Mountain Memoir

A collection of hilarious, heartbreaking, and terrifying encounters with wild black bears in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Rangers, scientists, wildlife photographers, wilderness guides, tourists, and others do all the wrong things when meeting one of the world famous icons of the Smokies. Wake up from a nap and discover a bear sleeping next to you, see a bear driving a car through the park, or hear a ranger whisper a warning that there's a bear in the stall next to you in the ladies room. It's all so emBEARrassing.

The time of the American mountain man was not to reach its peak until the mid-19th century, but the man who served as the prototype for the cultural genre hailed from an earlier age in which the new United States had scarcely established its most basic structural tenets. A member of the original Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery commissioned by Thomas Jefferson, John Colter’s multiple journeys to the northwest country of present-day Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho were first-time events in the development of the continent.

Being inspired to act can take many forms. For some, it's taking a weekend to volunteer, but for Shannon Galpin, it meant leaving her career, selling her house, launching a nonprofit, and committing her life to advancing education and opportunity for women and girls. Focusing on the war-torn country of Afghanistan, Galpin and her organization, Mountain2Mountain, have touched the lives of hundreds of men, women, and children.

Ever since she was a young girl, Virginia had to face many obstacles mentally, spiritually and physically to fit into this judgmental world. Feeling alone and misunderstood, Virginia faces what life has to throw at her with sheer determination and a bit of luck. When Virginia loses her way along her journey, she encounters forces both light and dark before she finds a genuine connection with the divine and starts to heal her broken soul with her unwavering faith.

As Tammy explores mountains and beaches in paradise, she’s fueled by the allure of new cultures, creating memories that have made her who she is today. Throughout her island adventures to the Bahamas, Turks and Caicos, and Curacao, as well as hikes through national parks in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, surprises lurk at every turn—from navigating floods to fending off avian ambushes. Embracing the chaos, Tammy turns each misadventure into a story worth telling.

When Neema Avashia tells people where she's from, their response is nearly always disbelief: "There are Indian people in West Virginia?" A queer Asian American teacher and writer, Avashia fits few Appalachian stereotypes. But the lessons she learned in childhood about race and class, gender and sexuality continue to inform the way she moves through the world today. Another Appalachia examines both the roots and the resonance of Avashia's identity, while encouraging listeners to envision more complex versions of both Appalachia and the nation as a whole.

At 54, Lisa Stewart set out to regain the fearless girl she once had been, riding her horse, Chief, 500 miles home. Hot, homeless, and horseback, she snapped back into every original cell. On an extraordinary homegoing from Kansas City to Bates and Vernon Counties in Missouri, Lisa exhausted herself, faced her past, trusted strangers, and stayed in the middle of her frightened horse to document modern rural America, the people, animals, and land.

On October 7, 1780, American Patriot and Loyalist soldiers battled each other at Kings Mountain, near the border of North and South Carolina. With over one hundred eyewitness accounts, this collection of participant statements from men of both sides includes letters and statements in their original form—the soldiers' own words—unedited and unabridged.

From the award-winning author of Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon comes an intimate exploration of Alaska's northernmost mountain range with observations on Indigenous cultures, conservation, and intense cross-country travel, all shaped by respect for the land. Follow author Michael Engelhard through tussock-studded tundra for a remarkable tale of bear encounters and white-knuckled river moments, as well as poetic reflections on a vast, untamed landscape.

Stable Weight is a story of resilience, empowerment, and the transformative power of the human-animal bond, revealing how even the most sensitive soul can ditch being a good girl for becoming an independent woman.

Sometimes raw, sometimes humorous, but always honest, this is a true account of a woman’s struggle to overcome a paralyzing fear, get back into the sport she loves, and the friendships she develops along the way. After a lifetime of riding and owning horses and performing both in the show ring and on the trail, a difficult fall off her own horse on her own property leads Pam to realize age is catching up with her and she has become afraid to get back in the saddle.

Joe Mitchell and his family have lived in China off and on for a total of seven years beginning in 1993. During three of those years they lived on a one acre property with a minority Nosu family. This true, first person account is alive with stories of their lives there and the friendships they enjoyed.

Heroes are hard to come by - but there's one man whose legend has stood the test of two centuries, and whose name sits on Australia's highest peak. Tadeusz Kosciuszko: freedom fighter, friend of Thomas Jefferson and champion of liberty on two continents. Bestselling author Anthony Sharwood finds out why he's the hero the world needs right now.

Climbing the Rough Side of the Mountain is the remarkable story of a couple who came together during the Civil Rights Movement and made fighting for equality and civil and workers’ rights their purpose for more than sixty years, overcoming adversity—with the strength of their love and commitment—to bring about meaningful change.

In her hilarious yet sage debut essay collection, Midstokke demonstrates that battles with freeloading varmints, clogged stove pipes, childhood trauma, and one surprisingly aggressive boulder are unexpected, if not wonderfully entertaining, pathways to personal growth and joy. All the Things delivers the irreverent, fearless, and brilliant voice of a woman who laughs in the face of failure and soothes her wounds by splitting wood, often in her skivvies.

My family are followers of the Baha'i Faith, a religion founded in Iran and practiced by millions of people worldwide today. Muslims in Iran consider it a blasphemous, illegitimate religion. For more than four decades, Baha'is in Iran have been stripped of all human rights. We are routinely arrested, detained, tortured, imprisoned, and executed without cause. This is my story about what life was like living under Islamic rule.

In April 2014 Mark Horrell went on a mountaineering expedition to Nepal, hoping to climb Lhotse, the fourth-highest mountain in the world, which shares a base camp and climbing route with Mount Everest. But when a devastating avalanche swept across the Khumbu Icefall, he got more than he bargained for. Suddenly he found himself witnessing the greatest natural disaster Everest had ever seen.

Matchbox Mountain is a collection of stories told by the author about one year in her life in 1952 when she was 10 years old. Living in the mountains of western North Carolina in a house with no electricity, no running water, and no close neighbors, the author shares stories of how she and her siblings made their own world with little but creativity.

A friend's chance sighting of a hand-lettered "For Sale" sign sets Jan and Stu on a path that will change not only their domestic world, but their emotional one as well. Along the way, they find that the path ahead can be crooked, strewn with pitfalls just waiting to become pratfalls. Life at the university and in the theater never prepared accident-prone Stu for his new life as a would-be farmer, carpenter, and mountain man, nor Jan for some scary encounters with nature in the wild.

A journey back in time, The Golden Mountain is the gripping tale of four generations of Chinese women who live and die under the restrictions of their culture, except for one, the author. Her story tells of growing up in Hong Kong and of her transition to New York City where she struggled to meld the American dream with her ethnic background. Finally, at age 50, she dares to move into the present and understand the true nature of dreams and what it means to live.