The Daily Coyote = 32 down, 68 to go

Other nonfiction
The Daily Coyote
Shreve Stockton
287 pages

Girl drives her Vespa across country, falls in love with Wyoming along the way, gives up plan to move to NYC and relocates her life to Ten Sleep, Wy., a small town of 300 and about an hour from the nearest grocery store.

Then girl meets a nice guy who brings her a 10-day-old coyote. Girl falls in love with said coyote (and maybe the guy) and so begins author/photographer Shreve Stockton's adventure with a coyote pup named Charlie. 

There were a number of things in this book that resonate with me, starting with the opening sentence, "The jewels in this life are the events we do not plan..." That is perfectly simple insightful statement.

There are many areas of the West that I love, including Wyoming, and within the book's first three pages, the author captures the beauty of the state and its landscape succinctly:

...magnetized to the land, to the red dirt and the Bighorn Mountains and the wide-openness I had no idea still existed in this country. The landscape around the Bighorns is like an ocean on pause, rolling with the subtle colors of rust and sage and gold, stretching to every horizon. These mountains are unlike other mountain ranges. While the Tetons are fangs of stone and Rainier is an ice cream sundae, the Bighorns are sloped and subtle, built of some of the oldest exposed rock in the world; rock that has existed, in its current form, for over three billion years. There is exquisite power in their permanence. 

But I guess it would be helpful to get past the first chapter...onto the soul of this book, Charlie, the  coyote pup that comes into the author's life after his parents are shot for killing sheep. This is just the beginning of the book's juxtaposition of the passion and love for an individual wild animal against the reality of wildlife management in the west. It pits an animal lover against the realities of living in areas of the West, which includes the government-supported elimination of many coyotes that are viewed as threats to livestock and the ranching way of life.

But outside all that seriousness, Stockton pulls back the curtain and shows us the fun and antics, as well as trials and tribulations of balancing the responsibility of raising while not fully domesticating a coyote pup into beautiful adult. Every chapter is a new month and a new adventure in Charlie's development and growth.

This was a wonderfully refreshing book and very appropriately subtitled "A story of love, survival and trust in the wilds of Wyoming."

If you'd like to follow Charlie's journey, Shreve Stockton maintains a blog, which was the origination for the name of the book, The Daily Coyote -- where she posts regular photos. You can also subscribe to receive a new photo of Charlie every day or week.

The Johnstown Flood = 27 down, 73 to go

Other nonfiction

The Johnstown Flood

David McCullough

267 pages

On May 31, 1889, a dam located 14 miles above Johnstown, Pa., disintegrated during a horrible storm, sending nearly 20 million tons of water roaring down the valley and wiping many towns completely off the map in just a matter of minutes.

For Johnstown, the largest of the towns in the valley and the focus of the majority of recovery efforts following the disaster, it took just 10 minutes for the city of 30,000 to be virtually eliminated.

The book is a sobering look at this tragedy that killed more than 2,000. It depicts out the personalities involved, takes a microscopic look at the details of the flood, starting at the dam and moving down the valley. It showcases the preview of actions, or lack thereof, that led up to the failure of the dam, through the recovery efforts, which included a defining moment for the American Red Cross and money coming from around the globe. (It reminded me very much of an earlier example of the world rallying to the needs of those affected - such as in modern day times occurred after the tsunami in Asia and in the earthquakes in Haiti.)

Though much of the newspaper coverage was exaggerated, distorted and based on rumor and conjecture, the pile of debris and wreckage at the stone bridge remained days after the flood and likely consumed up to 45 acres of area. (See this photo from the Johnstown Flood Museum.)

A Sun reporter wrote of a very stirring observation of the catastrophe that remained at the bridge:

"At one place the blackened body of a babe was seen; in another 14 skulls could be counted...At this time the smoke was still rising to the height of 50 feet."

In an earlier chapter, when the pile of debris at the stone bridge caught fire, McCullough shares this sober sentence:

...by six o'clock the whole monstrous pile had become a funeral pyre for perhaps as many as eighty people trapped inside.

It was also observed that people trapped in the debris who had survived the trip down river could be heard screaming as the fire burned, and the survivors on the shore having no way to reach them.

While the complete absence of engineering oversight crashed against the forces of nature to create this flooded tragedy, it would be interesting if this event occurred within the last five to 10 years. As our society is litigious at the drop of a hat, the members of South Fork Hunting and Fishing Club would not have been likely to walk away unscathed with the fortunes left intact.

This is my eighth David McCullough book. I never tire, even for a moment, of his distinct and extremely thorough storytelling style, which makes you feel that you are riding right alongside characters that we often only remember only fleetingly from grade school history. You never feel that you are forcibly reading a history text while consuming a McCullough book.

It is thrilling to see these historical figures in such detail during the defining moments of their lives and careers. If you dislike historical biographies, I recommend McCullough to you. Though I enjoy historical biographies, it is easy for me to equate his books to reading a delightful novel.

Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman = 24 down, 76 to go

Other nonfiction
Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman
Jon Krakauer
416 pages

This is my fourth Jon Krakauer book, and once again, he has done an outstanding job of juxtaposing history against a compelling current story. I haven't read any books surrounding 9/11, and though this doesn't directly talk about it, 9/11 was the catalyst that for Pat Tillman to abandon his NFL career and sign up for the U.S. Army, along with his brother Kevin.

This book navigates the land mines of the Army's lies, betrayal and conspiracy after Tillman is killed by friendly fire during his deployment in Afghanistan. From the beginning, the Army, and soon the Bush administration, go to extraordinary lengths to cover up how Tillman was killed. This book - which also details the history of Afghanistan and how its landscape was impacted by the United States, Soviet Union and other parties - uses interviews with Tillman's wife, Marie, mother and other family members and Tillman's own journals and letters, as well as interviews with his Army buddies and extensive research to tell his story.

Tillman was a rare person who was unbelievably dedicated and loyal to his family, his friends and his principles. One example of this was that when the Rams offered Pat a five-year, $9.6 million contract, which he turned down to continue to play for the Cardinals with a one-year contract worth $512,000. He declined the offer because of his loyalty to Arizona and the Cardinals. Tillman's agent, Frank Bauer, said in the book, "In twenty-seven years, I've never had a player turn down that big of a package in the National Football League...You just don't see loyalty like that in sports today. Pat Tillman was special. He was a man of principle. He was a once-in-a-lifetime kid."

And after his first tour in Iraq, Pat could have left the Army on a technicality that would have allowed him to rejoin the NFL. But without hesitation, he decided to stay and fulfill his three-year commitment. Krakauer capsulizes Pat's philosophy:

He was one of those rare individuals who simply can't be bought at any price. Although he had no qualms about making a boatload of money if it happened to mesh with his master plan, Pat was impervious to greed. His belief that other things in life took priority over amassing wealth never faltered. But if Tillman was uncommonly resistant to the temptations of the baser human appetites, and was thereby well defended against attempts by others to manipulate him into doing their bidding with such enticements, he found it nearly impossible to resist appeals to his sense of decency and justice. Paradoxically, this latter trait would ultimately prove to be his downfall.

The level of tragedy that the Tillman family had to deal with seems insurmountable to me. It wasn't just that they lost a beloved member of their family, it's that the U.S. Army and Bush administration increased the family's pain exponentially with its conscientious decisions to lie to the family and the American people.

This was a powerful book, one that I highly recommend. Here is a quote from one of Tillman's journal entries that I found powerful:

Passion is what makes life interesting, what ignites our soul, drives our curiosity, fuels our love and carries our friendships, stimulates our intellect, and pushes our limits...A passion for life is contagious and uplifting. Passion cuts both ways...Those that make you feel on top of the world are equally able to turn it upside down...In my life I want to create passion in my own life and with those I care for. I want to feel, experience, and live every emotion. I will suffer through the bad for the heights of the good.

Into the Wild + Into Thin Air = 12 down, 88 to go

A couple of years ago I read Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, which opens with the murder of a wife and infant daughter committed by the husband's two brothers. The book tracks the back story of the murder and its ties to Mormon fundamentalism, of which the brothers were practitioners and claimed they received direct orders from God to commit the heinous murders. The book also told the detailed history of Mormonism and the break off of the fundamental sects. The book was well written and researched, compelling and engaging. After I put it down, I didn't give a second thought to the author.

A couple of months ago while enjoying a bottle of wine with friends, Jon Krakauer's name came up while volleying book recommendations to one another across the table. His book, Where Men Find Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, was strongly suggested, as were a number of his other books. Once I realized it was the same author, I knew that I would read at least one book by him during my yearlong book challenge.

As I read two Jon Krakauer books back to back (because yes, they were that good!), I've joined them into this shared entry.

Recommendation
Into the Wild
Jon Krakauer
207 pages

After graduating from college, Christopher McCandless made a conscience decision to drop out of society, and he had one ultimate goal in mind -- living off the land in the wilds of Alaska, where his adventure eventually turned deadly.

The book details his journey across the United States, the people's whose lives he touched along the way and then his trip north to Alaska where he ultimately starved to death in an abandoned bus in the backcountry.

Krakauer does a brilliant job of not just telling McCandless' story, but also juxtaposing him against others who over the decades have checked out of mainstream society and taken extreme risks in a man v. nature approach.

To help the reader better understand McCandless' psyche, he tells his own story of an extreme mountaineering trip he took in his early 20s to scale Devil's Thumb:

The closest thing I'd had to human contact since the airdrop, the distant lights triggered a flood of emotion that caught me off guard. I imagined people watching baseball on television, eating fried chicken in brightly lit kitchens, drinking beer, making love. When I lay down to sleep, I was overcome by a wrenching loneliness. I'd never felt so alone, ever.

Other Nonfiction
Into Thin Air: A Personal Account of the Mt. Everest Disaster
Jon Krakauer
332 pages

Jon Krakauer was on assignment from Outside magazine in May 1996. He had been tasked with ascending Mt. Everest and writing about his experiences, as well as the commercialization over the years of Everest.

That climbing season though took a horrible turn for the worst when a sudden storm enveloped the world's tallest peak, leaving five hikers dead. This book was a very personal story for Krakauer:

Until I visited the Himalaya, however, I'd never actually seen death at closer range. Hell, before I went to Everest, I'd never even been to a funeral. Mortality had remained a conveniently hypothetical concept, an idea to ponder in the abstract. Sooner or later the divestiture of such a privileged innocence was inevitable, but when it finally happened, the shock was magnified b the sheer superfluity of the carnage; all told, Everest killed twelve men and women in the spring of of 1996, the worst single-season death toll since climbers first set foot on the peak seventy-five years ago.

Of the six climbers on [Rob] Hall's expedition who reached the summit, only Mike Groom and I made it back down; four teammates with whom I'd laughed and vomited and held long, intimate conversations lost their lives. My actions -- or failure to act -- played a direct role in the death of Andy Harris. And while Yasuko Namba lay dying on the South Col, I was a mere 350 yards away, huddled inside a tent, oblivious to her struggle, concerned only for my own safety. The stain this has left on my psyche is not the sort of thing that washes off after a few months of grief and guilt-ridden self-reproach.

Jon Krakauer is a powerful storyteller. These are two of most insightful books that I've read in a long time.

Have a Little Faith = 1 down, 99 to go

Other Nonfiction
Have a Little Faith
Mitch Albom
272 pages

This is the first book of my challenge that I finished. I enjoyed reading it, especially the juxtaposition of the rabbi's story against that of the inner-city minister, as well as the intersections where their stories met in the author's life.