Science Ecology

Among the more than 34,000 species of fish, few have the walleye's following—among anglers and diners, states conferring official status on the fish, and towns battling for recognition as the Walleye Capital of the World. And among those passionate fans, few know the walleye as well as Paul J. Radomski does—a fisheries biologist, lake ecology scientist, and old fisherman. In Walleye: A Beautiful Fish of the Dark he unspools the mysteries of this fascinating fish.

In a riveting investigation of the science and ecology of wildfires, journalist M.R. O'Connor ventures into some of the oldest, most beautiful, and remote forests in North America to explore the powerful and ancient relationship between trees, fires, and humans. Along the way, she describes revelatory research in the fields of paleobotany and climate science to show how the world's forests have been shaped by fire for hundreds of millions of years.

With warmth and compassion, Denworth weaves together past and present, field biology and cutting-edge neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed to make friends, the process by which social bonds develop, and how a drive for friendship underpins human (and nonhuman) society. With its refreshingly optimistic vision of the evolution of human nature, this book puts friendship at the center of our lives.

From bestselling author, long-time former National Geographic Explorer, and anthropologist Wade Davis comes the story of America's Nile: how it once flowed freely and how human intervention has left it near exhaustion, altering the water temperature, volume, local species, and shoreline of the river Theodore Roosevelt once urged us to "leave it as it is."

In The Equations of Life, biologist Charles S. Cockell makes the forceful argument that the laws of physics narrowly constrain how life can evolve, making evolution's outcomes predictable. If we were to find something very much like a lady bug eating something very much like an aphid on a distant planet, we shouldn't be surprised. The forms of life are guided by a limited set of rules, and, as a result, there is a narrow set of solutions to the challenges of existence.

Meet the intelligent insects, marvelous minibeasts, and inspirational invertebrates that help shape our planet - and discover how you can help them help us by rebugging your attitude today! Remember when there were bugs on your windshield? Ever wonder where they went? We need to act now if we are to help the insects survive. Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Attenborough, and Elizabeth Kolbert are but a few voices championing the rewilding of our world. Rebugging the Planet shows us small changes we can make to have a big impact on our littlest allies.

If you learn about the scientific method, you learn that first we hypothesize about something we’ve experienced, and then we look for more of it. This works well enough—but what if you are interested in studying a heretofore unknown comet or supernova? That is the essential problem of the astronomer: the most important discoveries happen without notice! Indeed, as Chris Lintott argues in Accidental Astronomy, luck defines astronomy. Lintott explores the ways in which happenstance shapes how we investigate the sky.

Alone on a small Missouri farm after a thirty-year marriage, Sue Hubbell found a new love—of the winged, buzzing variety. Left with little but the commercial beekeeping and honey-producing business she started with her husband, Hubbell found solace in the natural world. Then she began to write, challenging herself to tell the absolute truth about her life and the things she cared about. Describing the ups and downs of beekeeping from one springtime to the next, A Country Year transports listeners to a different, simpler place.

An examination of the Scientific Revolution that shows how the mechanistic world view of modern science has sanctioned the exploitation of nature, unrestrained commercial expansion, and a new socioeconomic order that subordinates women.

When Chris Dombrowski burst onto the literary scene with Body of Water, the book was acclaimed as “a classic” (Jim Harrison) and its author compared with John McPhee. Dombrowski begins the highly anticipated The River You Touch with a question as timely as it is profound: “What does a meaningful, mindful, sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropocene?”

Ruppel Shell follows the elusive eel from Maine to the Sargasso Sea, stalking riversides, fishing holes, laboratories, restaurants, courtrooms, and America's first commercial eel "family farm." This is an enthralling, globe-spanning look at an animal that you may never come to love, but which will never fail to astonish you.

Fungi are everywhere. Most are harmless, some are helpful. A few are killers. Collectively, infectious fungi are the most devastating agents of disease on Earth, and a fungus that can persist in the environment without its host is here for the long haul. In gripping, accessible prose, Emily Monosson documents how changing climate, trade, and travel are making us all more vulnerable to invasion.

In this first-ever English translation of The Weather Detective, Peter Wohlleben uses his long experience and deep love of nature to help decipher the weather and our local environments in a completely new and compelling way. Analyzing the explanations for everyday questions and mysteries surrounding weather and natural phenomena, he delves into a new and intriguing world of scientific investigation.

"There are no unsacred places," the poet Wendell Berry has written. "There are only sacred places and desecrated places." What might it mean to behold the world with such depth and feeling that it is no longer possible to imagine it as something separate from ourselves, or to live without regard for its well-being? To understand the work of seeing things as an utterly involving moral and spiritual act? Such questions have long occupied the center of contemplative spiritual traditions.

Sixty-six million years ago the dinosaurs were wiped from the face of the earth. Today a new generation of dinosaur hunters, armed with cutting-edge technology, is piecing together the complete story of how the dinosaurs created a hugely successful empire that lasted for around 150 million years.

Born in Boston, Stephen Bodio wandered into Magdalena, New Mexico, in the 1970s while on his way to Montana and never left. He was accompanied by Betsy Huntington, who was twenty years his senior; the couple had been inseparable from the day they met. After stumbling upon a vintage home along the highway, they settled into a country life; it was the perfect way for the two of them to make their lives together in an out-of-the-way place.

New from best-selling author Mark Shepard! Written as a companion to the best seller Restoration Agriculture, this book will help farmers capture water in areas they want to and avoid having water flow immediately to the low point. The result? Less water expense, healthier crops and livestock, and less erosion...just to name a few.

Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science and one of the leading young environmental journalists and bloggers working today, immerses listeners in the world of those who study hurricanes. What was once an arcane branch of meteorology (itself an arcane science) has become embroiled in one of the most politicized and hotly contested debates in American science: whether or not the recent hurricane disasters, culminating in Katrina, are connected to global warming.

In Seven Dirty Words, journalist and cultural critic James Sullivan tells the story of Alternative America from the 1950s to the present, from the singular vantage point of George Carlin, the Catholic boy for whom nothing was sacred.

Red is a brilliantly told, captivating history of red hair throughout the ages. An audiobook that breaks new ground, dispels myths, and reinforces the special nature of being a redhead, with a look at multiple disciplines, including science, religion, politics, feminism and sexuality, literature, and art. With an obsessive fascination that is as contagious as it is compelling, author Jacky Colliss Harvey (herself a redhead) begins her exploration of red hair in prehistory and traces the redhead gene as it made its way out of Africa with the early human diaspora.