Originally published in 1997 by Houghton Mifflin, this is a collection of true stories, essays and poems which tell of the glories and rigours of living close to the land.

For forty years, Andy Goldsworthy has worked with an extraordinary range of natural materials, often at their source. On an almost daily basis, he makes works of art using the materials and conditions that he encounters wherever he is, be it the land around his Scottish home, the mountain regions of France or Spain, or the pavements of New York City, Glasgow, or Rio de Janeiro. Out of earth, rocks, leaves, ice, snow, rain, sunlight and shadow he makes artworks that exist briefly before they are altered and erased by natural processes. They are documented in his photographs, and their larger meanings are bound up with the conditions, forces and processes that they embody: materiality, temporality, growth, vitality, permanence, decay, chance, labour and memory. Ephemeral Works features approximately two hundred of these works, selected by Goldsworthy from thousands he has made between 2001 and the present, and arranged in chronological sequence, capturing his creative process as it interacts with material, place, and the passage of time and seasons.

"Leaning into the Wind is a series of ten intimate essays in which Susan Allen Toth, who was spent most of her life in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, reveals the ways in which weather has challenged and changed her perceptions about herself and the world around her. She describes her ever-growing awareness of and appreciation for how the weather marks the major milestones of her life. Toth explores issues as large as weather and spirituality in "Who Speaks in the Pillar of Cloud?" and topics as small as mosquito in "Things That Go Buzz in the Night." In "Storms," a severe thunderstorm becomes a continuing metaphor for the author's troubles first marriage. Two essays, one from late middle age, ponder how the weather seems different at various stages of life but always provides unexpected opportunities for self-discovery, change, and renewal."--BOOK JACKET.

The grassroots publishing sensation that began with "Leaning Into the Wind" continues in this second volume of women's writing from the heart of the American West.

One of the best ways to understand history is through eye-witness accounts. Ting-Xing Ye’s riveting first book, A Leaf in the Bitter Wind, is a memoir of growing up in Maoist China. It was an astonishing coming of age through the turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1974). In the wave of revolutionary fervour, peasants neglected their crops, exacerbating the widespread hunger. While Ting-Xing was a young girl in Shanghai, her father’s rubber factory was expropriated by the state, and he was demoted to a labourer. A botched operation left him paralyzed from the waist down, and his health deteriorated rapidly since a capitalist’s well-being was not a priority. He died soon after, and then Ting-Xing watched her mother’s struggle with poverty end in stomach cancer. By the time she was thirteen, Ting-Xing Ye was an orphan, entrusted with her brothers and sisters to her Great-Aunt, and on welfare. Still, the Red Guards punished the children for being born into the capitalist class. Schools were being closed; suicide was rampant; factories were abandoned for ideology; distrust of friends and neighbours flourished. Ting-Xing was sent to work on a distant northern prison farm at sixteen, and survived six years of backbreaking labour and severe conditions. She was mentally tortured for weeks until she agreed to sign a false statement accusing friends of anti-state activities. Somehow finding the time to teach herself English, often by listening to the radio, she finally made it to Beijing University in 1974 as the Revolution was on the wane — though the acquisition of knowledge was still frowned upon as a bourgeois desire and study was discouraged. Readers have been stunned and moved by this simply narrated personal account of a 1984-style ideology-gone-mad, where any behaviour deemed to be bourgeois was persecuted with the ferocity and illogic of a witch trial, and where a change in politics could switch right to wrong in a moment. The story of both a nation and an individual, the book spans a heady 35 years of Ye’s life in China, until her eventual defection to Canada in 1987 — and the wonderful beginning of a romance with Canadian author William Bell. The book was published in 1997. The 1990s saw the publication of several memoirs by Chinese now settled in North America. Ye’s was not the first, yet earned a distinguished place as one of the most powerful, and the only such memoir written from Canada. It is the inspiring story of a woman refusing to “drift with the stream” and fighting her way through an impossible, unjust system. This compelling, heart-wrenching story has been published in Germany, Japan, the US, UK and Australia, where it went straight to #1 on the bestseller list and has been reprinted several times; Dutch, French and Turkish editions will appear in 2001.

"Sometimes a story comes along that just plain makes you want to hug the world. The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise is Dan Gemeinhart’s finest book yet — and that’s saying something. Your heart needs this joyful miracle of a book." — Katherine Applegate, acclaimed author of The One and Only Ivan and Wishtree Five years. That's how long Coyote and her dad, Rodeo, have lived on the road in an old school bus, criss-crossing the nation. It's also how long ago Coyote lost her mom and two sisters in a car crash. Coyote hasn’t been home in all that time, but when she learns that the park in her old neighborhood is being demolished—the very same park where she, her mom, and her sisters buried a treasured memory box—she devises an elaborate plan to get her dad to drive 3,600 miles back to Washington state in four days...without him realizing it. Along the way, they'll pick up a strange crew of misfit travelers. Lester has a lady love to meet. Salvador and his mom are looking to start over. Val needs a safe place to be herself. And then there's Gladys... Over the course of thousands of miles, Coyote will learn that going home can sometimes be the hardest journey of all...but that with friends by her side, she just might be able to turn her “once upon a time” into a “happily ever after.”

These widely acclaimed essays from the author of Infinite Jest -- on television, tennis, cruise ships, and more -- established David Foster Wallace as one of the preeminent essayists of his generation. In this exuberantly praised book -- a collection of seven pieces on subjects ranging from television to tennis, from the Illinois State Fair to the films of David Lynch, from postmodern literary theory to the supposed fun of traveling aboard a Caribbean luxury cruiseliner -- David Foster Wallace brings to nonfiction the same curiosity, hilarity, and exhilarating verbal facility that has delighted readers of his fiction, including the bestselling Infinite Jest.