Rebecca M. Douglass, Author

Another installment in my quest to understand walking, hiking and the huge mental health benefits that I, at least, get from doing it.     Title: On Trails: An Exploration 
 Author: 
Robert Moor, read by Jason Grasl Publication Info: Audiobooks.com, 2016. 11 hours. Original by Simon and Schuster, 2016. 
 Source:  Library 

 Publisher’s Blurb: 

   From a brilliant new literary voice comes a groundbreaking exploration of how trails help us understand the world—from tiny ant trails to hiking paths that span continents, from interstate highways to the Internet. In 2009, while thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail, Robert Moor began to wonder about the paths that lie beneath our feet: How do they form? Why do some improve over time while others fade? What makes us follow or strike off on our own? Over the course of the next seven years, Moor traveled the globe, exploring trails of all kinds, from the minuscule to the massive. He learned the tricks of master trail-...

Another of my random history reads.     Title: Last Hope Island: Britain, Occupied Europe, and the Brotherhood That Helped Turn the Tide of War Author : 
Lynne Olson. Read by Arthur Morey & Kimberly Farr Publication Info : Random House Audio, 2017, 19 hours. Original hardback by Random House, 2017, 526 pages. Source: Library 

Publisher’s Blurb (via Overdrive): 

 A groundbreaking account of how Britain became the base of operations for the exiled leaders of Europe in their desperate struggle to reclaim their continent from Hitler, from the New York Times bestselling author of Citizens of London and Those Angry Days When the Nazi blitzkrieg rolled over continental Europe in the early days of World War II, the city of London became a refuge for the governments and armed forces of six occupied nations who escaped there to continue the fight. So, too, did General Charles de Gaulle, the self-appointed representative of free France.     As the on...

This one comes out of the "random audiobooks on historical/science/nature topics" file.     Title: Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner,and an Gentleman Solve the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail Author: Stephen R. Bown Publisher : Phoenix Books, Inc., 2007, 8 hours. Original hardback published 2003 by Viking, 256 pages. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb (from Overdrive) : A lively recounting of how three determined individuals overcame the constraints of 18th century thinking to solve the greatest medical mystery of their era. The cure for scurvy ranks among the greatest of military successes, yet its impact on history has mostly been ignored. Stephen Bown, in this engaging and often gripping book, searches back to the earliest recorded appearance of scurvy in the 16th century, to the 18th century, when the disease was at its gum-shred, bone-snapping worst, to the early 19th century, when the preventative was finally put into service. Bown introduces us,...

I owe the author and publisher of Into Siberia an apology, as I apparently got this book through NetGalley, not from the library as I assumed by the time I got around to reading it. So I'm overdue with the review. Title: Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia Author: Gregory J. Wallance Publisher: St. Martin's Press, 2023. 304 pages. Source: Netgalley ARC Publisher's Blurb: In the late nineteenth century, close diplomatic relations existed between the United States and Russia. All that changed when George Kennan went to Siberia in 1885 to investigate the exile system and his eyes were opened to the brutality Russia was wielding to suppress dissent. Over ten months Kennan traveled eight thousand miles, mostly in horse-drawn carriages, sleighs or on horseback. He endured suffocating sandstorms in the summer and blizzards in the winter. His interviews with convicts and political exiles revealed how Russia ran on the...

One of my friends sent me this book, and I've already managed to forget who. Thanks--it was a good read and I learned a lot.     Title: Ladies of the Canyons: A League of Extraordinary Women and Their Adventures in the American Southwest Author: Lesley Poling-Kempes Publication Info: University of Arizona Press, 2015.  373 pages Source: Gift Publisher’s Blurb: Ladies of the Canyons is the true story of remarkable women who left the security and comforts of genteel Victorian society and journeyed to the American Southwest in search of a wider view of themselves and their world. Educated, restless, and inquisitive, Natalie Curtis, Carol Stanley, Alice Klauber, and Mary Cabot Wheelwright were plucky, intrepid women whose lives were transformed in the first decades of the twentieth century by the people and the landscape of the American Southwest. Part of an influential circle of women that included Louisa Wade Wetherill, Alice Corbin Henderson, Mabel Dodge Luhan, ...

A couple of weeks ago I did a little road trip with my 94-year-old mom and my adult daughter, over the North Cascades Highway and down to visit the history museum in Okanogan, near where my grandmother grew up. Along the way we enjoyed some great scenery, and Barry George at the Okanogan County Historical Society museum went way out of his way to find information for us about the family and their property. We picked up Mom Monday morning and headed north on I5. I was too busy talking and missed our exit, so we took an extra "scenic route" before finding our way onto Highway 20 (the North Cascades Highway). The highway opened in 1972, so it was brand-new when I was a kid, and I remember the excitement of it when we drove it on a family trip. The entrance sign for the North Cascades National Park. I love the "glacier" atop the rocks. We made a couple of stops along the way for scenery, including one where my daughter and I blasted through a half-mile scenic trail, hur...

Teddy Roosevelt and saving our public lands.   Title: Leave It As It Is: A Journey Through Theodore Roosevelt's American Wilderness Author: David Gessner Publication Info: Simon Schuster, 2020. 352 pages hardback; 12.5 hours audio. Source: Library Publisher's Blurb: “Leave it as it is,” Theodore Roosevelt announced while viewing the Grand Canyon for the first time. “The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.” Roosevelt’s rallying cry signaled the beginning of an environmental fight that still wages today. To reconnect with the American wilderness and with the president who courageously protected it, acclaimed nature writer and New York Times bestselling author David Gessner embarks on a great American road trip guided by Roosevelt’s crusading environmental legacy. Gessner travels to the Dakota badlands where Roosevelt awakened as a naturalist; to Yellowstone, Yosemite and the Grand Canyon where Roosevelt escaped during the grind of his reelection tour;...

  Title: Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest Author:  Wade Davis, read by Enn Reitel Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2011, 29 hours. Original hardback, Knopf Canada, 2011, 672 pages. Source: Library (Overdrive) Publisher's Blurb: If the quest for Mount Everest began as a grand imperial gesture, as redemption for an empire of explorers that had lost the race to the Poles, it ended as a mission of regeneration for a country and a people bled white by war. Of the twenty-six British climbers who, on three expeditions (1921-24), walked 400 miles off the map to find and assault the highest mountain on Earth, twenty had seen the worst of the fighting. Six had been severely wounded, two others nearly died of disease at the Front, one was hospitalized twice with shell shock. Three as army surgeons dealt for the duration with the agonies of the dying. Two lost brothers, killed in action. All had endured the slaughter, the coughing of th...

Title: Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir by one of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII Author: Chester Nez with Judith Schiess Avila Publication Info: Paperback: Dutton Caliber, 2011, 296 pages. Original hardcover, 2011, Berkley Source: Purchased at the Grand Canyon! Publisher's Blurb: Although more than 400 Navajos served in the military during World War II as top-secret code talkers, even those fighting shoulder to shoulder with them were not told of their covert function. And, after the war, the Navajos were forbidden to speak of their service until 1968, when the code was finally declassified. Of the original twenty-nine Navajo code talkers, only two are still alive. Chester Nez is one of them. [Note: this was true as off 2011]. In this memoir, the eighty-nine-year-old Nez chronicles both his war years and his life growing up on the Checkerboard Area of the Navajo Reservation-the hard life that gave him the strength, both physical and mental, to become a Mar...

Title: Tigers of the Snow: How One Fateful Climb Made the Sherpas Mountaineering Legends Author: Jonathan Neale Publication Info: Thomas Dunne Books, 2002. 320 pages Source: Kamzang Journeys trekking library! Publisher’s Blurb: In 1922 Himalayan climbers were British gentlemen, and their Sherpa and Tibetan porters were "coolies," unskilled and inexperienced casual laborers. By 1953 Sherpa Tenzing Norgay stood on the summit of Everest, and the coolies had become the "Tigers of the Snow." Jonathan Neale's absorbing new book is both a compelling history of the oft-forgotten heroes of mountaineering and a gripping account of the expedition that transformed the Sherpas into climbing legends. In 1934 a German-led team set off to climb the Himalayan peak of Nanga Parbat, the ninth highest mountain on earth. After a disastrous assault in 1895, no attempt had been made to conquer the mountain for thirty-nine years. The new Nazi government was determined to pro...

  Title: 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created Author: Charles C. Mann. Narrated by Roberston Dean Publication Info: Random House Audio 2011, 17:45 hours. Original Alfred A. Knopf, 2011, 557 pages. Source: Library Digital Editions Publisher’s Blurb: From the author of 1491— the best-selling study of the pre-Columbian Americas—a deeply engaging new history of the most momentous biological event since the death of the dinosaurs. More than 200 million years ago, geological forces split apart the continents. Isolated from each other, the two halves of the world developed radically different suites of plants and animals. When Christopher Columbus set foot in the Americas, he ended that separation at a stroke. Driven by the economic goal of establishing trade with China, he accidentally set off an ecological convulsion as European vessels carried thousands of species to new homes across the oceans.  The Columbian Exchange, as researchers call it, is the reason ...

  Title: Destiny of the Republic: A Tale of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President Author: Candice Millard. Read by Paul Michael Publication Info: Random House Audio, 2011; 9 hours 47 minutes. Original by Doubleday, 2011, 339 pages Source: Library digital resources Goodreads Blurb: James A. Garfield was one of the most extraordinary men ever elected president. Born into abject poverty, he rose to become a wunderkind scholar, a Civil War hero, and a renowned and admired reformist congressman. Nominated for president against his will, he engaged in a fierce battle with the corrupt political establishment. But four months after his inauguration, a deranged office seeker tracked Garfield down and shot him in the back. But the shot didn’t kill Garfield. The drama of what hap­pened subsequently is a powerful story of a nation in tur­moil. The unhinged assassin’s half-delivered strike shattered the fragile national mood of a country so recently fractured by civil war, ...