A provocative look at the vital connection between human beings, the natural world and meaningful knowledge. While tracking a lion with a Samburu headman and then, later, eluding human assailants who may be tracking him, Jon Turk experiences people at their best and worst. As the tracker and the tracked, Jon reveals how the stories we tell each other, and the stories spinning in our heads, can be moulded into innovation, love and co-operation -- or harnessed to launch armies. Seeking escape from the confusion we create for ourselves and our neighbours with our think-too-much-know-it-all brains, Jon finds liberation within a natural world that spins no fiction. Set in a high-adventure narrative on the unforgiving savannah, Tracking Lions, Myth, and Wilderness in Samburu explores the aboriginal wisdoms that endowed our Stone Age ancestors with the power to survive - and how, since then, myth, art, music, dance, and ceremony have often been hijacked and distorted within our urban, scientific, oil-soaked world.

Noted scientist and kayak adventurer undertakes a journey of spiritual healing Jon Turk has kayaked around Cape Horn and paddled across the Pacific Ocean to retrace the voyages of ancient people. But, the strangest trip he ever took was the journey he made as a man of science into the realm of the spiritual. In a remote Siberian village, Turk met an elderly Koryak shaman named Moolynaut who invoked the help of a Spirit Raven to mend his fractured pelvis. When the healing was complete, he was able to walk without pain. Turk, finding no rational explanation, sought understanding by traversing the frozen tundra where Moolynaut was born, camping with bands of reindeer herders, and recording stories of their lives and spirituality. Framed by high adventure across the vast and forbidding Siberian landscape, The Raven's Gift creates a vision of natural and spiritual realms interwoven by one man's awakening.

Humans spend more time in or on the water than ever before. We love the beach. But for many people, getting in the water provokes a moment’s hesitation. Shark attacks are big news events and although the risk of shark attack on humans is incredibly low, the fact remains that human lives are lost to sharks every year. Shark Attacks explores the tension between risk to humans and the need to conserve sharks and protect the important ecological roles they play in our marine environments. Marine biologist Blake Chapman presents scientific information about shark biology, movement patterns and feeding behaviour. She discusses the role of fear in the way we think about sharks and the influence of the media on public perceptions. Moving first-hand accounts describe the deep and polarising psychological impacts of shark attacks from a range of perspectives. This book is an education in thinking through these emotive events and will help readers to navigate the controversial issues around mitigating shark attacks while conserving the sharks themselves.

The thrilling account of an extraordinary journey in the tradition of Kon-Tiki In 1996 a 9,500-year-old skeleton was found beside the Columbia River, galvanizing anthropologists with the possibility that prehistoric humans reached North America from Asia by crossing the ocean in small open boats. In this compelling narrative, world-class kayaker and science writer Jon Turk relates his successful attempt to re-create this perilous migration. This story wraps an intriguing anthropological argument inside a gripping narrative about the sea, an ancient people, and the wilderness of northeast Siberia. Recounting his two-year, 3,000-mile kayak voyage from Japan's bamboo forests to the tundra of Siberia and Alaska, Turk introduces strong archeological and anthropological evidence that his expedition was not the first. He explains how the ancient Jomon people could have completed this journey 10,000 to 15,000 years ago and provides insight into the question of why they did it. Both fascinating adventure and riveting prehistory, In the Wake of the Jomon is destined to become a classic.

Ties together several of Jon's expeditions under the theme of a zjourney into a Consciousness Revolution based on a deep, reciprocal communication with the Earth.y.

In ‘He is a Glutton and a Drunkard’: Deviant Consumption in the Hebrew Bible Rebekah Welton uses interdisciplinary approaches to explore the social and ritual roles of food and alcohol in Late Bronze Age to Persian-period Syro-Palestine (1550 BCE–400 BCE). This contextual backdrop throws into relief episodes of consumption deemed to be excessive or deviant by biblical writers. Welton emphasises the social networks of the household in which food was entangled, arguing that household animals and ritual foodstuffs were social agents, challenging traditional understandings of sacrifice. For the first time, the accusation of being a ‘glutton and a drunkard’ (Deut 21:18-21) is convincingly re-interpreted in its alimentary and socio-ritual contexts.

A camping guide features basic wilderness instructions on such topics as reading a map, selecting a campsite, staking a tent, cooking meals, and administering first aid.