Most Popular Books by Farley Mowat

This international bestseller that changed the way we look at wolves “opens new horizons in understanding animal nature and intelligence” (Newsday). In 1948, Farley Mowat landed in the far north of Manitoba, Canada, a young biologist sent to investigate the region’s dwindling population of caribou. Many people thought that the caribous’ conspicuous decline had been caused by the tundra’s most notorious predator: the wolf. Alone among the howling canine packs, Mowat expected to find the bloodthirsty beasts of popular conception. Instead, over the course of a summer spent observing the powerful animals, Mowat discovered an animal species with a remarkable capacity for loyalty, virtue, and playfulness. Praised for its humor and engrossing narrative, Never Cry Wolf describes a group of wolves whose interactions and behaviors seem strikingly similar to our own. Mowat humanizes these animals that have long been demonized, turning the widespread narrative of the “savage wolf” on its head and inspiring many governments to enact protective legislation for the North’s most mysterious creature.

The northeastern seaboard of North America, extending from Labrador to Cape Cod, was the first region of North America to suffer from human exploitation. Farley Mowat informs the extensive historical and biological research with his direct experience living in and observing this region. When it was first published nearly thirty years ago, Sea of Slaughter served as a catalyst for environment reform, raising awareness of the decline and destruction of marine and coastal species. Today, it remains a prescient and chilling environmental classic, serving, now as ever, as a haunting reminder of the impact of human interest on the natural world.

"First published by The Curtis Publishing Company in 1957"--Title page verso.

Mowat''s gripping account of how a young man, excited by the prospect of battle, is transformed into a war-weary veteran.

Farley Mowat''s outrageous memoir begins with his unlikely conception in a canoe and continues to his boyhood fascination with creatures of the natural world and on to his youthful rambles and adventures. To his immense pleasure and his parents'' dismay, he adopted various beasts (whom he affectionately calls "The Others") as roommates. In this boyhood memoir, he recounts the exploits of this second family, who have been the subjects of many of his beloved books for young readers. This is the tale of a mischievous, immensely gifted young naturalist, recounted with the wisdom, humor and grown-up perspective of a very talented writer.

In 1886, the Ihalmiut people of northern Canada numbered seven thousand; by 1946, when Farley Mowat began his two-year stay in the Arctic, the population had fallen to just forty. With them, he observed for the first time the phenomenon that would inspire him for the rest of his life: the millennia-old migration of the Arctic''s caribou herds. He also endured bleak, interminable winters, suffered agonizing shortages of food, and witnessed the continual, devastating intrusions of outsiders bent on exploitation. Here, in this classic and first book to demonstrate the mammoth literary talent that would produce some of the most memorable books of the next half-century, best-selling author Farley Mowat chronicles his harrowing experiences. People of the Deer is the lyrical ethnography of a beautiful and endangered society. It is a mournful reproach to those who would manipulate and destroy indigenous cultures throughout the world. Most of all, it is a tribute to the last People of the Deer, the diminished Ihalmiuts, whose calamitous encounter with our civilization resulted in their unnecessary demise.

When an 80-ton Fin Whale became trapped in a lagoon near his Newfoundland home, Farley Mowat rejoiced: here was a unique chance to observe one of the world''s most magnificent creatures up close. But some of his neighbours saw a different opportunity altogether: in a prolonged fit of violence, they blasted the whale with rifle fire, and scarred its back with motorboat propellers. Mowat appealed desperately to the police, to marine biologists, finally to the Canadian press. But it was too late. Mowat''s poignant and compelling story is an eloquent argument for the end of the whale hunt, and the rediscovery of the empathy that makes us human.

Awasin, a Cree Indian boy, and Jamie, a Canadian orphan living with his uncle, the trapper Angus Macnair, are enchanted by the magic of the great Arctic wastes. They set out on an adventure that proves longer and more dangerous than they could have imagined. Drawing on his knowledge of the ways of the wilderness and the implacable northern elements, Farley Mowat has created a memorable tale of daring and adventure. When first published in 1956, Lost in the Barrens won the Governor-General’s Award for Juvenile Literature, the Book-of-the-Year Medal of the Canadian Association of Children’s Librarians and the Boys’ Club of America Junior Book Award.

"Ten tales of the Arctic, rendering hardy praise to the land and its people, past and present, and focusing on the elemental bonds between men and between men and the world and on survival"--NoveList.

The popular sequel to his award-winning Lost in the Barrens, this is Farley Mowat’s suspense-filled story of how Awasin, Jamie and Peetryuk, three adventure-prone boys, stumble upon a cache of Viking relics in an ancient tomb somewhere in the north of Canada. Packed with excitement and with little-known information about the customs of Viking explorers, this story of survival portrays the bond of youthful friendship and the wonders of a virtually unexplored land.

The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment (the Hasty Ps) was Canada’s most decorated regiment in the Second World War. In The Regiment, Farley Mowat, famed novelist and member of the regiment, movingly recounts the story of the Hasty Ps, telling the story of his fellow soldiers and their vital role in the Allied conquest of Italy.

Visits the little-known regions of Soviet Siberia.

Mainly period 960-1010. New approach at variance with earlier theories.

Deep in the volcano country of central Africa live some of the rarest, most intriguing animals on earth -- the mountain gorillas. Here, in the mist-shrouded forests, Dian Fossey courageously dedicated her life to studying them. Here she patiently waited until the luminous-eyed gorillas accepted her presence, hugged her, and loved her...while she fought for their survival against poachers, callous researchers, zoo collectors, and local bureaucrats. And here, surrounded by these enemies, she died, mysteriously and brutally murdered. Now, one of the world''s most respected naturalist writers draws for the first time ever on Dian Fossey''s personal writings to reveal the true story of a magnificent obsession...one woman''s enormous empathy for a highly intelligent, desperately endangered animal -- and how it ruled her life, her work, and her heart.

In 1957, Farley Mowat shipped out aboard one of Newfoundland’s famous coastal steamers, tramping from outport to outport along the southwest coast. The indomitable spirit of the people and the bleak beauty of the landscape would lure him back again and again over the years. In the process of falling in love with a people and a place, Mowat also met the woman who would be the great love of his life. A stunningly beautiful and talented young artist, Claire Wheeler insouciantly climbed aboard Farley’s beloved but jinxed schooner as it lay on the St. Pierre docks, once again in a cradle for repairs, and changed both their lives forever. This is the story of that love affair, of summers spent sailing the Newfoundland coast, and of their decision to start their life together in Burgeo, one of the province’s last remaining outports. It is also an unforgettable portrait of the last of the outport people and a way of life that had survived for centuries but was now passing forever. Affectionate, unsentimental, this is a burnished gem from an undiminished talent. I was inside my vessel painting the cabin when I heard the sounds of a scuffle nearby. I poked my head out the companionway in time to see a lithesome young woman swarming up the ladder which leaned against Happy Adventure’s flank. Whining expectantly, the shipyard dog was endeavouring to follow this attractive stranger. I could see why. As slim and graceful as a ballet dancer (which, I would later learn, was one of her avocations), she appeared to be wearing a gleaming golden helmet (her own smoothly bobbed head of hair) and was as radiantly lovely as any Saxon goddess. I invited her aboard, while pushing the dog down the ladder. “That’s only Blanche,” I reassured my visitor. “He won’t bite. He’s just, uh . . . being friendly.” “That’s nice to know,” she said sweetly. Then she smiled . . . and I was lost. —From Bay of Spirits

A humorous account of the author''s excursions through the Maritime Provinces in a thirty-one-foot craft that was barely seaworthy

In this bestseller, Farley Mowat challenges the conventional notion that the Vikings were the first Europeans to reach North America, offering an unforgettable portrait of the Albans, a race originating from the island now known as Britain. Battered by repeated invasions from their aggressive neighbors—Celt, Roman, and Norse—the Albans fled west. Their search for safety, and for the massive walrus herds on which their survival depended, eventually took them to the land now known as Newfoundland and Labrador. Skillfully weaving together clues gathered from forty years of research, Mowat presents a fascinating account of a forgotten history.

THEY COULD SURVIVE ANYTHING IN THE ARCTIC WILDERNESS--EXCEPT THE WHITE MAN. They were rich, the caribou were abundant. Their dogs were many and strong. The children in the tents were happy, and there was never any fear of going hungry. Then came the ruthless white man''s civilization. And with it came slaughter of the herds, starvation of the flesh, and torture of the spirit.

Following Farley Mowat’s bestselling memoir, Otherwise, the literary lion returns with an unexpected triumph. Eastern Passage is a new and captivating piece of the puzzle of Farley Mowat’s life: the years from his return from the north in the late 1940s to his discovery of Newfoundland and his love affair with the sea in the 1950s. This was a time in which he wrote his first books and weathered his first storms of controversy, a time when he was discovering himself through experiences that, as he writes, "go to the heart of who and what I was" during his formative years as a writer and activist. In the 1950s, with his career taking off but his first marriage troubled, Farley Mowat buys a piece of land northwest of Toronto and attempts to settle down. His accounts of building his home are by turns hilarious and affecting, while the insights into his early work and his relationship with his publishers offer a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a writer’s career. But in the end, his restless soul could not be pinned to one place, and when his father offered him a chance to sail down the St. Lawrence, he jumped at it, not realizing that his journey would bring him face to face with one of Canada’s more shocking secrets – one most of us still don’t know today. This horrific incident, recalling as it did the lingering aftermath of war, and from which it took the area decades to recover, would forge the final tempering of Mowat as the activist we know today. Eastern Passage is a funny, astute, and moving book that reveals that there is more yet to this fascinating and beloved figure than we think we know.

In 1985, when Mowat tried to enter the United States for a book promotion tour, he was barred by the McCarran Act, a 1952 law enacted during the McCarthy era. This book, told with outraged but good humour, describes Mowat''s fight against the ban.

In the spring of 1953, Farley Mowat returned to Europe to retrace his wartime footsteps and search for peace. He returned to England and France - countries that less than a decade previously had been made weary under the weight of war. He returned to the nightmarish battlefields of Italy that had seen Canadian soldiers, his friends and comrades, fall in tragically high numbers. He wanted to see what the land - and its peoples - were like when the world was not a charnel house of mud, rain, metal and death. What he found was a world that was - after so many years of misery, tragedy, and destruction - overwhelmingly and energetically embracing life, nature and hope. Driving through Western Europe with his wife Frances, Farley Mowat begins his traveller`s tale. He meets former French resistance fighters who, when they learn that he`s a Canadian veteran, greet and fete him with food, drink and stories as if he were a long-lost brother. He sees San Carlo, an Italian town practically levelled as the site of a horrifying battle in the winter of 1944, rebuilt and teeming with life, as if risen from the grave. He meets people shaped and changed by tragedy and yet determined to move forward. They tell Mowat the stories only the inhabitants of a war-zone can tell: stories of the evils of war and the courage, sacrifice and resilience of ordinary people. Farley Mowat also sees places still, but probably for the last time, untouched by the rapid "progress" of this last half century. In Kent, he is invited into a flagstone-floored Tudor brewery where, since the days of King Henry VIII, time and brewing methods have stood still. In Positano, a seaside fishing town where he spent some of his war years, Mowat watches firsthand as fishermen ply their trade as their ancestors did during the Roman Empire. Mowat paints an unforgettable portrait of ancient places on the cusp of unimaginable change. Aftermath: Travels in a Post-War World is vintage Mowat: lively, moving, heart-stopping and beautifully told. (1995)

Walking on the Land brings Mowat''s writing full circle, and will stand as a testament to his lifelong passions and unparalleled career."--BOOK JACKET.

On December 28, 1985 after eighteen years of research in the dripping rain forests of the Virunga volcanoes in central Africa, Dian Fossey was brutally murdered. Though not quite fifty-four years old, she had lived a life as remarkable and rewarding as that of any woman of our time. Dian Fossey went to Africa at the urging of famed anthropologist Dr. Louis Leakey to study one of the rarest, most mysterious animals on earth: the wild mountain gorilla. She found the great, gentle apes threatened on all sides by zoo collectors, poachers, herdsmen and scientists. Slowly, she came to understand the magnificent creatures on their own terms, to understand and admire--even to love them. She became their greatest champion--and their greatest martyr. Virunga is the startling true account of Dian Fossey''s life as told by Canada''s favorite wildlife writer, Farley Mowat. Based on Fossey''s private correspondence, journals, camp records, personal papers and interviews with her colleagues, friends and enemies, it is the story of one woman''s inexhaustible passion for life--and the creatures who share it with us.

Ordeal by Iceis the thrilling account of the great Northern explorers: men who struggled, starved, and finally conquered the capricious forces of the bitter Northern winter in a centuries-long search for the Northwest Passage. The stories, compiled by award-winning author Farley Mowat and presented in gripping, firsthand narratives, capture both the stark drama of the struggle for survival and the breathtaking panorama of virgin Arctic lands.

One of the great storytellers of our century writes passionately of the courage of men and of a small, ocean-going salvage tug, Foundation Franklin. The captain and the crew were mostly Newfounders; the sea was in their blood. Battered by towering waves, dwarfed by the ships she towed, blasted by gale-force winds and frozen by squalls of snow and rain, the stout ship and her brave crew saved hundreds of vessels and thousands of lives as they battled their ancient enemy, the North Atlantic.

Mowat''s eloquent record of several months of intimiate study of reputedly vicious wolves in the subarctic Barren Lands.

Press kit includes 5 pamphlets and 2 sheets of loose copy.