Some scholars label the sample survey--the idea that small, randomly selected, well-designed samples can provide accurate estimates of large population attributes--as the most important social sciences invention of the 20th century. One of the world's most recognized survey methodologists is Don A. Dillman. His findings raised the standards of evidence in the field and changed how researchers conduct thousands of essential surveys throughout the world--a United States Census Bureau director once described the organization's revamped decennial questionnaire as Dillmanized. In You Have Been Randomly Selected, Dillman conveys the excitement he felt getting up in the morning with a new concept that would lead to months of experiments, one after another, trying to solve many unknowns. He found working with people interested in using those ideas to carry out their work even more satisfying.

Random selection also played a large role in Dillman's own life, teaching him to embrace, rather than reject, change. An early bout with polio kept him indoors instead of outside on his family's Iowa farm. Relationships he enjoyed as a child in rural communities later shaped his theoretical approach to survey participation. Exposure to Iowa State University Research Extension agents prompted an interest in practical research. Key experiences in college and graduate school piqued thoughts about how he could contribute to the world. A student strike a few months after he started as a Washington State University assistant professor brought classroom instruction to a halt and led to his formation of the institution's Social & Economic Sciences Research Center and future work with the U.S. Census Bureau. Together, these unexpected events and circumstances destined him to become an agronomist, a sociologist, and ultimately, a world-renowned survey methodologist. You Have Been Randomly Selected is his story.

The grizzly paused in knee-deep water, staring straight at the man behind the camera. Abruptly he bolted, racing full tilt toward Thomas Bancroft, his eyes glued to the photographer's face. The bear kept coming, closer and closer, as Bancroft snapped pictures and frantically debated what to do. Suddenly a sockeye darted out of the water, and just as quickly, the powerful animal veered away to chase the fish.

A biologist and scientific policy advisor, Bancroft planned his weeklong trip to the Katmai National Park and Preserve intending to photograph bears, but he ended up finding a great deal more. Having spent much of his professional career in Washington, DC, working to protect places like the Alaska wilderness and now struggling with a deep personal loss, when he finally walked among its salmon, bears, and caribou, emotions overwhelmed him.

Wild things are essential to human wellbeing. Whether standing in a crystal-clear river feeling dozens of sockeye salmon swim around his legs, watching gulls lurk around a feeding bear, meeting a thrush by a Lake Clark cabin, pondering conservationist Dick Proenneke's determination, flying over spectacular volcanoes, mountains, and glaciers, or sitting beside a pilot who has lived his entire life in wild Alaska, Bancroft felt a profound awe and respect for Alaska's wild creatures and landscape. He also found himself contemplating his own life choices, family relationships, and career. More than just a biological perspective on Alaska's wonders, a discussion of potential environmental impacts from human actions, a personal travel account, or a collection of dynamic photographs, Beyond the Wonder is a beautiful meditation on nature--one that highlights the importance of untamed places and the role they play in crafting a better world.

With numbers swelled by Oregon-bound settlers as well as hordes of gold-seekers destined for California, the 1852 overland migration was the largest on record in a year taking a terrible toll in lives mainly due to deadly cholera. Included here are firsthand accounts of this fateful year, including the words and thoughts of a young married couple, Mary Ann and Willis Boatman, released for the first time in book-length form.

In its immediacy, Surviving the Oregon Trail, 1852 opens a window to the travails of the overland journeyers--their stark camps, treacherous river fordings, and dishonest countrymen; the shimmering plains and mountain vastnesses; trepidation at crossing ancient Indian lands; and the dark angel of death hovering over the wagon columns. But also found here are acts of valor, compassion, and kindness, and the hope for a new life in a new land at the end of the trail.

A napping volcano blinked awake in March 1980. Two months later, when that mountain roared, Jim Scymanky was about twelve miles northwest, logging a north slope above Hoffstadt Creek. Rocks zinged through the woods, bouncing off trees, then the tops of trees snapped off... Suddenly I could see nothing...it got hot right away, then scorching hot and impossible to breathe. The air had no oxygen, like being trapped underwater...I was being cremated, the pain unbearable.

Steve Malone, at the University of Washington Seismology Laboratory, was inconsolable. We'd failed. For two months we'd counted and located thousands of earthquakes, looked for changes to anticipate an eruption. Then it just happened. It killed many people. It killed David Johnston. We could hardly work.

Author Richard Waitt was part of a U.S. Geological Survey team doing volcano research in the Cascades, and was one of the first to arrive following the mountain's early rumblings. His journey collecting eyewitness accounts began with a conversation in a bar the third week after Mount St. Helens erupted. The couple he met barely outraced a searing ash cloud, and Waitt realized their experiences could inform geologic studies. He eventually conducted hundreds of interviews--sometimes two and three decades later--often making multiple visits to gather additional details, correct errors, and resolve discrepancies.

A meticulous scientist with intimate knowledge of Mount St. Helens, Waitt delivers a detailed and accurate chronicle of events. He tapped numerous primary sources--interviews, legal depositions, personal diaries, geologists' field notes, radio logs, and police records. Newspaper stories and even sun shadows on photographs revealed additional intricacies. In the Path of Destruction's eruption story unfolds through unforgettable, riveting narratives--the heart of a masterful chronology that also delivers engrossing science, history, and journalism.

The grizzly paused in knee-deep water, staring straight at the man behind the camera. Abruptly he bolted, racing full tilt toward Thomas Bancroft, his eyes glued to the photographer's face. The bear kept coming, closer and closer, as Bancroft snapped pictures and frantically debated what to do. Suddenly a sockeye darted out of the water, and just as quickly, the powerful animal veered away to chase the fish.

A biologist and scientific policy advisor, Bancroft planned his weeklong trip to the Katmai National Park and Preserve intending to photograph bears, but he ended up finding a great deal more. Having spent much of his professional career in Washington, DC, working to protect places like the Alaska wilderness and now struggling with a deep personal loss, when he finally walked among its salmon, bears, and caribou, emotions overwhelmed him.

Wild things are essential to human wellbeing. Whether standing in a crystal-clear river feeling dozens of sockeye salmon swim around his legs, watching gulls lurk around a feeding bear, meeting a thrush by a Lake Clark cabin, pondering conservationist Dick Proenneke's determination, flying over spectacular volcanoes, mountains, and glaciers, or sitting beside a pilot who has lived his entire life in wild Alaska, Bancroft felt a profound awe and respect for Alaska's wild creatures and landscape. He also found himself contemplating his own life choices, family relationships, and career. More than just a biological perspective on Alaska's wonders, a discussion of potential environmental impacts from human actions, a personal travel account, or a collection of dynamic photographs, Beyond the Wonder is a beautiful meditation on nature--one that highlights the importance of untamed places and the role they play in crafting a better world.

Captured from Great Depression-era Seattle newspapers, this narrative history of the city's business, labor, and political life traces a turbulent decade that scarred a generation and defined years of policy and culture. Underlying themes include the idea that the Depression was an economic consequence of World War I, intensified by reckless lending and restrictions on trade; that the New Deal helped people get through the Depression but could not end it; that the radical left made big gains in the 1930s but was ultimately rejected; and that, after the war, private economy revived but was not fundamentally altered.

These are stories many Seattleites have never heard. They begin with the end of the office tower development boom, the real estate depression that followed, and the failure of two large savings and loans. Investment banker Ben Ehrlichman emerges as a fascinating figure. As the economy worsens, articles consider the growth of the waterfront Hooverville, one woman's desperate search for work, political fights over controlling help for the unemployed, the debate whether to require work in exchange for food, and the rise of a union for the unemployed.

Labor-related accounts cover the 1934 longshore strike, a 1936 newspaper strike, and the reign of pugnacious Teamster leader Dave Beck. Ramsey offers new, nuanced insights into Beck's climb and his influence over Mayor John Dore. Political pieces document the rise of the left, its domination by the Communist Party, resistance from non-Communist progressives, and its collapse following the Hitler-Stalin pact. Business coverage returns with the intense rivalry between City Light and Puget Power, Black Ball ferries' unsuccessful struggle to remain private, and Boeing's risky gamble on a four-engine aircraft. The final chapter highlights unions' and the Democratic Party's long-term rise, the scattering of the radicals, and the revival of private business.

The first Euro-Americans to trek through the verdant Walla Walla Valley were uniformly impressed with its prospects for colonization. The Cayuse remained the valley's primary inhabitants until diverse populations with equally diverse objectives--manipulative traders, frictional missionaries, hostile colonists, an over-ambitious governor, a distracted Bureau of Indian Affairs, vigilante armies, and their rival, the US Army--arrived and rapidly transformed the region. Established at a fortunate location just prior to the Idaho gold rush, Walla Walla quickly grew into Washington Territory's largest and wealthiest city. At the same time, the sudden expansion increasingly forced the Cayuse and some Walla Walla and Umatilla bands to live south of the city within ambiguously defined reservation boundaries.

Who were these Cayuse and early Walla Wallans? What was the relationship between the city and the reservation in the mid-1800s? What was Walla Walla's place within the political and commercial spectra of a swiftly evolving Pacific Northwest? How did both city and reservation fare during the Long Depression of the 1870s?

Becoming Walla Walla covers Walla Walla Valley history from the time of the Sahaptian Peoples' first encounters with Euro-Americans to the initial expiration of the U.S. government's treaty with the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla. It sheds light on the city's and reservation's simultaneous development, re-animates the Walla Walla of the 1860s and '70s, reconsiders the city's status in early Washington Territory and Oregon State histories, and documents transformations of the region's built and natural environments.

Hardship to Homeland recounts Volga Germans' unique story in a saga that stretches from Germany to Russia and across the Atlantic. Burdened by war and debt, life was extremely difficult for impoverished European peasants until a former German princess came to power. Seeking to increase borderland population, provide a buffer against Ottoman Empire incursions, and bring agricultural ingenuity to her country, Russian empress Catherine II issued a remarkable 1763 manifesto inviting Europeans to immigrate. Their passage paid, colonists would become Russian citizens, yet retain their language and culture. For the next four years, some 27,000 settlers came--mostly from Hesse and the Palatinate--founding 104 communities along both banks of the Volga River near Saratov and introducing numerous agricultural innovations.

But the Russian Senate revoked the original settlement terms in 1871. Facing poor economic conditions and a forced Russian army draft, 100,000 Volga Germans joined other immigrant waves to the New World. After a decade of hardship in the Midwest, some began moving to the Pacific Northwest, and their westward movement was one of the region's largest single ethnic group migrations. From outposts in Washington State they spread throughout the Columbia Basin, along the coast, and into northern Idaho, Oregon, British Columbia, and Alberta, transforming their new homelands into centers of western productivity and significantly influencing North American religion, politics, and social development.

Like the rest of the American West, the mid-Columbia region has always been diverse. Its history mirrors common multiracial narratives, but with important nuances. In the late 1880s, Chinese railroad workers were segregated to East Pasco, a practice that later extended to all non-whites and continued for decades. Kennewick residents became openly proud of their status as a lily-white town.

In Echoes of Exclusion and Resistance, the third Hanford Histories volume, four scholars--Laura Arata, Robert Bauman, Robert Franklin, and Thomas E. Marceau--draw from Hanford History Project, Atomic Heritage Foundation, and Afro-American Community Cultural and Educational Society oral histories to focus on the experiences of non-white groups whose lives were deeply impacted by the Hanford Site. Linked in ways they likely could not know, each group resisted the segregation and discrimination they encountered, and in the process, challenged the region's dominant racial norms.

The Wanapum, evicted by Hanford Nuclear Reservation construction, relate stories of their people, as well as their responses to dislocation and forced evacuation. Unable to interact with the ancient landscapes and utilize the natural resources of their traditional lands, they suffered painful, irretrievable losses. Early arrivals to the town of Pasco, the Yamauchi family built the American dream--including successful businesses and highly educated children--only to have their aspirations crushed by World War II Japanese-American internment. Thousands of African Americans migrated to the area for wartime jobs and discovered rampant segregation. Through negotiations, demonstrations, and protests, they fought the region's ingrained racial disparity. During the early years of the Cold War, Black women, mostly from East Texas, also relocated to work at Hanford. They offer a unique perspective on employment, discrimination, family, and faith.

The story of the infamous murder and robbery of Lewiston merchant Lloyd Magruder and his companions during the 1860s gold rush is legendary in Montana, Idaho, and Washington. Ladd Hamilton constructs a compelling account of the destruction of Magruder's pack train while traveling on the Southern Nez Perce Trail in the Bitterroot Mountains, and the subsequent quest by Magruder's friend Hill Beachey to track his killers to San Francisco, escort them back to Lewiston, and then protect them from lynching until they could be tried in Idaho Territory.

By appraising written evidence and community lore, Hamilton has created an intriguing account based on fact and documentation. But he also blends in historical fiction when required to complement the narrative in those places where events are known to have occurred but the historical sources are sparse or virtually nonexistent. Underlying Hamilton's work is his exact and familiar knowledge of early Idaho Territory, which in 1863 stretched hundreds of miles from Lewiston at the Snake-Clearwater confluence to the gold camps of Virginia City, Bannack, and beyond in what is now Montana.

Hamilton's imaginative characterizations of Magruder, Beachey, outlaw sheriff Henry Plummer, and the large cast of other historical figures in Idaho, Montana, and California is based on his years of knowing many and varied peoples of the West.

Riding five horses and leading five more, three young New York men, their guide, and a camp cook entered the untamed vastness of the Bitteroot Mountains. They expected the trip to be the adventure of a lifetime, but it was already September. As the hunters made their way up the Lolo Trail in 1893, they were unaware of the coming record snows that would trigger a cruel, controversial decision.

Snowbound is the true story of the Carlin party, whose ill luck and bad judgment drove decent men to an ethical dilemma that intrigued the nation and can still raise an argument wherever people rub shoulders with wilderness. This gripping narrative is the story of a desperate struggle to get out of the mountains with a sick man and of the heroic efforts of various army units to rescue them.

Ladd Hamilton has brought rich narrative detail and crackling tension to an intriguing episode in Northwest history. Hamilton gives flesh and bone to his characters, setting the reader down among them as they battle the elements and their own failures, caught between the imprisoning mountains and an unforgiving river.

Between 1801 and 1812, North West Company fur trader, explorer, and cartographer David Thompson established two viable trade routes across the Rocky Mountains in Canada and systematically surveyed the entire 1,250-mile course of the Columbia River. In succeeding years he distilled his mathematical notations from dozens of journal notebooks into the first accurate maps of a vast portion of the northwest quadrant of North America. The writings in those same journals reveal a complex man who was headstrong, curious, and resourceful in ways that reflected both his London education and his fur trade apprenticeship on the Canadian Shield.

In The Mapmaker's Eye: David Thompson on the Columbia Plateau, Jack Nisbet utilizes fresh research to convey how Thompson experienced the full sweep of human and natural history etched across the Columbia drainage. He places Thompson's movements within the larger contexts of the European Enlightenment, the British fur trade economy, and American expansion as represented by the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Nisbet courses through journal notebooks to assemble and comment on the explorer's bird and mammal lists, his surprisingly detailed Salish vocabulary, the barrel organ music he and his crew listened to, and the woodworking techniques they used to keep themselves under shelter or on the move.

Visual elements bring Thompson's written daybooks to life. Watercolor landscapes and tribal portraits drawn by the first artists to travel along his trade routes illuminate what the explorer actually saw. Tribal and fur trade artifacts reveal intimate details of two cultures at the moment of contact. The Mapmaker's Eye also depicts the surveying instruments that Thompson utilized, and displays the series of remarkable maps that grew out of his patient, persistent years of work. In addition, Nisbet taps into oral memories kept by the Kootenai and Salish bands who guided the agent and his party along their way.

Lewis and Clark Among the Nez Perce is a generous and careful re-evaluation of Lewis and Clark west of the Bitterroot Mountains. An extraordinary new look at their extended visit--approximately four months of daily interchange with a community the white visitors regarded as especially friendly, hospitable, and helpful to their success--the book represents a breakthrough in Lewis and Clark studies. Many incidents suddenly take on a new light when the historical lens is reversed.

In 1984, James Ronda's groundbreaking Lewis and Clark Among the Indians looked broadly at the Lewis and Clark expedition from the Native American perspective. Nearly three decades later, Nez Perce historians Allen V. Pinkham and Steven Ross Evans examined the journals of Lewis and Clark with painstaking care to tease out new insights from what Lewis and Clark wrote about their Nez Perce hosts. Pinkham and Evans evaluate both what Lewis and Clark understood and what they misunderstood in the Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) lifeway and political structure. More particularly, they have scoured the journals for clues about how the Nez Perce reacted to the bearded strangers, gathering and putting into print for the first time the stands of a surprisingly rich Nez Perce oral tradition.

The first richly detailed exploration of the relationship between Mr. Jefferson's Corps of Discovery and a single tribe, this volume also serves as a template for a Lewis and Clark expedition tribal history series.

While working for Washington State Magazine, eleven journalists traveled throughout the region to interview farmers, chefs, wine tasters, mountain climbers, scientists, and more. The resulting stories highlight the Evergreen State's captivating people, industries, and history, describing influential programs, cities from Aberdeen to Zillah, and a wide variety of trends, research, and innovative solutions.

The writers introduce the people who keep the largest ferry system in the country running, examine the most deadly pathogen ever recorded, and reveal the secret ingredient that makes Cougar Gold cheese possible. They also cover creating the Cosmic Crisp, producing Skagit Valley tulips, how soil composition impacts the taste of wine, and the fickle business of growing cherries. Additional accounts chronicle art and the Makah canoe, significant architecture, the advent of Master Gardeners, a stash of Mount St. Helens ash, challenges related to ocean life, and much more. Featured pieces include favorites from Eric Apalategui, Pat Caraher, Brian Charles Clark, Adriana Janovich, Ken Olson, Rebecca Phillips, Eric Sorenson, Tim Steury, Hannalore Sudermann, Andrea Vogt, and Dave Wasson.

Gathered from thousands of pieces published in Washington State Magazine across two decades, The Evergreen Collection celebrates the state's vast diversity and the impressive accomplishments of those who call it home.

Throughout the mid-1800s, outsiders, including many Euro-Americans, arrived in what is now northwest Washington. As they interacted with Samish, Lummi, S'Klallam, Sto: lo, and other groups, some of the men sought relationships with young local women. Hoping to establish mutually beneficial ties, Coast and Interior Salish families arranged strategic cross-cultural marriages. Some pairs became lifelong partners while other unions were short. These were crucial alliances that played a critical role in regional settlement and spared Puget Sound's upper corner from the tragic conflicts other regions experienced.

Accounts of the men, who often held public positions--army officer, Territorial Supreme Court justice, school superintendent, sheriff--exist in a variety of records. Some, like the nephew of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, were from prominent eastern families. Yet across the West, the contributions of their native wives remain unacknowledged.

The women's lives were marked by hardships and heartbreaks common for the time, but the four profiled--Caroline Davis Kavanaugh, Mary Fitzhugh Lear Phillips, Clara Tennant Selhameten, and Nellie Carr Lane--exhibited exceptional endurance, strength, and adaptability. Far from helpless victims, they influenced their husbands and controlled their homes. Remembered as loving mothers and good neighbors, they ran farms, nursed and supported family, served as midwives, and operated businesses. They visited relatives and attended ancestral gatherings, often with their children. Each woman's story is uniquely hers, but together they and other intermarried women helped found Puget Sound communities and left lasting legacies. They were peace weavers.

Author Candace Wellman hopes to shatter stereotypes surrounding these relationships. Numerous collaborators across the United States and Canada--descendants, local historians, academics, and more--graciously participated in her seventeen-year effort.

Starting in 1825, David Douglas made the first systematic collections of flora and fauna across many parts of the greater Pacific Northwest. Colleagues in Great Britain then attached his name to more than 80 different species, including the region's iconic timber tree. A colorfully illustrated essay collection, David Douglas, a Naturalist at Work examines various aspects of Douglas' meteoric career, demonstrating connections between his work and the Pacific Northwest of today. From the Columbia River's perilous bar to luminous mountain wildflower blooms; from ever-changing technology frontiers to the quiet seasonal rhythms of tribal families gathering roots, Nisbet's compositions collapse time to shed light on the area's people and landscapes. Originally published in conjunction with a major museum exhibit, this is the first paperback edition.

When Susan Landgraf received an Academy of American Poets' Laureate in 2020, her project proposal included teaching more than a dozen workshops on the Muckleshoot Indian Reservation that would culminate in a Muckleshoot poetry book. Landgraf sees writing as both opening oneself to vulnerability and to a feeling of empowerment. She believes that poetry can save lives, and worked to facilitate a teaching environment that welcomed each voice. Her exercises, prompts, and discussions sparked creativity and critical thinking, and invited young people and elders to reflect on their history, culture, and current lives in a meaningful way.

Ultimately, fifty-four poets--most from the Muckleshoot Tribal School--participated in the collection. Expressive and moving, their pieces are about searching and belonging. Loss and finding. The writers range from elementary school age to adult, but all share a common theme--a reaching back and a reaching forward--sometimes in the same poem. Their work highlights Muckleshoot history and culture, but also spotlights individual histories, lessons, and beliefs.

Muckleshoot is the Native name for the prairie on which the 6.128 square-mile reservation was established in 1857. Federally recognized as descendants of the Duwamish and Upper Puyallup people who inhabited Central Puget Sound thousands of years before non-Indian settlement, approximately 3,600 people live on the reservation, making the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe one of the largest Native American tribes in Washington State.

Born to T'siyiak, a champion horse racer and Com-mus-ni, the daughter of Chief Wiyáwiikt, Kamiakin helped relatives tend his family's rapidly expanding herds. He wintered in tule mat lodges in the Kittitas and Ahtanum valleys, shared in spring root gathering, went salmon fishing in the summer, and participated in fall hunting and berry picking.

The young Indian also learned ancestral traditions. Alone as an adolescent on the treacherous, icy heights of Mount Rainier, he dreamt of the Buffalo's power and completed his quest for a spirit guide. Muscular and sinewy, he became a skilled horse racer and competitor in feats of agility. He married and established his home on Ahtanum Creek, where he raised potatoes, squash, pumpkins, and corn in large, irrigated gardens.

As Kamiakin matured, he became more prominent among the Yakamas; leaders of both Sahaptin and Salish tribes often sought his counsel. Through personal aptitude as well as family bonds, he emerged as one of the region's most influential chiefs. He cautiously welcomed White newcomers and sought to learn beneficial aspects of their culture. His dignified manner and attire impressed both soldiers and missionaries.

In the 1850s, the arrival of unprecedented numbers of White immigrants incited a cataclysmic upheaval that would threaten the very existence of the Plateau's native people. On May 29, 1855, the Walla Walla Council commenced with a brief meeting attended by some 5,000 Indians, including Chief Kamiakin. Two weeks later, with great reluctance, he signed the Yakima Treaty of 1855. He also resolved to fight against the destruction of his people and desecrations upon the land. Finding Chief Kamiakin is his story.

In the many published accounts of the Lewis and Clark expedition, historians have tended to undervalue the explorers' encounter with Columbia River country. Most narratives emphasize Lewis and Clark's adventures through their journey to the Bitterroot Mountains but have said little about the rest of their travels west of there. River of Promise fills a significant gap in our understanding of Lewis and Clark's legendary expedition.

Historian David L. Nicandri shifts the focus to an essential goal of the explorers: to discover the headwaters of the Columbia and a water route to the Pacific Ocean. He also restores William Clark in his role as the primary geographic problem-solver of the partnership. Most historians assume that Meriwether Lewis was a more distinguished scientist than Clark because of his formal training in Philadelphia and superior writing skills. Here we see Clark as Lewis's equal as scientific geographer, not merely the practical manager of boats and personnel.

Nicandri places the legend of Sacagawea in clearer perspective by focusing instead on the contributions of often-overlooked Indian leaders in Columbia River country. He also offers many points of comparison to other explorers and a provocative analysis of Lewis's suicide in 1809, arguing that it was not a sudden event but fruit of a seed planted much earlier, quite possibly in Columbia country. Originally published by The Dakota Institute.

Professional wildlife biologist Scott McCorquodale observed the natural world from a unique and intimate perspective. His compelling, dramatic, and detailed accounts describe forty years of research on Pacific Northwest bears, deer, elk, and moose. He and his colleagues spent hours tracking animals in miserable conditions, setting countless traps, and hanging out of helicopters with a dart gun. Some animals left a lasting impression--including Granny, the first elk he ever darted, a Cle Elum elk who considered herself human, and a variety of personality-filled bears.

The work was transformative. His thirteen years with a Yakama Nation wildlife program left a deep personal impact. Research on elk in eastern Washington's treeless shrub-steppe essentially redefined much of what scientists now know about this species. Living year-round in an environment that they were not supposed to be able to occupy, they defied expectations and humbled experts. Close work with wild bears in Montana and Washington--capturing them for radio-collaring, entering their winter dens, dealing with the consequences of their innate ability to problem-solve and innovate in their search for food--earned them the author's deep respect.

While exciting and demanding, frequent helicopter and small airplanes flights also meant dangerous duty that--despite expert pilots and skilled passengers--sometimes led to tragedy. Finally, McCorquodale highlights the major efforts he led, the evolution of wildlife research, and how different the work is today.