NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “A delightful sampler plate of our national parks, written with charisma and erudition.”—Nick Offerman, author of Paddle Your Own Canoe From CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Conor Knighton, a behind-the-scenery look at his year traveling to each of America's National Parks, discovering the most beautiful places and most interesting people our country has to offer NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY OUTSIDE When Conor Knighton set off to explore America's "best idea," he worried the whole thing could end up being his worst idea. A broken engagement and a broken heart had left him longing for a change of scenery, but the plan he'd cooked up in response had gone a bit overboard in that department: Over the course of a single year, Knighton would visit every national park in the country, from Acadia to Zion. In Leave Only Footprints, Knighton shares informative and entertaining dispatches from what turned out to be the road trip of a lifetime. Whether he's waking up early for a naked scrub in a historic bathhouse in Arkansas or staying up late to stargaze along our loneliest highway in Nevada, Knighton weaves together the type of stories you're not likely to find in any guidebook. Through his unique lens, America the Beautiful becomes America the Captivating, the Hilarious, and the Inspiring. Along the way, he identifies the threads that tie these wildly different places together—and that tie us to nature—and reveals how his trip ended up changing his views on everything from God and love to politics and technology. Filled with fascinating tidbits about our parks' past and reflections on their fragile future, this book is both a celebration of and a passionate case for the natural wonders that all Americans share.

Every child feels different in some way, but Thuy feels "double different." She is Vietnamese American and she has two moms. Thuy walks home one winter afternoon, angry and lonely after a bully's taunts. Then a bird catches her attention and sets Thuy on an imaginary exploration. What if she could fly away like a bird? What if she could sprint like a deer, or roar like a bear? Mimicking the footprints of each creature in the snow, she makes her way home to the arms of her moms. Together, the three of them imagine beautiful and powerful creatures who always have courage - just like Thuy.

Daily Diary / journal / notebook to write in, for creative writing, for creating lists, for Scheduling, Organizing and Recording your thoughts. Makes an excellent gift idea for birthdays, Christmas, coworkers or any special occasion. Perfectly sized at 6" x 9" 120 page Softcover bookbinding Flexible Paperback

For twelve years, Andrea Lankford lived in the biggest, most impressive national parks in the world, working a job she loved. She chaperoned baby sea turtles on their journey to sea. She pursued bad guys on her galloping patrol horse. She jumped into rescue helicopters bound for the heart of the Grand Canyon. She won arguments with bears. She slept with a few too many rattlesnakes. Hell yeah, it was the best job in the world! Fortunately, Andrea survived it. In this graphic and yet surprisingly funny account of her and others’ extraordinary careers, Lankford unveils a world in which park rangers struggle to maintain their idealism in the face of death, disillusionment, and the loss of a comrade killed while holding that thin green line between protecting the park from the people, the people from the park, and the people from each other. Ranger Confidential is the story behind the scenery of the nation’s crown jewels—Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Great Smokies, Denali. In these iconic landscapes, where nature and humanity constantly collide, scenery can be as cruel as it is redemptive.

Saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter has not only left his footprints on our musical terrain, he has created a body of work that is a monument to artistic imagination. Throughout Shorter's extraordinary fifty-year career, his compositions have helped define the sounds of each distinct era in the history of jazz. Filled with musical analysis by Mercer, enlivened by Shorter's vivid recollections, and enriched by more than seventy-five original interviews with his friends and associates, this book is at once an invaluable history of music from bebop to pop, an intimate and moving biography, and a story of a man's struggle toward the full realization of his gifts and of himself.

It's the middle of the night when Beth Watson sneaks out of the house, steals a car, and drives, desperate to run from what she's seen, what happened to Jack. She drives across several states until she ends up in a sleepy little Michigan resort town as the summer season draws to a close. All Beth wants to do is escape, to stay unnoticed, to fly under the radar. But tiny Beaumont is a town with big secrets, some very like the ones she's fled from, and she arrives in town at the same time a murderer strikes. Beth, who has never gone to school, never held a job, and isn't even sure if 16 is her real age, enlists the help of a protector, Dee, the town's cafe owner, who sees a little of herself in Beth. Beth has to jump into a world she's never known--a world of other teens, of cell phones and computers, cliques and bullying, girlfriends and boyfriends. And killing. So much killing. When the murderer strikes again, and again, Beth is certain her plans to start a new life are over and the worst is yet to come. "J.D. Shaw takes on child abuse, bullying, the deep need teens have to be loved and accepted, and the risks they'll take to gain that love. Despite the horrors she's faced, Beth is a character all teens can identify with. Leave No Footprints is a deftly drawn portrait of a young woman whose past is a mystery even to herself, but who, like most kids, just wants to be normal--if only she can escape her past." --Joanne Dahme, author of Tombstone Tea and Contagion