Two Bottles of Water is Janet Flaugher's account of living in China for two years.

When Flaugher accepted the position as superintendent of an international school in the Chinese capital, she didn't realize what it was like to live in a city of 20 million people where you don't know the language and are unable to read the signs.

The book's title comes from the weekly routine of ordering two five-gallon bottles of water, she said. "I got pretty good at it," she said, noting that the water was delivered on a three-wheeled bicycle 20 minutes after her call.

"I had to revise my Hollywood version of what Chinese people would be like," she said.

For one thing, they weren't all short, Flaugher noted.

Her husband, meanwhile, watched a lot of Chinese TV (with subtitles) before he got a job with the Canadian embassy there in Beijing.

"Everything had to be planned in advance," said Flaugher. "We couldn't just jump in the car and go shopping, go for an outing, go to a restaurant, or just go for a ride."

"Shopping was hard. I was always coming home with something I didn't expect." she said.

The time in China, while enjoyable, was humbling. "You're not the center of the universe when you go to another place," said Flaugher.

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A professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Roger Gottlieb qualifies as a counselor for those dealing with environmental anxiety.

His new book, Nature Spirituality and Environmental Crisis: Embracing a Sacred, Wounded Earth, serves as a guide in troubled times.

"We are in the midst of an environmental crisis, a crisis for the entire civilization," he said.

Dealing with the problems of rising temperatures and rising seas, rampant fires, and brutal storms requires faith, said Gottlieb.

"It's okay to be in despair. That's a natural human response. And there's nothing wrong with grief," he said.

But Gottlieb suggests that it's still important to embrace nature--even if it's in a less-than-perfect form.

By sending students out in one of his classes to "adopt" a tree, something he's done for many years, Gottlieb has seen the power of an encounter with nature.

Skeptics who initially found the assignment silly sometimes wind up naming their tree, he said.

Contending with the environment requires dealing with another problem, said Gottlieb, pointing out the hold the internet and social media have on so many.

Much of what's transmitted online is designed to appeal to greed, anxiety, or rage, he said.

If the human race doesn't figure out how to handle the problem, things will get infinitely worse, warns Gottlieb.

In the meantime, the professor takes a positive approach to the problems of the day. "What happens when the Earth is wounded? It starts with gratitude. We need to shift attention to what we have," he said.

Your typical cowboy movie features stagecoaches, lots of horses, Indians, and a saloon with swinging doors. The women depicted are either saloon girls or school teachers, noted Chris Enss, who’s worked hard for the past 30 years to dispel that image.

Enss has written numerous books detailing the history of the Old West, most of it focusing on women's exploits during that period. Her latest book, The Last Ride, is the 61st book she’s had a hand in producing.

Some of the titles that Enss has cranked out include Buffalo Gals (highlighting the women of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show), A Bedside Book of Bad Girls, Gilded Girls and Entertaining Women (women entertainers), High Country Women (pioneers at Yosemite National Park), No Place for a Woman (suffrage), Hearts West (mail-order brides of the frontier), Daughters of Daring (stuntwomen), and Frontier Teachers, among many others.

Enss believes that the accomplishments of women have been overlooked in general, but especially when tales of the Old West are recounted.

Enss talks about female doctors like Sophie Herzog, who hung patients upside down in order to extract bullets from victims more safely. She had a necklace made of all the bullets she removed from patients, a necklace she was buried with, noted Enss.

The first female photographers of the Old West made use of walking darkrooms, flipping big dresses over their heads in order to handle film safely, she said.

Enss is a fountain of knowledge when it comes to recalling overlooked accomplishments of women such as actress Maude Adams, who not only was a friend of J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan, but also played Peter Pan on stage over 1,500 times. Adams was a star off the stage, later working on the development of stage lighting for General Electric.

“(Adams) contributed to what became the largest light bulb patented to date. Adams, a giant in the art and science of theater, nonetheless kept fans in the dark as to her personal life and private passions,” noted Adam Bisno, writing on the website of the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office.

In a previous interview, Enss noted that the quirkiest story she ever came across involved Calamity Jane. At her funeral held in Deadwood, S.D., mourners took pieces of her dress and hair as they passed by her body to pay their respects. The undertaker eventually had to cover Calamity with special wire to keep people from further disturbing her remains, said Enss.

The most notorious woman of the West was Lola Montez, she said. The Irish-born entertainer was known worldwide for her “Spider Dance.” She was eccentric and daring, and had lovers everywhere, said Enss, adding that the most famous of Montez's paramours was King Ludwig I of Bavaria. Montez is reputed to be the inspiration for the saying “Whatever Lola wants, Lola gets,” Enss noted.

In her interview on Read Beat, Enss points out that many of the stunts you see executed so expertly in westerns from the silent movie era were performed by women. Ruth Roland, Alice Van Springsteen, and Mary Wiggins were among the former rodeo stars that performed in movies that starred Tom Mix and William S. Hart, she said.

In The Last Ride, Enss recounts the story of Laura Bullion, who was part of Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch around the turn of the century. After being jailed in 1900 for her part in a train robbery, she went straight, the author stated. Bullion changed her name, working at a department store in St. Louis before going into business for herself as a seamstress. She died in 1961 at the age of 85 without fanfare.

Enss departs from her focus on the Old West next year when she returns to her comedic roots with the book Jessica of the Jungle, a rom-com romp already highlighted on her website, chrisenss.com.