problems of "winter-active" organisms, Marchand illuminates the many challenges of sustaining life in places that demand extraordinary adaptations. The fourth edition of this classic text includes a new chapter on climate change and its effects on plants and animals wintering in the North.

With a revealing memoir and striking photographs, Peter J. Marchand reflects on the Beja nomads of the Red Sea Hills and contemplates the fate of nomadic peoples the world over, as population growth and economic forces chip away at the edges of indigenous cultures everywhere. "Little by little," he writes, these encroachments exact their toll on the voiceless and invisible, sapping the life of their culture like an ancient tree silently dying one root at a time." It is a regretable loss, Marchand suggests, as indigenous cultures preserve a rich store of ideas and values that might one day come to our rescue.

When Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971, eighty million acres were flagged as possible national park land. Field expeditions were tasked with recording what was contained in these vast acres. Under this decree, five men were sent into the sprawling, roadless Interior of Alaska, unsure of what they'd encounter and ultimately responsible for the fate of four thousand pristine acres. Life and Times of a Big River follows Peter J. Marchand and his team of biologists as they set out to explore the land that would ultimately become the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. Their encounters with strange plants, rare insects, and little-known mammals bring to life a land once thought to be static and monotonous. And their struggles to navigate and adapt to an unforgiving environment capture the rigorous demands of remote field work. Weaving in and out of March - and's narrative is an account of the natural and cultural history of the area as it relates to the expedition and the region's Native peoples. Life and Times of a Big River chronicles the riveting, one-of-a-kind journey of uncertainty and discovery of a disparate (and at one point desperate) group of biologists.

Rarely visited by outsiders, the ranchers of the Sierra de la Giganta in Baja California Sur live much as their ancestors have for the past two centuries. They raise goats and cattle and grow a magnificent variety of fruits, vegetables, and flowers. In this book a gifted photojournalist introduces us to individual ranchers and their families and describes their traditional practices and the ways they have adapted to twenty-first-century challenges and technological advances. Marchand’s photographs and text are both informative and intimate. His introduction to this little-known corner of Mexico will delight travelers and scholars alike.