Showing titles in Nature & Ecology

On 11 March 2011, a massive earthquake sent a 120-foot-high tsunami smashing into the coast of Northeast Japan. By the time the sea retreated, more than 18,000 people had been crushed, burned to death, or drowned. It was Japan's greatest single loss of life since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It set off a national crisis and the meltdown of a nuclear power plant. And even after the immediate emergency had abated, the trauma of the disaster continued to express itself in bizarre and mysterious ways.

What you eat doesn’t just impact you – it shapes the world around you. Wonderfully enlightening and engagingly written. Dr Idz If you are looking at ways to combat the exploitation of the planet this book is for you. Rhiannon Lambert Well Fed is a vital tool in the ongoing battle against...

Bloomsbury presents Spinosaur Tales by David Hone & Mark Witton, read by Gavin Osborn The spinosaurs – the dinosaur group that includes the largest land predator of all time, the awe-inspiring Spinosaurus – star in this cutting-edge review. The giant sail-backed carnivorous dinosaur...

On October 12, 1972, a plane carrying a team of young rugby players crashed into the remote, snow-peaked Andes. Out of the 45 original passengers and crew, only 16 made it off the mountain alive. For 10 excruciating weeks, they suffered deprivations beyond imagining, confronting nature head-on at its most furious and inhospitable. And to survive, these men and women not only had to keep their faith; they had to make an impossible decision: Should they eat the flesh of their dead friends?

*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL WRITING 2025* From the winner of the 2023 Wingate Literary Prize comes a fascinating and moving untold story of the Leningrad scientists who risked everything for the future of humanity *An Economist Book of the Year* 'An astonishing story...

A "normal" Caribbean hurricane travels from east to west, but Lenny was anything but normal. Spawned south of Cuba in 1999, this late-season storm defied all predictions by moving steadily east toward the Leeward Islands. Eventually building almost to Category 5 strength, Lenny squatted for two days between the Virgin Islands and St. Martin, whipping the ocean with 155 mile-per-hour winds and sixty-foot seas.

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben, read by Thomas Judd. Mother deer that grieve? Horses that feel shame? Squirrels that adopt their grandchildren? We humans tend to assume that we are the only living things able to experience feelings...

From the bestselling author Simon Winchester, a human history of land around the world: who mapped it, owned it, stole it, cared for it, fought for it and gave it back. In 1889, thousands of hopeful people raced southward from the Kansas state line and westward from the Arkansas boundary to...

The nation's greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads J. A. Baker's extraordinary classic of British nature writing, The Peregrine. J. A. Baker's classic of British nature writing was first published in 1967. Greeted with acclaim, it went on to win the Duff Cooper Prize, the pre-eminent literary prize of the time. Luminaries such as Ted Hughes, Barry Lopez and Andrew Motion have cited it as one of the most important books in 20th-century nature writing.

She has to be OK, I pleaded silently to myself. She has to be. ‘We’ve alerted the RNLI and they’re sending a lifeboat out.’ ‘The RNLI?’ I said, surprised. ‘They do that?’ Saved from the Waves is a heart-warming collection of first-hand accounts from RNLI volunteers of the myriad...

For the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religion and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art and poetry. In Ten Birds That Changed the World, naturalist and author Stephen Moss tells the gripping story of this long and eventful relationship through ten key species from all seven of the world's continents.

Surviving the unsurvivable. Healing from the unhealable. This is an inspiring memoir of physical and mental recovery, from someone who lived through the Whakaari White Island volcanic eruption. ""I heard someone say, 'Wow!' And someone else exclaimed, 'Look at that!' I had my back to the crater...

Bushcraft and survival legend Ray Mears takes us on his own lifetime's journey through the natural world, into the British countryside and across continents, and shows us how to tune our senses, enhance our experience of nature, and understand our place within it. Guiding us through practical fieldcraft tips, Ray brings us up close with creatures we share our planet with, and reveals how we can learn from them, from the stealth of the leopard to the patience and stillness of the crocodile, and even the colour-changing camouflage of the octopus.

World-renowned volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer has worked at the crater's edge in the wildest places on Earth. He's faced down AK47s, learned from tribal elders, and watched red hot rocks shoot into the sky. More people have been into space than have set eyes on the fiery depths of Mount Erebus in Antarctica, where he has measured the Earth's powerful forces. In Mountains of Fire, he paints volcanoes as otherworldly, magical places where our history is laid bare, and shows us just how entangled volcanic activity is with our climate, economy, politics, culture and beliefs.

Our most powerful tool to reverse the global epidemic of chronic disease, heal the environment, reform politics, and revive economies is food. What we eat has tremendous implications not just for our waistlines, but also for the planet, society, and the global economy. What we do to our bodies...

Leopold's essays on conservation will open the mind of any listener who gives them a chance. The first part uses essays for each of the 12 months to share the rhythm of life on his restored Wisconsin farmland, and uses the stories to branch into eye opening lessons on the history of man's use and abuse of it. The second part continues using stories from Leopold's experiences in wild places across North America to expand the lessons to a much wider view. The final part of the work seeks to lay out a better path for humanity, using solid logic and deep philosophical questioning.

The secretive Mysteries conducted at Eleusis in Greece for nearly two millennia have long puzzled scholars with strange accounts of initiates experiencing otherworldly journeys. In this groundbreaking work, three experts - a mycologist, a chemist, and a historian - argue persuasively that the sacred potion given to participants in the course of the ritual contained a psychoactive entheogen. The authors then expand the discussion to show that natural psychedelic agents have been used in spiritual rituals across history and cultures.

California’s coast redwoods are Earth's tallest living beings, some reaching more than 350 feet high. They can also live for more than 2,000 years, outlasting entire civilizations. In this episode, we spend an evening with an ancient tree. Below ground, its roots tap into a forest-wide network; above ground, its branches harbor life in its many forms.

It's December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote Russian village. The tiger isn't just killing people, it's annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren't random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

“Reynolds gives us a much-needed reason for hope. The gardener, the conservationist, the city planner, and the nature lover will all be inspired for this wonderful book shows how thousands of even small wildlife friendly gardens can provide habitat for embattled wildlife around the world.”...