Nature Biography

Several years ago, ecologist Lauren E. Oakes set out from California for Alaska's old-growth forests to hunt for a dying tree: the yellow-cedar. With climate change as the culprit, the death of this species meant loss for many Alaskans. Oakes and her research team wanted to chronicle how plants and people could cope with their rapidly changing world. Amidst the standing dead, she discovered the resiliency of forgotten forests, flourishing again in the wake of destruction, and a diverse community of people who persevered to create new relationships with the emerging environment.

Jeanne Villepreux-Power was never expected to be a scientist. Born in 1794 in a French village more than 100 miles from the ocean, she pursued an improbable path that brought her to the island of Sicily. There, she took up natural history and solved the two-thousand-year-old mystery of how the argonaut octopus gets its shell. In an era when most research focused on dead specimens, Jeanne was determined to experiment on living animals. And to keep sea creatures alive for her studies, she had to invent a contraption to hold them: the aquarium.

In the winter of 1959, a group of nine young and experienced hikers embarked on a journey into the Ural Mountains of Russia. Although they had previously undertaken cold-weather trips, this particular expedition would tragically be their last. During their trek, the hikers encountered something unexpected in the supposedly desolate region, resulting in the demise of the entire group. The exact events of that fateful night remain unknown, but the incident has since become one of the world's most perplexing mysteries.

From well-known nature and adventure writer Dan Koeppel, whose work has appeared in Audubon and National Geographic Adventure, comes this true story of one bird watcher's incredible achievements.

Nick Bullock is a climber who lives in a small, green van, flitting between Llanberis, Wales, and Chamonix in the French Alps. Tides, Nick’s second work, is the much-anticipated follow-up to his critically acclaimed debut, Echoes. Tides is a gripping memoir that captures the very essence of what it means to dedicate one’s life to climbing.

Ben Short has a successful career in advertising, a flat in a trendy part of London, a flashy motorbike. But after years of suffering with anxiety, he's a wreck. A drastic change is needed. For a time, he finds solace working with a forester, then as an apprentice to a Gypsy woodman, setting up home in a dilapidated wagon with just a rescue dog for company.

Once a killing ground for whalers hunting a leviathan they called the "devilfish," the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, Mexico, is now an environmental and spiritual sanctuary—the only place in the world where animals in their natural aquatic environment routinely seek out human contact. A nursery for the gray whale since before recorded history, the lagoon and its stories, told here by James Michael Dorsey, illuminate the magic of human connection to animals, and what those bonds teach us about ourselves and our purpose on this shared planet.

From the author of Ghosts in the Fog comes a story that will appeal to lovers of history, adventure, and dogs. Byrd & Igloo is the first narrative nonfiction audiobook to tell the daring adventures of legendary polar explorer and aviator Richard Byrd and his lovable dog explorer, Igloo. Byrd is known for being the first to fly a plane over the North and South Poles, while Igloo is famous for being the only dog to explore both the North and South Poles.

Jack Rocco was a baby when he was adopted by a blue-collar, Italian American family. Today a successful orthopedic surgeon, Jack’s identity was built around his Italian heritage, and while he knew the story of his “Gotday,” he didn’t know the story of his birth day. His was a closed adoption, and he only knew that his birth parents were a young couple—an Italian father and a German Irish mother—who couldn’t afford a child.

This amazing memoir follows the story of Reggie Williams - ex-NFL linebacker, former Disney executive, renaissance man, and the epitome of determination in the face of extreme challenges.

A Londoner for more than 20 years, moving from flat to Tube to air-conditioned office, Melissa Harrison knew what it was to be insulated from the seasons. Adopting a dog and going on daily walks helped reconnect her with the cycle of the year and the quiet richness of nature all around her: swifts nesting in a nearby church; ivy-leaved toadflax growing out of brick walls; the first blackbird's song; an exhilarating glimpse of a hobby over Tooting Common.

Learn about America's founding conservationists: Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot, Stephen T. Mather, Hugh Hammond Bennett.

Quando nel 1961 pubblica Le mie montagne, il suo primo libro, Walter Bonatti ha da rac- contare oltre un decennio di imprese impossibili, trionfi e sofferenze: dalla scalata sullo sperone Walker (a 19 anni) all’odissea sul Pilone Centrale, passando per il Grand Capucin, il Dru e la fatidica notte all’addiaccio sul K2. Se questo libro segnerà una svolta nella sua vita, sarà anche per il riaccendersi delle braci che covavano proprio sotto la memoria di quell’episodio.

Eighteen years ago, Stanford MBA Michele Raffin pulled off the road to help an injured dove, a momentary impulse that ignited in her a fervent commitment to saving vulnerable bird species. Today, her suburban home plays host to Pandemonium Aviaries, one of the largest avian rescue sanctuaries and endangered breeding facilities in the country, with a maze of 54 individual aviaries that house over 40 species, 14 of which are listed as threatened with extinction.

Im August 2015 macht Katherine May sich auf, um den 1014 Kilometer langen South West Coast Path entlang der Küsten von Somerset, Devon und Cornwall nach Dorset zu wandern. Sie will den Kopf freibekommen, endlich verstehen, warum ihr so vieles in ihrem Leben schwerer zu fallen scheint als anderen: Warum hat sie immer wieder das Gefühl, nicht recht zu verstehen, was andere meinen, wenn sie mit ihr sprechen? Warum verspürt sie so oft den Impuls, aus einer Gruppe Menschen in die Einsamkeit zu flüchten? Und warum empfindet sie es als besonders herausfordernd, Mutter zu sein?

In 2007, after 20 years of living in London, Kate Humble and her husband Ludo decided it was time to leave city life behind them. Three years later, now the owner of a Welsh smallholding, Kate hears that a nearby farm is to be broken up and sold off. Another farm lost; another opportunity for a young farmless farmer gone. Desperate to stop the sale, Kate contacts the council with an alternative plan - to keep the farm working and to run a rural skills and animal husbandry school alongside it. Against all odds, she succeeds.

Fanny Bullock Workman was a complicated and restless woman who defied the rigid Victorian morals she found as restrictive as a corset. With her frizzy, brown hair tucked under a topee, Workman was a force on the mountain and off. Instrumental in breaking the British stranglehold on Himalayan mountain climbing, this American woman climbed more peaks than any of her peers, became the first woman to map the far reaches of the Himalayas, the first woman to lecture at the Sorbonne, and the second to address the Royal Geographic Society of London.

One of the best-loved men in Britain, Alan Titchmarsh brilliantly recalls his childhood in 1950s Yorkshire. Alan Titchmarsh grew up and developed his passion for nature in the wild and beautiful landscape of Yorkshire. A real treat for his millions of fans, the ever-popular presenter vividly depicts a childhood of simple pleasures like climbing trees and fishing in streams in a time of post-war austerity.

In Wild Winter, John D. Burns, best-selling author of The Last Hillwalker and Bothy Tales, sets out to rediscover Scotland’s mountains, remote places and wildlife in the darkest and stormiest months. He traverses the country from the mouth of the River Ness to the Isle of Mull, from remote Sutherland to the Cairngorms, in search of rutting red deer, pupping seals, minke whales, beavers, pine martens, mountain hares, and otters.

Naturalist Joe Hutto’s latest adventures in wildlife observation take him to Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. Hutto is living in a tent at 12,000 feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant—and human needs can become a matter of life and death—to study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.