In this remarkable collection of essays and stories, Jerry Dennis demonstrates why he has emerged as one of America's finest writers on nature and the outdoors, drawing such comparisons as John Voelker, Sigurd Olson, and Aldo Leopold. Ranging from northern Michigan to Iceland, Chile, and the fabled rivers of the American West, Dennis explores and celebrates the simple pleasures (and complex challenges) of famiily life, the allure of giant trout, the sacredness of secret places, and such wonders as bad weather, quirky fishing companions, and the occasional naked angler. "The River Home" is a passionate record of life outdoors, crafted with clarity, insight, and wit--by a writer gifted with an instinct for what matters.

It's Raining Frogs and Fishes is a generously illustrated inquiry into wonders of the sky: Why is the sky blue? Where do meteors originate? What causes rainbows, mirages, and the colors of the sunset? Why do some birds and insects migrate, and how do they navigate over hundreds or thousands of miles to do it? How have civilizations throughout history viewed the aurora borealis, tornadoes, eclipses, and the bizarre but well documented cases of fish, reptiles, snails, and even snakes that have rained to earth? Author Jerry Dennis and illustrator Glenn Wolff approach such questions with curiosity and wit, and suggest ways to observe first-hand extraordinary weather, astronomical anomalies, and odd and interesting wildlife of the skies.

This updated edition of the national bestseller is a spellbinding look into the natural world's most fascinating and baffling phenomena, with illustrated explanations of rainbows, meteors, sunsets, hurricanes, the northern lights, bird and insect flight, and dozens of other curiosities. Subjects are arranged by season, and each is discussed in a concise and entertaining style that blends the most recent scientific findings with historical anecdotes, personal observations, and examples of the lore and superstitions that have always surrounded phenomena of the skies. PRAISE

"Amusing and illuminating...This writer-artist team shines a bright and lovely light on nature." Los Angeles Times

"Charming, informative, humorous, and scholarly... embraces wind and weather, the sun, the moon and stars, the seasons of the year and the effect of these things on the denizens of this planet. It is a delight." Nelson Bryant, The New York Times

"Vastly entertaining, valuable... Makes natural history so much fun the reader is sucked from paragraph to paragraph, page to page, chapter to chapter." St. Louis Post-Dispatch

"This delightful look at nature...is a cornucopia of fact and lore. Wit, humor, wonder, and reverence spice and season the vignettes herein. It's Raining Frogs and Fishes reminds adults -- especially in this hectic, fast-paced, just-do-it world -- that it is more than OK, it is desirable, to be child-like and to look up at the heavens and ask why." Toledo Blade

"For anyone interested in natural history, there are few texts to rival this one." Booklist

"As leaves fall and the sky becomes more noticeable, you're likely to look towards the heavens and wonder at their mysteries... Author Jerry Dennis and illustrator Glenn Wolff address the questions with intelligence, wit and artistry." Atlanta Constitution

"A delightful book, both readable and informative -- like the best of Hal Borland and Edwin Way Teale...You've many hours of pleasure waiting with It's Raining Frogs and Fishes." Richmond Times-Dispatch

"Parents take note: Here's how to explain comets (stars with horrid hair) and frost (flowers of ice)... surprisingly nontechnical." Detroit Free Press

"With text that mesmerizes, drawings that enchant, and a dust jacket that simply feels good, this book calls you to hold it open before you." The Oakland Press

"This wonderfully illustrated book will make heroes of parents and teachers, who will be able to explain nature's magic and the superstitions surrounding it." El Paso Times

"This is a perfect choice for adults and kids alike who want to discover more about how the world is put together. Dennis has done a good job of entertaining and informing at the same time, and Glenn Wolff's black-and-white illustrations gracefully supplement the fact-filled text. It's enjoyable reading and a good reference for anyone's library." Sacramento Bee

Jerry Dennis has earned a reputation as one of the finest writers on nature and the outdoors in America today. Now in From a Wooden Canoe, he turns his attention to old passions and discovers new reasons to appreciate them.

This engaging collection explores the quintessential American sports of canoeing and camping and pays tribute to the things worth keeping, from wooden canoes to pocket knives to cast-iron skillets. At a deeper level, it is about respect - for our possessions, for the natural world, for ourselves - and about the pleasures of a life well spent.

From a Wooden Canoe is a celebration of the good things and the simple pleasures of life outdoors. It is a book to be treasured, to be read on winter evenings and rainy afternoons, and to be kept handy on a cabin shelf.

More than a collection of fishing stories, "A Place on the Water "is a passionate and eloquent exploration of subjects with broad appeal: love of land and water, informed and unsentimental appreciation of nature, and outrage at changes that threaten to obliterate places we can no longer afford to take for granted. In clear and sparkling prose, Jerry Dennis transports us to a world that every angler dreams of-where the very next cast will be the one that hooks something enormous and wonderful.

Brazil's Northeast has traditionally been considered one of the country's poorest and most underdeveloped areas. In this impassioned work, the Brazilian historian Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. investigates why Northeasterners are marginalized and stereotyped not only by inhabitants of other parts of Brazil but also by "nordestinos" themselves. His broader question though, is how "the Northeast" came into existence. Tracing the history of its invention, he finds that the idea of the Northeast was formed after independence, when elites around Brazil became preoccupied with building a nation. Diverse phenomena--from drought policies to messianic movements, banditry to new regional political blocs--helped to consolidate this novel concept, the Northeast. Politicians, intellectuals, writers, and artists, often "nordestinos," played key roles in making the region cohere as a space of common references and concerns. Ultimately, Albuqerque urges historians to question received concepts, such as regions and regionalism, to reveal their artifice and abandon static categories in favor of new, more granular understandings.

Brazil's Northeast has traditionally been considered one of the country's poorest and most underdeveloped areas. In this impassioned work, the Brazilian historian Durval Muniz de Albuquerque Jr. investigates why Northeasterners are marginalized and stereotyped not only by inhabitants of other parts of Brazil but also by nordestinos themselves. His broader question though, is how "the Northeast" came into existence. Tracing the history of its invention, he finds that the idea of the Northeast was formed in the early twentieth century, when elites around Brazil became preoccupied with building a nation. Diverse phenomena—from drought policies to messianic movements, banditry to new regional political blocs—helped to consolidate this novel concept, the Northeast. Politicians, intellectuals, writers, and artists, often nordestinos, played key roles in making the region cohere as a space of common references and concerns. Ultimately, Albuqerque urges historians to question received concepts, such as regions and regionalism, to reveal their artifice and abandon static categories in favor of new, more granular understandings.  

In People of Faith, Mariza de Carvalho Soares reconstructs the everyday lives of Mina slaves transported in the eighteenth century to Rio de Janeiro from the western coast of Africa, particularly from modern-day Benin. She describes a Catholic lay brotherhood formed by the enslaved Mina congregants of a Rio church, and she situates the brotherhood in a panoramic setting encompassing the historical development of the Atlantic slave trade in West Africa and the ethnic composition of Mina slaves in eighteenth-century Rio. Although Africans from the Mina Coast constituted no more than ten percent of the slave population of Rio, they were a strong presence in urban life at the time. Soares analyzes the role that Catholicism, and particularly lay brotherhoods, played in Africans' construction of identities under slavery in colonial Brazil. As in the rest of the Portuguese empire, black lay brotherhoods in Rio engaged in expressions of imperial pomp through elaborate festivals, processions, and funerals; the election of kings and queens; and the organization of royal courts. Drawing mainly on ecclesiastical documents, Soares reveals the value of church records for historical research.