Craig Childs

A tour of the hidden world of wild animals offers forty narrative essays on the author's encounters with a variety of species, in a volume that evaluates the behaviors, habitats, and life cycles of such creatures as bighorn sheep, sharks, and peregrine fa

Uncommon Encounters in the Wild

The Animal Dialogues

Drawing on scholarly research and archaeological evidence, the author examines the accomplishments of the Anasazi people of the American Southwest and speculates on why the culture vanished by the 13th century.

Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest

House of Rain

Deserts are environments that can be inhospitable even to seasoned explorers. Craig Childs has spent years in the deserts of the American West, and his treks through arid lands in search of water reveal the natural world at its most extreme.

There Are Two Easy Ways to Die in the Desert: Thirst and Drowning

The Secret Knowledge of Water

Scientists squabble over the locations and dates for human arrival in the New World. The first explorers were few, encampments fleeting. At some point in time, between twenty and forty thousand years ago, sea levels were low enough that a vast land bridge was exposed between Asia and North America-- but was not the only way across. Childs provides an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America twenty thousand years ago, the megafauna they found here, and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. -- adapted from publisher info

travels in ice age America

Atlas of a lost world

From the author of Apocalyptic Planet comes a vivid travelogue through prehistory, that traces the arrival of the first people in North America at least twenty thousand years ago and the artifacts that tell of their lives and fates. In Atlas of a Lost World, Craig Childs upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were. How they got here, persevered, and ultimately thrived is a story that resonates from the Pleistocene to our modern era. The lower sea levels of the Ice Age exposed a vast land bridge between Asia and North America, but the land bridge was not the only way across. Different people arrived from different directions, and not all at the same time. The first explorers of the New World were few, their encampments fleeting. The continent they reached had no people but was inhabited by megafauna—mastodons, giant bears, mammoths, saber-toothed cats, five-hundred-pound panthers, enormous bison, and sloths that stood one story tall. The first people were hunters—Paleolithic spear points are still encrusted with the proteins of their prey—but they were wildly outnumbered and many would themselves have been prey to the much larger animals. Atlas of a Lost World chronicles the last millennia of the Ice Age, the violent oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans’ chances for survival. A blend of science and personal narrative reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Across unexplored landscapes yet to be peopled, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light.

Travels in Ice Age America

Atlas of a Lost World

Essays from Dry Places

Virga & Bone

Discusses the Earth's inherent instability and susceptibility toward violent natural disasters and climate extremes, challenging beliefs about apocalyptic inevitabilities while revealing how to change humanity's place within the planet's cycles.

Field Guide to the Everending Earth

Apocalyptic Planet

Seasons with Rock Art on the Colorado Plateau

Tracing Time

A Naturalist's Exploration of Canyonlands National Park

Stone Desert

In Soul of Nowhere, Craig Childs answers the call of fierce places; the more desolate the landscape, the more passionately he is drawn to it. Childs tracks a broad territory: the Sierra Madre Mountains, the canyons of Utah, the White Mountain Apache Reservation, a deserted island in the Sea of Cortez. In his extraordinary nomadic treks, the author finds the land animated and himself enlivened. Childs’s obvious love for seemingly inhospitable places redeems them for armchair travelers and outdoor adventurers alike. Black-and-white photographs and pen-and-ink drawings by the author are included. “Childs is a poet at heart.” — San Francisco Chronicle

Traversing Grace in a Rugged Land

Soul of Nowhere

a tale of archaeological plunder and obsession

Finders keepers

To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero -- or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story -- an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.

A Tale of Archaeological Plunder and Obsession

Finders Keepers

Renowned naturalist Craig Childs explores the paradoxical nature of anthropological excavation amongst the Native American ruins his work is based upon. To whom does the past belong? Is the archeologist who discovers a lost tomb a sort of hero--or a villain? If someone steals a relic from a museum and returns it to the ruin it came from, is she a thief? Written in his trademark lyrical style, Craig Childs's riveting new book is a ghost story--an intense, impassioned investigation into the nature of the past and the things we leave behind. We visit lonesome desert canyons and fancy Fifth Avenue art galleries, journey throughout the Americas, Asia, the past and the present. The result is a brilliant book about man and nature, remnants and memory, a dashing tale of crime and detection.

A combination of photographs and text create a unique look at the Grand Canyon's natural vegetation, trails, and wildlife

Time Below the Rim

Grand Canyon

Ursula K. Le Guin

Barbara Kingsolver

Kij Johnson

Karen Davis

Gregory Blake Smith

Toni G. Frohoff

Anna Merz

Barbara Smuts

Stacy Young

Die individuellen Persönlichkeiten von Hühnern; ein Nashorn, das sein Leben lang immer wieder einen Menschen besucht, um gemeinsam Zeit zu verbringen; eine unerwartete Begegnung zwischen einer Katze und einem Vogel; Hunde, die in einer zukünftigen Welt ihre Gemeinschaft durch Geschichten strukturieren, die sie einander erzählen. Begegnungen mit (anderen) Tieren versammelt literarische, wissenschaftliche und essayistische Texte zu ungewöhnlichen Begegnungen zwischen Tieren und Menschen – mal in stärker interagierender, mal mehr in beobachtender Rolle –, denen gemeinsam ist, dass sie neue Formen der Wahrnehmung, von Offenheit und Empathie ermöglichen, einfordern und damit unser gewohntes Denken, unsere Ordnung der Dinge in Frage stellen. Tiere erscheinen als soziale Wesen miteinander und mit Menschen, die sie, wie die Autor*innen, als eigenständige Subjekte ernst nehmen. Die Texte geben Einblicke in das soziale und kulturelle Leben von Pavianen und Raben oder berichten von der sprachlosen Kommunikation mit Waschbären und Nabelschweinen, vom Lachen mit Delfinen, und nicht zuletzt davon, wie sich Menschen in diesen Begegnungen mit (anderen) Tieren selbst verändern. Die Anthologie versammelt Texte aus den letzten 30 Jahren von zumeist US-amerikanischen Autor*innen in der Übersetzung von Susanne Opfermann: Kurzgeschichten von Kij Johnson, Ursula K. Le Guin und Gregory Blake Smith; Erlebnisberichte von Craig Childs, Barbara Kingsolver, Anna Merz und Stacy Young; und wissenschaftliche Texte von Karen Davis, Toni G. Frohoff und Barbara Smuts. Die unterschiedlichen Genres ergänzen und kommentieren einander; verbindend sind die besonderen, unterhaltsamen und nachdenklichen Erfahrungen von Begegnung, die sie vermitteln. Sie schaffen ungewöhnliche Perspektiven darauf, was wir von anderen Tieren lernen und wie wir gemeinsam in unserer nicht-nur-menschlichen Welt (über-)leben können. Mit den Texten Craig Childs: Raben Karen Davis: Das geistige Leben von Hühnern, beobachtet an ihren sozialen Beziehungen Toni G. Frohoff: Jenseits der Speziesgrenze Kij Johnson: Die Evolution der Trickster-Geschichten unter den Hunden vom North Park nach der Wende Barbara Kingsolver: Frieden schließen Ursula K. Le Guin: Sie entnennt sie Anna Merz: Ein Nashorn aus der Wildnis von Hand aufziehen Gregory Blake Smith: Hände Barbara Smuts: Begegnungen mit dem Bewusstsein von Tieren Stacy Young: Jenseits von Jäger und Beute

Begegnungen mit (anderen) Tieren

Art Wolfe

Focusing his camera on the many shapes and forms of the elements--earth, air, fire, and water--Wolfe brings all his famed sense of composition, pattern, and light to expose the ever-changing beauty of the natural world. Includes four essays on the elements by Craig Child.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water

The Elements

Childs answers the call of fierce places; the more desolate the landscape, the more passionately he is drawn to it. For Childs, these are the types of terrain that sharpen the senses, and demand a physicality the modern civilized world no longer requires. Includes black-and-white photos and pen-and-ink drawings by the author.

A "beautifully written travelogue" that draws on the latest scholarly research as well as a lifetime of exploration to light on the extraordinary Anasazi culture of the American Southwest (Entertainment Weekly). The greatest "unsolved mystery" of the American Southwest is the fate of the Anasazi, the native peoples who in the eleventh century converged on Chaco Canyon (in today's southwestern New Mexico) and built what has been called the Las Vegas of its day, a flourishing cultural center that attracted pilgrims from far and wide, a vital crossroads of the prehistoric world. The Anasazis' accomplishments -- in agriculture, in art, in commerce, in architecture, and in engineering -- were astounding, rivaling those of the Mayans in distant Central America. By the thirteenth century, however, the Anasazi were gone from Chaco. Vanished. What was it that brought about the rapid collapse of their civilization? Was it drought? pestilence? war? forced migration? mass murder or suicide? For many years conflicting theories have abounded. Craig Childs draws on the latest scholarly research, as well as on a lifetime of adventure and exploration in the most forbidding landscapes of the American Southwest, to shed new light on this compelling mystery.

Craig Childs is lost. In a labyrinth of canyons in the American Southwest where virtually nothing else is alive-barely any vegetation, few signs of wildlife, scant traces of any human precursors in this landscape-Childs and his friend Dirk undertake a fortnight's journey.

A True Story of Ruin and Survival

The Way Out

From the author of The Secret Knowledge of Water and Atlas of a Lost World comes a deeply felt essay collection focusing upon a vivid series of desert icons—a half–blind bighorn ram, a sheet of virga over Monument Valley, solitude on the Green River. Craig Childs delves into the primacy of the land and the profound nature of the more–than–human.

Craig Childs

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