Mount Rainier is the largest and most dangerous volcano in the country, both an awesome natural monument and a formidable presence of peril. In The Measure of a Mountain, Barcott sets out to grasp the spirit of Rainier through a journey along its massive flanks. From forest to precipice, thinning air to fractured glaciers, he explores not only the physique of Rainier but the psychology and meaning of all mountains, and the deep connection that exists between humans and landscape. Filled with adventure, poignant personal reflections, and fascinating mountain lore told by Indian chiefs, professional guides, priests, and scientists, this book is one man's stirring quest to reconcile with a dazzling creation of nature, at once alluring and sometimes deadly.

The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier

History

Barcott, Bruce

Americas

Ballantine Books

Caring for orphaned animals at her own zoo in the tropical country of Belize, Sharon Matola became one of Central America’s greatest wildlife defenders. And when powerful outside forces conspired with the local government to build a dam that would flood the nesting ground of the only scarlet macaws in Belize, Matola was drawn into the fight of her life. In The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, award-winning author Bruce Barcott chronicles Sharon Matola’s inspiring crusade to stop a multinational corporation in its tracks. Ferocious in her passion, Matila and her confederates–a ragtag army of courageous locals and eccentric expatriates–endure slander and reprisals and take the fight to the courtroom and the boardroom, from local village streets to protests around the globe. Barcott explores the tension between environmental conservation and human development, puts a human face on the battle over globalization, and ultimately shows us how one unwavering woman risked her life to save the most beautiful bird in the world.

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Random House Publishing Group

The Wild Edge Trailer - Live from Florian Schulz on Vimeo.
 •First book on this ocean-based North American wildlife corridor •The health of many important marine species depends on this corridor •The Wild Edge is the result of more than 6 years of expeditions •Contributions by Eric Scigliano, Jon Hoekstra, and Bonnie Henderson With the publication of Florian Schulz’s book, Yellowstone to Yukon: Freedom to Roam, in 2006, the public’s interest in wildlife corridors was sparked. Prior to that seminal book, few people recognized that large mammals don’t necessarily stay in parks, but that their evolutionary imprinting compels them to migrate sometimes thousands of miles and despite great peril when civilization has cut off their paths. Yellowstone to Yukon moved establishing wildlife corridors to a top priority for organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund, which has since adopted the “Freedom to Roam” anthem as a rallying cry. The Wild Edge: Freedom to Roam the Pacific Coast reveals the great Pacific seam of North America that knits together land and sea, ocean and continent in a tumble of interrelated life. From the Baja peninsula through the coves and breaks of California and the bays and inlets of the Pacific Northwest, to the deep forests of British Columbia and the icy realm of polar bears in the Beaufort Sea of Alaska, the west coast of North America provides a life-sustaining corridor of great energy. Here, life and landscape are interconnected in complex and intriguing ways. Many migrating marine species, including gray and blue whales, salmon, sea turtles, bluefin tuna and more, travel thousands of miles from the tropics to the Arctic in the waters along North America’s west coast. Birds and butterflies, too, migrate the same distance, and rest and feed along the edge of the Pacific. In addition, many species live year-round in the wide range of habitats―the rivers, estuaries, lagoons, forests, and more―that feed into the Pacific and define the Baja to Beaufort ecosystem. Even land mammals such as caribou, wolves, and the white Kermode “spirit” bear depend on the marine corridor to supply much of their sustenance. Through vivid imagery, stories, and science, The Wild Edge reveals how the health and livelihood of a distant Iñupiaq Eskimo whaler is related to a suburban family in Los Angeles enamored with the pod of whales passing by their city beach. Through extraordinary photographs, Schulz contrasts this astonishing beauty against the threats from degradation and runaway development.

Wild Edge: Freedom to Roam the Pacific Coast

Arts & Photography

Florian Schulz

Photography & Video

Braided River

“The first time we came here I didn’t know what to expect,” she told me as we paddled upstream. “What we found just blew me away. Jaguars, pumas, river otters, howler monkeys. The place was like a Noah’s Ark for all the endangered species driven out of the rest of Central America. There was so much life! That expedition was when I first saw the macaws.” As a young woman, Sharon Matola lived many lives. She was a mushroom expert, an Air Force survival specialist, and an Iowa housewife. She hopped freight trains for fun and starred as a tiger tamer in a traveling Mexican circus. Finally she found her one true calling: caring for orphaned animals at her own zoo in the Central American country of Belize. Beloved as “the Zoo Lady” in her adopted land, Matola became one of Central America’s greatest wildlife defenders. And when powerful outside forces conspired with the local government to build a dam that would flood the nesting ground of the last scarlet macaws in Belize, Sharon Matola was drawn into the fight of her life. In The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw, award-winning author Bruce Barcott chronicles Sharon Matola’s inspiring crusade to stop a multinational corporation in its tracks. Ferocious in her passion, she and her confederates–a ragtag army of courageous locals and eccentric expatriates–endure slander and reprisals and take the fight to the courtroom and the boardroom, from local village streets to protests around the world. As the dramatic story unfolds, Barcott addresses the realities of economic survival in Third World countries, explores the tension between environmental conservation and human development, and puts a human face on the battle over globalization. In this marvelous and spirited book, Barcott shows us how one unwavering woman risked her life to save the most beautiful bird in the world. "Barcott’s compelling narrative is suspenseful right up to the last moment." –Publisher's Weekly "An engrossing but sad account of a brave and quirky champion of nature."–Kirkus “…A riveting account of one woman’s fight to save one of the last bastions of an endangered Species. . . Barcott writes of international politics, ecology and endangered species, and human relations with equal facility. This real page-turner of narrative nonfiction is hard to put down.” –Booklist

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Pets & Animal Care

Random House]

The writer explores and describes Mount Rainier, the large volcano on the outskirts of Seattle

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Sasquatch Books

In The Measure of a Mountain, Seattle writer Bruce Barcott sets out to know Rainier. His method is exploratory, meandering, personal. He begins by encircling it, first by car then on foot. He finds that the mountain is a complex of moss-bearded hemlocks and old-growth firs, high meadows that blossom according to a precise natural timeclock, sheets of crumbling pumice, fractured glaciers, and unsteady magma. Its snow fields bristle with bug life, and its marmots chew rocks to keep their teeth from overgrowing. Rainier rumbles with seismic twitches and jerks—some one-hundred-thirty earthquakes annually. The nightmare among geologists is the unstoppable wall of mud that will come rolling down its slopes when a hunk of mountain falls off, as it does every half century (and we’re fifty years overdue). Rainier is both an obsession and a temple that attracts its own passionate acolytes: scientists, priests, rangers, and mountain guides. Rainier is also a monument to death: every year someone manages just to disappear on its flanks; imperiled climbers and their rescuers perish on glaciers; a planeload of Marines remains lodged in ice since they crashed into the mountain in 1946. Referred to by locals as simply "the mountain," it is the single largest feature of the Pacific Northwest landscape—provided it isn’t hidden in clouds. Visible or not, though, it’s presence is undeniable.

The legalization of marijuana is the next great reversal of history. Perhaps the most demonized substance in America, scientifically known as Cannabis sativa, simply a very fast growing herb, thrived underground as the nation's most popular illegal drug. Now the tide has shifted: In 1996 California passed the nation's first medical marijuana law, which allowed patients to grow it and use it with a doctor's permission. By 2010, twenty states and the District of Columbia had adopted medical pot laws. In 2012 Colorado and Washington state passed ballot measures legalizing marijuana for adults age 21 and older. The magnitude of the change in America's relationship to marijuana can't be measured in only economic or social terms: There are deeper shifts going on here - cultural realignments, social adjustments, and financial adjustments. The place of marijuana in our lives is being rethought, reconsidered, and recalibrated. Four decades after Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, that long campaign has reached a point of exhaustion and failure. The era of its winding down as arrived. Weed the People will take readers a half-step into the future. The issues surrounding the legalization of pot vary from the trivial to the profound. There are new questions of social etiquette: Is one expected to offer a neighborly toke? If so, how? Is it cool to bring cannabis to a Super Bowl party? Yea or nay on the zoning permit for a marijuana shop two doors down from the Safeway? Plus, there are the inevitable conversations between parents and children over exactly what this adult experiment with marijuana means for them.

Weed the People

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Time Books

The legalization of marijuana is the next great reversal of history. Perhaps the most demonized substance in America, scientifically known as Cannabis sativa, simply a very fast growing herb, thrived underground as the nation's most popular illegal drug. Now the tide has shifted: In 1996 California passed the nation's first medical marijuana law, which allowed patients to grow it and use it with a doctor's permission. By 2010, twenty states and the District of Columbia had adopted medical pot laws. In 2012 Colorado and Washington state passed ballot measures legalizing marijuana for adults age 21 and older. The magnitude of the change in America's relationship to marijuana can't be measured in only economic or social terms: There are deeper shifts going on here - cultural realignments, social adjustments, and financial adjustments. The place of marijuana in our lives is being rethought, reconsidered, and recalibrated. Four decades after Richard Nixon declared a War on Drugs, that long campaign has reached a point of exhaustion and failure. The era of its winding down has arrived. Weed the People will take readers a half-step into the future. The issues surrounding the legalization of pot vary from the trivial to the profound. There are new questions of social etiquette: Is one expected to offer a neighborly toke? If so, how? Is it cool to bring cannabis to a Super Bowl party? Yea or nay on the zoning permit for a marijuana shop two doors down from the Safeway? Plus, there are the inevitable conversations between parents and children over exactly what this adult experiment with marijuana means for them.

Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America

Time

Time Marijuana Goes Mainstreet

TIME INC. BOOKS

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barcott, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Barcott, Bruce

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Barcott, Bruce. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird

Wild Edge: Freedom to Roam the Pacific Coast

The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw: One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird

The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier

The Measure of a Mountain: Beauty and Terror on Mount Rainier

Weed the People

Weed the People: The Future of Legal Marijuana in America

Time Marijuana Goes Mainstreet