Corn from a Jar: Moonshining in the Great Smoky Mountains by Daniel S. Pierce traces the history of moonshining from its beginning in the U.S. to current, legal moonshining. Dr. Pierce humanizes moonshiners as sober, folks trying to provide for their families.

Were Frederick Law Olmstead, or his son, alive today, they likely would much prefer the view of Yosemite National Park from their namesake overlook along the Tioga Pass Road, and not from the floor of the Yosemite Valley.

While the Plains states and Northeast have been drubbed again and again by winter in recent weeks, they've got nothing on Mount Rainier National Park. In the past week the park has received more than 6 feet of snow at Paradise.

Roderick Nash's 5th edition of his seminal work, Wilderness and the American Mind, should serve as a reminder of the underlying value of nature in the raw, a value that shouldn't be trivialized.