A critical compendium of the life, work, and photo-documentary archive of American zoologist Harold Coolidge Jr., whose pioneering study of primates and leadership role in co-founding the first international conservation organization helped shape the global environmental movement.

Told through transcripts of interviews conducted in the years following Coolidge receiving the J. Paul Getty Award for Conservation (1980), Nature's Scion centers on the first-hand account of Coolidge’s expeditions to Liberia, Congo, and Southeast Asia, shedding light on the moral responsibility of human encounters with animals in the wild and on how a movement originating in the ethos of hunting and the patronage of colonialism became focused on stewardship and global cooperation.

Coolidge dedicated his life to the animals he studied, later co-founding the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) after the Second World War. His interviews offer insight into the people who became "nature's diplomats" as well as intimately connecting readers to postwar institutions that have altered our laws and perception of natural environments. Recounting the Harvard African Expedition to Liberia and the Belgian Congo in 1926–27 and the 1928–29 Kelley-Roosevelt Asian Expedition, which he led for Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, Coolidge takes us into the most exciting and controversial realms of species research and exploration. Understood within the changing context of colonization in the early 20th century, the expeditions Coolidge participated in were not only important for our understanding of the animals themselves, but also for the role of medical science in natural history and the emergence of institutionally separate fields of study.

Coolidge’s account allows us to understand the origins of modern-day conservation as a movement pioneered by a community of men who were not just passionate conservationists, but also hunters and outdoorsmen. While Coolidge’s own views about the Western presence in Africa and Southeast Asia keep pace with social developments of his time, as they shift and modernize, they demonstrate achievements of involving more stakeholders and voices. Additional framing content is offered by Chief Conservation Officer of re:wild, Russell Mittermeier and professor of art, Miles Coolidge.

In this powerful memoir of resilience, forgiveness, and a mother’s “divine resourcefulness,” a Congolese child-refugee of war searches for belonging while seeking acceptance in diverse American communities. Through the creative and healing power of dance, they navigate past trauma and transform pain into purpose.

Firmly rooted in the rich heritage of the Democratic Republic of Congo, Deo Mwano begins his story with recollections of his hometown Mbanza Ngungu. This city was far from the Zairian capital of Kinshasa, where his father served as an officer aligned with the prominent Zairean General Dantien Mahele, a would-be peacemaker, before the fall of the Mobutu regime. Reflecting on the colonial legacy, the linguistic mélange, the abundant flavors, textures, and music of Zaire, Mwano takes readers on a journey through the conflicts that shaped his childhood, the political upheavals, and war that forcibly resettled his family thousands of miles from his birthplace.

In New Hampshire, new struggles emerge as his family works to build a life in America, never far from the memories of the violence they escaped. As Deo shoulders responsibilities beyond his years, he is thrust into early adulthood. Seeking community through faith, refuge in dance, and healing in sharing his story, he searches for a way forward. Anchoring him on this difficult path is his father’s lasting charge: “Take care of the people I love. Take care of your mother and your little brothers.”

A deeply moving account of motherhood, love, and the complexities of memory and healing by a survivor sexual assault grappling with betrayals in her past as she moves through her experience of trauma to redefine her future. For readers of Jeanette Walls, Alexandra Fuller, and anyone who has struggled to hope, to heal, to forgive, and be free.

When Jessica Teich happens upon the obituary of a fellow Rhodes scholar named Lacey, she vows to unravel the truth behind the young woman’s suicide. As Lacey’s story unspools, Teich begins to detect ghostly links to her own life, forcing her to reflect on her own anguished past. A funny, probing and deeply affecting book, The Future Tense of Joy is the luminous account of one woman’s efforts to free herself—and her family—from the demons of her memory. The book explores the daily upheavals of marriage and motherhood, even as it exposes the treachery of silence and honors the consoling power of love.

“'No one was less likely to take her own life.' That’s what her Oxford thesis advisor said. From the moment I stumbled across her obituary, late at night when I couldn’t sleep, I was captivated. This brilliant woman seemed incandescent. She was funny and gifted and generous and beloved. Twenty-six years old, and a newlywed. Why would she decide to die?"

“Jessica Teich’s understanding of trauma is the infallible authority upon which her tale rests. But the delicacy and nuance with which she renders this story is that of a poet. This beautiful, compassionately imagined book will bring a pang of recognition to anyone who has traveled to young adulthood from a wounded adolescence via the quest for ‘perfection.’”  —MERYL STREEP 

A filmmaker cycling across the United States reflects upon his connection to other passionate cyclists from 20th-century surrealism, adventuresome high-wheelers, science fiction, and philosophy in this charming and artful travel book. 

For readers of Rebecca Lowe (The Slow Road to Tehran), Robert Pirsig (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance), and Sara Dykman (Bicycling with Butterflies).

To cross the United States by bicycle with his beloved, a Dutch filmmaker sets out with her from Disney's Epcot Center toward Las Vegas — a 4500 mile journey — on the cusp of summer. His goal is to reimagine the dimensions and breadth of the American landscape without the mediation of a car's windshield. In search of the mythological American West seamlessly represented in movies and literature, they instead discover a landscape rarely felt in its actual punishing weather and expanse. On their way through the South, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the couple encounter a blistering and varied cast of characters. A philosophy emerges as they bicycle their way across America that unites the challenge, wonderment, discovery, and naivete that brought them along these roads. Woven into their journey is the history of long-distance cycling in America, the 19th-century high-wheeler adventures, H.G. Wells's Wheels of Chance, the sublime paintings of Mark Rothko, and Alfred Jarry's parody Supermale about the erotics of the machine age. On the day the author turns forty, the adventure culminates in Las Vegas, the ridiculous exaggeration of Manifest Destiny. But instead of becoming discouraged, he writes in a new introduction that this trip was the seed of a passion that has taken him and his still-beloved all over the world for decades since.

 "Peter Delpeut’s Long Landscape is a rollicking ride across the United States. The book is a celebration of the nourishing potential of long distance cycling. Delpeut moves seamlessly between travel, film and cycling history, paying homage to the diary form. Imagine David Lynch’s Wild at Heart conversing with Bruce Chatwin’s In Patagonia and you get some sense of the vitality of this wonderful edition." —Dara Waldron, New York Times bestselling author of A Sheepdog Named Oscar

A four-part collection of poems and epistolary fiction by Eve Wood, accompanied by darkly humorous drawings and paintings from her thirty-year archive.

What did Jackson Pollock say to the tree that killed him? Or the wives of Henry VIII behind closed doors? In her humorous, lustful, and insightful book, Eve Wood imagines the hidden lives (and deaths) of contemporary artists and the women who married Henry VIII, as well as rendering the coded amorous exchanges between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West and pulling wisdom from under Abraham Lincoln's hat. Eve Wood takes her subjects beyond the looking glass, turns history in on itself and sees our contemporary moment reflected there. Laughing along the way, surprised by her discoveries and her art, readers will find this book to be a panacea for dark times.

Color illustrations throughout.