Our Books
Growing up in Alabama, the author was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she offers an unusual, captivating portrait of her family and her childhood—and of the...
When her mother is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, the author—a cook, collector of thrifted vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt—can’t help but wonder: Feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for...
In 2012, Sarah Ruhl was a distinguished author and playwright, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Max Ritvo was an exuberant, opinionated, and highly gifted poet in remission from pediatric cancer. Studded with poems and songs, their...
The Boundary Waters is a national treasure—so when the authors learned of a danger facing the region, they decided to speak on behalf of the wilderness. This is the story of their year bearing witness to wild places and a passionate argument for...
Midway through the journey of his life, Dan Beachy-Quick found himself without a path, unsure how to live well. This collection of essays, fragments, marginalia, images, travel writing, and poetry follows him through the result: a classical...
When young Deni’s mother leaves his charismatic father, the boy learns of his father’s true identity: André Béchard was once a bank robber—and so Deni’s imagination is set on fire. This deeply affecting memoir is at once a highly unconventional...
The author was in the Bahamas, pursuing bonefish—one of the world’s most elusive creatures—when he had a life-changing encounter with David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Here he tells Pinder’s story, as well as that of an ecology, of an...
Growing up on his family’s land in South Carolina, the author fell in love with the subtle beauties of the natural world around him—and grew up to be one of the lone black men in a predominantly white field. This memoir is a riveting exploration...
Jon Lurie and José Perez are floundering. Jon is newly divorced and depressed; José, a smart, angry young Lakota-Puerto Rican, is embedded in a haze of women and street feuds. Then Lurie hits upon a plan to save them: to retrace the mythic two...
For over thirty years, the author has written novels in which the natural world is as much a living presence as any character. In this beautiful, evocative, and sometimes provocative memoir, he explores Australia’s unique landscape, and how that...
When a New Jersey native moves to Minnesota, she discovers a local food movement strong enough to survive the toughest winter. Fascinating and heartfelt, this memoir demonstrates that even in a place with a short growing season, food grown...
At the very time we need them most, scientists and the idea of objective knowledge are being bombarded by a well-funded, three-part war on science. This provocative book investigates why and how, and offers compelling solutions to bring us to our...
Bringing together a wide range of perspectives—industry veterans and provocateurs, writers, editors, and digital mavericks—this collection reflects on the current situation of literary publishing, and provides a road map for the shifting...
As the author approached his thirtieth birthday in a state of acute anxiety, a bookseller prescribed to him a singular literary diet—the poems of a Tang Dynasty hermit named Han-shan. His pilgrimage to Han-shan’s cave decades later comes to life...
This contemporary classic has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, this memoir catalogues a people and their home—a...
How are bonobos like us, what can they teach us, and how can we save them? Combining elements of travelogue, journalism, and natural history, this incomparably rich book takes readers deep into the Congo to examine these great apes and the people...
What if the greatest cause of our planet’s dramatic change—humans’ ability to adapt and innovate—also holds the key to our survival? Part science journal, part travelogue, this book tells the story of a journey into the Anthropocene, or Age of...
From a haunted widow’s wildly expanding mansion to atomic test sites in the Nevada desert, the settings of these essays are often places of destruction and loss. And yet this collection transforms these eerie, apocalyptic destinations into sites...
As a botanist, the author has been trained to examine nature with the tools of science; as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our teachers. Here she brings these two lenses together,...
In the century and a half since John James Audubon’s death, his name has become synonymous with wildlife conservation and natural history. But few people know what a complicated figure he was—or the dramatic story behind The Birds of America...
These essays take jellyfish, fainting goats, and imperturbable caterpillars as just a few of their many inspirations. Surveying both the tiniest earth dwellers and the most far-flung celestial bodies, this is a book of wonder, one readers cannot...