The real stories behind the scenery of America's national parks For twelve years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world Fortunately, Andrea survived it. In this graphic and yet surprisingly funny account of her and others' extraordinary careers, Lankford unveils a world in which park rangers struggle to maintain their idealism in the face of death, disillusionment, and the loss of a comrade killed while holding that thin green line between protecting the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from each other. Ranger Confidential is the story behind the scenery of the nation's crown jewels--Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smokies, Denali. In these iconic landscapes, where nature and humanity constantly collide, scenery can be as cruel as it is redemptive.

An Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire ( a class of knighthood). Tremain spent the 17 years before 1989 running Boston's historic Copley Plaza Hotel. He used his international contacts and social and business acumen to turn the Copley from a faltering property into a lucrative draw for the prosperous and photogenic. Tremain became a celebrity. He had a television show called Words and Music and interviewed many famous people including Luciano Pavarotti, Sebastian Cabot, Peter Falk, Elizabeth Taylor and the author, Thornton Wilder. His Cannes townhouse on the French Riviera even appeared on television's "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous." In October, 2009 Tremain hosted a television show on WXEL in the Palm Beaches entitled "Meet the Chef." Harking back to the interview with the Serendipity Editor of the Palm Beach Society Magazine, Tremain said, "And a final answer to a question which you haven't asked. What would I still like to do? I would like to publish a book called Without Reservation-a fun look at my experiences in the hotel business. Well, here it is.

The comprehensive guide to the place that brought sport climbing to North America--
a full-color, thoroughly updated new edition Smith Rock State Park. It was on the impressive crags of this Oregon hideaway that American sport climbing came into its own, and to this day, some of the hardest climbs in the United States are found on these walls. Alan Watts, who has played a leading role in the development of this popular rock-climbing destination, details more than 1,700 routes at Smith Rock and the surrounding area. This new edition updates hundreds of routes, includes hundreds of new ones, and has new photos of each crag, wall, and route. No other guide is as comprehensive or thorough, and no author more respected for his intimate knowledge of one of the world's most popular climbing destinations.