Jeff Appelquist has traveled to all 50 of the United States, myriad foreign countries, and six continents. He has survived three years in the Marine Corps infantry; a violent rock slide on the Western Breach of Mount Kilimanjaro; a Force Nine gale in a sailboat on the Atlantic Ocean; a frozen regulator while wreck-diving deep in icy Lake Superior; a precipitous mid-flight plunge aboard a commercial airliner; two earthquakes; numerous bodily injuries, concussions, and surgeries; and a ghostly encounter with a Confederate soldier on Little Round Top at Gettysburg. He is a student of history who teaches leadership. He is an international sportsman who loves the outdoors. And he is deeply concerned about the state of our beloved Earth.

In Changing Places, Appelquist journeys from the Great Barrier Reef of Australia to the highest mountaintop in Africa; from Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to the Vatican City in Rome; from the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor to the Inca Trail and Machu Picchu; from the lush vineyards of Napa Valley to the rushing rivers of Montana to the fertile farmlands of rural Minnesota to the gorgeous waters off Key West, and many points in between. Changing Places is both an engaging travel memoir and a sobering treatise on the environment. Our world is a beautiful place, which Appelquist chronicles with a keen, loving eye and captivating storytelling. But it is also in danger: its coastlines, reefs, glaciers, rainforests, icecaps, and species are vanishing before our eyes. In the end, Changing Places is a call to action for every person who cherishes the Planet Earth.