Melissa L. Sevigny's Books

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

Winner of the 2023 National Outdoor Book Award for History/Biography Finalist for the Reading the West Book Award in Memoir/Biography A Booklist Top of the List Winner for Nonfiction in 2023 A New Yorker Best Book of 2023 "Thrilling, expertly paced, warmhearted." —Peter Fish, San Francisco Chronicle The riveting tale of two pioneering botanists and their historic boat trip down the Colorado River and through the Grand Canyon. In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran river runners boldly proclaimed that the motley crew would never make it out alive. But for Clover and Jotter, the expedition held a tantalizing appeal: no one had yet surveyed the plant life of the Grand Canyon, and they were determined to be the first. Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their daring forty-three-day journey down the river, during which they meticulously cataloged the thorny plants that thrived in the Grand Canyon’s secret nooks and crannies. Along the way, they chased a runaway boat, ran the river’s most fearsome rapids, and turned the harshest critic of female river runners into an ally. Clover and Jotter’s plant list, including four new cactus species, would one day become vital for efforts to protect and restore the river ecosystem. Brave the Wild River is a spellbinding adventure of two women who risked their lives to make an unprecedented botanical survey of a defining landscape in the American West, at a time when human influences had begun to change it forever.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

289

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393868249

ISBN 13

9780393868241

Mythical River

Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Mythical River

Chasing the Mirage of New Water in the American Southwest

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

In a lyrical mix of natural science, history, and memoir, Melissa L. Sevigny ponders what it means to make a home in the American Southwest at a time when its most essential resource, water, is overexploited and undervalued. Mythical River takes the reader on a historical sojourn into the story of the Buenaventura, an imaginary river that led eighteenth- and nineteenth-century explorers, fur trappers, and emigrants astray for seventy-five years. This mythical river becomes a metaphor for our modern-day attempts to supply water to a growing population in the Colorado River Basin. Readers encounter a landscape literally remapped by the search for “new” water, where rivers flow uphill, dams and deep wells reshape geography, trees become intolerable competitors for water, and new technologies tap into clouds and oceans. In contrast to this fantasy of abundance, Sevigny explores acts of restoration. From a dismantled dam in Arizona to an accidental wetland in Mexico, she examines how ecologists, engineers, politicians, and citizens have attempted to secure water for desert ecosystems. In a place scarred by conflict, she shows how recognizing the rights of rivers is a path toward water security. Ultimately, Sevigny writes a new map for the future of the American Southwest, a vision of a society that accepts the desert’s limits in exchange for an intimate relationship with the natural world.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

295

Publisher

University of Iowa Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

160938394X

ISBN 13

9781609383947

Under Desert Skies

How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Under Desert Skies

How Tucson Mapped the Way to the Moon and Planets

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

President Kennedy’s announcement that an American would walk on the Moon before the end of the 1960s took the scientific world by surprise. The study of the Moon and planets had long fallen out of favor with astronomers: they were the stuff of science fiction, not science. An upstart planetary laboratory in Tucson would play a vital role in the nation’s grand new venture, and in doing so, it would help create the field of planetary science. Founded by Gerard P. Kuiper in 1960, the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) at the University of Arizona broke free from traditional astronomical techniques to embrace a wide range of disciplines necessary to the study of planets, including geology, atmospheric sciences, and the elegant emerging technology of spacecraft. Brash, optimistic young students crafted a unique sense of camaraderie in the fledgling institution. Driven by curiosity and imagination, LPL scientists lived through—and, indeed, made happen—the shattering transition in which Earth’s nearest neighbors became more than simple points of light in the sky. Under Desert Skies tells the story of how a small corner of Arizona became Earth’s ambassador to space. From early efforts to reach the Moon to the first glimpses of Mars’s bleak horizons and Titan’s swirling atmosphere to the latest ambitious plans to touch an asteroid, LPL’s history encompasses humanity’s unfolding knowledge about our place in the universe.

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

184

Publisher

University of Arizona Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0816533814

ISBN 13

9780816533817

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

By: Melissa L. Sevigny

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

289

Publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

Published Date

ISBN 10

0393868249

ISBN 13

9780393868241

Book's by Melissa L. Sevigny

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

Mythical River

Mythical River

Under Desert Skies

Under Desert Skies

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

Brave the Wild River: The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

Username

Password

Username

Password

Password again

Birthday

Email