Parks and Recreation actor and Making It co-host Nick Offerman shares his humorous fulminations on life, manliness, meat, and much more in this New York Times bestseller. Growing a perfect moustache, grilling red meat, wooing a woman—who better to deliver this tutelage than the always charming, always manly Nick Offerman, best known as Parks and Recreation’s Ron Swanson? Combining his trademark comic voice and very real expertise in woodworking—he runs his own woodshop—Paddle Your Own Canoe features tales from Offerman’s childhood in small-town Minooka, Illinois—“I grew up literally in the middle of a cornfield”—to his theater days in Chicago, beginnings as a carpenter/actor and the hilarious and magnificent seduction of his now-wife Megan Mullally. It also offers hard-bitten battle strategies in the arenas of manliness, love, style, religion, woodworking, and outdoor recreation, among many other savory entrees. A mix of amusing anecdotes, opinionated lessons and rants, sprinkled with offbeat gaiety, Paddle Your Own Canoe will not only tickle readers pink but may also rouse them to put down their smart phones, study a few sycamore leaves, and maybe even hand craft (and paddle) their own canoes.

Well-illustrated with more than 600 color photographs, this how-to book achieves as high a standard as the authors' Paddle Your Own Canoe with step-by-step instructions on essential techniques, and includes history, recommendations, camping and more.

The most comprehensive book ever written on canoeing technique ... essential guide for recreational paddlers is packed with information. -- Bushwacker's Wilderness Journal 09/2003.

An Epic Memoir of an Intrepid Solo Adventurer, a Woman Who Lived by the Philosophy "Go Simple, Go Solo, Go Now"

Detailed plans and instructions on making, finishing and repairing wooden canoe paddles.

From Rochester to Hornell, west to Chautauqua and north to the Buffalo region, western New York State is home to a wealth of quiet-water paddling locations for canoers and kayakers at all levels. TAKE A PADDLE--WESETERN NEW YORK is a detailed guide to 45 specific locations, with 20 ponds and small lakes and over 250 miles of quiet streams and rivers.