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Click on a link below to order a Puma Press book. Over The Edge: Death in Grand Canyon Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite Grand Obsession: Harvey Butchart and the Exploration of Grand Canyon |
Hardcover $36.95 Paperback $24.95
Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon Two River-Running Authors Take Us on a Gripping Tour of All Known Aside from being the most famous and most visited of the World's Seven Natural Wonders, Grand Canyon also holds the reputation of being Mother Nature's most impressive death trap. How well deserved is this reputation? Why does this reputation seem so credible? And what, exactly, are the most lethal dangers that Grand Canyon poses? Are they its soaring cliffs, or its heat, or its bewildering maze of unscalable rock leading to "nowhere?" Or instead is it the "Killer Colorado" rushing through its Inner Gorge? Grand Canyon's death toll below the rims leaves Mount Everest's appalling record in the dust. This ambitious, well researched, and absolutely gripping book Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon explores every Canyon danger and chronicles every fatal error made by those who failed to respect them. These pages recount story after story of Man Meets Grand Canyon—and Underestimates It. Casual visitors, adventurers, prospectors, and professional outdoorsmen alike have stepped up to the sudden edge of the vast, unforgiving, desert crucible of Grand Canyon, and failed to understand what they saw. These true stories are suspenseful, engaging, and often astounding. And while many are tragic, the accounts of near-misses offer inspiration and often humor as well. Every story told here—whether of foolish errors or heroism—offers a lesson of survival. The dangers of Grand Canyon mentioned above—plus an astounding and lethal array of other dangers yet—have claimed hundreds of victims. And this amazing book Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon covers them all. Authors Ghiglieri and Myers recount many little known fatal incidents for the first time. They also set the record straight on every famous and infamous saga of death in the Canyon. They offer surprising new revelations about what may have happened to John Wesley Powell's missing three men in 1869 and to "honeymooners" Glen and Bessie Hyde, who vanished in 1928. Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon offers the first comprehensive look at were and how things start going wrong in Grand Canyon. Its lessons compromise a great leap forward in our quest to prevent future fatalities. Authors Ghiglieri—an ecologist and veteran Canyon river guide of 142 Canyon traverses—and Myers, a medical physician at Grand Canyon Clinic for a decade and a Canyon explorer since age ten, recount many little known fatal incidents for the first time. They set the record straight on every famous—and infamous—saga of death in the Canyon. They recount Arizona's biggest manhunt in history, a 54-day pursuit of Danny Ray Horning and trace the bizarre career of serial killer Robert Merlin Spangler. "If you believe that everything interesting about the Grand Canyon has already been written, you are dead wrong. Michael P. Ghiglieri and Tom Myers offer fascinating accounts of the 550 people who have met untimely deaths in the Canyon and in an amazing variety of ways. Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon belongs not only in the libraries of Canyon Lovers, but in those of everyone interested in Western Americana."
Two veterans of decades of adventuring in Grand Canyon chronicle the first complete and comprehensive history of Canyon misadventures spanning the entire era of visitation from the time of the first river exploration by John Wesley Powell and his crew of 1869 to that of tourists falling off it rims in Y2K. Over the Edge promises to be the most intense yet informative book on true adventure ever written. These episodes go so far beyond the amazing that this book sets a new high water mark for offering the most astounding set of adventures and misadventures published between any two covers. After reading this book maybe you'll be the next one to nip a disaster in the bud. Ghiglieri has spent 2,000 days inside the Canyon and has rendered assistance as an EMT during many accidents. His previous book on Grand Canyon, Canyon, was hailed by the Library Journal as "the single best introduction to a myriad of aspects of this 'most impressive place' this reviewer has seen. Recommended for all---" Category: Adventure/Wilderness/Grand Canyon/Western History Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon Gripping Accounts of all Known Fatal Mishaps in the Most Famous Authors: Michael P. Ghiglieri & Thomas M. Myers Publication Date: May 25, 2001 Price: Cloth: $34.95 (out of print) Binding type: Cloth: Smyth Sewn, cloth-covered, gold-stamped spine, natural stock, DJ. Images or quotes: Author and bookcover images are available as hardcopy or email images. Contact: for bookstore (wholesale) orders, call Becky Myers at (928) 714-0305 or pumapress@infomagic.net
Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite
Yosemite National Park holds a worldwide reputation for being one of the most astoundingly beautiful places on the planet. Its glacier-carved, high Sierra wilderness has defied verbal description just as its polished walls have defied climbers. But along with Yosemite's ethereal beauty have come human errors. Yosemite's death toll leaves Mount Everest's appalling record in the dust. This ambitious, heavily researched, and absolutely gripping book explores every lethal danger in Yosemite and chronicles every fatal error made by those who failed to recognize or respect those perils. These pages recount story after story in which "Man Meets Yosemite" and underestimates it. Indians, Forty-niners, soldiers, casual visitors, concession workers, loggers, builders, National Parks Service (NPS) personnel, big wall climbers, hikers, fishermen, picknickers, and campers have entered the complex environment and topography of Yosemite for their own purposes then failed to understand what they were up against. Their true stories are suspenseful, engaging, and often astonishing. And while many are tragic, the accounts of near-misses offer inspiration and even humor. Each story told here—whether of foolish errors or selfless heroism—offers a lesson in survival. Authors Farabee and Ghiglieri recount many little known errors for the first time. They also set the record straight on every famous and infamous saga of death in Yosemite from the time of the Mariposa Battalion's "war" against the Yosemite Indians to the infamous rope-jumping death of super-soloist Dan Osman. Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite offers the first comprehensive look at how and where things start going wrong. Its lessons comprise a great leap forward in the quest to prevent future fatal episodes. Authors Michael P. Ghiglieri and Charles R. “Butch” Farabee draw on their extensive experience in professional wilderness guiding (34 years) and in wilderness Search & Rescue in the National Park Service (34 other years), respectively, to research and create detailed and compelling stories for every known fatal mishap in Yosemite’s complicated recreational wonderland. These sagas span the era from Yosemite’s “discovery” in 1849 today when big wall climbing, BASE jumping, and tumbles off Yosemite’s huge waterfalls take such tolls. All 870+ mishaps are included; more than 100 are highlighted in dramatic detail and historical context. This book could save your life. Off the Wall: Death in Yosemite is a great read: suspenseful, engaging, astounding, accurate, occasionally humorous, often tragic—and is loaded with practical lessons for survival. It is destined to become The book on Yosemite’s history of pushing the envelope. Whether the “push” was deliberate or inadvertent, Off the Wall recounts each incident with insight. Author Michael Ghiglieri—a Ph.D. ecologist and past President of Grand Canyon River Guides Association with 661 professional wilderness trips (including 141 traverses of Grand Canyon)—plus author Charles R. “Butch” Farabee—a former superintendent of two national parks and director of Search & Rescue (in both Yosemite and Grand Canyon)—set the record straight, eliminate rumors, and prove yet again that truth is one heck of a lot stranger than fiction. Category: Adventure/ Outdoor Recreation/American History/Yosemite National Park Authors: Michael P. Ghiglieri & Charles R. “Butch” Farabee, Jr. Publication Date: March 30, 2007 Price: Cloth: $36.95 Binding type: Cloth: Smyth Sewn, cloth-covered, gold-stamped spine, natural stock, DJ. Size: 608 + xvi pages, 6” X 9,” with maps and illustrations. Author tour: Lecture and signing tour begins April, 2007. Ghiglieri has Images or quotes: Author and book cover images are available as hardcopy or email images. Contact: for bookstore (wholesale) orders, call Becky Myers at (928) 714-0305 or pumapress@infomagic.net Should you have any questions, please contact us at Puma Press.
Hardcover $29.95 Paperback $19.95
First through Grand Canyon: The Secret Journals & Letters of the 1869 Crew Who
The most famous of the World's Seven Natural Wonders held its secrets half a century longer than the wilds of Yellowstone. Grand Canyon's soaring cliffs and stupefying heat created such an immense, arid, bewildering maze of unscalable rock that even Coronado's men, detouring from their quest to loot the Seven Cities of Gold in 1540, were stopped dead. Not until 1869, when a one-armed ex-major named John Wesley Powell threw together a shoestring expedition to explore the Green and Colorado rivers and brave Grand Canyon's lethal array of defenses, did the Canyon emerge from legend and rise instead to infamy. Powell's crew of learn-as-you-row oarsmen filled in the biggest blank spot remaining on the map of the United States. But at a high cost in lives. This well-researched and gripping book, First Through Grand Canyon, brings the first Grand Canyon expedition to life as never before. It recounts a saga of extraordinary courage, hardship, and adventure of the first magnitude, one that carries the reader with unbearable tension to the expedition's surprising but tragic outcome. Told with unique insight and authority by an insider and historian with decades of experience running the Colorado, Michael P. Ghiglieri, this epic is recounted with humor, intelligence and empathy to reveal the true nature of the challenge the 1869 expedition faced. A bonus here for the river runner, armchair adventurer, and for the professional historian: This is the first ever book to include every known word written by each member of the 1869 expedition while it explored these unknown canyons. Surprisingly, paramount among these writings is not the skimpy, abbreviated, and inaccurate journals of its leader, Major Powell, as so often have been heralded, but instead the informative and entertaining journals of the two men who repeatedly saved Powell's life, George Young Bradley and John Colton Sumner. What Bradley's, Sumner's, and the other men's journals and letters reveal is an expedition that, while facing starvation and ever more daunting rapids, began to unravel in discipline and leadership—with dramatic and tragic results. This book also yields a very different view of Major John Wesley Powell than the traditional but facile one of the intrepid hero. Instead, by dispelling more than a century of myths woven around Powell, we see a man driven by personal ambition, a man well over his head in the unknown depths of this southwestern desert labyrinth, and a man who lost control of his small band of capable and self sufficient outdoorsmen in a canyon that today remains synonymous with impossibility. In May of 1869, eleven men in Wyoming stood beside four moored boats on the Green River where, weeks earlier, the Union Pacific Railroad had bridged it. These men's mission, their goal, and their fates hung on their intent to navigate those four boats down the Green River and through the unexplored canyons of the Colorado a thousand miles to, through, and beyond Grand Canyon. As fortune would have it, 98 days later, only six of those eleven men and only two of those four boats would ride the Colorado past the Grand Wash Cliffs at the foot of Grand Canyon. The story of these brave---maybe too brave---men and their harrowing accomplish-ments forms one of the most astonishing epics in the exploration history of North America. Here for the first time this gripping saga of extreme adventure, optimism, courage, fear, heroism, humor, triumph, and tragedy is told in full by the men themselves via their newly transcribed, unabridged journals and letters written during the expedition. Author Michael Ghiglieri also draws on his extensive river-running experience to create detailed bios of the men who challenged the river, their life and times, their ultimate fates, and of the river itself. First Through Grand Canyon is suspenseful, engaging, astounding, accurate—and tragic. It is destined to become The book on America's most famous river expedition. Author Michael Ghiglieri---an ecologist, former President of Grand Canyon River Guides Association, and with 140 whitewater rowing traverses of the Canyon---finally sets the record straight on this infamous saga of America's most famed river expedition. First Through Grand Canyon offers many surprising new revelations, including what happened to Major John Wesley Powell's "missing" three men of 1869 who hiked out only two days before the expedition ended in success, only to be murdered. "Hang on, we're going for the Big One. Michael Ghiglieri's First Through Grand Canyon takes us on a wild run through one of the most exciting explorations of the West, the fateful 1869 expedition down the Colorado River. Accurate transcriptions, long overdue, of the letters and diaries written during the expedition form the core of this book, but it goes well beyond a mere compilation of documents. The crew members emerge from the shadows to tell their stories, often differing from the account written by expedition leader John Wesley Powell. In a detailed introduction and series of biographical sketches, Ghiglieri presents a scathing reappraisal of Powell and the historians who have glossed over his failings of 1869.
"The book on America's most famous river expedition." "—important is the accurate and engaging way First Through Grand Canyon reanimates this classic tale of exploration during 1869, bringing it alive for a new generation of river runners and for all those drawn to the history of the West."
Category: Adventure/American History/Exploration/Grand Canyon/River-running Publication Date: March 25, 2003 Price: Cloth: $29.95, Trade Paperback: $19.95 Binding type: Cloth: Smyth Sewn, cloth-covered, gold-stamped spine, natural stock, DJ. Size: 342 + xviii pages, 6 X 9, with many illustrations Contact: for bookstore (wholesale) orders, call Becky Myers at (928) 714-0305 or pumapress@infomagic.net The Dark Side of Man Tracing the Origins of Male Violence Do men murder because they are victims of society gone haywire? Is gang violence the product of poverty? Overcrowding? Why is rape so prevalent across cultures? And what draws men into war? In this ambitious book, Michael Ghiglieri, a biologist and protege of Jane Goodall, takes on these questions—and many others—in an attempt to unearth the roots of human aggression. Drawing on literally thousands of sources, from scientific journals, to personal interviews, as well as both his own experience as both a primatologist, and a soldier, he explains why males are far more aggressive than females: male violence is largely innate; a product of millions of years of evolution. Plumbing a wide range of disciplines—from biology and psychology to anthropology, history, and sociology—Ghiglieri offers the most up-to-date, comprehensive look at violence in our society. His riveting narrative begins with a look at what makes men and women so fundamentally different, both in body and behavior. He then moves on to examine, in turn, the four major manifestations of violence: rape, murder, war, and genocide. In the process, Ghiglieri debunks many of our most clung-to, "politically correct" notions: that the differences between men and women are strictly due to socialization, that rape is really about power—not sex—and that genocide is only possible with a single madman at the helm. From Compton to Quito, from Kenya's Athi-Kapiti plains to a convenience store in a small Arizona town, Ghiglieri recounts tales of unspeakable violence, while shedding light on natural selection's most abiding truths. But, he warns, we are not genetic robots, forever destined to rob, rape, and kill. Ghiglieri's message is ultimately a hopeful one: by acknowledging the biological underpinnings of human nature, and then moving toward policies that are based on this understanding, we can finally hope to end the vicious cycle of violence that plagues us. Well-argued, even-handed, yet never dull, this important book illuminates the darkest impulses of the male psyche, and suggests ways for modern society to overcome them. "Men are responsible for most of he world's mayhem. By examining gender differences in its biological context, Michael Ghiglieri brings a fresh, coherent, and provocative perspective to rape, murder, war, and other complex aspects of behavior. This book should be read by anyone concerned by violence- that is, by everyone."
"A scientifically sound, insightful, hardheaded look at the 'evil' that men do. Romantics and ideologues will be appalled. But there is no turning away from the voluminous evidence that the gravest acts of violence are deeply rooted in the evolution of human nature. The Dark Side of Man is beautifully written, and gripping from start to finish. It's an extremely important book that should be required reading for all students of human nature."
"A clear portrait of the nature of violence, aggression, and discord among humans. In a conversational voice, Ghiglieri clearly explains the biological basis and evolutionary origins of all the necessary unpleasantness and manages to bring light to our dark side."
"Michael Ghiglieri has responsibly assembled and urgently analyzed a formidable inventory of scholarly findings about aggression in humans and other animals. He documents unbelievable examples of human cruelty and violence, yet relates them to the war stories in tomorrow's newspaper with an agonized sense of the mysterious 'why' at he heart of human darkness."
"Michael Ghiglieri takes on a topic- male aggression- that many researchers try to avoid, and he takes it on with honesty, with grace, and with a real sense of hope. And it's a startlingly good read; Ghiglieri is a natural storyteller in addition to being a fine researcher."
Published By PERSEUS BOOKS Hardcopies, 323 + xii pages, available through Puma Press $26.00
Grand Obsession has been named a 2008 National Outdoor Book Award winner in the History/Biography category. This book tells the story of Harvey Butchart (1907-2002), the legendary Grand Canyoneer who climbed, hiked, floated and bushwhacked 12,000 pioneering miles below the rim during a 42-year obsession with the world-famous gorge. Here for the first time is Harvey’s life story—his years as a fatherless child in the mountains of China, his struggles in America during the Great Depression, and finally, his all-consuming drive for greatness by exploring one of the West’s last unknown wildernesses. Lace up your boots and follow along as the authors retrace Harvey’s footsteps on dangerous cliff edges while chronicling his thrilling exploits, heart-breaking tragedies, and lasting triumphs. Part biography, part modern-day adventure, Grand Obsession will take you deeper into the soul of this fascinating man—and Grand Canyon—than you have ever been before! Over 160 photographs and Butchart's own detailed maps round out the 460-page book. A limited number of hardbacks will be available (sold out as of 2008) featuring gorgeous all-color maps ($29.95); paperbacks contain black-and-white maps ($19.95). For updates, news and reviews for Grand Obsession, please click here. A short list of Harvey Butchart’s accomplishments in 42 years of exploration: • 1,025 days of exploration below the rim, 560 trips total “Much has been written on early river expeditions through the Grand Canyon, but little on its exploration by foot. Grand Obsession brings alive the actual process of canyon exploration, the search for elusive routes through cliff mazes and high-angled talus in the most remote corners of a vast, vertical landscape. By tracing what drove one man, the book gives readers an insight into what compels others to keep pushing farther, deeper. Harvey Butchart had a passion for the Canyon, but only after reading this book did I realize it was an obsession—a grand, transforming obsession.” - Scott Thybony, author of Burntwater and Official Guide to Hiking the Grand Canyon “Butler and Myers do wonders with this book, taking what seems at first glance a prosaic subject, and fashioning it into a fascinating portrait of a man hopelessly addicted to a place.”
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