Conservation Science

A collection of 13 award-winning short stories concerning the true adventures of California fish and game wardens and the wildlife-destroying outlaws they pursue. These stories illustrate the wide variety of wildlife-related problems wardens face in California, which has a greater diversity of wildlife and wildlife habitat than any other state and is second only to Alaska in its vast expanses of wilderness.

“This is one of those stories that begins with a female body. Hers was crumpled, roadside, in the ash-colored slush between asphalt and snowbank.” So begins Erica Berry’s kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves, both real and symbolic. At the center of this lyrical inquiry is the legendary OR-7, who roams away from his familial pack in northeastern Oregon. While charting OR-7’s record-breaking journey out of the Wallowa Mountains, Erica simultaneously details her own coming-of-age as she moves away from home and wrestles with inherited beliefs about fear, danger, femininity, and the body.

From Dr. Tim Flannery, one of the world's foremost experts on conservation and ecology, comes a book of immeasurable importance. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as a "powerful and persuasive" work that is "sure to provoke strong reaction", The Weather Makers is among the finest examinations of climate change ever written.

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses—on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

When Bob Quinn was a kid, a stranger at a county fair gave him a few kernels of an unusual grain. Little did he know, that grain would change his life. Years later, after finishing a PhD in plant biochemistry and returning to his family's farm in Montana, Bob started experimenting with organic wheat. In the beginning, his concern wasn't health or the environment; he just wanted to make a decent living and some chance encounters led him to organics.

Five Times Faster is an inside story from Simon Sharpe, who has spent ten years at the forefront of climate change policy and diplomacy. In our fight to avoid dangerous climate change, science is pulling its punches, diplomacy is picking the wrong battles, and economics has been fighting for the other side. This provocative and engaging book sets out how we should rethink our strategies and reorganize our efforts in the fields of science, economics, and diplomacy, so that we can act fast enough to stay safe.

In The Worst Hard Time, Timothy Egan put the environmental disaster of the Dust Bowl at the center of a rich history, told through characters he brought to indelible life. Now he performs the same alchemy with the Big Burn, the largest-ever forest fire in America and the tragedy that cemented Teddy Roosevelt's legacy in the land.

In the late 19th century, as humans came to realize that our rapidly industrializing and globalizing societies were driving other animal species to extinction, a movement to protect and conserve them was born. In Beloved Beasts, acclaimed science journalist Michelle Nijhuis traces the movement's history: from early battles to save charismatic species such as the American bison and bald eagle to today's global effort to defend life on a larger scale.

An exploration of water's power to heal us, inspire us, and offer us spiritual meaning. This is a feminist reimagining of the meaning of power through the lens of water. Easkey offers a range of wellness practices to encourage the listener to connect with water as healer, restoring a relationship of care.

“One of the most important utopian novels of the twentieth century that still has very important lessons to teach us. It will always convey to perfection the wild optimism of that ….

For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth - Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.

The science is overwhelming; the facts are in. The planet is heating up at an alarming rate and the results are everywhere to be seen. Yet, as time runs out, climate progress is blocked by the men who are profiting from the burning of the planet: energy moguls like the Koch brothers and Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson. Powerful politicians like Senators Mitch McConnell and Jim Inhofe, who receive massive contributions from the oil and coal industries. Most of these men are too intelligent to truly believe that climate change is not a growing crisis.

A Brief History of the Earth's Climate is an accessible, myth-busting guide to the natural evolution of the Earth's climate over 4.6 billion years, and how and why human-caused global warming and climate change is different and much more dangerous. It covers the major historical climate change processes, as well as recent human-induced climate change and the implications of the COVID pandemic for climate change. It is an essential listen for everyone who is looking to understand what drives climate change, counter skeptics and deniers, and take action on the climate emergency.

Fashion is political. From the red carpets of the Met Gala to online fast fashion, clothes tell a story of inequality, racism and climate crisis. In The Anti-Capitalist Book of Fashion, Tansy E. Hoskins unpicks the threads of capitalist industry to reveal the truth about our clothes.

Part memoir, part manifesto, in Eat Like a Fish Bren Smith - a former commercial fisherman turned restorative ocean farmer - shares a bold new vision for the future of food: seaweed. Through tales that span from his childhood in Newfoundland to his early years on the high seas aboard commercial fishing trawlers, from pioneering new forms of ocean farming to surfing the frontiers of the food movement, Smith introduces the world of sea-based agriculture and advocates getting ocean vegetables onto American plates (there are thousands of edible varieties in the sea!).

Darwin's theory of evolution is accepted by most educated Americans as simple fact. This easy acceptance, however, hides from us the many ways in which evolution - as an idea - shapes our thinking about a great many things. What if this idea is wrong? What if "evolution" is just a word that covers up scientific ignorance of how the wonders of the living world could have been created? Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson looks at the evidence for Darwinistic evolution the way a lawyer would - with a cold dispassionate eye for logic and proof.

Richard Rashke leads us through the myriad of charges and countercharges, theories and facts, and reaches conclusions based solely on the evidence in hand. Originally published in 1981, his audiobook offers a vivid, edgy picture of the tensions that racked this country in the 1970s. However, the volume is not only an important historical document. Complex, fascinating characters populate this compelling insider's view of the nuclear industry.

Reissued on the 10th anniversary of its publication, this classic work on our environmental crisis features a new introduction by the author, reviewing both the progress and ground lost in the fight to save the Earth. This impassioned plea for radical and life-renewing change is today still considered a groundbreaking work in environmental studies. McKibben's argument that the survival of the globe is dependent on a fundamental, philosophical shift in the way we relate to nature is more relevant than ever.

When a beloved place is decimated by physical damage, many hit the donate button or call their congressperson. But award-winning author Trebbe Johnson argues that we need new methods for coping with these losses and invites listeners to reconsider what constitutes “worthwhile action”. She discusses real wounded places ranging from weapons-testing grounds at Eglin Air Force Base to Appalachian mountain tops destroyed by mining. These stories, along with tools for community engagement, show us how we can find beauty in these places and discover new sources of meaning and community.

Once, farmers knew how to make a living hedge and fed their flocks on tree-branch hay. Rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts, and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls, and baskets. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. This created the healthiest, most sustainable, and most diverse woodlands that we have ever known. In this journey from the English fens to Spain, Japan, and California, William Bryant Logan rediscovers what was once an everyday ecology.