(back cover):
Being able to tie your own flies gives an added dimension to the already absorbing hobby of fly fishing. This foolproof book is a complete guide to making 50 versatile flies for trout and salmon fishing.
Each featured fly includes close-up shots and an explanation of its component parts, from threads and yarns to beads, tinsels, and feathers. A full-page photograph is also presented.
Clear instructions allow you to master the core techniques quickly, and detailed photographs take you through every stage of the process, from dubbing the body to fixing the hook.
Learn how to make sturdy dry flies, wet flies, bugs, nymphs, hairwings, and streamers. Each entry indicates where the fly should sit in the water, and which fish it is best used to catch.
PETER GATHERCOLE is one of Britain's leading fly dressers, and he is also a popular photographer and writer of articles and books on game fishing.. His work has appeared in "Trout and Salmon "and many other magazines, and his previous books include "The Sotheby's Guide to Fly Fishing for Trout, Catch That Fish, "and the hugely successful "The Fly Tying Bible."

Published to rave reviews in hardcover and purchased by DreamWorks in a major film deal, The Big One is a spellbinding and richly atmospheric work of narrative journalism in the tradition of Friday Night Lights. Here is the story of a community--Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts--and a sporting event--the island's legendary Striped Bass & Bluefish Derby--that is rendered with the same depth, color, and emotional power of the best fiction. Among the characters, we meet: Dick Hathaway, a crotchety legend who once caught a bluefish from a helicopter and was ultimately banned for cheating; Janet Messineo, a recovering alcoholic who says that striped bass saved her life; Buddy Vanderhoop, a boastful Native American charter captain who guides celebrity anglers like Keith Richards and Spike Lee; and Wyatt Jenkinson, a nine-year-old fishing fanatic whose mother is battling brain cancer. At the center of it all is five-time winner Lev Wlodyka, a cagey local whose next fish will spark a storm of controversy and throw the tournament into turmoil. Much more than just a book for fishing enthusiasts, The Big One is an exhilarating story of passion and obsession--and a powerful testament to the dreams that keep us all going.

Fisherman Mark Spitzer takes readers on an action-packed investigation of the most fierce and fearsome freshwater grotesques of the American West ever to inspire both hatred and fascination. Through the lenses of history, folklore, biology, ecology, and politics, Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West depicts the environmental destruction plaguing the most maligned creatures in our midst while subtly interweaving Spitzer's experiences of personal tragedy and self-discovery. Join Spitzer as he noodles for flathead catfish in Oklahoma, snags paddlefish in Missouri, trotline- and electro-fishes American eels in Arkansas, studies razorback suckers in Arizona, bounty hunts for pikeminnows in Washington State, attends a burbot festival in Utah, stirs up Asian carp in Kansas, and breaks the state record for the largest yellow bullhead ever caught in Nebraska. By examining freakish links in a vital chain and working with specialists in the field, Spitzer portrays a planet in environmental crisis and dispels the illusion that our actions don't result in long-term, toxic consequences. Spitzer offers models for fisheries and provides other sources of hope in this informative epic of redemption that ultimately celebrates the wild and resilient beauty and remaining possibilities of the American West. Watch a book trailer. Visit the Where in the West is Mark Spitzer? blog series for additional reading and a look at more photographs not included in the book.

This is a compendium of forty-five of Barry Thornton's best article and columns on fishing with flies in the Northwest. Barry focuses on three main angling opportunities -- saltwater fly fishing for Pacific salmon, fly fishing for steelhead and still water fly fishing for rainbow trout. These are the primary fishing sports in the region and provide a worthy challenge for those anglers who have been drawn to fly fishing. The anthology's lively and easy-to-read style is complemented by a vivid thirty-two-page colour section. Full of valuable information, tips on tackle, amusing anecdotes and useful reminders, Fly Fishing will reel-in readers in pursuit of trophy fish.

Kenneth Chase traces the history of firearms from their invention in China in the 1100s to the 1700s, when European firearms had become clearly superior. In Firearms, Chase asks why it was the Europeans who perfected firearms, not the Chinese, and answers this question by looking at how firearms were used throughout the world. Early firearms were restricted to infantry and siege warfare, limiting their use outside of Europe and Japan. Steppe and desert nomads imposed a different style of warfare on the Middle East, India, and China--a style incompatible with firearms. By the time that better firearms allowed these regions to turn the tables on the nomads, Japan's self-imposed isolation left Europe with no rival in firearms design, production, or use, with lasting consequences. After earning his doctorate from Harvard in the area of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and traveling extensively in Asia, Kenneth Chase pursued a career in the law. His interest in history endures unabated, however, and after nine years of research on firearms, he is now working on a history of international trade in the Indian Ocean region in the 1300s and 1400s.

Weapons have been a source of political and legal debate for centuries. Aristotle considered the possession of arms a fundamental source of political power and wrote that tyrants ""mistrust the people and deprive them of their arms."" Today ownership of weapons - whether handguns or military-grade assault weapons - poses more acute legal problems than ever before. In this volume, the editors' introduction traces the history of gun control in the United States, arguing that until the 1980s courts upheld reasonable gun control measures. The contributors confront urgent questions, among them the usefulness of history as a guide in ongoing struggles over gun regulation, the changing meaning of the Second Amendment, the perspective of law enforcement on guns and gun control law, and individual and relational perspectives on gun rights. The contributors include the editors and Carl T. Bogus, Jennifer Carlson, Saul Cornell, Darrell A.H. Miller, Laura Beth Nielsen, and Katherine Shaw.

Flycasting, that key pre-requisite to all successful trout and salmon fishing, can be a stumbling block for many anglers. This clear, well-illustrated guidebook will show you, step-by-step, how to execute all the casts you will ever need: from the basic overhead cast to the double-handed Spey cast, and from the simple roll cast to the flamboyant snake cast, and many more.

It is now more than ten years since Bruce Brown began the Olympic Peninsula wanderings that led him to write this powerful account of how greed, indifference and environmental mismanagement have threatened the survival of the wild Pacific salmon and, as a result, the region's ecology and its people. Acclaimed by critics who likened it to Coming Into the Country by John McPhee and Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, Mountain in the Clouds has become a classic of natural history. As the struggle to protect Northwest salmon runs and the urgency of the fight against environmental deterioration escalates, Mountain in the Clouds remains an important and illuminating story, as timely now as when it was first written.