A classic since its first publication in 1947, Adventures with a Texas Naturalist distills a lifetime of patient observations of the natural world. This reprint contains a new introduction by noted nature writer Rick Bass.

The Brazos River and the Rio Grande: what lies between are physical and cultural geographies stretching south from the Texas Hill Country to the border of Mexico, west across the Trans-Pecos, and up through Northern New Mexico into Colorado. Photographer Jerod Foster and poet John Poch praise and wonder along these varied waterways and across the landscapes they host. The result is communion-a synergy of imagery in story and story in imagery, finding unexpected form, depths, and meaning much as rivers themselves are honed in the pull of gravity and texture.

Rick Bass's Fortunate Son is a literary tour of the Lone Star State by a native Texan of exceptional talent. The essays encompass a Texas that is both lost and found, past and present. The stories reach from Galveston Bay to the Hill Country outside Austin, and from Houston in the 1960s to today. They are bound together by a deep love and a keen eye for the land and its people and by an appreciation for what is given, a ruefulness for what is lost, and a commitment to save what can be saved. "This is a journalist's Texas scrapbook, then: a firefighting story, a musical pilgrimage, a ramble in Texas's tiniest public wilderness (one of only five in the entire state). Fishing with my father and uncle on a lake that is partly in Texas and partly in Louisiana; flying around the borders of Texas--usually defined by water, a resource that will vanish in much of the state within our lifetime; hanging out at my parents' cattle farm down near Goliad; reading the work of Texans before me."--from the Introduction

"An extraordinary exploration and meditation . . . Bass] transports us along on this wonder-filled tour, full of hardness and hope, into an otherworldly place that mirrors our own." --"National Geographic Traveler"
Black rhinos are not actually black. They are, however, giant animals with tiny eyes, feet the diameter of laundry baskets, and horns that are prized for both their aesthetic and medicinal qualities. Until recently, these creatures were perched on the edge of extinction, their numbers dwindling as they succumbed to poachers and the ravages of civil war. Now their numbers are rising, thanks to a groundbreaking new conservation method from the Save the Rhino Trust: make sure that rhinos are worth more alive than dead.
Rick Bass, who has long worn the uneasy mantle of both activist and hunter, traveled to Namibia to find black rhinos. The tale of his journey provides a deeper understanding of these amazing animals and of just what needs to be done to protect them.
"Bass provides a singularly thoughtful portrait of a unique animal, and a meditation on mankind's relationship to both it and the natural world as a whole." --"Minneapolis Star Tribune"

These thirteen eloquent and engaging essays about camping and canoeing in wild country are among Rick Bass' earliest "nature" writing. Written while he was working as a geologist in Mississippi, "Wild to the Heart" chronicles his journeys from the East to the West, back and forth: loving the dark woods of the deep South, but homesick for the wide open spaces of the West, to which he finally returned.

With contributions from Robert G. Barrier, Robert Beuka, Thomas A rvold Bjerre, Jean W. Cash, Robert Donahoo, Richard Gaughran, Gary Hawkins, Darlin' Neal, Keith Perry, Katherine Powell, John A. Staunton, and Jay Watson

Larry Brown is noted for his subjects--rural life, poverty, war, and the working class--and his spare, gritty style. Brown's oeuvre spans several genres and includes acclaimed novels ("Dirty Work," "Joe," "Father and Son," "The Rabbit Factory," and "A Miracle of Catfish"), short story collections ("Facing the Music," "Big Bad Love"), memoir ("On Fire"), and essay collections ("Billy Ray's Farm"). At the time of his death, Brown (1951-2004) was considered to be one of the finest exemplars of minimalist, raw writing of the contemporary South.

"Larry Brown and the Blue-Collar South" considers the writer's full body of work, placing it in the contexts of southern literature, Mississippi writing, and literary work about the working class. Collectively, the essays explore such subjects as Brown's treatment of class politics, race and racism, the aftereffects of the Vietnam War on American culture, the evolution of the South from a plantation-based economy to a postindustrial one, and male-female relations. The role of Brown's mentors--Ellen Douglas and Barry Hannah--in shaping his work is discussed, as is Brown's connection to such writers as Harry Crews and Dorothy Allison. The volume is one of the first critical studies of a writer whose depth and influence mark him as one of the most well-regarded Mississippi authors.

Jean W. Cash is professor of English at James Madison University. She is the author of "Flannery O'Connor: A Life." Keith Perry is associate professor of English at Dalton State College and the author of "The Kingfish in Fiction: Huey P. Long and the Modern American Novel." Rick Bass is the author of novels and collections of nonfiction and short stories, most recently "The Lives of Rocks: Stories.""

The Hermit's Story is Rick Bass's best and most varied fiction yet, "the work of a seasoned author in full possession of his art and craft" (Denver Post). In this story collection, Bass explores the mysterious and near-mythical connections between man and nature. In the title story, a man and a woman travel beneath the frozen surface of a dry lake; in "The Cave," a couple passes a magical afternoon in an abandoned mine; in "Swans," a woman lights fires along the shore of a freezing pond to warm the five swans living there. The characters in each of these ten stories try to seek out the marrow of life. "[A] fully realized collection of the highest quality" (Baltimore Sun), The Hermit's Storyshows Rick Bass at the top of his form.

From renowned outdoor writer Jim Fergus comes this collection which represents a kind of extended journey across the country from Colorado to Florida and points beyond. From pheasant hunting at Nebraska's Fort Robinson to bone fishing on the flats of Grand Exuma, Bahamas, these 32 essays, arranged by season, chronicle Fergus's most memorable travels hunting and fishing over a period of 6 years. A book about the natural world and man's place in it, The Sporting Road is also a book about relationships, which for Fergus include old friends, new acquaintances, and his trusted yellow lab, Sweetzer.

Rick Bass's dog Colter is the brown dog of the Yaak. Described as a creature almost mythic, the dog charges through the mountain valleys following the scent of game. In this book, Bass gives a history of his years with Colter as a way of understanding what is intuitive in his quest to create art.

The Lost Grizzlies chronicles the ongoing search for proof that a small number of grizzly bears still lives in the isolated mountain wilds of southern Colorado. Rick Bass turns his considerable talents to an evocation of wilderness beauty and the history of human encroachment that may, or may not, have wiped out the last of these massive, solitary bears from their southern range.

On the Road meets Tuesdays with Morrie in this pilgrimage by "an American classic" (Newsweek) to thank his most important mentors through memorable meals and conversations "Some years later, George Plimpton offered to punch me in the nose," recounts Rick Bass, remembering fondly a conversation with the famed Paris Review editor in his office, in which Plimpton, who had been slugged by Archie Moore, offered to connect Bass to a "hoary genealogy" that would include Ali and Frazier. Lineage has always been important to Bass. Before the punch-that-could-have-been, there was his failed bid to become Eudora Welty's lawn boy, and his first meal with Jim Harrison, during which he could barely bring himself to speak. That supper would eventually inspire this book, Rick's years-long pilgrimage to thank his heroes, and to pass on their legacy of mentorship to the next generation. The poignancy of this journey of thanksgiving is intensified by the place in life at which Bass finds himself. He is nearing sixty, his daughters are now grown, and his wife of more than two decades, who accompanied him on that long-ago dinner with Jim Harrison, has called an end to their marriage. In the wake of this loss, Bass sets out, accompanied by two young writers, to recapture the fire, the hunger, that has faded from his life. The Traveling Feast is a book about meeting one's debts in two directions--sending gratitude to the old exemplars, and a few contemporaries, from Peter Matthiessen to David Sedaris and John Berger to Lorrie Moore, while paying it forward to the next generation of writers, believing in and supporting them as Bass was by his own heroes. Each chapter in this fruitful journey recalls the meeting, the meal, and the history--the writer of the past and of the now. From the disastrous pecan tart to the illegally transported elk meat to the photo op gone awry are many resonant moments. What emerges is a guide not only to writing well but to living well, to sucking out all the marrow of life, in Thoreau's immortal phrase. The Traveling Feast is a chronicling of the old ways, a cross-continent pilgrimage to show gratitude for a legacy of American literature and the writers who made it.

In November, countless families across Texas head out for the annual deer hunt, a ritual that spans generations, ethnicities, socioeconomics, and gender as perhaps no other cultural experience in the state. Rick Bass’s family has returned to the same hardscrabble piece of land in the Hill Country—“the Deer Pasture�—for more than seventy-five years. In A Thousand Deer, Bass walks the Deer Pasture again in memory and stories, tallying up what hunting there has taught him about our need for wildness and wilderness, about cycles in nature and in the life of a family, and particularly about how important it is for children to live in the natural world. The arc of A Thousand Deer spans from Bass’s boyhood in the suburbs of Houston, where he searched for anything rank or fecund in the little oxbow swamps and pockets of woods along Buffalo Bayou, to his commitment to providing his children in Montana the same opportunity—a life afield—that his parents gave him in Texas. Inevitably this brings him back to the Deer Pasture and the passing of seasons and generations he has experienced there. Bass lyrically describes his own passage from young manhood, when the urge to hunt was something primal, to mature adulthood and the waning of the urge to take an animal, his commitment to the hunt evolving into a commitment to family and to the last wild places.

One of Rick Bass's most widely respected works of natural history, The Ninemile Wolves follows the fate of a modern wolf pack, the first known group of wolves to attempt to settle in Montana outside protected national park territory. The wolf inspires hatred, affection, myth, fear, and pity; its return polarizes the whole of the West -- igniting the passions of cattle ranchers and environmentalists, wildlife biologists and hunters. One man's vigorous, emotional inquiry into the proper relationship between man and nature, The Ninemile Wolves eloquently advocates wolf reintroduction in the West. In a new preface, Bass discusses the enduring lessons of the Ninemile story.

The Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana is one of the last great wild places in the United States, a land of black bears and grizzlies, wolves and coyotes, bald and golden eagles, and even a handful of humans. But its magic may not be enough to save it from the forces threatening it now. In The Book of Yaak Rick Bass captures the soul of the valley itself, and he shows how, if places like the Yaak are lost, so too will be the human riches of mystery and imagination.

Rick Bass is one of the foremost writers of his generation, charging headlong past the hard surface of modern life to illuminate human beings and their relationship to the natural world. Platte River is a collection of three novellas, each a singular exploration of the human heart set against the backdrop of God's creation. Filled with arresting images-chinook winds flying through a valley, couples skating in the dark on thin ice, tools made from animal bones, a delicate shape frozen in a river-"Mahatma Joe" is about an evangelist who settles in Grass Valley, Montana, and the woman who becomes obsessed with his vision of the world. In "Field Events" a woman falls in love with a man even larger than her discus-tossing brothers. And the title novella, "Platte River," portrays one man's lyric meditation on loneliness, the nature of peace, and the quest for love.

While fog does not come easily or frequently to Central Texas, when it does, it inspires moments of quiet and reflection. David K. Langford captures those moments here in stirring images of the comings and goings of fog on Hillingdon Ranch, family land that has benefited from the stewardship of six generations. These photographs in turn inspired an essay by writer Rick Bass that takes him back to his own memories of fog-in the Texas Hill Country and elsewhere. Fog at Hillingdon includes a personal note by Langford on his techniques and camera equipment. Apt historic or contemporary quotations selected by Myrna Langford accompany many of the photographs and reflect the moods and sentiments fog often evokes.

Late in 1959, the Brown siblings - Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed - were enjoying unprecedented international success, rivalled only by their long-time friend Elvis Presley. They had a bona fide megahit on their hands, which topped both the country and pop charts and gave rise to the polished sound of the multibillion-dollar country music industry we know today. Mesmerized by the Browns' haunting harmonies, the Beatles even tried to learn their secret. Their unique harmony, however, was only achievable through shared blood, and the trio's perfect pitch was honed by a childhood spent listening for the elusive pulse and tone of an impeccably tempered blade at their parent's Arkansas sawmill. But the Browns' celebrity couldn't survive the world changing around them, and the bonds of family began to fray along with the fame. Heartbreakingly, the novel jumps between the Browns' promising past and the present, which finds Maxine - once supremely confident and ravenous in her pursuit of applause - ailing and alone. As her world increasingly narrows, her hunger for just one more chance to secure her legacy only grows, as does her need for human connection.

In this searching memoir, Rick Bass describes how he first fell in love with theWest -- as a landscape, an idea, and a way of life. Bass grew up in the suburban sprawl of Houston, attended college in Utah, and spent eight years working as a geologist in Mississippi before packing up and heading west in pursuit of something visceral and true. He found it in the remote Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana, where despite extensive logging, not a single species has gone extinct since the last Ice Age. Bass has lived in the Yaak ever since, a place of mountains, outlaws, and continual rebirth that transformed him into the writer, hunter, and activist that he is today. The West Bass found is also home to deep-rooted philosophical conflicts that set neighbor against neighbor -- disputes that Bass has joined reluctantly, but necessarily, to defend and preserve the wilderness that he loves.

A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice A Rocky Mountain News Best Book of the Year Finalist for the Story Prize
At once expertly crafted and undeniably moving, these ten stories deftly explore our immutable connection with nature. The centerpiece of the collection is the arresting title story, in which a woman alone in her mountain cabin confronts a terminal illness. In the equally remarkable "Her First Elk," the same character recalls her most memorable and significant hunting experience. Set in locations ranging from Montana to Texas to Mississippi, the remaining stories further illuminate the consequences of our attitudes toward the environment and each other. This masterly collection lays bare the essentials of life with unparalleled passion and grace..

The Diezmo tells the incredible story of the Mier Expedition, one of the most absurd and tragic military adventures in the history of Texas -- a country and a state, as Rick Bass writes, that was "born in blood." In the early days of the Republic of Texas, two young men, wild for glory, impulsively volunteer for an expedition Sam Houston has ordered to patrol the Mexican border. But their dreams of triumph soon fade into prayers for survival, and all that is on their minds is getting home and having a cool drink of water. After being captured in a raid on the Mexican village of Mier, escaping, and being recaptured, the men of the expedition are punished with the terrible diezmo, in which one man in ten is randomly chosen to die. The survivors end up in the most dreaded prison in Mexico. There they become pawns in an international chess game to decide the fate of Texas, and with their hopes of release all but extinguished, they make one desperate, last-ditch effort to escape.

A great crossover book with appeal for high school students. It will also interest readers of westerns and historical fiction.

The first full-length novel by one of our finest fiction writers, Where the Sea Used to Be tells the story of a struggle between a father and his daughter for the souls of two men, Matthew and Wallis-his protégés, her lovers. Old Dudley is a Texan whose religion is oil, and in his fifty years of searching for it in Swan Valley he has destroyed a dozen geologists. Matthew is Dudley's most recent victim, but Wallis begins to uncover the dark mystery of Dudley's life. Each character, the wildlife, and the land itself are rendered with the vivid poetry that is that hallmark of Rick Bass's writing.