Nature & Outdoors Books
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The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
Montgomery, Sy
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $6.07
In pursuit of the wild, solitary, predatory octopus, popular naturalist Sy Montgomery has practiced true immersion journalism. From New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, she has befriended octopuses with strikingly different personalities—gentle Athena, assertive Octavia, curious Kali, and joyful Karma. Each creature shows her cleverness in myriad ways: escaping enclosures like an orangutan; jetting water to bounce balls; and endlessly tricking companions with multiple “sleights of hand” to get food.Scientists have only recently accepted the intelligence of dogs, birds, and chimpanzees but now are watching octopuses solve problems and are trying to decipher the meaning of the animal’s color-changing techniques. With her “joyful passion for these intelligent and fascinating creatures” (Library Journal Editors’ Spring Pick), Montgomery chronicles the growing appreciation of this mollusk as she tells a unique love story. By turns funny, entertaining, touching, and profound, The Soul of an Octopus reveals what octopuses can teach us about the meeting of two very different minds.
Desert Solitaire
Abbey, Edward
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.00 Sale: $5.43
First published in 1968, this legendary author vividly captures the essence of his life during three seasons as a park ranger in southeastern Utah. It is a rare view of a quest to experience nature, but is also the cry of a man who challenges the growing exploitation of the wilderness by oil and mining interests, as well as by the tourist industry.
Cadillac Desert
Reisner, Marc
(Paperback)
List Price: $19.00 Sale: $5.88
Newly updated, this timely history of the struggle to discover and control water in the American West is a tale of rivers diverted and damned, political corruption and intrigue, billion-dollar battles over water rights, and economic and ecological disaster.
Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale
Minter, Adam
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $7.83
From the author of "Junkyard Planet," a journey into the surprising afterlives of our former possessions.Downsizing. Decluttering. A parent's death. Sooner or later, all of us are faced with things we no longer need or want. But when we drop our old clothes and other items off at a local donation center, where do they go? Sometimes across the country - or even halfway across the world - to people and places who find value in what we leave behind.In Secondhand, journalist Adam Minter takes us on an unexpected adventure into the often-hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse: thrift stores in the American Southwest to vintage shops in Tokyo, flea markets in Southeast Asia to used-goods enterprises in Ghana, and more. Along the way, Minter meets the fascinating people who handle - and profit from - our rising tide of discarded stuff, and asks a pressing question: In a world that craves shiny and new, is there room for it all?Secondhand offers hopeful answers and hard truths. A history of the stuff we've used and a contemplation of why we keep buying more, it also reveals the marketing practices, design failures, and racial prejudices that push used items into landfills instead of new homes. Secondhand shows us that it doesn't have to be this way, and what really needs to change to build a sustainable future free of excess stuff.
Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder (Updated and Expanded)
Louv, Richard
(Softcover)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $5.88
Richard Louv was the first to identify a phenomenon we all knew existed but couldn't quite articulate: nature-deficit disorder. His book Last Child in the Woods created a national conversation about the disconnection between children and nature, and his message has galvanized an international movement. Now, three years after its initial publication, we have reached a tipping point, with Leave No Child Inside initiatives adopted in at least 30 regions within 21 states, and in Canada, Holland, Australia, and Great Britain. This new edition reflects the enormous changes that have taken place since the book - and this grassroots movement - were launched. It includes: 101 Things you can do to create change in your community, school, and family. Discussion points to inspire people of all ages to talk about the importance of nature in their lives. A new afterword by the author about the growing Leave No Child Inside movement. New and updated research confirming that direct exposure to nature is essential for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. This is a book that will change the way you think about your future and the future of your children.
Miracle Country
Atleework, Kendra
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $6.47
Kendra Atleework grew up in Swall Meadows, in the Owens Valley of the Eastern Sierra Nevada, where annual rainfall averages five inches and in drought years measures closer to zero.Kendra’s parents taught their children to thrive in this beautiful, if harsh, landscape, prone to wildfires, blizzards, and gale-force winds. Above all, they were raised on unconditional love and delight in the natural world. After Kendra’s mother died of a rare autoimmune disease when Kendra was just sixteen, however, her once-beloved desert world came to feel empty and hostile, as climate change, drought, and wildfires intensified. The Atleework family fell apart, even as her father tried to keep them together. Kendra escaped to Los Angeles, and then Minneapolis, land of tall trees, full lakes, water everywhere you look. But after years of avoiding her troubled hometown, she realized that she needed to come to terms with its past and present and had to go back. Miracle Country is a moving and unforgettable memoir of flight and return, emptiness and bounty, the realities of a harsh and changing climate, and the true meaning of home. For readers of Cheryl Strayed, Terry Tempest Williams, and Rebecca Solnit, this is a breathtaking debut by a remarkable writer.
The Stokes Field Guide to the Birds of North America (Stokes Field Guides)
Stokes, Donald
(Paperback)
List Price: $25.00 Sale: $9.51
The guide features 853 North American bird species and more than 3,400 stunning color photographs. And yet it's portable enough to fit in your pocket! The photographs cover all significant plumages, including male, female, summer, winter, immature, morphs, important subspecies, and birds in flight. Also included: the newest scientific and common names and phylogenetic order; special help for identifying birds in flight through important clues of behavior, plumage, and shape; detailed descriptions of songs and calls; important behavioral information; key habitat preferences of each species; the newest range maps, detailing species' winter, summer, year-round ranges, and migration routes; a special downloadable CD with more than 600 bird sounds (from Lang Elliott and Kevin Colver) and 150 photographs: the calls and songs of 150 common North American species.
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating
Bailey, Elisabeth Tova
(Paperback)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $5.67
In a work that beautifully demonstrates the rewards of closely observing nature, Elisabeth Tova Bailey shares an inspiring and intimate story of her encounter with a Neohelix albolabris--a common woodland snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches a wild snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand. As a result, she discovers the solace and sense of wonder that this mysterious creature brings and comes to a greater understanding of her own place in the world. Intrigued by the snail's molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making, hydraulic locomotion, and courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer, offering a candid and engaging look into the curious life of this underappreciated small animal. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world can illuminate our own human existence, while providing an appreciation of what it means to be fully alive.
Refuge
Williams, Terry Tempest
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $6.23
In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same spring, Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and with it the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, "Refuge" transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that seems certain to become a classic in the literatures of women, nature, and grieving.
The Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions
Brannen, Peter
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $4.79
As new groundbreaking research suggests that climate change played a major role in the most extreme catastrophes in the planet's history, award-winning science journalist Peter Brannen takes us on a wild ride through the planet's five mass extinctions and, in the process, offers us a glimpse of our increasingly dangerous future.Our world has ended five times: it has been broiled, frozen, poison-gassed, smothered, and pelted by asteroids. In The Ends of the World, Peter Brannen dives into deep time, exploring Earth’s past dead ends, and in the process, offers us a glimpse of our possible future.Many scientists now believe that the climate shifts of the twenty-first century have analogs in these five extinctions. Using the visible clues these devastations have left behind in the fossil record, The Ends of the World takes us inside “scenes of the crime,” from South Africa to the New York Palisades, to tell the story of each extinction. Brannen examines the fossil record—which is rife with creatures like dragonflies the size of sea gulls and guillotine-mouthed fish—and introduces us to the researchers on the front lines who, using the forensic tools of modern science, are piecing together what really happened at the crime scenes of the Earth’s biggest whodunits.Part road trip, part history, and part cautionary tale, The Ends of the World takes us on a tour of the ways that our planet has clawed itself back from the grave, and casts our future in a completely new light.
The Forest Unseen: A Year's Watch in Nature
Haskell, David George
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $6.47
In this wholly original book, biologist David Haskell uses a one-square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window onto the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life. Each of this book's short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these, Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology and ecology, explaining the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals and describing the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands - sometimes millions - of years. Each visit to the forest presents a nature story in miniature as Haskell elegantly teases out the intricate relationships that order the creatures and plants that call it home.
Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World
Yunkaporta, Tyson
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.99 Sale: $6.95
A paradigm-shifting book in the vein of Sapiens that brings a crucial Indigenous perspective to historical and cultural issues of history, education, money, power, and sustainability--and offers a new template for living.As an indigenous person, Tyson Yunkaporta looks at global systems from a unique perspective, one tied to the natural and spiritual world. In considering how contemporary life diverges from the pattern of creation, he raises important questions. How does this affect us? How can we do things differently?In this thoughtful, culturally rich, mind-expanding book, he provides answers. Yunkaporta's writing process begins with images. Honoring indigenous traditions, he makes carvings of what he wants to say, channeling his thoughts through symbols and diagrams rather than words. He yarns with people, looking for ways to connect images and stories with place and relationship to create a coherent world view, and he uses sand talk, the Aboriginal custom of drawing images on the ground to convey knowledge.In Sand Talk, he provides a new model for our everyday lives. Rich in ideas and inspiration, it explains how lines and symbols and shapes can help us make sense of the world. It's about how we learn and how we remember. It's about talking to everyone and listening carefully. It's about finding different ways to look at things.Most of all it's about a very special way of thinking, of learning to see from a native perspective, one that is spiritually and physically tied to the earth around us, and how it can save our world.Sand Talk include 22 black-and-white illustrations that add depth to the text.
Unlikely Friendships: 47 Remarkable Stories from the Animal Kingdom
Holland, Jennifer S.
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.95 Sale: $5.43
Written by National Geographic magazine writer Jennifer Holland, Unlikely Friendships documents one heartwarming tale after another of animals who, with nothing else in common, bond in the most unexpected ways. A cat and a bird. A mare and a fawn. An elephant and a sheep. A snake and a hamster. The well-documented stories of Koko the gorilla and All Ball the kitten; and the hippo Owen and the tortoise Mzee. And almost inexplicable stories of predators befriending prey - an Indian leopard slips into a village every night to sleep with a calf. A lioness mothers a baby oryx. Ms. Holland narrates the details and arc of each story, and also offers insights into why - how the young leopard, probably motherless, sought maternal comfort with the calf, and how a baby oryx inspired the same mothering instinct in the lioness. Or, in the story of Kizzy, a nervous retired Greyhound, and Murphy, a red tabby, how cats and dogs actually understand each other’s body language. With Murphy’s friendship and support, Kizzy recovered from life as a racing dog and became a confident, loyal family pet. These are the most amazing friendships between species, collected from around the world and documented in a selection of full-color candid photographs.
Newcomb's Wildflower Guide
Newcomb, Lawrence
(Paperback)
List Price: $20.00 Sale: $7.83
Armed with Newcomb's Wildflower Guide, amateur and expert alike can quickly and accurately identify almost any wildflower. Lawrence Newcomb's ingenious system of identification is based on natural structural features that are easily visible even to the untrained eye. This guide covers more plants than other guides and has more color illustrations, a more complete glossary, and a more accurate identification system, easily mastered by nonbotanists. 490 pages.
Beyond Words - What Animals Think and Feel
Safina, Carl
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $7.11
Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals. In Beyond Words, readers travel to Amboseli National Park in the threatened landscape of Kenya and witness struggling elephant families work out how to survive poaching and drought, then to Yellowstone National Park to observe wolves sort out the aftermath of one pack's personal tragedy, and finally plunge into the astonishingly peaceful society of killer whales living in the crystalline waters of the Pacific Northwest.Beyond Words brings forth powerful and illuminating insight into the unique personalities of animals through extraordinary stories of animal joy, grief, jealousy, anger, and love. The similarity between human and nonhuman consciousness, self-awareness, and empathy calls us to re-evaluate how we interact with animals. Wise, passionate, and eye-opening at every turn, Beyond Words is ultimately a graceful examination of humanity's place in the world.
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
Safina, Carl
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $9.11
Some people insist that culture is strictly a human feat. What are they afraid of? This book looks into three cultures of other-than-human beings in some of Earth’s remaining wild places. It shows how if you’re a sperm whale, a scarlet macaw, or a chimpanzee, you too experience your life with the understanding that you are an individual in a particular community. You too are who you are not by genes alone; your culture is a second form of inheritance. You receive it from thousands of individuals, from pools of knowledge passing through generations like an eternal torch. You too may raise young, know beauty, or struggle to negotiate a peace. And your culture, too, changes and evolves. The light of knowledge needs adjusting as situations change, so a capacity for learning, especially social learning, allows behaviors to adjust, to change much faster than genes alone could adapt.Becoming Wild offers a glimpse into cultures among non-human animals through looks at the lives of individuals in different present-day animal societies. By showing how others teach and learn, Safina offers a fresh understanding of what is constantly going on beyond humanity. With reporting from deep in nature, alongside individual creatures in their free-living communities, this book offers a very privileged glimpse behind the curtain of life on Earth, and helps inform the answer to that most urgent of questions: Who are we here with?
Dinosaur: A Photicular Book
Kainen, Dan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $25.95 Sale: $7.83
Using unique Photicular® technology that’s like a 3-D movie on the page, DINOSAUR brings these legendary, long-extinct creatures to life. Each image delivers a rich, immersive visual experience - and the result is breathtaking. There’s a herd of giant sauroposeidons, with their impossibly long necks, lumbering across the sun-drenched plains, a threatened velociraptor waving its wildly feathered arms, and more.Flipping through these pages is transports readers to Earth’s distant past. With informative text by science writer Kathy Wollard, it’s like a natural history museum but better - experience it for yourself!
Sad Animal Facts
Barker, Brooke
(Hardcover)
List Price: $19.99 Sale: $5.88
A delightful and quirky compendium of the Animal Kingdom's more unfortunate truths, with over 150 hand-drawn illustrations.
Don't Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change
Marshall, George
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $6.47
Most of us recognize that climate change is real yet we do nothing to stop it. What is the psychological mechanism that allows us to know something is true but act as if it is not? George Marshall's search for the answers brings him face to face with Nobel Prize-winning psychologists and Texas Tea Party activists; the world's leading climate scientists and those who denounce them; liberal environmentalists and conservative evangelicals. What he discovers is that our values, assumptions, and prejudices can take on lives of their own, gaining authority as they are shared, dividing people in their wake.With engaging stories and drawing on years of his own research, Marshall argues that the answers do not lie in the things that make us different, but rather in what we share: how our human brains are wired - our evolutionary origins, our perceptions of threats, our cognitive blind spots, our love of storytelling, our fear of death, and our deepest instincts to defend our family and tribe. Once we understand what excites, threatens, and motivates us, we can rethink climate change, for it is not an impossible problem. Rather, we can halt it if we make it our common purpose and common ground. In the end, Don't Even Think About It is both about climate change and about the qualities that make us human and how we can deal with the greatest challenge we have ever faced.
The Story of Stuff: The Impact of Overconsumption on the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health--And How We Can Make It Better
Leonard, Annie
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $5.43
The Story of Stuff offers an astonishing, galvanizing exploration of the stuff we use every day, revealing how overconsumption threatens the planet and our health, and providing hope that change is within reach. Uncovering and communicating a critically important idea - that there is an intentional system behind our patterns of consumption and disposal - Annie Leonard transforms how we think about our lives and our relationship to the planet. From sneaking into factories and dumps around the world to visiting textile workers in Haiti and children mining coltan for cell phones in the Congo, Leonard, named one of Time magazine's 100 environmental heroes of 2009, highlights each step of the materials economy and its actual effect on the earth and the people who live near sites like these. With curiosity, compassion, and humor, Leonard shares concrete steps for taking action at the individual and political level that will bring about sustainability, community health, and economic justice. Embraced by teachers, parents, churches, community centers, activists, and everyday readers, The Story of Stuff will be a long-lived classic, keeping company with Silent Spring and An Inconvenient Truth .
Rambunctious Garden
Marris, Emma
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $4.79
A paradigm shift is roiling the environmental world. For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means even the remotest places now bear the fingerprints of humanity. Emma Marris argues convincingly that it is time to look forward and create the "rambunctious garden," a hybrid of wild nature and human management.In this optimistic book, readers meet leading scientists and environmentalists and visit imaginary Edens, designer ecosystems, and Pleistocene parks. Marris describes innovative conservation approaches, including rewilding, assisted migration, and the embrace of so-called novel ecosystems. Rambunctious Garden is short on gloom and long on interesting theories and fascinating narratives, all of which bring home the idea that we must give up our romantic notions of pristine wilderness and replace them with the concept of a global, half-wild rambunctious garden planet, tended by us.
The Song of the Dodo
Quammen, David
(Softcover)
List Price: $22.00 Sale: $7.56
A captivating work of scientific journalism which explains the worldwide ecosystem decay which is at the root of countless species' extinction and which will continue to wipe out species as human activity carves the wilderness into ever-increasing island-like fragments. Combining personal observation, scientific theory, and history, this book takes readers on a worldwide tour of wild places, ideas, and creatures, including the dragons of Komodo, the elephant birds of Madagascar, and the giant tortoises of the Galapagos.
The Revolutionary Genius of Plants: A New Understanding of Plant Intelligence and Behavior
Mancuso, Stefano
(Hardcover)
List Price: $30.00 Sale: $9.32
Do plants have intelligence? Do they have memory? Are they better problem solvers than people? The Revolutionary Genius of Plants—a fascinating, paradigm-shifting work that upends everything you thought you knew about plants—makes a compelling scientific case that these and other astonishing ideas are all true.Plants make up eighty percent of the weight of all living things on earth, and yet it is easy to forget that these innocuous, beautiful organisms are responsible for not only the air that lets us survive, but for many of our modern comforts: our medicine, food supply, even our fossil fuels.On the forefront of uncovering the essential truths about plants, world-renowned scientist Stefano Mancuso reveals the surprisingly sophisticated ability of plants to innovate, to remember, and to learn, offering us creative solutions to the most vexing technological and ecological problems that face us today. Despite not having brains or central nervous systems, plants perceive their surroundings with an even greater sensitivity than animals. They efficiently explore and react promptly to potentially damaging external events thanks to their cooperative, shared systems; without any central command centers, they are able to remember prior catastrophic events and to actively adapt to new ones.Every page of The Revolutionary Genius of Plants bubbles over with Stefano Mancuso’s infectious love for plants and for the eye-opening research that makes it more and more clear how remarkable our fellow inhabitants on this planet really are. In his hands, complicated science is wonderfully accessible, and he has loaded the book with gorgeous photographs that make for an unforgettable reading experience. The Revolutionary Genius of Plants opens the doors to a new understanding of life on earth.
Modoc: The True Story of the Greatest Elephant That Ever Lived
Helfer, Ralph
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.95 Sale: $5.19
Spanning seven decades and three continents, Modoc is one of the most amazing true animal stories ever told. Raised together in a small German circus town, a boy and an elephant formed a bond that would last their entire lives, and would be tested time and again: through a near-fatal shipwreck in the Indian Ocean, an apprenticeship with the legendary Mahout elephant trainers in the Indian teak forests, and their eventual rise to circus stardom in 1940s New York City. Modoc is a captivating true story of loyalty, friendship, and high adventure, to be treasured by animal lovers everywhere.
The End of Nature
McKibben, Bill
(Softcover)
List Price: $14.95 Sale: $4.79
Reissued on the tenth anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever. McKibben writes of our earth's environmental cataclysm, addressing such core issues as the greenhouse effect, acid rain, and the depletion of the ozone layer. His new introduction addresses some of the latest environmental issues that have risen during the 1990s. The book also includes an invaluable new appendix of facts and figures that surveys the progress of the environmental movement. More than simply a handbook for survival or a doomsday catalog of scientific prediction, this classic, soulful lament on Nature is required reading for nature enthusiasts, activists, and concerned citizens alike.
Kinship with All Life
Boone, J. Allen
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.95 Sale: $5.19
Is there a universal language of love, a "kinship with all life" that can open new horizons of experience? This intriguing book documents simple, real-life experiences that show how animals communicate with each other and with people.
A Natural History of the Senses
Ackerman, Diane
(Paperback)
List Price: $13.00 Sale: $5.19
If Colette had studied science and spent time listening to icebergs in Antarctica and interviewing a professional nose in New York, she might have written a book as luscious and erudite as A Natural History of the Senses. In the course of this grand tour of the realm of the senses, Diane Ackerman writes about the evolution of the kiss, the sadistic cuisine of eighteenth-century England, the chemistry of pain, and the melodies of the planet Earth with an evocativeness and charm that make the book itself a marvel of literate sensuality.
The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man an the Sea
Roberts, Callum
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $5.43
The sea feeds and sustains us, but its future is under catastrophic threat. In this powerful and ambitious book Callum Roberts - one of the world's foremost conservation biologists - tells the story of the history of the sea, from the earliest traces of water on earth to the oceans as we know them today. He offers a devastating account of the impact of overfishing, deep-sea mining, pollution, and climate change and explains what we must do now to preserve our rapidly dwindling marine life. Passionate and persuasive, The Ocean of Life is a wake-up call that will appeal to anyone who loves the sea and its creatures.
Never Cry Wolf
Mowat, Farley
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.00 Sale: $5.88
More than a half-century ago the naturalist Farley Mowat accepted an assignment to investigate why wolves were killing Arctic caribou. Mowat's account of the summer he lived in the frozen tundra alone - studying the wolf population and developing a deep affection for these wild creatures - is today celebrated as a classic of nature writing, at once a tale of remarkable adventure and an indelible record of the myths and magic of wolves.
Hummingbird Book: The Complete Guide to Attracting, Identifying, and Enjoying Hummingbirds
Stokes, Donald
(Softcover)
List Price: $14.00 Sale: $5.43
With seventy full-color photographs, eight range maps showing summer and winter distribution, and eight diagrams of the birds' striking aerobatics, this guide will fully enable readers to enjoy these popular birds.
Earth Prayers from Around the World
Roberts, Elizabeth (Edt)
(Softcover)
List Price: $15.99 Sale: $5.67
"Through this extraordinary collection of prayers from all the world and from all historical periods we finally awaken to the presence of the divine that comes to us through the Earth and the entire natural world."-Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth.
Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters
Dillard, Annie
(Softcover)
List Price: $13.00 Sale: $5.19
Here, in this compelling assembly of writings, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Annie Dillard explores the world of natural facts and human meanings. SC, 175 pages.
The Water Will Come: Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World
Goodell, Jeff
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.99 Sale: $6.07
What if Atlantis wasn't a myth, but an early precursor to a new age of great flooding? Across the globe, scientists and civilians alike are noticing rapidly rising sea levels, and higher and higher tides pushing more water directly into the places we live, from our most vibrant, historic cities to our last remaining traditional coastal villages. With each crack in the great ice sheets of the Arctic and Antarctica, and each tick upwards of Earth's thermometer, we are moving closer to the brink of broad disaster.By century's end, hundreds of millions of people will be retreating from the world's shores as our coasts become inundated and our landscapes transformed. From island nations to the world's major cities, coastal regions will disappear. Engineering projects to hold back the water are bold and may buy some time. Yet despite international efforts and tireless research, there is no permanent solution-no barriers to erect or walls to build-that will protect us in the end from the drowning of the world as we know it.The Water Will Come is the definitive account of the coming water, why and how this will happen, and what it will all mean. As he travels across twelve countries and reports from the front lines, acclaimed journalist Jeff Goodell employs fact, science, and first-person, on-the-ground journalism to show vivid scenes from what already is becoming a water world.
The Lobster Coast
Woodard, Colin
(Softcover)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $6.23
In the tradition of William Warner's "Beautiful Swimmers," veteran journalist Woodard traces the history of the rugged fishing communities that dot the coast of Maine and the prized crustacean that has long provided their livelihood.
The Maine Woods (Penguin Nature Classics)
Thoreau, Henry David
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $5.88
With Abnaki guides, Thoreau climbed Mt. Katahdin and hiked deep into the Maine woods to places where one "might live and die and never hear of the United States." His accurate, evocative descriptions still reflect his belief that man himself is a part of the natural world.
Zeitoun
Eggers, Dave
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $5.19
The true story of one family, caught between America’s two biggest policy disasters: the war on terror and the response to Hurricane Katrina.Abdulrahman and Kathy Zeitoun run a house-painting business in New Orleans. In August of 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approaches, Kathy evacuates with their four young children, leaving Zeitoun to watch over the business. In the days following the storm he travels the city by canoe, feeding abandoned animals and helping elderly neighbors. Then, on September 6th, police officers armed with M-16s arrest Zeitoun in his home. Told with eloquence and compassion, Zeitoun is a riveting account of one family’s unthinkable struggle with forces beyond wind and water.
Birds, Beasts, and Relatives
Durrell, Gerald
(Paperback)
List Price: $15.00 Sale: $5.88
This humorous account of the unconventional Durrell family living on the sun-drenched, thyme scented Greek island of Corfu before World War II is Gerald Durrell's dazzling sequel to his very popular book, My Family and Other Animals. Part coming-of-age autobiography and part nature guide, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is based on Durrell's boyhood on the island from 1933 to 1939, where he made a special study of zoology and kept a large number of the local wild animals as pets. Originally published in 1969 but long out of print, Birds, Beasts, and Relatives is filled with clever observations, amusing anecdotes, boyhood memories, and childlike wonder.
Field Notes from a Catastrophe
Kolbert, Elizabeth
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.00 Sale: $5.88
Elizabeth Kolbert's environmental classic Field Notes from a Catastrophe first developed out of a groundbreaking, National Magazine Award-winning three-part series in The New Yorker. She expanded it into a still-concise yet richly researched and damning book about climate change: a primer on the greatest challenge facing the world today. But in the years since, the story has continued to develop; the situation has become more dire, even as our understanding grows. Now, Kolbert returns to the defining book of her career. She'll add a chapter bringing things up-to-date on the existing text, plus she'll add three new chapters--on ocean acidification, the tar sands, and a Danish town that's gone carbon neutral--making it, again, a must-read for our moment.
Into the Raging Sea: Thirty-Three Mariners, One Megastorm, and the Sinking of El Faro
Slade, Rachel
(Paperback)
List Price: $17.99 Sale: $5.67
On October 1, 2015, Hurricane Joaquin barreled into the Bermuda Triangle and swallowed the container ship El Faro whole, resulting in the worst American shipping disaster in thirty-five years. No one could fathom how a vessel equipped with satellite communications, a sophisticated navigation system, and cutting-edge weather forecasting could suddenly vanish - until now.Relying on hundreds of exclusive interviews with family members and maritime experts, as well as the words of the crew members themselves - whose conversations were captured by the ship’s data recorder - journalist Rachel Slade unravels the mystery of the sinking of El Faro. As she recounts the final twenty-four hours onboard, Slade vividly depicts the officers’ anguish and fear as they struggled to carry out Captain Michael Davidson’s increasingly bizarre commands, which, they knew, would steer them straight into the eye of the storm. Taking a hard look at America's aging merchant marine fleet, Slade also reveals the truth about modern shipping - a cut-throat industry plagued by razor-thin profits and ever more violent hurricanes fueled by global warming.A richly reported account of a singular tragedy, Into the Raging Sea takes us into the heart of an age-old American industry, casting new light on the hardworking men and women who paid the ultimate price in the name of profit.
The Language of Butterflies: How Thieves, Hoarders, Scientists, and Other Obsessives Unlocked the Secrets of the World's Favorite Insect
Williams, Wendy
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.00 Sale: $7.83
In this fascinating book, Wendy Williams explores the lives of one of the world’s most resilient creatures—the butterfly—shedding light on the role that they play in our ecosystem and in our human lives.Butterflies are one of the world’s most beloved insects. From butterfly gardens to zoo exhibitions, they are one of the few insects we’ve encouraged to infiltrate our lives. Yet, what has drawn us to these creatures in the first place? And what are their lives really like? In this groundbreaking book, New York Times bestselling author and science journalist Wendy Williams reveals the inner lives of these “flying flowers”—creatures far more intelligent and tougher than we give them credit for.Monarch butterflies migrate thousands of miles each year from Canada to Mexico. Other species have learned how to fool ants into taking care of them. Butterflies’ scales are inspiring researchers to create new life-saving medical technology. Williams takes readers to butterfly habitats across the globe and introduces us to not only various species, but to the scientists who have dedicated their lives to studying them.Coupled with years of research and knowledge gained from experts in the field, this accessible “butterfly biography” explores the ancient partnership between these special creatures and humans, and why they continue to fascinate us today. Touching, eye-opening, and incredibly profound, The Language of Butterflies reveals the critical role they play in our world.
Autumn
Knausgaard, Karl Ove
(Paperback)
List Price: $18.00 Sale: $4.79
From one of the masters of contemporary literature comes the first in an autobiographical quartet based on the four seasons. Autumn begins with a letter Karl Ove Knausgaard writes to his unborn daughter. He adds one short piece pr day, describing the material and natural world with the precision and mesmerizing intensity that have become his trademark. The sun, wasps, jellyfish, eyes, lice - the stuff of everyday life is the fodder for his art. Nothing is too small or too great to escape his attention. A beautifully illustrated personal encyclopedia on everything from chewing gum to the stars, Autumn shows us how vast, unknowable, and wondrous the world is.
A Short Philosophy of Birds
Dubois, Philippe J.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $19.99 Sale: $6.07
Twenty-two short lessons from the secret lives of birds on living harmoniously and reconnecting with nature.This charming volume on bird behavior invites us to take a step back from our busy lives and to listen to the tiny philosophers of the sky. From the delicate sparrow to the majestic eagle, birds are among the most fascinating species on earth, and there is much to be learned from these paragons of beauty and grace that can be applied to our lives, including:• Independence: what it means to be “pushed out of the nest.”• Vulnerability: what the mallard teaches us about giving up our old feathers for new ones in order to fly.• Gender equality: what happens when a papa Turtledove sits on the nest.• Hierarchy and power: what the raven and the vulture know about the pecking order.Filled with elegant illustrations of bird species, this gem of a book celebrates of our friends in the sky, and what they can teach us about the rhythms of life.
Hummingbirds
Fogden, Michael
(Hardcover)
List Price: $29.99 Sale: $9.11
Hummingbirds have always held popular appeal, with their visual brilliance, extraordinary flight dexterity, jewel-like color, and remarkably small size. This is the first book to profile all 338 known species, from the Saw-billed Hermit to the Scintillant Hummingbird. Every bird is shown life-size in glorious full-color photographs. Every species profile includes a flight map and key statistics, as well as information about behavior, plumage, and habitat. This authoritative guide has been annotated by the world's leading experts on hummingbirds and features a foreword by renowned birding author Pete Dunne.
Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?
McKibben, Bill
(Hardcover)
List Price: $28.00 Sale: $3.11
Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out.Bill McKibben’s groundbreaking book The End of Nature -- issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic -- was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience.Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben’s experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We’re at a bleak moment in human history -- and we’ll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away.Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity.
Outback: The Amazing Animals of Australia (A Photicular Book)
Kainen, Dan
(Hardcover)
List Price: $26.95 Sale: $7.83
Using Photicular® technology that’s like a 3-D movie on the page, OUTBACK whisks you to the vast, remote world of wild Australia, where heat waves dance forever and animals, isolated by the vagaries of continental drift, are unlike those found anywhere else on Earth.Each moving image delivers a rich, immersive visual experience - and the result is breathtaking. The kangaroo hops. A wombat waddles. The frilled lizard races on two legs across the desert floor. A peacock spider dances and shows off its vibrant colors. Experience it for yourself!
The Solace of Open Spaces
Ehrlich, Gretel
(Paperback)
List Price: $16.00 Sale: $5.43
Writing of hermits, cowboys, changing seasons, and the wind, Ehrlich draws us into her personal relationship with this "planet of Wyoming" she has come to call home. She captures the incredible beauty and the demanding harshness of natural forces in these remote reaches of the West, and the depth, tenderness and humor of the quirky souls who live there. Ehrlich, a former filmmaker and urbanite, presents in these essays a fresh and vibrant tribute to the new life she has chosen.
Fossils (Golden Guide)
Rhodes, Frank H.T.
(Paperback)
List Price: $6.95 Sale: $2.63
Golden has one of the most authoritative and largest selections of nature guide available. Perfect for nature lovers of all ages, this guide to fossils is a convenient size for outdoor use on field projects, hiking, and vacations. Full-color illustrations, non-technical language, and up-to-date range maps complete this comprehensive pocket reference.
Innumerable Insects: The Story of the Most Diverse and Myriad Animals on Earth (Natural Histories)
Engel, Michael S.
(Hardcover)
List Price: $27.95 Sale: $9.51
A fascinating look at the world's most numerous inhabitants, illustrated with stunning images from the American Museum of Natural History's Rare Book Collection.To date, we have discovered and described or named around 1.1 million insect species, and thousands of new species on Earth, making them the most diverse lineage of all life by far. This magnificent volume tells the incredible story of these innumerable animals: their evolution; metamorphosis; pests, parasites, and plagues; society and language; camouflage; and pollination - plus tales of discovery by intrepid entomologists. With more than 180 illustrations, you'll discover a world observed and documented down to its tiniest, astonishing detail, from butterflies' iridescent wings to beetles' vibrant colors.
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