This widely praised book chronicles Peter Laufer's adventures within the butterfly industry and the butterfly underground. Laufer begins by examining the allure of butterflies throughout history, but his research soon veers into the high-stake realms of organized crime, ecological devastation, museum collections, and chaos theory. His ever-expanding journey of discovery throughout the Americas and beyond offers a rare look into a theater of intrigue,...

By 1941, a nascent statehood movement began to coalesce into an active and explicit secession campaign seeking to carve from Northern California and Southern Oregon a new State of Jefferson. Yreka, California, home of the secession movement, was named the temporary state capital. Local proponents, Members of the State of Jefferson Citizens Committee, began to stop traffic along Highway 99 at armed roadblocks to pass out political broadsides — their...

Describes the importance of the guitar in Mexico, especially in Paracho, a town which is becoming the center of the Mexican guitar industry.

Dreaming in Turtle is a compelling story of a stalwart animal prized from prehistory through to today-an animal threatened by human greed, pragmatism, and rationalization. It stars turtles and shady and heroic human characters both, in settings ranging from luxury redoubts to degraded habitats, during a time when the confluence of easy global trade, limited supply, and inexhaustible demand has accelerated the stress on species. The growth of the middle...