Showing titles in Ecosystems & Habitats

Brought to you by Penguin. A stunning meditation on how the physical world can bring us back to earth from the edge of grief In the aftermath of catastrophic loss, a mother and her young son cross the Atlantic, taking refuge in a wooden house on a remote strip of land. Viewed from the shore...

The first complete history of Britain’s mountains, capturing their beauty, tragedy and the pivotal role of these dramatic landscapes in the nation’s past and future Britain’s mountains are our grandest and wildest places, their vast openness providing inspiration and escape. But they are...

'The Patron Saint of Conservation' Sir David Attenborough 'Peter Scott was a huge influence on my childhood...Later on in life I had the good fortune both to meet and to interview him, and he remains, for me, a hero. His knowledge, his kindness to me and his generosity of spirit have remained an...

Iceland, Greenland, Northern Norway, and the Faroe Islands lie on the edges of Western Europe, in an area long portrayed by travelers as remote and exotic - its nature harsh, its people reclusive. Since the middle of the 18th century, however, this marginalized region has gradually become part of modern Europe, a transformation that is narrated in Karen Oslund's Iceland Imagined. This cultural and environmental history sweeps across the dramatic North Atlantic landscape, exploring its unusual geography, saga narratives, language, culture, and politics, and analyzing its emergence as a distinctive and symbolic part of Europe.

Paul Falkowski looks "under the hood" of microbes to find the engines of life, the actual working parts that do the biochemical heavy lifting for every living organism on Earth. With insight and humor, he explains how these miniature engines are built - and how they have been appropriated by and assembled like Lego sets within every creature that walks, swims, or flies. Falkowski shows how evolution works to maintain this core machinery of life, and how we and other animals are veritable conglomerations of microbes.

"In mid-July of 1879, John Muir sailed for the first time through the sheer-walled fjords of Alaska's Inside Passage. 'Never before this,' he wrote, 'had I been embosomed in scenery so hopelessly beyond description.' During the previous 15 years, Muir had vanished into the north woods of Canada, walked a thousand miles from Kentucky to the Gulf of Mexico, and nested himself in the granite heart of California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Wild nature burned with volcanic intensity in the core of John Muir's soul."

In a triumph of marketing, the Tasmanian salmon industry has for decades succeeded in presenting itself as world's best practice and its product as healthy and clean, grown in environmentally pristine conditions. But what are we eating when we eat Tasmanian salmon? Richard Flanagan's expose of the salmon farming industry in Tasmania is chilling. In the way that Rachel Carson took on the pesticide industry in her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, Flanagan tears open an industry that is as secretive as its practices are destructive and its product disturbing.

In this powerful essay, Joëlle Gergis, a leading climate scientist, depicts the likely future in vivid and credible detail. Working from the science, she discusses the world’s and Australia’s efforts to combat climate change. She outlines how far Australia is from keeping its promises to cut emissions. She takes aim at false solutions and the folly of “adaptation” rather than curbing fossil fuel use.

Hailed as "the great nature writer of this generation" (Wall Street Journal), Robert Macfarlane is the celebrated author of books about the intersections of the human and the natural realms. In Underland, he delivers his masterpiece: an epic exploration of the Earth's underworlds as they exist in myth, literature, memory, and the land itself.

Nur zwei große Lebensräume unserer Erde sind scheinbar über lange Zeiträume hinweg gleich geblieben: der Dschungel und das Meer. Doch selbst die Landmassen, auf denen der Urwald liegt, haben sich aufgrund der Kontinentalverschiebungen verändert, und die Aufspal­tung und Verschmelzung der Kontinente hatten Auswirkungen auf die Ausdehnung der warmen, flachen Küstenmeere.

'This is my earliest memory. I am three years old and I sit in the bottom of my great-uncle's pot boat and take off the bands from the lobsters' claws. The deepest of blues, they creak over the bilges with robotic limbs towards my father's bare feet as he rows. Over the scent of the herring bait...

Sally Coulthard explores the miraculous world of the earthworm, the modest little creature without whom life as we know it would not be possible. For Charles Darwin - who estimated every acre of land contained 53,000 earthworms - the humble earthworm was the most important creature on the planet. And yet, most people know almost nothing about these little engineers of the earth. We take them for granted but, without the earthworm, the world's soil would be barren and our gardens, fields and farms wouldn't be able to grow the food and support the animals we need to survive.

In Albert & the Whale, Philip Hoare sets out to discover why Dürer's art endures. He encounters medieval alchemists and modernist poets, eccentric emperors and queer soul rebels, ambassadorial whales and enigmatic pop artists. He witnesses the miraculous birth of Dürer's fantastical rhinoceros and his hermaphroditic hare, and he traces the fate of the star-crossed leviathan that the artist pursued. And as the author swims from Europe to America and beyond, these prophetic artists and downed angels provoke awkward questions. 

Brought to you by Penguin. Rivers, more than any road, technology or political event, have shaped the course of civilization. In Rivers of Power, geographer Laurence C. Smith tells the sweeping story of rivers and how they made us. Rivers have opened frontiers, defined borders, supported trade...

For centuries, the unique and astonishing geography of the Himalaya has attracted those in search of spiritual and literal elevation: pilgrims, adventurers, and mountaineers seeking to test themselves among the world's most challenging peaks. But far from being wild and barren, the Himalaya has been home to a diversity of indigenous and local cultures, a crucible of world religions, a crossroads for trade, and a meeting point and conflict zone for empires past and present. 

An "instant classic", this genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto is a fascinating study for rewilding the city, the self, and society (Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times bestselling author). During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an...

‘Brilliant, clear, and humane’ Elizabeth Gilbert ‘Miraculous and hopeful’ Emma Straub Riverman: An American Odyssey uncovers the story of an extraordinary man and his puzzling disappearance, and paints a picture of the singular spirit of America’s riverbank towns. ‘The peace of mind...

Within the next three years, Juliet Blaxland's home will be demolished, and the land where it now stands will crumble into the North Sea. In her numbered days living in the Easternmost House, Juliet fights to maintain the rural ways she grew up with, re-connecting with the beauty, usefulness and erratic terror of the natural world. A stunning memoir, describing a year on the easternmost edge of England, and exploring how we can preserve delicate ecosystems, and livelihoods, in the face of rapid coastal erosion and environmental change.

Environmental writer Laurie King and international best-selling author Miriam Lancewood present a collection of narrative non-fiction stories and poems on the human connection with nature.

They are trees of life and trees of knowledge. They are wish-fulfillers, rain forest royalty, more precious than gold. They are the fig trees, and they have affected humanity in profound but little-known ways. Gods, Wasps and Stranglers tells their amazing story. Fig trees fed our prehuman ancestors, influenced diverse cultures, and played key roles in the dawn of civilization.