Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West

Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West

Author: Mark Spitzer

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2017-03-01

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0803265239

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Fisherman Mark Spitzer takes readers on an action-packed investigation of the most fierce and fearsome freshwater grotesques of the American West ever to inspire both hatred and fascination. Through the lenses of history, folklore, biology, ecology, and politics, Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West depicts the environmental destruction plaguing the most maligned creatures in our midst while subtly interweaving Spitzer’s experiences of personal tragedy and self-discovery. Join Spitzer as he noodles for flathead catfish in Oklahoma, snags paddlefish in Missouri, trotline- and electro-fishes American eels in Arkansas, studies razorback suckers in Arizona, bounty hunts for pikeminnows in Washington State, attends a burbot festival in Utah, stirs up Asian carp in Kansas, and breaks the state record for the largest yellow bullhead ever caught in Nebraska. By examining freakish links in a vital chain and working with specialists in the field, Spitzer portrays a planet in environmental crisis and dispels the illusion that our actions don’t result in long-term, toxic consequences. Spitzer offers models for fisheries and provides other sources of hope in this informative epic of redemption that ultimately celebrates the wild and resilient beauty and remaining possibilities of the American West. Watch a book trailer. Visit the Where in the West is Mark Spitzer? blog series for additional reading and a look at more photographs not included in the book.


Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West

Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West

Author: Mark Spitzer

Publisher: U of Nebraska Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 223

ISBN-13: 1496200047

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Fisherman Mark Spitzer takes readers on an action-packed investigation of the most fierce and fearsome freshwater grotesques of the American West ever to inspire both hatred and fascination. Through the lenses of history, folklore, biology, ecology, and politics, Beautifully Grotesque Fish of the American West depicts the environmental destruction plaguing the most maligned creatures in our midst while subtly interweaving Spitzer's experiences of personal tragedy and self-discovery. Join Spitzer as he noodles for flathead catfish in Oklahoma, snags paddlefish in Missouri, trotline- and electro-fishes American eels in Arkansas, studies razorback suckers in Arizona, bounty hunts for pikeminnows in Washington State, attends a burbot festival in Utah, stirs up Asian carp in Kansas, and breaks the state record for the largest yellow bullhead ever caught in Nebraska. By examining freakish links in a vital chain and working with specialists in the field, Spitzer portrays a planet in environmental crisis and dispels the illusion that our actions don't result in long-term, toxic consequences. Spitzer offers models for fisheries and provides other sources of hope in this informative epic of redemption that ultimately celebrates the wild and resilient beauty and remaining possibilities of the American West. Watch a book trailer. Visit the Where in the West is Mark Spitzer? blog series for additional reading and a look at more photographs not included in the book.


Fish On, Fish Off

Fish On, Fish Off

Author: Stephen Sautner

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2016-10-03

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1493025066

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Fish On, Fish Off is the angling version of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Through a series of nearly 50 personal essays, the author explores what happens when the self-taught, DIY angler sets out to fish the world – and winds up stumbling into every possible pitfall and danger along the way. These include: getting chased from a river by an elephant, surviving a terrifying helicopter ride over the Straits of Magellan, and breaking his only rod on the second cast in Cuba’s Bay of Pigs. Closer to home, he is swept off a jetty on Block Island by a rogue wave, winds up in an emergency room more than once with fishing lures hanging from various parts of his anatomy, and perhaps most daunting, surviving 30 years of the scrum better known as opening day of trout season in his crowded home state of New Jersey. If Upriver and Downstream showed the poetry of angling, Fish On, Fish Off shows the scars.


Return of the Gar

Return of the Gar

Author: Mark Spitzer

Publisher: University of North Texas Press

Published: 2015-03-15

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1574415999

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The alligator gar belongs to a family of fish that has remained fundamentally unchanged since the Cretaceous, over 100 million years ago. Its intimidating size and plethora of teeth have made it demonized throughout its range in North America, resulting in needless killing. Massive oil spills in its breeding range have not helped its population either. Interspersing science, folklore, history, and action-packed fishing narratives, Spitzer's empathy for and fascination with this air-breathing, armored fish provides for an entertaining odyssey that examines management efforts to preserve and propagate the alligator gar in the United States. Spitzer also travels to Central America, Thailand, and Mexico to assess the global gar situation. He reflects on what is and isn't working in compromised environments, then makes a case for conservation based on personal experience and a love for wildness for its own sake. This colorful portrait of the alligator gar can serve as a metaphor and measurement for the future of our biodiversity during a time of planetary crisis.


Season of the Gar

Season of the Gar

Author: Mark Spitzer

Publisher: University of Arkansas Press

Published: 2010-04-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1557289298

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Season of the Gar is a fang-infested, monster-headed, armor-plated romp through the prehistoric swamps and murky rivers of America’s most feared and demonized fish. Follow Mark Spitzer on his lengthy and often frustrating quest from Texas and Louisiana, Missouri, and Arkansas to catch his own gar. Read about his sometimes bizarre angling adventures in search of this air-breathing freshwater giant (up to ten feet in length and well over three hundred pounds) as he separates fact from fiction. Spitzer draws on folklore, science, history, his own pet gar, and even gar recipes to tell this unique and exciting literary eco-tale about a fish that has inspired imaginations for centuries, a fish many have hated, a fish many have thrown on the shore to die.


Grotesque

Grotesque

Author: Natsuo Kirino

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2007-03-13

Total Pages: 482

ISBN-13: 0307267296

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Life at the prestigious Q High School for Girls in Tokyo exists on a precise social axis: a world of insiders and outsiders, of haves and have-nots. Beautiful Yuriko and her unpopular, unnamed sister exist in different spheres; the hopelessly awkward Kazue Sato floats around among them, trying to fit in.Years later, Yuriko and Kazue are dead — both have become prostitutes and both have been brutally murdered. Natsuo Kirino, celebrated author of Out, seamlessly weaves together the stories of these women’s struggles within the conventions and restrictions of Japanese society. At once a psychological investigation of the pressures facing Japanese women and a classic work of noir fiction, Grotesque is a brilliantly twisted novel of ambition, desire, beauty, cruelty, and identity by one of our most electrifying writers.


Super Bass Flies

Super Bass Flies

Author: Pat Cohen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2020-05-26

Total Pages: 589

ISBN-13: 1510736905

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“Pat Cohen of Super Fly is the modern-day hair master. So exceptional is his work that many of his fans consider his flies more art than tackle. . . . Not only is Pat Cohen the man when it comes to tying hair bugs, he’s also a leading expert on fishing them.” —Field & Stream After a lifetime of bass fishing and a decade of tying flies to catch them, Pat Cohen shares in Super Flies the abundance of tips, tactics, and fly recipes he has gathered in pursuing bass on the fly. In creating his own proprietary bass patterns, he has made smart design choices based on an understanding of the prey an angler might imitate in a particular presentation. He researched each food source to give insight into the flies he features from some of the best tiers in the world. He has divided the book into three main areas that feature: Topwater mice, frogs, birds, floating minnows, dragonflies, damsel flies, and hoppers Mid-column flies, including Spaghetti Cat, Fleeing Bucktail, and Manbearpig Bottom-dweller flies, including Shaggin’ Dragon, Mud Puppet, and Sulking Sculpin Techniques for fishing each type of fly And much more. Every fly in Super Fliescomes with a short description offering insight into how the creator recommends fishing it, and he offers additional step-by-step instructions for tying his original designs. Use Super Flies as a handy reference to expand your base knowledge of creative solutions for bass on the fly.


Doing a Bit of Bleeding

Doing a Bit of Bleeding

Author: Nate Liederbach

Publisher: Ghost Road Publishing Group Incorporated

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 175

ISBN-13: 9780976072928

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In a substantial literary work that leaves readers satiated yet challenged, Liederbach has created a study of the frailty of the human heart and its capacity for love amid irresolvable disappointment and extraordinary beauty.


Sophie's World

Sophie's World

Author: Jostein Gaarder

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2007-03-20

Total Pages: 735

ISBN-13: 1466804270

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A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.


The Beadworkers

The Beadworkers

Author: Beth Piatote

Publisher: Catapult

Published: 2019-10-22

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1640092692

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Beth Piatote's luminous debut collection opens with a feast, grounding its stories in the landscapes and lifeworlds of the Native Northwest, exploring the inventive and unforgettable pattern of Native American life in the contemporary world Told with humor, subtlety, and spareness, the mixed–genre works of Beth Piatote’s first collection find unifying themes in the strength of kinship, the pulse of longing, and the language of return. A woman teaches her niece to make a pair of beaded earrings while ruminating on a fractured relationship. An eleven–year–old girl narrates the unfolding of the Fish Wars in the 1960s as her family is propelled to its front lines. In 1890, as tensions escalate at Wounded Knee, two young men at college—one French and the other Lakota—each contemplate a death in the family. In the final, haunting piece, a Nez Perce–Cayuse family is torn apart as they debate the fate of ancestral remains in a moving revision of the Greek tragedy Antigone. Formally inventive and filled with vibrant characters, The Beadworkers draws on Indigenous aesthetics and forms to offer a powerful, sustaining vision of Native life.