The remarkable Pacific temperate rainforest has become an endangered landscape, rarer than even the embattled tropical rainforest. In "Last Stands," award-winning environmental writer Larry Pynn plunges into coastal forests from California to Alaska to explore this unique ecosystem and the complex factors that threaten it. Whether standing with new-age loggers as they toil beneath the churning blades of a heli-logging operation, witnessing the wolverine's legendary ferocity, bouncing along in the back of a pickup with a couple of bear hunters, or embarking on a week-long solo hike through an uncharted wilderness, Pynn's approach to understanding North America's temperate rainforest--and the creatures and people connected to it--is as diverse and unconventional as the forest itself. The result is a fascinating book, one part impassioned travelogue and one part natural history.