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...
Deepwater Horizon, Hurricane Katrina, Flint: this is the litany of our time, and these are the events traced in these poems, invoking the poet as moral witness. Incorporating interviews and excerpts from government documents and other sources,...
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,...
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...
This timely collection—featuring essays from Wendell Berry, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Bill McKibben, and Rebecca Solnit, among others—challenges the division of human society from the natural world that has often characterized traditional...
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...
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...
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...
For centuries, the richness of our world’s diverse stories has been widely overlooked by readers of environmental literature. This collection works against this blind spot, exploring the relationship between culture and place, emphasizing the...
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...
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...
The sea is an impossible force in this collection: it is both a majestic presence that predates man, and something to carry with us wherever we go. These brilliantly translated poems, presented in both Chinese and English, introduce an important...
In January 2001, the editors, responding to proposals to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, sent a call to writers across the country. With testimonies by President Jimmy Carter, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Bill McKibben, and Terry...
Edward Abbey’s postcards and letters, legendary during his lifetime, convey the fullness of this singular writer and reveal a tender side seldom seen before. This collection is an awe-inspiring introduction for readers new to Abbey—and for...
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...
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...
After the Deepwater Horizon well was capped in 2010, most reporters and government officials turned away from the unfolding narrative: the story was over. But for one writer the unimaginable amount of oil spilled into the ocean was only the...
Born and raised in the Arctic, Cutuk Hawcley has learned to provide for himself by hunting, fishing, and trading. But when he leaves for the city as a young man, incompatible realities collide, forcing Cutuk to choose between two worlds—both...
This fascinating account of life on North America’s last frontier chronicles the transformation of the Arctic as the mainstream moves relentlessly north. Essays and photographs offer an ode to respect—that oft-forsaken, unromantic quality—for the...
In April 2003, the author and his wife set out with the Porcupine caribou herd as they journeyed from the Yukon Territory to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. On the caribou’s trail, two people learn what is possible when they immerse...
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...
With a tragically leaky canoe, a broken cell phone, a cooler of beer, and a passionate environmental planner in tow, the author sets off on a rough-and-tumble journey down Boston’s Charles River. Along the way, the vision of a new sort of eco-...
Engaging in a deep and richly entertaining study of “campus ecology,” this fascinating, highly original book explores one day in the life of the average student. Along the way, it repurposes the great and timeless opportunity presented by college...
From the Adirondack Mountains to Kerala, India, to Curitiba, Brazil, this book offers clear-eyed and profoundly compelling portraits of places where resourceful people have confronted modern problems with inventive solutions, and thrived in the...
This collection takes the physical, elemental world as its point of inquiry, examining how language arises from landscape. Some of these poems begin with the form of physical objects—a rock, split slate, an egg, a feather—while others emerge from...
These eloquent essays meditate on living with the land and reinvigorating the values of community. Combining personal reflection and memoir with a powerful look at the state of our rural towns and people, this collection postulates a society in...
Organized by the seasons of the year, this book explores the natural and soul-sustaining beauty of the largest roadless area east of the Rocky Mountains. Drawing on the works of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, the author turns his naturalist’s eye on...
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...
Strange things begin to happen after eleven-year-old Sebby finds a secret cave behind his home: he falls ill, his family’s chickens disappear, and he finds a special pair of eyeglasses that show him a world where colors come alive and fly through...
Hoping to get away from the complexities of her life, the author arrived at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station with the intention of researching the landscape; what she found, instead, was a zany population of misfits and dreamers. This is an...