In the tradition of Krakauer's Into the Wild, The Golden Spruce tells an astonishing true story of a furious man's obsessive mission against an industrial juggernaut, the struggle of the Haida people to save their world, and the mysterious golden tree that binds them all together.
When a kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited Alaskan island just north of the Canadian border, they re-ignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest that made international news. On a winter night in 1997, a logger-turned-activist named Grant Hadwin plunged into the frigid waters of the Yakoun River in the Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw behind him. When he was done, a unique spruce tree -- 50 meters tall and covered with luminous golden needles -- was teetering on its massive stump.
The tree, which baffled scientists, was sacred to the Haida on whose land it had stood for over 300 years. It was also beloved by local loggers who singled it out for protection in the midst of vast clear cuts. Since the 1970s, the mist-shrouded archipelago -- one of the continent's most pristine and vibrant ecosystems -- has been a battleground with government officials and logging companies squaring off against the Haida and environmental groups. The loss of the mythic golden spruce united loggers, natives and environmentalists in sorrow and outrage. But while heroic efforts were made to revive the tree, Grant Hadwin, the tree's confessed killer, disappeared under suspicious circumstances.
John Vaillant's article on the death of the golden spruce was published in 2002 in "The New Yorker, and this book has grown out of it, dramatizing the destruction of a deeply conflicted man and thewilderness he loved; in so doing, it traces the rise, fall and rebirth of the Haida nation, and exposes the logging industry -- the most dangerous land-based job in North America -- from a point of view never explored in contemporary non-fiction.

"To look at this seedling -- if one could see it at all -- and believe that it had every intention of growing into one of the towering columns that blot out so much of the northwestern sky, would have seemed far-fetched at best. In its first year, the infant tree would have been about two inches tall and sporting a half dozen or so pale green needles. It would have been appealing in the same abstract way that baby snapping turtles are, its alien appearance transcended by the universal indicators of wild babyhood: utter helplessness and primordial determination in equal measure. Despite its bristling ruff and a stem as straight as a sunbeam, the seedling was still as vulnerable as a frog's egg; a falling branch, the footstep of a human or an animal -- any number of random occurrences -- could have finished it there and then.
Down there, in the damp darkness of the under story, the sapling's wonderful flaw was a well-kept secret. With each passing year, it dug its roots deeper into the riverbank, strengthening its grip on life and on the land. In spite of the odds, it became one of a handful of young trees that would survive to shoulder their way into the sunlight, competing with giants a dozen feet wide and hundreds of feet tall. In the end, it would be the sun that exposed this tree's secret for all to see and, by the middle of the 1700s, it would have been abundantly clear that something extraordinary was growing on the banks of theYakoun. It was a creature that seemed more at home in a myth or a fairy tale: a spruce tree with golden needles.
--excerpt from The Golden Spruce

***AN INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*** 'Astounding on every page. John Vaillant is one of the great poetic chroniclers of the natural world' David Wallace-Wells 'A towering achievement; an immense work of research, reflection and imagination' Robert Macfarlane A gripping account of this century's most intense urban fire, and a panoramic exploration of the rapidly changing relationship between humanity and fire's fierce energy. In May 2016, Fort McMurray, Alberta, the hub of Canada's oil industry, was overrun by wildfire. The multi-billion-dollar disaster turned entire neighbourhoods into firebombs and drove 90,000 people from their homes in a single afternoon. Through the story of this apocalyptic conflagration, John Vaillant explores the past and the future of our ever-hotter, more flammable world. For hundreds of millennia, fire has been a partner in our evolution, shaping culture and civilization. Yet in our age of intensifying climate change, we are seeing its destructive power unleashed in ways never before witnessed by human beings. With masterly prose and cinematic style, Vaillant delves into the intertwined histories of the oil industry and climate science, the unprecedented devastation wrought by modern wildfires, and the lives forever changed by these disasters. Fire Weather is urgent reading for our new century of fire.

It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote Russian village. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again. As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region. Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga.

A gripping story of man pitted against nature's most fearsome and efficient predator.
Outside a remote village in Russia's Far East a man-eating tiger is on the prowl. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's murdering them, almost as if it has a vendetta. A team of trackers is dispatched to hunt down the tiger before it strikes again. They know the creature is cunning, injured, and starving, making it even more dangerous. As John Vaillant re-creates these extraordinary events, he gives us an unforgettable and masterful work of narrative nonfiction that combines a riveting portrait of a stark and mysterious region of the world and its people, with the natural history of nature's most deadly predator.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfectionssuch as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed worksworldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Reports Of Cases In The Reigns Of Hen. VIII, Edw. VI, Q. Mary, And Q. Eliz, Volume 1; Reports Of Cases In The Reigns Of Hen. VIII, Edw. VI, Q. Mary, And Q. Eliz; Sir James Dyer Sir James Dyer, John Vaillant J. Butterworth, 1794 Law reports, digests, etc

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfectionssuch as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed worksworldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book.++++The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Reports Of Cases In The Reigns Of Hen. VIII, Edw. VI, Q. Mary, And Q. Eliz, Volume 2; Reports Of Cases In The Reigns Of Hen. VIII, Edw. VI, Q. Mary, And Q. Eliz; Sir James Dyer Sir James Dyer, John Vaillant J. Butterworth, 1794 Law reports, digests, etc

THE AWARD-WINNING INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER WINNER OF A WINDHAM-CAMPBELL PRIZE 2014 'Absolutely spellbinding' New York Times 'Will change how many people think about nature' Sebastian Junger ______________________________________ JOURNEY INTO THE HEART OF NORTH AMERICA'S LAST GREAT FOREST. On a bleak winter night in 1997, a British Columbia timber scout named Grant Hadwin committed an act of shocking violence: he destroyed the legendary Golden Spruce of the Queen Charlotte Islands. With its rich colours, towering height and luminous needles, the tree was a scientific marvel, beloved by the local Haida people who believed it sacred. The Golden Spruce tells the story of the sadness which pushed Hadwin to such a desperate act of destruction - a bizarre environmental protest which acts as a metaphor for the challenge the world faces today. But it also raises the question of what then happened to Hadwin, who disappeared under suspicious circumstances and remains missing to this day. Part thrilling mystery, part haunting depiction of the ancient beauty of the coastal wilderness, and part dramatic chronicle of the historical collision of Europeans and the native Haida, The Golden Spruce is a timely portrait of man's troubled relationship with a vanishing world. _______________________ 'Worthy of comparison to Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild . . . A story of the heartbreakingly complex relationship between man and nature.' ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY 'His story is about one man and one tree, but it is much more than that. John Vaillant has written a work that will change how many people think about nature.' SEBASTIAN JUNGER 'A haunting tale of a good man driven mad by environmental devastation' LOS ANGELES TIMES 'Absolutely spellbinding . . . descriptions of the Queen Charlotte Islands, with their misty, murky light and hushed, cathedral-like forests, are haunting, and Vaillant does full justice to the noble, towering trees.' NEW YORK TIMES 'A haunting portrait of man's vexed relationship with nature.' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY