The timely story of how the forces of change converge on a small tribe of Niaruna Indians living in the heart of the Amazon rain forest. In addition to being a prophetic commentary on emerging threats to the environment, and the troublesome encroachment of the modern world on traditional cultures, the novel is a suspenseful adventure story about two men striving to find meaning in a world not their own.

For twenty thousand miles, Peter Matthiessen crisscrossed the South American wilderness, traveling from the Amazonian rain forests to Machu Picchu high in the Andes, down to the edge of the world at Tierra del Fuego and back. In the course of his journey he followed the trails of old explorers, encountered river bandits, wild tribesmen, and the evidence of ancient ruins, and discovered a fossilized snout of a giant unknown crocodilian hidden in the...

"Peter Matthiessen journeyed to the Russian Far East and other remaining tiger territory to witness for himself the species' present condition and to understand its possible fates. Bringing to his subject his deep knowledge and the instinct for the natural world that have made classics of his previous books, he allows us to participate in the battle for the future of one of the earth's most awesome creatures. Along the way, he tells the story of the...

A son in Florida seeks the truth about his father, a hunter executed by a lynch mob. History has it that Edgar Watson was a cold-blooded killer, but was he really so evil? As he talks to oldtimers, Lucius Watson learns about the smugglers and outlaws who populated the Everglades early this century.

Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.--From publisher description.

Brilliantly attuned to the transience of nature and painfully aware of the precariousness of a polar environment facing global warming, Peter Matthiessen provides an exquisite account of his voyage through the islands surrounding Antarctica. In lyrical prose, Matthiessen describes the wildlife he encounters and the region it inhabits, along with historical information regarding the greatest pioneers and adventurers who preceded him. Matthiessen brings...

On a hot June morning in 1975, a fatal shoot-out took place between FBI agents and American Indians on a remote property near Wounded Knee, South Dakota. Four members of the American Indian Movement were indicted on murder charges for the deaths of two federal agents killed that day. Leonard Peltier, the only one to be convicted, is now serving consecutive life sentences in a federal penitentiary. Behind this violent chain of events lie issues of...