Nature and the natural world: general interest Books
Penguin Putnam Inc Never Turn Your Back On An Angus Cow: My Life as
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£15.29
Counterpoint The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky's Red River
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£13.59
Inner Traditions Bear and Company Presence of the Past Morphic Resonance and the
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£21.60
Mountaineers Books Salmon in the Trees: Life in Alaska's Tongass
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£26.96
North Country Books Adirondack Nature Notes: An Adirondack Almanac
Book SynopsisA fascinating overview of the inhabitants that exist in regions across the North Country. The stories of the plants and animals included in this book illustrate the amazing diversity of life present in the Adirondacks.
£14.24
Trinity University Press,U.S. The Walk
Book SynopsisIn The Walk, William deBuys writes about personal loss and the power of the landscape to nurture the recovery of hope. The book consists of three interrelated essays that move from a period of strife in the author's life to a kind of limbo and eventually to a place of peace. The setting is deBuys' small farm in New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Each morning, he takes the same walk through the woods, arriving, as he describes in the first essay, at a clarity that comes from looking at the same vantage point for years. The middle essay, "Geranium," takes its name from a mare deBuys had to put down, and whose remains become one with the forest. In the final essay, deBuys reflects on drought, the loss of a friend, and the resurgence of land and hope. Contemplative, compassionate, and quietly humorous, The Walk is nature writing at its finest.
£9.99
Trinity University Press,U.S. Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in
Book SynopsisMoral Ground brings together the testimony of over 80 visionaries -- theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturists, activists, and writers -- to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibilities to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do. The missing premise of the argument and much-needed centerpiece in the debate to date has been the need for ethical values, moral guidance, and principled reasons for doing the right thing for our planet, its animals, its plants, and its people. This book encourages a newly discovered, or rediscovered, commitment to consensus about our ethical obligation to the future and why it's wrong to wreck the world.Trade ReviewNamed a “Top 10 Environmental Read” by Huffington Post “Will light a righteous fire under those who are receptive to its message; the best we can do is hope that it spreads, and spreads, and spreads.” — Utne Moral Ground seeks to inspire action through a recognition of our species’ commitment to ethical behavior and a reminder that ideals such as love and justice must dictate all of our actions.” — Orion “Because the message needs to be heard now more than ever, as we are on the brink of continuing to thoughtlessly, recklessly, destroy ourselves and the Earth, the combination of philosophy and science is especially effective.” — Chicago Examiner “Taking ethical action to address global climate change worldwide is a bequest that will give life to people now and in the future.” — Eugene Register Guard “An ambitious project that aims to make a rock-solid moral case for environmental action.” — Grist “A call to cultivate and implement a sense of collective moral responsibility to the future of our planet.” — Isle Journal “Solving climate change issues will come only from our openness to listen to each other, learn from each other, and seek mutual understanding in good faith.” — Portland Tribune
£13.49
Trinity University Press,U.S. The Burning Island: Myth and History of the
Book SynopsisWesterners--from early missionaries to explorers to present-day artists, scientists, and tourists--have always found volcanoes fascinating and disturbing. Native Hawaiians, in contrast, revere volcanoes as a source of spiritual energy and see the volcano goddess Pele as part of the natural cycle of a continuously procreative cosmos. Volcanoes hold a special place in our curiosity about nature. The Burning Island is an intimate, multilayered portrait of the Hawaiian volcano region--a land marked by a precarious tension between the harsh reality of constant geologic change, respect for mythological traditions, and the pressures of economic exploitation. Pamela Frierson treks up Mauna Loa, the world's largest active volcano, and Kilauea to explore how volcanoes work, as well as how their powerful and destructive forces reshape land, cultures, and history. Her adventures reveal surprising archeological ruins, threatened rainforest ecosystems, and questionable real estate development of the islands. Now a classic of nature writing, Frierson's narrative sets the stage for a larger exploration of our need to take great care in respecting and preserving nature and tradition while balancing our ever-expanding sense of discovery and use of the land.Trade Review"...a compelling personal narrative... Highly recommended." Library Journal (starred review) "...nature writing at its best ... an ambitious and complex book, beautifully written and thoroughly researched." Manoa "...as fascinating as the Big Island itself. And that's saying a lot." Islands Magazine "...an extraordinary book... Frierson has tackled one of the most profound issues in Hawaii." Honolulu Star Bulletin "Frierson is brilliant on the subject of volcanoes." San Francisco Chronicle
£13.49
Trinity University Press,U.S. On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in
Book SynopsisOn the Edge grew out of a lifetime spent living and traveling across the American Southwest, from San Antonio to Los Angeles. Char Miller examines this borderland region through a native's eyes and contemplates its considerable conflicts. Internal to the various US states and Mexico's northern tier, there are struggles over water, debates over undocumented immigrants, the criminalizing of the border, and the region's evolution into a no-man's land. The book investigates how we live on this contested land --how we make our place in its oft-arid terrain; an ecosystem that burns easily and floods often and defies our efforts to nestle in its foothills, canyons, and washes. Exploring the challenges in the Southwest of learning how to live within this complex natural system while grasping its historical and environmental frameworks. Understanding these framing devices is critical to reaching the political accommodations necessary to build a more generous society, a more habitable landscape, and a more just community, whatever our documented status or species.Trade Review"One of the environmental history profession's most thoughtful and astute observers (not to mention most graceful writers) shares with us his accumulated wisdom about the pasts and presents of places her has come to know deeply...Wise, witty, and intriguing."-Environmental HistoryTable of ContentsIntroduction: Center Points 1. Alamo City White Gold City Brew Organizing for War Political Legend Buyer's Remorse Danger: Work Ahead Holy Moses! Repairing Eden Springtime Central Core Going for Green Ebb and Flow Back to Nature 2. Rough Waters Rough Waters Storm Warning Ike's Wake 3. Borderline Anxieties Fiery Deaths Lockup Highway Robbery Homeland Insecurity Why Friendship Park Mattered Praise Song Political Agency Bulldozing Nature Behind Bars Walled Off Just Litter Wandering in the Wilderness 4. Southland On Fire Up in Smoke Sliding Away Shaken and Stirred On the Wild Side Forget the Garden of Eden Let It Be Damaged Desert Step Back Net Loss Shady Dealings Breathe Deep Pumped Dry Course Correction Mud Fight Afterword: Homeward Bound Acknowledgments
£12.34
Trinity University Press,U.S. An Almanac for Moderns
Book SynopsisAn Almanac for Moderns contains a short essay for each day of the year that contemplates a unique but factual aspect of unbridled nature. According to a review in Nation, this collection of essays manages to "appeal to the ordinary lover of nature ...but the turn of Peattie's mind is poetic and speculative." The New York Times calls this book "a fine and subtle perception ...rising at times to an intense lyric beauty ...a book which the reader will deeply treasure, and to which he will repeatedly return."
£13.49
Trinity University Press,U.S. A Book of Hours
Book SynopsisA Book of Hours contains 24 essays, one for each hour of the day, that seek to bridge the gap between definitive scientific philosophy and the sheer unadulterated beauty that Donald Culross Peattie envisioned within everyday life. The Boston Transcript referred to this collection as "science, in sheer poetry," and the Chicago Daily Tribune mused that "it leaves one a better man for having read it" and offers "the inevitableness of natural laws and the truth of beauty, if one cares to seek it."
£12.34
Trinity University Press,U.S. Cargoes and Harvests
Book SynopsisCargoes and Harvests, famed naturalist Donald Culross Peattie's first book, eloquently explores agriculture and trade within America's past using thoughtful language that is well ahead of its time. Originally published in 1926, Peattie takes readers on a compelling adventure through the socioeconomic histories of staples such as tea, coffee, cocoa, potatoes and tobacco. Starting with the seeds and roots of the American landscape, Cargoes and Harvests illustrates where we've been and how far we've come. By considering the relationship between a nation and its goods, Peattie unearths countless reflective implications that still resonate within the field of American agriculture today.
£13.49
Trinity University Press,U.S. Green Laurels: The Lives and Achievements of the
Book SynopsisIn Green Laurels, Donald Culross Peattie combines his extensive knowledge of history's foremost naturalists with his personal observations about the subject to form what the New York Herald Tribune calls "a delightful book...one would not wish to miss on any account." This piece is accurate and precise but according to Nation, "there is not a line which is not dramatically vivid and entertaining." Peattie's enthusiasm and enlightened curiosity make Green Laurels appealing to readers of all backgrounds.
£16.19
Trinity University Press,U.S. The Road of a Naturalist
Book SynopsisThe Road of a Naturalist is a fascinating autobiographical wonder written by one of America's most beloved naturalists at the height of his fame. A scientist, a philosopher, and a poet, Donald Culross Peattie takes us on an confessional journey across the landscape of his life. Told in flashbacks of years past and interspersed with impressions of a journey by motorcar across the American West, it is intensely personal. It is American in the best sense of the word. From saying goodbye to the trees at his childhood home on Lake Michigan to a man formed via Harvard and New York City, finally discovering a belief in the nature of things in a cabin in the Grand Tentons, it is not told as as linear life story but rather an adventure in living, in science, in thought.
£13.49
Trinity University Press,U.S. Talking on the Water: Conversations about Nature
Book SynopsisDuring the 1980s and 90s, the Resource Institute, headed by Jonathan White, held a series of "floating seminars" aboard a sixty-five-foot schooner featuring leading thinkers and writers from an array of disciplines. Over ten years, White conducted interviews, gathered in this collection, with the writers, scientists, and environmentalists who gathered on board to explore our relationship to the wild. White describes the conversations as the roots of an integrated community: "While at first these roots may not appear to be linked, a closer look reveals that they are sustained in common ground." Beloved fiction writer Ursula K. Le Guin discusses the nature of language, microbiologist Lynn Margulis contemplates Darwin's career and the many meanings of evolution, and anthropologist Richard Nelson sifts through the spiritual life of Alaska's native people. Rounding out the group are writers Gretel Ehrlich, Paul Shepard, and Peter Matthiessen, conservationists Roger Payne and David Brower, theologian Matthew Fox, activist Janet McCloud, Jungian analyst James Hillman, poet Gary Snyder, and ecologist Dolores LaChapelle. By identifying the common link between these conversations, Talking on the Water takes us on a journey in search of a deeper understanding of ourselves and the environment.
£12.99
Trinity University Press,U.S. Dispatches from the End of Ice: Essays
Book SynopsisThe future of the world’s ice is at a critical juncture marked by international debate about climate change and almost daily reports about glaciers and ice shelves breaking, oceans rising, and temperatures spiking across the globe. These changing landscapes and the public discourse surrounding them are changing fast. It is science wrought with mystery, and for Beth Peterson it became personal. A few months after Peterson moved to a tiny village on the edge of Europe’s largest glacier, things began to disappear. The glacier was melting at breakneck pace, and people she knew vanished: her professor went missing while summiting a volcano in Japan, and a friend wandered off a mountain trail in Norway. Finally, Peterson took a harrowing forty-foot fall while ice climbing. Peterson’s effort to make sense of these losses led to travels across Scandinavia, Italy, England and back to the United States. She visited a cryonics institute, an ice core lab, a wunderkammer, Wittgenstein’s cabin, and other museums and libraries. She spoke with historians, guides, and scientists in search of answers. Her search for a noted glacier museum in Norway led to news that the renowned building had set on fire in the middle of the night before and burned to the ground. Dispatches from the End of Ice is part science, part lyric essay, and part research reportage—all structured around a series of found artifacts (a map, a museum, an inventory, a book) in an attempt to understand the idea of disappearance. It is a brilliant synthesis of science, storytelling, and research in the spirit of essayists like Robert Macfarlane, John McPhee, and Joni Tevis. Peterson’s work veers into numerous terrains, orbiting the idea of vanishing and the taxonomies of loss both in an unstable world and in our individual lives.Trade Review"Her omnivorous curiosity is fascinating." — Elizabeth Dodd, author of In the Mind's Eye “Following the trails Peterson maps, you don’t so much find your way to and from the northern latitudes as get lost in them along with her—lost in a way that makes you look around in wonderment, gratitude, and grief." — Donovan Hohn, author of Moby Duck
£17.99
Trinity University Press,U.S. The West Will Swallow You: Essays
Book SynopsisAt eighteen, Vermont-native Leath Tonino ventured west to attend college in Colorado. Upon hearing his destination, many of Tonino’s friends and family predicted that he’d never come back; he’d make the “land of endless space and sky, its ranges and their storms” his home. “The West will swallow you,” one said, in a tone that felt like part warning and part prophecy.More than a decade later Tonino continues to call Vermont his home. But despite his love of New England and his admiration for writers who sing the praises of their native ground, he concedes that he is, as Gary Snyder once phrased it, “promiscuous with landscapes.” Tonino has spent the intervening years since college traversing “the alphabet of the American West from AZ to CA to UT to WY” and writing about its mysterious and powerful beauty. The resulting musings are collected in The West Will Swallow You, the title of which is a nod to the words that stayed with him and that, in many ways, turned out to be true.Although the adventures gathered here range widely in terrain and tone, the western landscape is always front and center—focusing on Arizona’s remote Kaibab Plateau, where Tonino worked as a biologist studying raptor communities, in San Francisco’s overgrown nooks and crannies and pigeon-flocked park benches, on ranches in Wyoming, at campsites in Nevada, in the mountains of Colorado, and “in libraries and national monuments, in people, in a midnight fox’s eyes, in the rushing wind.”Trade Review“Although the adventures collected here range widely in terrain and tone, the western landscape is always front and center—focusing on Arizona’s remote Kaibab Plateau, where Tonino worked as a biologist studying raptor communities, in San Francisco’s overgrown nooks and crannies and pigeon-flocked park benches, on ranches in Wyoming, at campsites in Nevada, in the mountains of Colorado, and in libraries and national monuments.”— Addison County Independent
£12.34
Trinity University Press,U.S. All the Powerful Invisible Things: A
Book SynopsisAll the Powerful Invisible Things is an eloquent memoir of self-discovery and a chronicle of outdoor life. Refusing “impoverished ideas of passion,” Gretchen Legler writes about the complexities of being a woman who fishes and hunts, as well as about the more intimate terrain of family and sexuality. The result is a unique literary confluence filled with the ineffable graces of the natural world. She writes: “I used to hate being a woman. When I was young, I believed I was a boy. Throughout college I never knew what it was like to touch a woman, to kiss a woman, to have a woman as a friend. All of my friends were men. I am thirty years old now, and I feel alone. I am not a man. Knowing this is like an earthquake. Just now all the lies are starting to unfold. I don’t blend in as well or as easily as I used to. I refuse to stay on either side of the line.” Like many women, Legler finds that her presence identifies the unmarked boundaries of where she is and is not welcome, learning when it is advantageous to pass as male and when it is better to disappear into the woods and trees around her. This contrasts sharply with her experience of nature as a source of spiritual sustenance, a space of unparalleled freedom where she can lose herself in something larger. Twenty-five years after it was first published, All the Powerful Invisible Things remains a highwater mark for women writing about the outdoors and is one of the few works to tackle the intricacies of gender identity and sexuality with transcendental aplomb.Trade Review"What this volume evokes is beyond sympathy; the reader aches for Legler's pain." — Kirkus Reviews "These moving essays so seamlessly connect her inner and outer selves that Legler (a creative writing teacher whose work has been anthologized elsewhere) even manages to combine such seemingly at-odds subjects as her love of and respect for animals and her love of hunting, her affection for her ex-husband and her strong sexual attraction to women, without ever sounding hypocritical or confused." — Publishers Weekly "In these compelling, engrossing essays we are in the hands of a writer with an acute eye and a steady pulse, one of the most forthright literary talents in nature writing." — Patricia Hampl, author of Virgin Time "Part nature guide, part family history and part feminist tract. Gretchen Legler captures the reader's imagination with the same skill and precision with which she catches spring walleyes on the Rainey River." — The New York Times "Deep woods. A candlit tent. A woman writes 'noting out of the ordinary' in a notebook, recording her footsteps on varied paths, lessons about 'finding who you are. Who you are. Who you are.' When a drop of sweat smears the ink, she dries it with her shirttail; head erect, she stares at darkness outside and swallos fear. 'You can't ignore anything or someone will die,' she writes, rubs her stiffened fingers, listening to the river's flow, to the waterfall of shadows in her brain. Day by day, she records how other lives pass into ours, 'this passing of other blood and muscle, into our own tongues and hearts.' In Gretchen Legler's notebooks I read truths I recognize and celebrate; so will other readers." — Linda Hasselstrom, author of Land Circle: Collected from the Land "Legler, a lifelong hunter and angler, explores in a roughly chronological series of essays her relationships with hunting, fishing, killing, nature, her family, her husband, other hunters, and her women friends and lovers...Legler has a spare yet vivid style, heavy on sensuous descriptions of sights, sounds, and smells." — Library Journal "Full of lovely moments..." — ISLE Journal
£12.59
Trinity University Press,U.S. Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonders in a World beyond
Book SynopsisLooking for adventure and continuing a process of self-discovery, Janisse Ray has repeatedly set out to immerse herself in wildness, to be wild, and to learn what wildness can teach us. From overwintering with monarch butterflies in Mexico to counting birds in Belize, the stories in Wild Spectacle capture her luckiest moments—ones of heart-pounding amazement, discovery of romance, and moving toward living more wisely. In Ray’s worst moments she crosses boundaries to encounter danger and embrace sadness.Anchored firmly in two places Ray has called home—Montana and southern Georgia—the sixteen essays here span a landscape from Alaska to Central America, connecting common elements in the ecosystems of people and place. One of her abiding griefs is that she has missed the sights of explorers like Bartram, Sacagawea, and Carver: flocks of passenger pigeons, routes of wolves, herds of bison. She craves a wilder world and documents encounters that are rare in a time of disappearing habitat, declining biodiversity, and a world too slowly coming to terms with climate change. In an age of increasingly virtual, urban life, Ray embraces the intentionality of trying to be a better person balanced with seeking out natural spectacle, abundance, and less trammeled environments. She questions what it means to travel into the wild as a woman, speculates on the impacts of ecotourism and travel in general, questions assumptions about eating from the land, and appeals to future generations to make substantive change.Wild Spectacle explores our first home, the wild earth, and invites us to question its known and unknown beauties and curiosities.Trade ReviewPraise for Wild SpectacleGeorgia Center for the Book “Books All Georgians Should Read” for 2022Atlanta Journal Constitution Top 10 Southern Books of 2021Gun & Garden’s Favorite Books of 2021 “A lover takes nothing for granted. A lover explores, wanders, takes delight in nuance. Says, viva la difference. A lover listens, savors, is patient. Janisse Ray is a writer in love with place and places.” — Orion “With its combination of lyrical sentences, heartfelt truths, and profound observations, this book is a gem and a worthy sequel to Cracker Childhood.” — Southern Literary Review “Ray is more than a knowledgeable observer. Her relationship with the natural world is passionate and spiritual.” — Alabama Public Radio “The essays in Wild Spectacle span 20 years…they show that no matter where or when we are, there’s wonders to bear witness to.” — Savannah Morning News “Just a small town girl traveling the whole world, Janisse Ray’s new collection Wild Spectacle showcases her choice to take on heart-pounding adventure while discovering herself and nature.” — Connect Savannah“Naturalist Janisse Ray’s clear, nimble, sensitive writing about wildness and self-discovery is so arresting that it has informed my own writing.” — Latria Graham, Garden & Gun “Wild Spectacle is prayer to Mother Earth, and like prayers Ray both exalts and grieves Her. This book will surely mark your soul.” — Dawn Major"An enthralling immersion into the splendor of our natural world told in language that is equal parts rapturous and down to earth." — The Atlanta Journal-Constitution"An enchanting essay collection about the wonders and lessons that nature provides." — Foreword Reviews“Wild Spectacle is prayer to Mother Earth, and like prayers Ray both exalts and grieves Her. This book will surely mark your soul.” — Dawn Major“Think about epiphany. Think about change. Think about the moments that make your face burn, your fingers tingle. Wild Spectacle is about those shocks, encounters that shift the way we see the world and ourselves in it. Ray is the vortex around which everything spins.” — Joni Tevis, author of The World Is on Fire: Scrap, Treasure, and Songs of Apocalypse“Wonderful. Janisse Ray has a heart the size of a manatee and the tenacity (and laugh) of a pileated woodpecker. She is incapable of not loving this world and all that is in it. If you don’t yet know her work, today is your lucky day.” — Rick Bass, author of For a Little While: New and Selected Stories”Curious, humble, bright, and compelling. Whenever I read Janisse Ray, I come away feeling both moved and fortunate. She is one of America’s best chroniclers of spiritual and physical wilderness. Her prose is as gorgeous as her mind is wise, and lands a necessary punch: how should a human enter a wild place?” — Megan Mayhew Bergman, author of Almost Famous Women“These seductive and diverse essays evoke wildness themselves, weaving narratives of community, love, and heroism. Ray writes with the heart of a poet and warrior, casting a spell that leaves us wanting to love and protect all that is wild. She urges us to remember what beauty there is in the world, and how much that world needs us.” — Sheryl St. Germain, author of Fifty Miles“Ray’s richness of observation, clarity of expression, and moral purpose are in such balance that this book hums like a gyroscope in your hands. Read and reread it again to savor the scenes and sentences.” — Melissa Fay Greene, author of No Biking in the House without a Helmet: 9 Kids, 3 Continents, 2 Parents, 1 Family“An urgent love letter to our wild places. Part poet, naturalist, and tour guide, Ray is a gifted observer. We finish this remarkable book brimming with gratitude and alive to the wild spectacles around us.” — Beth Ann Fennelly, author of Heating and Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs“Here is Janisse Ray at her best—fully immersed in wilderness, immersed in friendship, immersed in parenthood. She engages with the world in a way that few can manage in this screened-off age. If there’s a more open, honest, and appealing writer today, I’ve not met her.” — Bill McKibben, author Wandering Home: A Long Walk across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape“Wild Spectacle is a stirring book. To experience the truth of Thoreau’s claim that wildness preserves the world, take these journeys with Janisse Ray. She is an exhilarating observer who explores untamed places where that shaping, animating energy is on vivid display.” — Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination“Janisse Ray’s sense of wonder in the presence of the natural world permeates this collection of essays on how to love the Earth and measure the value of a life surrounded by the mother we all share. These essays help us measure the value of life.” — Pam Houston, author of Deep Creek: Finding Hope in the High Country"Seriously great. In its brilliantly detailed celebrations of geography, Janisse Ray's writing suggests Walt Whitman. Hers is a literary ambition that makes no pretenses to modesty." — Franklin Burroughs, author of Billy Watson’s Croker Sack"Janisse Ray doesn’t explore nature so much as remind us of what we have forgotten... She is our Rachel Carson and our Walt Whitman, both fierce prophet and loving courage teacher." — Mark Powell, author LionessPraise for Ecology of a Cracker Childhood"Painfully and powerfully told.... Ray's passion for preserving and restoring this unsung landscape is heartfelt and refreshing." — Tony Horowitz, New York Times"The forests of the southeast find their Rachel Carson . . . . In Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, part memoir, part clarion call to save the longleaf pine, she casts a loving but unflinching eye on growing up poor and fundamentalist in southeast Georgia.” — Anne Raver, New York Times"A gutsy, wholly original memoir of ragged grace and raw beauty...Ray’s redemptive story of an impoverished childhood brings to mind the novels of Dorothy Allison and the nature writing of Amy Blackmarr, but the stunning voice and vision are hers alone." — Kirkus Reviews (STARRED)"Ray's writing is at its best when she recalls her most harrowing memories, such as when her father gave her and her two brothers a whipping after they stood by and watched a friend kill a turtle. These scenes resonate during the interpolated naturalist chapters, which evoke the calm of the landscape and give readers a respite from the anger and pain that drive much of the family narrative. In a final chapter (in which she includes appendixes on the specific endangered species of the South), Ray laments the 'daily erosion of unique folkways as our native ecosystems and all their inhabitants disappear.' What remains most memorable are the sections where Ray describes, and attempts to prevent, her own disconnection from the Georgia landscape." — Publishers Weekly"Ray’s paean to the filth, rot, shit, and rust of her childhood on a Georgia junkyard. Half memoir, half polemic, Cracker Childhood is both a recollection of how Ray came to understand the natural world’s value and beauty, and an impassioned explanation of why the longleaf pine ecosystems of southeast Georgia, Alabama, and Florida must be defended against any further assault by humanity." — GristPraise for Wild Card Quilt"Ray celebrates the richness of the natural world and the comforts of family. — Publishers WeeklyPraise for Pinhook"Her moving book is a tribute to a small but crucial wild place and a call for readers to help preserve it and others like it." — Publishers WeeklyPraise for The Seed Underground"An enchanting narrative...Even couch potatoes will be enthralled by Ray’s intimate, poetically conversational stories of her encounters with the 'lovely, whimsical, and soulful things [that] happen in a garden, leaving a gardener giddy.'"— Publishers Weekly
£14.24
Arcadia Publishing High Vistas Volume I 16741900 An Anthology of
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£18.69
Arcadia Publishing Swarm Tree Of Honeybees Honeymoons and the Tree
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£16.99
Red Hen Press LEAVING RESURRECTION
Book SynopsisLeaving Resurrection is one woman's love poem to the Alaskan places and people that have taken possession of her soul. Eva Saulitis writes with great honesty about her vulnerability and fears, about her excitement and discoveries, and about her passionate love for the wild. She inspires us with her boldness, she invites us to eagerly accept challenges, she opens us to the willing embrace of adventure, and she takes us into the hidden glories of Alaska as few other writers have done. These gentle, richly perceptive, beautifully rendered stories take readers straight to the heart of Alaska. And like all fine writing, it leaves you aching for more. Eva Saulitis writes deeply from the spirit of Margaret Murie, and she shows us that the soul of wildness is still very much alive in the north country. The wild country of Alaska has always attracted women of extraordinary strength and character, women with a keen eye for the land's beauty and a heart strong enough for its challenges, women equal to the measure of the Alaskan land itself. Eva Saulitis and Leaving Resurrection are wonderful reminders that the tradition lives on.
£14.24
Heyday Books Secrets of the Oak Woodlands: Plants and Animals
Book SynopsisA Next Generation Indie Book Award Finalist''I love this book. It reads like a walk in the woods with the best naturalists."—John Muir LawsA Californian may vacation in Yosemite, Big Sur, or Death Valley, but many of us come home to an oak woodland. Yet, while common, oak woodlands are anything but ordinary. In a book rich in illustration and suffused with wonder, author Kate Marianchild combines extensive research and years of personal experience to explore some of the marvelous plants and animals that the oak woodlands nurture. Acorn woodpeckers unite in marriages of up to ten mates and raise their young cooperatively. Ground squirrels roll in rattlesnake skins to hide their scent from hungry snakes. Manzanita's rust-colored, paper-thin bark peels away in time for the summer solstice, exposing sinuous contours that are cool to the touch even on the hottest day. Conveying up-to-the-minute scientific findings with a storyteller's skill, Marianchild introduces us to a host of remarkable creatures in a world close by, a world that “rustles, hums, and sings with the sounds of wild things.”Trade Review“Kate Marianchild's beautiful and celebratory work guides us through an exploration of trees, trunks, and the creatures that make them home. Open this book and join this biologically diverse community. You'll be glad you did.”—Dan Gluesenkamp, executive director, California Native Plant Society“An Island Called California, by Elna Bakker, was a favorite of my teacher/mentor Al Molina; he spoke of it highly and in the same way that I endorse your book. Bakker's prose and style are very similar to yours. I'm so pleased that you've given me the opportunity to 'pass the torch' with such a well-written book. Al's teachings mean a lot to me and I'm saddened he didn't get a chance to read your book—I know he would have toted his well worn copy by his side at all times.”—Joe Mueller, Professor of Biology, College of Marin“[Secrets of the Oak Woodlands] is a beautiful masterpiece of fine writing alongside skillful, deep research. I love the way you observe the natural world and bring the reader into generous, loving relationship with plants and animals that might otherwise be overlooked. This book is a classic of California natural history writing.”—David Lukas, author of Bay Area Birds“A unique and captivating book.”—Debbie Diersch Albatross“A wonderful enrichment for hikers and nature lovers, Secrets of the Oak Woodlands is highly recommended.”—The Midwest Book Review"A wide range of nature enthusiasts will enjoy Kate Marianchild's informative and well-balanced natural history book. … Marianchild's articulate yet easy to understand writing style makes the book suitable for armchair readers to investigative scholars. The science is clear, research up-to-date, and depth satisfying. … At the same time she inserts interesting relevant information and builds the readers' appreciation for intricately rich oak woodlands."—Fremontia"Marianchild's enthusiasm is infectious because she grounds it so well in precise observation, skilled prose, and careful research. Each essay is packed with fascinating and marvelously concise assemblages of facts gleaned from scientific studies. The result is both educational and entertaining. Like the best entertainment, it leaves the reader wishing for more."—Blue Heron"Kate Marianchild's beautiful and celebratory work guides us through an exploration of trees, trunks, and the creatures that make them home. Open this book and join this biologically diverse community. You'll be glad you did."—Dan Gluesenkamp, executive director, California Native Plant Society"I love this book. It reads like a walk in the woods with the best naturalists. The clear layout helps me scan for the information that I am looking for, or browse and learn something new. The natural history stories in this book are detailed and rich, sharing discoveries from the latest research and field observations. You cannot help falling more deeply in love with oak woodlands and feeling inspired to care for them."—John Muir Laws, author-illustrator of The Laws Field Guide to the Sierra Nevada"In this sublime ode to California's most ubiquitous plant community, Kate Marianchild fills the oak woodlands with life, enabling us to peer under fallen leaves, gaze inside layers of bark, and look deeply at animals that scurry on the branches, burrow under the roots, and rest in the shade of trees and shrubs. Secrets of the Oak Woodlands introduces you to the magical community of the oak and its neighbors like the coyote, western fence lizard, and California quail and once you've read this book, you'll forever see the oak woodland as the catalyst for a marvelous array of life."—Beth Pratt, California director, National Wildlife Federation
£15.19
Heyday Books The Sea Forager's Guide to the Northern
Book SynopsisIn The Sea Forager's Guide to the Northern California Coast, Kirk Lombard combines a startling depth of knowledge with wry humor and colorful storytelling to guide readers' quests to hook fish, dig clams, and pick seaweed for themselves."Lombard is a divinely inspired whack job—think Frank Zappa meets Aldo Leopold. If you have ever considered the idea of gathering something good to eat from the beach or surf … you need this book."—Bill Heavy, editor-at-large, Field & StreamLombard, a former staff member at the state Department of Fish and Game and founder of the foraging tour company/seafood delivery service Sea Forager Seafood, insists that his readers follow all regulations and encourages sustainable practices above and beyond what the State of California requires. This quirky and useful how-to is sure to inspire an empowering epicurean adventure. Leighton Kelly's stunning, occasionally idiosyncratic illustrations complement practical instructions for gathering a variety of fish and seafood and delicious recipes for what to do with each catch.Trade Review"Lombard is a divinely inspired whack job—think Frank Zappa meets Aldo Leopold. If you have ever considered the idea of gathering something good to eat from the beach or surf … you need this book."—Bill Heavy, editor-at-large, Field & Stream"Lombard is a master of the nearshore environment, knowledgeable (and hilarious). This is, simply put, the best book on the this subject ever written."—Hank Shaw, James Beard Award-winning author, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook"Kirk has created an ecosystem that allows us to be sustainable citizens and, more importantly, sustainable eaters."—Andrew Zimmerman, host of Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmerman
£17.09
Heyday Books The Forests of California: A California Field
Book SynopsisThe first book of a major new trilogy from artist-naturalist Obi Kaufmann."A call to action … full of beautiful watercolor renderings of both landscape and data."—Los Angeles TimesFrom the author of The California Field Atlas (#1 San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller) comes a major work that not only guides readers through the Golden State’s forested lands, but also presents a profoundly original vision of nature in the twenty-first century. The Forests of California features an abundance of Obi Kaufmann’s signature watercolor maps and trail paintings, weaving them into an expansive and accessible exploration of the biodiversity that defines California in the global imagination. Expanding on the style of the Field Atlas, Kaufmann tells an epic story that spans millions of years, nearly one hundred species of trees, and an astonishing richness of ecosystems. The Forests of California is the first volume in a planned trilogy of field atlases, with The Coasts of California and The Deserts of California to follow, and Kaufmann seeks to create nothing less than a new understanding of the more-than-human world. The lessons in this book extend well beyond California’s borders. If Peter Wohlleben’s The Hidden Life of Trees and Richard Powers’s The Overstory opened readers’ eyes to the awesome power of arboreal life, The Forests of California gives readers a unique and unprecedented immersion in that power.Trade Review2021 Northern California Book Award nominee, General Nonfiction"Masterful … The work that has gone into this book is simply astonishing; every page is a treasure trove of information and beauty." —San Francisco Book Review"A call to action … full of beautiful watercolor renderings of both landscape and data."—Los Angeles Times"[A] must-read. The Forests of California features an abundance of Kaufmann's signature watercolor maps and trail paintings, weaving them into an expansive and accessible exploration of the biodiversity that defines California in the global imagination."—7x7"The Forests of California is a breathtaking object." —Berkeleyside"One-of-a-kind." —Diablo Magazine"Kaufmann’s expressive writing is matched by his creativity as an artist … [The Forests of California] is Audubon-esque in style and scope." —San Francisco Examiner"Swirls research with poetry, the personal and human with the collective and ecological …" —Mother Jones"[Kaufmann] lay[s] important groundwork to help people better understand the complex ecology of the state’s varied forests and why they are so important." —The Revelator"Braiding colorful watercolors of local flora and fauna with expertly illustrated infographics and maps, Forests is a must-read for anyone who cranes their neck skyward in great groves of Sequoia; for those who wonder how mountains are shaped, how carbon is stored; how fires can replenish—or reduce to ash. The lush, illustrative tome offers an instant education in one of the West’s greatest assets. … Obi leaves no leaf unturned in his quest to capture the wonder and fragility of this important resource."—SunsetTable of ContentsContents INTRODUCTION: The Philosopher’s Stone KEYS AND MEASURES 00.01 The Cenozoic 00.02 The Acre and the Foot 00.03 The Taxonomic Classifications of Life 00.04 Map Icons 01. THE FIELD ATLAS: Maps and meaning across California’s forests 02. THE ANCIENT FORESTS: California’s Holocene crescendo 03. EARTH, WATER, AIR, and FIRE: California’s defining forces 04. THE LIVING BODY: How forests thrive across California 05. STAND, GROVE, WOODLAND and FOREST: Vegetation alliances within arboreal California 06.01 ARBOREAL HABITATS OF CALIFORNIA: Distribution and conditions of wildlife systems 07. EXEMPLARY IN CHARACTER: Accessibility and impact 08. THE GIVING FORESTS: Beyond Value and Utility 09. THE FUTURE FORESTS: California’s next one hundred years and beyond
£35.99
Heyday Books Fylling's Illustrated Guide to Nature in Your
Book SynopsisIn the same lighthearted yet scientifically accurate style of Fylling’s Illustrated Guide to Pacific Coast Tide Pools, this portable guidebook reveals the splendidly strange animals and plants just outside your door. Marni Fylling’s full-color illustrations make species identification a snap, and concise descriptions include fascinating (and sometimes grotesque) factoids about frequently encountered plants, insects, arachnids, birds, and mammals. With Fylling’s guidance, the everyday becomes extraordinary: Pigeons share nest-building and egg-sitting duties, and mate for life—with occasional dalliances; squirrel teeth grow about six inches per year; spiders owe their characteristic creep to their “hydraulic” legs; poison oak and poison ivy’s itch-inducing oil is also found in pistachios, cashews, and mangoes; and much, much more.Table of ContentsCONTENTS v Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Plants 15 Annelids 18 Mollusks 21 Arthropods - Centipedes, Millipedes, Pillbugs, Sowbugs, Insects, and Arachnids 72 Amphibians 77 Reptiles 84 Birds 100 Mammals 115 Appendix - Scientific and Common Names 119 References 125 About the Author
£14.24
Heyday Books The Coasts of California: A California Field
Book SynopsisA San Francisco Chronicle bestseller!An epic, gloriously illustrated journey up and down California’s shoreline.California’s coastline is world famous, an endless source of fascination and fantasy, but there is no book about it like this one. Obi Kaufmann, author-illustrator of The California Field Atlas and The Forests of California, now turns his attention to the 1,200 miles of the Golden State where the land meets the ocean. Bursting with color, The Coasts of California is in Kaufmann’s signature style, fusing science with art and pure poetic reverie. And much more than a survey of tourist spots, Coasts is a full immersion into the astonishingly varied natural worlds that hug California’s shoreline. With hundreds of gorgeous watercolor maps and illustrations, Kaufmann explores the rhythms of the tides, the lives of sea creatures, the shifting of rocks and sand, and the special habitats found on California’s islands. At the book’s core is an expansive, detailed walk down the California Coastal Trail, including maps of parks along the way—a wealth of knowledge for any coast-lover. The Coasts of California is a geographic epic, an odyssey in nature, a grand and glorious book for a grand and glorious part of the world.Trade Review"I think it is safe to say that when one pores over the nearly 650-page Coasts of California— filled with vivid watercolor illustrations of flora and fauna and exquisite vistas and scenes, in addition to hand-colored maps of everything from coastal wildflower blooms to amphibian habitats to oceanic chlorophyll concentrations combined with painstakingly researched facts and histories—Kaufmann’s knowledge of and respect for these myriad forms of life cannot help but spark one’s own spirit of inquiry and adventure."—Red Canary"The Coasts of California by Obi Kaufmann is an amazing achievement in both art and science. It is brimming with expressive yet accurate watercolors of animals, maps, landscapes, and concepts, annotated by elegant calligraphy and typography."—Pacific Horticulture"Much more than a survey of tourist spots Coasts is a full immersion into the astonishingly varied natural worlds that hug California's shoreline. Everyone in the state should have this gorgeous book on their bookshelf."—CBS San Francisco"Kaufmann’s gaze easily ranges from the micro to the macro, skipping from phytoplankton to blue whales, and rising from the 2-mile depths of Monterey Canyon to mile-high coastal peaks where California condors glide along the thermals. [...] As a reader you are invited to join him on a journey of discovery—not as a passenger but as an active partner."—San Francisco Chronicle"Much of the writing on beaches and coasts betrays an Atlantic bias, which is part of what makes Obi Kaufmann’s The Coasts of California, the fourth installment in his California Field Atlas series, an original contribution to the genre. In 639 pages, Kaufmann, a naturalist, writer, and illustrator, tackles the geography and ecology of California’s 840-mile-long Pacific coastline in immersive detail."—Los Angeles Review of Books"Kaufmann spent a year, seven days a week, delving into and recording what’s on the coastline, in complex and dynamic detail, to produce a substantive, colorfully interpretive, frequently poetic 'atlas.' [...] The natural world of California’s coasts is surprising in its depth and complexity. And as captured by a diligent and experienced observer, unbelievably beautiful as well."—The Press Democrat"In words and charts, in watercolors and maps, this field atlas takes the reader on a tour from the microscopic plankton that create the richness of the California Current just offshore, to the large-scale ocean weather patterns that carry storms and create the coast’s temperate Mediterranean climate. The book is an exploration of the varied, three-dimensional, and inseparable forces that make this coast what it is today, and could shape its future." —Cameron Walker, Terrain"The Coasts of California is a paean to the beauty and diversity of the littoral, unfolding in evocative essays and lovingly-rendered watercolors of the flora and fauna that live at the edges of the land."—Alisa Carroll, HENRY magazine"The Coasts of California is a great addition to a collection of field guides or atlases that are also art books—this one has over 400 of the author’s signature watercolors and maps. While providing precious information on trails, the shifting of rocks, sand and special habitats, Kaufmann’s books can also be described as philosophical meditations written with surprisingly poetic prose."—Monterey County Weekly"Obi wants to inspire us to be optimistic, not fatalistic about the world we find ourselves in. Stories of recovery are all around us if we open our eyes. He believes we can, indeed, reverse course and save what we have inherited."—EcoNewsTable of ContentsCONTENTS Introduction Keys and measures 01. Symmetry and Succession: Perspectives on time and ecology 02. Fault-Line Symphony: The geomorphology of coastal California 03. Elemental Rhythms: Energy, weather, and the cycles of wind and wave 04. Sand and Rivers: Littoral patterns and estuary types 05. As Above, So Below: A survey of coastal habitat types 06. All Creatures Great and Small: Coastal biodiversity 07. A Good, Long Walk: The California Coastal Trail 08. Each a Character: The islands of California 09. Policies and Protections: Stewardship of the land and sea 10. Navigating a Chaotic Sea: Modeling hope and peril Acknowledgements Glossary Notes Selected Bibliography About the Author
£37.99
Heyday Books The Sierra Forager: Your Guide to Edible Wild
Book SynopsisExplore the taste of the Sierra with foraging expert Mia Andler, and learn how to responsibly forage and deliciously prepare the wild plants that commonly grow in the Tahoe and northern Sierra Nevada regions.In this guide to the common edible plants of the Sierra Nevada, Andler offers practical advice for gathering food from the land, in a friendly voice full of rich knowledge of the montane regions of California. Whether hiking high above Yosemite or foraging at the outskirts of Lake Tahoe or Mammoth, with The Sierra Forager you’ll discover each of the region’s most readily available—and delightfully delectable—edible plants.With clear instructions for responsible harvesting, Andler connects readers and adventurers to the land’s seasonality and bounteous botany in a manner that fosters respectful, reciprocal caretaking of our wild spaces. Large, detailed photographs assist in identifying plants easily, and 44 simple recipes help you enjoy them, from campfire blackberry pie to manzanita muffins to birch leaf soda! This is the perfect guide for beginners, and it includes mouthwatering innovations to delight foragers of any experience level.Trade ReviewPraise for The Sierra Forager:"Andler’s book advises readers about finding edible plants in each season. Summer features the most offerings, including blossoms, berries, and greens such as dandelion and nettle. But even winter offers provisions like tree bark, fir needles and seeds of tall plants. […] This beautiful book will fill stomachs as it educates and broadens the horizons of even those who consider themselves experienced Sierra Nevada adventurers." —Sierra Nevada AllyPraise for Mia Andler’s previous book, The Bay Area Forager, coauthored with Kevin Feinstein:“This is a wonderful resource that is not only full of information on individual plants, it also sets forth a vision for how we may live in a regenerative way.”—Drew Harwell, Washington PostTable of ContentsDisclaimer about Dangers of Wild Edibles Gratitude Introduction A Taste of Place A Bit about Me and Why I Forage About the Montane Sierra Foraging in the Montane Sierra Seasons Mindful Foraging How to Forage with Respect Ethics and Rules of Foraging How to Use This Book What Not to Eat Common Poisonous Plants of the Sierra Promise Edible Plants American Brooklime/American Speedwell Birches Blackberries and Raspberries Brodiaea and Blue Dicks Bush Chinquapin Cattails Cinquefoils Cleavers/Bedstraws Clovers Common Camas Lily Cow Parsnip Crab Apple Dandelion Dock Elderberry Ferns Fireweed Horsetails Incense Cedar Junipers Lamb’s Quarters Manzanitas Mountain Ash Mountain Coyote Mint Mugwort Mullein Mustards, Cresses, and Radishes Oregon Grape Pineapple Weed Pines and Firs Plantains Purslane Roses Sagebrush Salsify Serviceberries Sierra Gooseberry Spring Beauties Stinging Nettle Strawberries Tarweeds Thimbleberry Thistles West Coast Goldenrod Western Blue Flax Wild Currants Wild Onions Wild Plums and Cherries Yampahs Yarrow Next Steps Appendix A: The Plants by Season and Index of Plant Names Appendix B: Additional Edible Plants in the Montane Sierra Resources About the Author
£16.19
Heyday Books Stranded: Finding Nature in Uncertain Times
Book SynopsisMarooned in Los Angeles by the pandemic, a marine biologist rediscovers the delights and wonders of the natural world in her own backyard."Stranded reminds us of what we all too easily forget: the sustaining delights of finding beauty and wonder all around us." —Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix and HeartbreakConservationist and marine biologist Maddalena Bearzi made her career studying the wild creatures of the deep, but when COVID-19 made landfall on the California coast this seafaring scientist found herself shuttered up ashore, her wide blue world constricted by pandemic lockdown. Never good at sitting idle, she despaired at the confines of her Los Angeles flat—until she began to find wonder in the wilderness of her own backyard.Stranded charts Bearzi’s discovery of both rapture and resilience in the unsung wildlife of urban LA. With a green thumb and a canine sidekick named Genghis, she finds as much to marvel at in her garden’s singing blackbirds, night-blooming cacti, and industrious wasps as in the whales, dolphins, and sea lions at the center of her maritime adventures. Discovering in the quotidian an antidote to the grief occasioned by captivity and climate chaos, Bearzi reveals how each of us can take heart, find courage, and discover inspiration in the thrumming systems of life that surround us. With a scientist’s precision and a poet’s instinct, she invites us to look at, listen to, and revel in the everyday grandeur of the natural world—and to embrace, with urgency, our responsibility to sustain it.Trade Review"Marine biologist Bearzi celebrates the marvels of ordinary wildlife in these charming meditations. Collecting vignettes about the animals she observed while confined to her Los Angeles home during COVID-19 lockdown, she serves up thoughtful commentary on humanity’s place in nature and the value of all creatures." —Publishers Weekly"Bearzi's thoughtful and meditative essays will appeal to naturalists, conservationists, and anyone who appreciates all the other animals with whom we share this planet." —Booklist"When marine biologist Bearzi was forced to leave the ocean at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, she turned to a marvel of nature a bit more quotidian: her backyard in urban Los Angeles. Writing in the contemplative voice of early lockdown, Bearzi observes resilience in birds, bugs, and plants and finds peace and purpose for herself." —Alta Journal"These nature essays exemplify evenhandedness, curiosity, and close observation. […] The book is a passionate primer to appreciating everyday nature." —Shelf Awareness"Marine biologist Maddalena Bearzi chronicles her unexpected transition from studying oceanic life to exploring the diverse ecosystems in her own urban backyard during the COVID-19 lockdown. Through her keen observations and profound reflections, Bearzi encourages readers to find beauty in the ordinary and underscores the critical need for environmental stewardship." —Scuba Diving Magazine"Stranded reminds us of what we all too easily forget: the sustaining delights of finding beauty and wonder all around us." —Florence Williams, author of The Nature Fix and Heartbreak"Maddalena Bearzi's way with words is magical, and so is her ability to transform what seem to be ordinary animals into miraculous creatures doing outrageous things right under our collective noses. And she puts us humans in our place as Earth’s worst nightmare, but also the best hope for restoring and safeguarding the health of the only home in the universe just right for us—and the millions of other species that underpin our existence." —Sylvia Earle, author of Sea Change"What happens when a scientist, trained in the powers of observing wildlife, turns that curious eye on herself? Maddalena explores so beautifully her journey of reckoning with the wild wonder of the everyday world as she realizes what she has left unexplored is not just found in the vastness of the ocean but in her own backyard.” —Beth Pratt, author of When Mountain Lions Are Neighbors"Stranded is one of the first great pieces of environmental writing to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic."—Peter S. Alagona, author of The Accidental Ecosystem“Bearzi has found her place as a nature essayist of the highest order." —Craig Stanford, author of Upright“Maddalena ends with not just hope but teaching-words of personal responsibility, grassroots activism, and large-scale governmental and other action that may—may—help us in this amazing, rapidly advancing Anthropocene Epoch.” —Bernd Würsig, coeditor of Encyclopedia of Marine Mammals“Nature is everywhere! We will discover awe and wonder any time we open our eyes and really look. Maddalena Bearzi shares how she rediscovered this state of amazement by focusing on the nature hidden in her urban Los Angeles neighborhood. She shows us how the insights she gained by merging her sense of curiosity and scientific know-how are available to everyone as soon as we open our senses to the natural wonders around us." —Daniel T. Blumstein, author of The Nature of Fear: Survival Lessons From the Wild"Maddalena Bearzi's important book is a wonderful reminder of just how critical it is to get outside, rewild ourselves, and enjoy the diverse and magnificent fauna and flora who await our attention and appreciation. (Re)finding nature is healing on the individual level and spreads compassion and empathy in our mixed communities of human and nonhuman beings." —Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence"It is ironic that this thing that ‘socially distanced’ all of us from each other brings us together now, to tell the stories of how we coped, how we changed, how we adapted as the world swirled around us, how we stopped going far and started going deeper." —Carl Safina, from the foreword
£16.19
Island Press Aldo Leopold's Odyssey: Rediscovering the Author
Book SynopsisAldo Leopold's Odyssey illuminates the great conservationist's lifelong quest for answers to a fundamental question: how can people live prosperously on the land and keep it healthy, too? Leopold's journey took him from Iowa to Yale to the Southwest to Wisconsin, with stops along the way to probe the causes of land settlement failures, contribute to the emerging science of ecology, compose his best known work, "A Sand County Almanac", and craft a new vision for land use. More than a biography, this insightful work is a guide to one person's intellectual growth and to our ongoing struggle to live in concert with the natural world.Trade Review"Julianne Lutz Newton makes us feel the loss of what might have followed A Sand County Almanac by showing us in authoritative detail what led up to it. The result is a biography of ideas, a map of how far Leopold had moved between 1909...and his death..." - THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW "Aldo Leopold's Odyssey enriches our appreciation of both Leopold and A Sand County Almanac." - SCIENCE "Lucid and perceptive." - NATURAL HISTORY "Superb...a full and fascinating portrait." - AMERICAN SCIENTIST"
£31.00
Outskirts Press Kamp Kill Kare: Memories Of Life In An Adirondack Great Camp
£11.59
The Library of America American Earth: Environmental Writing Since
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£37.46
The Library of America Aldo Leopold: A Sand County Almanac & Other
Book SynopsisA special edition of one of the greatest masterpieces of the environmental movement—plus original photographs and other writings on environmental ethicsSince his death in 1948, Aldo Leopold has been increasingly recognized as one of the indispensable figures of American environmentalism. A pioneering forester, sportsman, wildlife manager, and ecologist, he was also a gifted writer whose farsighted land ethic is proving increasingly relevant in our own time. Now, Leopold’s essential contributions to our literature—some hard-to-find or previously unpublished—are gathered in a single volume for the first time. Here is his classic A Sand County Almanac, hailed—along with Thoreau’s Walden and Carson’s Silent Spring—as one of the main literary influences on the modern environmental movement. Published in 1949, it remains a vivid, firsthand, philosophical tour de force. Along with Sand County are more than fifty articles, essays, and lectures exploring the new complexities of ecological science and what we would now call environmental ethics. Leopold’s sharp-eyed, often humorous journals are illustrated here for the first time with his original photographs, drawings, and maps. Also unique to this collection is a selection of over 100 letters, most of them never before published, tracing his personal and professional evolution and his efforts to foster in others the love and sense of responsibility he felt for the land.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
£31.88
Rowman & Littlefield Soul of the Rhino: A Nepali Adventure With Kings
Book SynopsisThe story of a Nepalese who has spent his entire life safeguarding an endangered speciesThis new release is a spirited yet humble account of one man’s scientific career and personal journey to save the endangered rhinoceros in his native Nepal. Fresh out of university, Mishra began his work with aboriginal tribes, the Nepalese royal house, the World Wildlife Fund, and the World Bank to protect the animal in its Himalayan habitat. In spite of decades spent political arm-wrestling, traveling and fund-raising, Mishra is still fearful to this day that Maoist insurgents and poachers will kill off the Asian rhinoceros for good—a tragedy after all his hard-won gains. This is the first book about saving the Asian one-horned rhinoceros, and the only one to delve into the multi-layered political labyrinths of wildlife conservation in South Asia. Filled with candor and bittersweet humor, Mishra recreates his journey on behalf of the rhino, an ugly yet enchanting, terrifying yet delicate creature. In the tradition of Leakey and Fossey, Mishra will be hailed by the media as the animal’s advocate, and SOUL OF THE RHINO will quickly engage the soul of the reader.Hemanta Mishra now lives in Virginia. This is his first book.Trade Review"The Soul of the Rhino is unusual, fascinating and important. It provides not only a rare insight into the personality and behavior of the highly endangered and little known Asian rhino, but an equally absorbing picture of the people who share its habitat. Hemanta Mishra is a native of Nepal and he shares his struggle to reconcile western conservation science, learned when he studied in America, with the cultural beliefs of his people; he attempts to combine hard facts with the mystical values of eastern philosophy. The Soul of the Rhino is also a commentary on the way in which wildlife management can be helped or tragically hindered by revolution, politics and the commitment, or lack of it, of those in power. Most important, it will surely inspire other young people in Asia to follow in his footsteps. I hope you will buy and read this book." --Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder - the Jane Goodall Institute & UN Messenger of Peace "Hemanta Mishra helped to establish Nepal’s famous Chitwan National Park, and he has with great dedication fought for three decades to assure the survival of its rare Indian rhino. From the unique perspective of a Nepali dealing with conservation battles in his own country, he describes his contacts with everyone from poacher and foreigner to bureaucrat, royalty and rhino. I enjoyed The Soul of the Rhino immensely for its potent conservation message, as well as its insights into a culture and the soul of the author." --George B. Schaller, Wildlife Conservation Society“It is the first book of its kind that proves that nature conservation in Asia does not only depend upon good Western science. But like politics in America, it is an art – an art of the possible – an art that puts human needs and culture in the forefront of environmental conservation.” --Lodi Gyari, Special Envoy of His Holiness the Dalai Lama "This book is much more than a story about rhinos. It is an account of the traditions, customs, and rituals of the people who live in the southern Terai region of Nepal known as Chitwan. It is also a story about how one man embarked on a cause to save this sacred national symbol from the effects of rampant habitat destruction and illegal poaching." --Leon J. Weil, former U.S. ambassador to Nepal (1984-1987) "For anyone interested in wildlife, the Himalayan region, Hindu and Buddhist culture, this book is a delight. . . . Many well-meaning, dedicated conservation supporters have written enthusiastically about environmental, species and cultural conservation -- but Mishra has not only ‘talked the talk,' he has really ‘walked the walk,’ as the reader will learn." --Kenneth Nebenzahl, director of the American Himalayan Foundation, member of the WWF-US Council, and life trustee of the University of Chicago "[Mishra's] a gutsy, committed man and a charming writer--and the rhinos could have no faster friend." --National Geographic Adventure "A mix of Western science and Eastern mythology, 'Soul' could be called 'Zen and the Art of Rhinoceros Maintenance'." --Bill Heller, New York Post "The Soul of the Rhino is a fascinating look at the heart of a conservationist—and what it takes to save an iconic species." --Smithsonian Zoogoer
£18.04
Rowman & Littlefield Tracks and Trailcraft: A Fully Illustrated Guide
Book SynopsisFrom dinosaurs to birds and mammals to insects, here are hundreds of tracks described and illustrated.Trade Review"An informative, constantly amusing study of the little-known autographs of man and his fellow creatures. It is difficult to say whether the grown-up or yongster will find the most adventure in Tracks and Trailcraft." --The New York Times
£10.79
University of Alaska Press Living With Wildness: An Alaskan Odyssey
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£17.95
University of Alaska Press Bear Wrangler: Memoirs of an Alaska Pioneer
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£17.05
University of Alaska Press Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in
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£17.95
University of Alaska Press Land of Extremes: A Natural History of the Arctic
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£26.55
University of Alaska Press Life and Times of a Big River: An Uncommon
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£18.86
University of Alaska Press Tongass Odyssey – Seeing the Forest Ecosystem
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£24.26
Skyhorse Publishing Mushrooming without Fear: The Beginner's Guide to
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£13.46
Texas A & M University Press Amphibians and Reptiles of Texas: With Keys,
Book SynopsisThis third edition of James R. Dixon’s Amphibians and Reptiles of Texas: With Keys, Taxonomic Synopses, Bibliography, and Distribution Maps, completely redesigned throughout with colour photographs, revised taxonomic keys, and updated species descriptions, covers more than two hundred species of amphibians and reptiles. As in the previous editions, the book includes an extensive listing of the literature on Texas amphibians and reptiles that goes back to the historic writings of Berlandier, in the early nineteenth century, and is updated to reflect the most recent research.Comprehensive distribution maps, updated references, and an exhaustive bibliography round out this latest edition of what has come to be widely recognised as the standard scientific guide and reference for professional, academic, and amateur naturalists interested in the herpatofauna of Texas.
£29.96
Chelsea Green Publishing Co Walking with the Great Apes: Jane Goodall, Dian
Book Synopsis2017 is the 50th anniversary of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda. Three astounding women scientists have in recent years penetrated the jungles of Africa and Borneo to observe, nurture, and defend humanity's closest cousins. Jane Goodall has worked with the chimpanzees of Gombe for nearly 50 years; Diane Fossey died in 1985 defending the mountain gorillas of Rwanda; and Biruté Galdikas lives in intimate proximity to the orangutans of Borneo. All three began their work as protégées of the great Anglo-African archeologist Louis Leakey, and each spent years in the field, allowing the apes to become their familiars--and ultimately waging battles to save them from extinction in the wild. Their combined accomplishments have been mind-blowing, as Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas forever changed how we think of our closest evolutionary relatives, of ourselves, and of how to conduct good science. From the personal to the primate, Sy Montgomery--acclaimed author of The Soul of an Octopus and The Good Good Pig--explores the science, wisdom, and living experience of three of the greatest scientists of the twentieth century. Trade ReviewPublishers Weekly- In this study of three great female primatologists, science journalist Montgomery moves beyond biography into ethology, taking a step that goes well beyond even her subjects' research. Goodall, Fossey and Galdikas each made a similar leap, the author contends, moving from observers and recorders to an almost shamanistic quest to enter the world of the apes they studied. These personal transformations are sketchily supported with anecdotes from the field, personal interviews and even a jarring account of an attempt to contact Fossey, after her death, via channeling. Montgomery adds little to Farley Mowat's 1988 biography of Fossey, Woman in the Mists , but she offers a few fresh angles on Goodall, Galdikas and other characters, human and ape, met before in their books. In an epilogue, Montgomery offers the intriguing view of these scientists as pioneers of a particularly female way of scientific knowing that deserves fuller argument than three portraits allow. Photos. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title."This is a book about how love--the power that moves us beyond us and our own self interest to form relationships with an 'other'--can transform lives and worlds.... Author Montgomery brings an admirable grace and kindness to her treatment of the three women's lives and work, affording them, in many ways, the same dignity and respect they offered to the animals they observed and card for so deeply.... It is worth reading simply as expert storytelling, animated by particular and passionate writing."--Cape Cod TimesTable of ContentsPart 1. Nurturers: 1. Biruté Galdikas and Supinah 2. Jane Goodall and Flo 3. Dian Fossey and Digit Part 2. Scientists: 4. The prodigal faith of Louis Leakey 5. "Science with a capital S" 6. The sacrifice of Nyiramachabelli 7. A study in patience Part 3. Warriors: 8. Crusader: The moral dilemma of Jane Goodall 9. Sorceress: The madness of Dian Fossey 10. Diplomat: The politics of Birute Galdikas Epilogue: Shamans
£16.00
Chelsea Green Publishing Co Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares: The Love,
Book Synopsis*2011 Winner, International Association of Culinary Professionals Jane Grigson Award *2011 Finalist, International Association of Culinary Professionals in the Culinary History category Throughout history, people have had a complex and confusing relationship with mushrooms. Are fungi food or medicine, beneficial decomposers or deadly "toadstools" ready to kill anyone foolhardy enough to eat them? In fact, there is truth in all these statements. In Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares, author Greg Marley reveals some of the wonders and mysteries of mushrooms, and our conflicting human reactions to them. With tales from around the world, Marley, a seasoned mushroom expert, explains that some cultures are mycophilic (mushroom-loving), like those of Russia and Eastern Europe, while others are intensely mycophobic (mushroom-fearing), including, the US. He shares stories from China, Japan, and Korea-where mushrooms are interwoven into the fabric of daily life as food, medicine, fable, and folklore-and from Slavic countries where whole families leave villages and cities during rainy periods of the late summer and fall and traipse into the forests for mushroom-collecting excursions. From the famous Amanita phalloides (aka "the Death Cap"), reputed killer of Emperor Claudius in the first century AD, to the beloved chanterelle (cantharellus cibarius) known by at least eighty-nine different common names in almost twenty-five languages, Chanterelle Dreams, Amanita Nightmares explores the ways that mushrooms have shaped societies all over the globe. This fascinating and fresh look at mushrooms-their natural history, their uses and abuses, their pleasures and dangers-is a splendid introduction to both fungi themselves and to our human fascination with them. From useful descriptions of the most foolproof edible species to revealing stories about hallucinogenic or poisonous, yet often beautiful, fungi, Marley's long and passionate experience will inform and inspire readers with the stories of these dark and mysterious denizens of our forest floor.Trade ReviewBooklist- Mushroom lovers who can only get their fix by sampling the often paltry array that appears in their grocer’s produce section may be sorely tempted to indulge their mycophilia when they encounter some choice fungi in the wild. Unlike many Asian and European cultures, however, most Americans are hesitant to just pluck one off the forest floor and eat it on the spot. Perhaps such evocative names as the “Death Cap” mushroom has something to do with this mycophobia. Yet, says Marley, armed with proper background, this culinary caution can turn into complete confidence. From the fabled psychedelic “magic mushrooms” to the duplicitous appearance of “false morels,” Marley examines these fungal fiends and provides thorough descriptions of their habitat, appearance, and toxic properties to ward off potential misadventures. An avowed mycophile, Marley offers an entertaining and inquisitive look at both the heroes and villains of the kingdom Fungi in an enlightened guide that comprehensively examines their nutritional benefits, undesirable properties, and diverse cultural history. -- Carol HaggasPublishers Weekly- By following a few basic guidelines, readers interested in foraging for their food will find themselves with a wealth of culinary opportunities courtesy of longtime amateur mycologist Marley (Mushrooms for Health). An enthusiastic guide, Marley introduces foragers to the most common wild edible shrooms - morels, puffballs, chicken mushrooms, and shaggy mane - as well as their more recognizable cousins in the market, such as chanterelles. Basic recipes for preparation (risottos, simple pastas, and the like) are included, enabling readers to get the most from their bounty. But Marley spends equal time with their more toxic and psychedelic brethren, describing key characteristics, common regions, and potential side effects, ensuring that initiates spend more time in the woods than the ER. While the book does have a set of color slides to aid in identification of edible and poisonous varieties, the sample pales in comparison to the many species Marley mentions.Booklist- “Mushroom lovers who can only get their fix by sampling the often paltry array that appears in their grocers produce section may be sorely tempted to indulge their mycophilia when they encounter some choice fungi in the wild. Unlike many Asian and European cultures, however, most Americans are hesitant to just pluck one off the forest floor and eat it on the spot. Perhaps such evocative names as the Death Cap mushroom has something to do with this mycophobia. Yet, says Marley, armed with proper background, this culinary caution can turn into complete confidence. From the fabled psychedelic magic mushrooms to the duplicitous appearance of false morels, Marley examines these fungal fiends and provides thorough descriptions of their habitat, appearance, and toxic properties to ward off potential misadventures. An avowed mycophile, Marley offers an entertaining and inquisitive look at both the heroes and villains of the kingdom Fungi in an enlightened guide that comprehensively examines their nutritional benefits, undesirable properties, and diverse cultural history.”This book is an enticing invitation into the fungal realm, accessible and a pleasure to read. Author Greg Marley's enthusiasm is infectious, as he encourages an appreciation of fungi as essential ecological partners, and empowers readers with practical tools. These pages are filled with foraging and cultivation tips, scientific explanations, ancient lore, literary references, and entertaining stories, with the mission of transforming mycophobia into mycophilia.--Sandor Ellix Katz, author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution Will Not Be MicrowavedTable of ContentsTales from the forest floor Part 1. Mushrooms and culture Passionate about mushrooms : the Russian and Slavic experience Overcoming distrust : mushrooming in America Part 2. Mushrooms as food Leading with our stomachs The Foolproof Four : updated for a new millennium Chanterelles Boletus edulis The Agaricus brothers Part 3. Dangerously toxic, deadly interesting poisonous mushrooms : not as bad as you fear Mushroom poisoning : not as bad as you fear ; Mushroom poisoning : the potential risks and ways to avoid them Amanita nightmares : the Death Cap and Destroying Angel False morels : the Finnish Fugu A fallen angel The poison pax : a deadly mystery Part 4. Mushrooms and the mind : the origin of religion and the pathway to enlightenment Entheogens : a new way to view hallucinogenic mushrooms Amanita muscaria : soma, religion, and Santa Psilocybin : gateway to the soul or just a good high? Part 5. Mushrooms within living ecosystems Honey mushrooms : the race for the world's largest fungus Fairy rings and fairy tales Fungal bioluminescence : mushroom nightlights Who's eating the truffles? Woodpeckers, wood decay fungi, and forest health Part 6. Tools for a new world Growing mushrooms in the garden : a how-to story
£16.00
Chelsea Green Publishing Co Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal
Book SynopsisExtraordinary new insights into the minds and lives of our fellow creatures from two of the world’s top animal authors, Elizabeth Marshall Thomas and Sy Montgomery. A Mail on Sunday “Critic's Pick” Best Read of the Year "In their writing and in their lives and in their remarkable friendship, Liz and Sy break down false barriers and carry us closer to our fellow creatures.”—from the foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of Elephant Company Tamed and Untamed―a collection of essays penned by two of the world's most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas―explores the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals as diverse as snails, house cats, hawks, sharks, dogs, lions, and even octopuses. Drawing on stories of animals both wild and domestic, the two authors, also best friends, created this book to put humans back into the animal world. The more we learn about what other animals think and do, they explain, the more we understand ourselves as animals, too. Writes Montgomery, “The list of attributes once thought to be unique to our species―from using tools to waging war―is not only rapidly shrinking, but starting to sound less and less impressive when we compare them with other animals’ powers.” With humor, empathy, and introspection, Montgomery and Thomas look into the lives of all kinds of creatures―from man’s best friend to the great white shark―and examine the ways we connect with our fellow species. Both authors have devoted their lives to sharing the animal kingdom’s magic with others, and their combined wisdom is an indispensable contribution to the field of animal literature. The book contains a foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of the bestseller Elephant Company.Trade ReviewLibrary Journal- "Best-selling authors and best friends, naturalists Montgomery (The Soul of an Octopus) and Thomas (The Hidden Life of Dogs), partner on this engaging collection adapted from their joint columns from The Boston Globe. The essays explore the minds, lives, intelligence, and mysteries of wild and domestic animals. Both have spent most of their lives studying and researching animal behavior and share a worldview that questions a human-centric sense of superiority, as reflected in their insightful essays. Some impressions come from their respective New Hampshire surroundings, which include their own dogs and cats, deer, mice, chickens, slugs, and worms. They also share observations of animals seen on their various international research trips including pink dolphins, lions, hyenas, and hyraxes (a small African mammal). Reflections on love among octopuses, the death of a dog, and a visit from a Christmas ermine are quietly eloquent. VERDICT: Armchair and active naturalists will enjoy and learn from the authors’ enlightened perceptions on the intricate relationship between humans and animals in this thought-provoking collection."“In their writing and in their lives and in their remarkable friendship, Liz and Sy break down false barriers and carry us closer to our fellow creatures.”—from the foreword by Vicki Constantine Croke, author of Elephant Company“Two kindred spirits treat animals as they ought to be treated, with understanding, knowledge, and humor. These well-crafted essays are a pleasure to read and make you marvel at our fellow travelers on this planet.”—Frans de Waal, author of Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are? “Are humans the ultimate species? Nope, not according to these authors. Water bears are: They have been around for 500 million years and will survive after we destroy the planet. Will chickens in your backyard sooner or later give you a name? Do eels dream? Can an octopus have a sense of humor? Read and learn. This is an absolutely enchanting book that anybody who loves animals will not only want to own but also to give to good friends. It is full of precious lines and deep wisdom, and there is a delicious sense of humor throughout. The authors constantly bring us back to the recognition that we are just one among millions of remarkable animals, each one worthy of study and deep admiration, the kind these very authors accord them.”—Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of Dogs Never Lie About Love; coauthor of When Elephants Weep“Two of the most tuned-in people in the world have now given us these marvelous narratives of nonhuman beings living their lives on our shared planet. This is exactly what we need more of. We need to understand who we are here with. And, more and more urgently, to understand that we are not alone on our planet. As humans become more isolated and alienated, stories of other animals offer us our best chance for succeeding at being human.”—Carl Safina, author of Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel“I cannot recommend highly enough this memorable collection of essays about the secret life of animals from two of the most thought-provoking, animal-savvy writers of this time, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. A must-read for anyone interested in all creatures great and small.”—Nicholas Dodman, DVM, author of Pets on the Couch; professor emeritus, Tufts University“A beautifully written, fascinating compendium of essays about many species with whom we share our planet. Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas impart their insights into the behavior of a variety of nonhumans in this extremely informative and thought-provoking read.”—Irene M. Pepperberg, author of Alex & Me“Tamed and Untamed is a beautiful duet between two of the world’s finest nature writers. These enchanting essays bring to life creatures both novel and familiar, from pink dolphins to domestic dogs, war elephants to garden slugs. Each chapter reveals a new animal mystery and adds to the menagerie of our minds.”—Abigail Tucker, author of The Lion in the Living Room“Tamed and Untamed is a gem of a book. Written by two incredibly gifted writers, it’s a multicourse buffet of wonderful and thought-provoking stories about the surprising and wide-ranging intelligence, and deep and rich emotional lives of many different nonhuman animals. These eloquent authors weave solid science into their stories so that nonresearchers can well understand what is happening in the heads and hearts of the dogs, cats, rats, hawks, octopuses, and many other animals about whom they write. The bottom line is that we are not all that unique among the fascinating and diverse beings who are called ‘animals’ and with whom we share our magnificent planet. They, like this book, are gifts we must cherish.”—Marc Bekoff, author of Rewilding Our Hearts; coauthor of The Animals’ Agenda“Who but Sy Montgomery could describe a hawk’s eyes as having ‘an intensity stronger than rage and brighter than joy’? Who but Elizabeth Marshall Thomas would take in a wild mouse, ‘sort of like helping a relative’? This is a book to cherish, full of enlightenment, curiosity, and admiration for all things animal. I loved it.”—Patricia McConnell, author of The Education of Will
£13.29
Chelsea Green Publishing Co Landfill: Notes on Gull Watching and Trash
Book SynopsisOver the past hundred years, gulls have been brought ashore by modernity. They now live not only on the coasts but in our slipstream following trawlers, barges, and garbage trucks. They are more our contemporaries than most birds, living their wild lives among us in towns and cities. In many ways they live as we do, walking the built-up world and grabbing a bite where they can. Yet this disturbs us. We’ve started fearing gulls for getting good at being among us. We see them as scavengers, not entrepreneurs; ocean-going aliens, not refugees. They are too big for the world they have entered. Their story is our story too. Landfill is the original and compelling story of how in the Anthropocene we have learned about the natural world, named and catalogued it, and then colonized it, planted it, or filled it with our junk. While most other birds have gone in the opposite direction, hiding away from us, some vanishing forever, gulls continue to tell us how the wild can share our world. For these reasons Landfill is the nature book for our times, groundbreaking and genre-bending. Without nostalgia or eulogy, it kicks beneath the littered surface of the things to discover stranger truths. Trade Review“Landfill is an erudite meditation on these former seabirds — in literature, science and culture — and their symbiotic relationship with us within the natural world."—Toronto Star “Landfill is an important and entirely brilliant book. It’s a love letter to gulls and their charged relationship with humans, but it’s also a deep meditation on difficulty and waste, on the beauty of the disregarded, and on what we make of matter out of place. There’s love and death here, fear, fascination, hope, and the breaking of the world. Dee has written an absolute triumph.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk“The British literature of birds that includes Gilbert White with his swifts and martins, Helen Macdonald with her hawks, is a rich one. But Tim Dee’s own obsession with gulls also leads him to contemplate the landfills over which they often preside and the alarming changes to our landscapes with which they are associated. His alertness to factors in ecological health results not in a jeremiad, however, but instead in an exploration of surprising parallels between evolution in the biological realm and the slow siftings of memory and culture. Landfill is a remarkably venturesome, robustly voiced, and illuminating book.”—John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home“Like coyotes, ravens, raccoons, and other resourceful urban wildlife, gulls frequently face our scorn, and sometimes our bullets. In his delightful jaunt through gull taxonomy, behavior, and lore, Tim Dee casts his feathered protagonists as indomitable heroes of the Anthropocene—thriving in our cities, colonizing our culture, and repurposing our trash as treasure. Next time a gull snatches your fries, you’ll find yourself not cursing a petty thief, but admiring one of our planet’s grittiest, savviest survivors.”—Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager“Tim Dee’s restive and gorgeous prose pulls readers into the wilds of the modern urban landscape, where gulls and humans wander side-by-side with ancient poets, Victorian novelists, and Madagascar nighthawks. In this small book Dee asks—and beautifully begins to answer—one of the largest questions of our time: How do we live with attentive grace and wisdom alongside the varied coinhabitants of our imperiled, complex, and beloved earth?”—Lyanda Lynn Haupt, author of Mozart’s Starling and Crow Planet“Evolution is fluid, and the urban gulls of Tim Dee’s Landfill embody this ever-changing world in action. Tracking difficult-to-categorize gulls and the people who know their habits best, Dee alerts us to the heavy-laden meanings we lay on the wings of others, even as he revels the ways in which gulls continue to fly beyond our grasp. Familiarity need not breed contempt. As Dee shows, it can breed fascination.”—Gavin Van Horn, author of The Way of Coyote
£21.15
Chelsea Green Publishing Co Dancing with Bees: A Journey Back to Nature
Book SynopsisThe Sunday Times Best Nature Writing Books 2020 SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2020 WAINWRIGHT PRIZE A naturalist’s passionate dive into the lives of bees (of all stripes) and the natural world in her own backyard Brigit Strawbridge Howard was shocked the day she realised she knew more about the French Revolution than she did about her native trees. And birds. And wildflowers. And bees. The thought stopped her—quite literally—in her tracks. But that day was also the start of a journey, one filled with silver birches and hairy-footed flower bees, skylarks, and rosebay willow herb, and the joy that comes with deepening one’s relationship with place. Dancing with Bees is Strawbridge Howard’s charming and eloquent account of a return to noticing, to rediscovering a perspective on the world that had somehow been lost to her for decades and to reconnecting with the natural world. With special care and attention to the plight of pollinators, including honeybees, bumblebees, and solitary bees, and what we can do to help them, Strawbridge Howard shares fascinating details of the lives of flora and fauna that have filled her days with ever-increasing wonder and delight.Trade ReviewKirkus Reviews— A British naturalist offers crisp essays on her relationship with bees. In her debut book, Howard, a devoted bee advocate, pens a lengthy, knowledgeable, and occasionally poetic tribute to honeybees, bumblebees, and other buzzy creatures . . . [She] provides a nice balance between the very real science of studying bees and their function in nature and her cleareyed and eloquent observations about the natural world. Because of that balance, what might have sounded like a dry lecture turns into something far more interesting. Whether she's explaining how different bee species are classified, describing her mother's deteriorating health (and eventual death), or simply ruminating on the beauty around her, Howard creates a text that is compelling and worth your time even if you're not a fellow bee advocate."Library Journal— "[A] fascinating and wide-ranging exploration of nature. . .This satisfying memoir of a woman’s reawakening to the importance of nature in her life will appeal to fans of natural history memoirs, bees, the natural world, or ecology."Booklist, Starred Review— “[An] engaging, richly descriptive tale of natural discovery."“In this delightful book, Brigit Strawbridge Howard brings us into the fascinating and often overlooked world of bees. She introduces us to solitary nesting bees that lay their eggs in empty snail shells, cuckoo bees that make other bees take care of their eggs, and the amazing social lives of bumblebees and honeybees. Her curiosity and wonder at these small creatures are infectious and will inspire a greater appreciation of our natural world.”—Nancy J. Hayden, coauthor of Farming on the Wild Side“Hovering through Brigit Strawbridge Howard’s remarkable encounters with bees, alighting on beautiful and often unexpected descriptions of bumblebees, miner bees, and even parasitizing cuckoo bees, one dips into a world most of us have forgotten. By leading us gently and discretely into the minutiae of nature, Brigit shows how rewarding it is to reconnect—how the world’s tiniest beings can not only lift our spirits, but signal the way to a richer, wilder future.”—Isabella Tree, author of Wilding“Dancing with Bees is a passionate hymn to nature, a joyful celebration not just of bees, but of the power of paying attention. Strawbridge Howard’s rediscovery of the natural world is infused with a sense of wonder both irresistible and infectious. And the promise of this beautiful book is that if we take the trouble to notice our natural surroundings, we too can find a way to reconnect not just to nature, but to a deeper sense of ourselves.”—Caroline Lucas, MP, former Green Party Leader“I devoured this book as I would a jar of exquisite honey. I was as fascinated by it as I would be watching a hive of bees at work. I may read another nature book this year, but not a better one. Or a more important one. As is made so manifestly clear in these pages, we need our bees. Thank God, then, for Brigit Strawbridge Howard, our queen bee-advocate.”—John Lewis-Stempel, author of Still Water and Meadowland“Dancing with Bees is one of the most important and accessible and entertaining books I’ve ever read. Brigit has poured meticulous detail and research into her book, which has left me with even more respect for our precious bees than I ever thought possible. What’s more, it’s a touching, sensitive account of what makes us human and how we connect to the natural world. Everyone should read it.”—Kate Bradbury, author of Wildlife Gardening and The Bumblebee Flies Anyway“A beautiful book and one that hums with good life. Brigit Strawbridge Howard came late to bees but began noticing them at a time when their going was being widely announced. Her attention has been clear-sighted but also loving. By looking closely at the hummers and the buzzers, she has begun to take in the whole of what Charles Darwin called the ‘tangled bank’ of life, where there are bees (and Brigit’s winning descriptions will help you know them) and there are plants, and there are other pollinators and nectar-seekers, including Homo sapiens. No other insect—surely no other animal—has had such a long and life-giving relationship with humans. Bees may well have shaped our evolution; our continued well-being is certainly dependent on them. Bees have long been part of our consciousness and art, buzzing in parables and fables and ancient and modern poems made out of their industry and their organisation and their marvellous sweet products. All that is in this book: It is ambrosia.”—Tim Dee, author of Landfill“While the plight of our overworked honeybees elicits much hand-wringing, the rest of Earth’s splendorous apian diversity has remained unjustly obscure. In this winning tribute to our black-and-yellow fellows, Brigit Strawbridge Howard celebrates the virtues of dozens of less heralded, but no less crucial, wild species—mining bees, leaf-cutting bees, mason bees, cuckoo bees. Like a bee herself, Strawbridge Howard is at once pragmatic and whimsical, flitting lightly between practical advice for crafting a bee-friendly garden and wise digressions about our manipulative relationship with nature. By the end of Dancing with Bees, you’ll wholeheartedly agree that these indispensable creatures should be extolled as ‘our equals, not our minions.’”—Ben Goldfarb, author of Eager“A joy-filled voyage of discovery through the wonderful world of bees.”—Dave Goulson, author of Bee Quest and A Sting in the Tale“Sprinkled with moments of pathos, this exquisite book is the perfect introduction to the often neglected world of wild bees—and the beautiful plants with which they dance an ecosystem into life.”—Hugh Warwick, author of Linescapes and Hedgehog“Brigit Strawbridge Howard is an excellent pollinator of information. Dancing with Bees is a book teeming with love: for bees but also for the natural world as a whole and, by extension, for life itself. Everyone who cares about the future of our planet should read it.”—Tom Cox, author of 21st-Century Yokel“Dancing with Bees is an antidote to the reality of modern life that’s spent nose down in our smartphones while the wondrous stuff—nature—goes on all around us. Brigit Strawbridge Howard chronicles her own journey of reconnecting with the natural world with heartfelt eloquence. Her descriptions of the creatures, plants, and landscapes that populate her journey are made with the unabashed joy of someone for whom a veil has been lifted, revealing a world to be cherished but also in great need of our protection.”—Matthew Wilson, garden designer; author; panelist, BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time“We are handed a lens—light, bright, beautiful things come into focus. Brigit’s flare for observation and description, passion for knowledge, and ease with communication involve us in adventuring through the looking glass to explore with her the intimate life of wild bees. Gently, this timely book reminds us that nature is in trouble and that we must all join the dance.”—Sue Clifford and Angela King, founding directors, Common Ground“Dancing with Bees is a brilliantly described journey of discovery of bees, trees, people, and places, imbued with a childlike wonderment. Learn about cuckoo bees, carder bees, bees that are not bees, the commonplace and the rare. It is never too late to reconnect with nature and rewild oneself.”—Steven Falk, author of Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland“Well written and researched, beautifully illustrated, and packed with natural history detail, Dancing with Bees is a book to start you off on a journey that could well become an obsession. Even if you are well versed in the ways of bees, you will still want to wrap yourself in the warmth of this charming book. Brigit Strawbridge Howard gently shows you all the things you may have been missing; you are about to enter a macro-world of wonder and delight. I absolutely loved this book. If, due to infirmity perhaps, I am ever unable to walk in the countryside, I can now go dancing with bees whenever I choose.”—Dr. George McGavin, president, Dorset Wildlife Trust; honorary research associate, Oxford University Museum of Natural History“Brigit Strawbridge Howard leads us on a wistful pilgrimage of awakening into the world of bees who are among the most fascinating, charismatic, and important of insects. Written in an easy, accessible style without shying away from solid facts and beguiling detail, and beautifully illustrated by renowned Devon naturalist John Walters, Strawbridge Howard’s book is the result of hundreds of hours of watching, listening, and learning in her garden and the wider countryside, wondering what the future might bring and how human excesses may be curbed.”—Stuart Roberts, entomologistTable of ContentsPreface: Realisations Introduction: The Honey Trap 1. Spring on the Wing 2. A Nest of One's Own 3. What's in a Name? 4. The Boys Are Back in Town 5. Bees Behaving Badly 6. The Upside-Down Bird 7. The Cabin by the Stream 8. Cuckoo, Cuckoo 9. On Swarms and Stings 10. To Bee, or Not to Bee 11. Seeking the Great Yellow Bumblebee, Part 1 12. Seeking the Great Yellow Bumblebee, Part 2 13. On Bovey Heathfield 14. In Praise of Trees 15. Sedgehill, a Natural History 16. Cotton Weavers 17. Time for Tea 18. Evergreen 19. Amongst the Snowdrops Epilogue. Reflections Acknowledgements List of Illustrations Selected Bibliography Index
£13.82
