Audubon Guide to the National Wildlife Refuges: Northern Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, South Dakota, Wisconsin

Often overlooked as outdoors destinations, the 10 states of the upper Mississippi/Missouri/Ohio River valleys encompass 103 national wildlife refuges, 64 of them in North Dakota alone. This guidebook profiles 43 of the region's refuges, which take in glacial lakes, sandhills, swift rivers, deep bays, and open prairies that shelter an astonishing diversity of plant and animal species, including gray wolves, falcons, rattlesnakes, and voles--as well as hundreds of bird species. Naturalist-writers John Grassy and Tom Powers offer remarks on the refuges' histories, the animals and plants they harbor, and the ongoing struggle to expand and maintain the national refuge system in a time when so much of the region is being developed (with, for example, prairie wetland being drained and filled at an unprecedented rate as once-quiet Midwestern cities and towns grow ever larger). Anyone who has been entranced by the Niobrara River or the call of a loon will want to follow the authors' suggestions on where to go and what to see. --Gregory McNamee