Natural Science

As nature's largest and longest-lived creations, trees play an extraordinarily important role in our cities; they are living landmarks that define space, cool the air, soothe our psyches, and connect us to nature and our past. Jill Jonnes's Urban Forests tells the captivating stories of the founding mothers and fathers of urban forestry, in addition to those arboreal advocates presently using the latest technologies to illuminate the value of trees to public health and to our urban infrastructure.

In The Marsh Builders, Sharon Levy delves into the intertwined histories of wetlands loss and water pollution. The book's springboard is the tale of a years-long citizen uprising in Humboldt County, California, which led to the creation of one of the first US wetlands designed to treat city sewage. The book explores the global roots of this local story: the cholera epidemics that plagued 19th-century Europe; the researchers who invented modern sewage treatment after bumbling across the insight that microbes break down pollutants in water; and more.

This work is intended to create access to the wonders and benefits of nature to those who may have mobility issues, disabilities (including visual impairment), or who otherwise lack access to the healing power of nature due to financial hardship, racial, social, or fat-biased exclusion, or other circumstances.

Coal mining in the UK dates back to Roman times, but in the 21st century, has practically disappeared. In this history, Jeremy Paxman charts our vital relationship with coal and all the extraordinary change it has fuelled. Told through the stories of real people, Paxman travels the regions of the UK where communities were built around coal, to the industrial revolution, to the beginnings of time and coal’s geological formation, to the great tragedies such as Aberfan, and to the picket lines of the miners’ strike.

The incredible story of a flood of near-Biblical proportions - its destruction, its heroes and victims, and how it shaped America’s natural-disaster policies for the next century. The storm began March 23, 1913, with a series of tornadoes that killed 150 people and injured 400. Then the freezing rains started and the flooding began. It was the nation’s most widespread flood ever - more than 700 people died, hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings were destroyed, and millions were left homeless.

How do you recognize healthy soil? How much can your existing soil be improved? What are the best amendments to use for your soil? Let Building Soil answer your questions and be your guide on gardening from the ground up. Fertilizing, tilling, weed management, and irrigation all affect the quality of your soil. Using author Elizabeth Murphy’s detailed instructions, anyone can become a successful soil-based gardener, whether you want to start a garden from scratch or improve an existing garden.

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the beloved Thor Hanson takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, our mythologies, and our very existence. They've given us sweetness and light, the beauty of flowers, and as much as a third of the foodstuffs we eat. And, alarmingly, they are at risk of disappearing.

Була зима, сніжинки падали на землю, з дахів звисали бурульки - загалом, звичайний зимовий день. Але раптом місто наповнилося теплом, лавина гарячого повітря обрушилася на нього ззовні, подарувавши місту чергове ракетне літо. Ця розповідь — це не просто картина неймовірного майбутнього, це емоційна подорож у світ, де наука здатна перетворювати зиму на літо, де надії та мрії про космос стають відчутними та реальними. Бредбері майстерно вплітає в розповідь мотиви зміни, устремлінь до невідомого та тонку ностальгію за втраченою гармонією з природою.

Brains Through Time examines how vertebrate nervous systems evolved in conjunction with other organ systems and the planet's ecology. Surveying an enormous range of information on genes and proteins, sensory and motor systems, central neural circuits, physiology, and animal behavior, the authors reconstruct the major changes that occurred as vertebrates emerged and then diversified.

Nixon declared the war on cancer in 1971. Forty-five years and billions of dollars later, it looks like we have lost the battle. Or have we? When a natural, non-toxic way to fight cancer is discovered, it is big news in the scientific community. But instead of being embraced, it is fiercely opposed by those tied to the pharmaceutical industry. Research by the late Mirko Beljanski, PhD, - one of the first green molecular biologists - revealed that natural molecules can selectively target cancer cells and work alongside many chemotherapy drugs.

Ofelia Archer has a full life...which only gets fuller when a dead body lands in her backyard. As owner of New Orleans’ premier supernatural speakeasy, Ofelia is always in the thick of things when the witch hits the fan. Zach Sully has a colorful background. As a panther shifter, he keeps his true origins secret while walking the colorful streets of the French Quarter keeping law and order. Ofelia and Sully will be forced to get over their inner misgivings and unite if they want to solve the crime...and stay alive in the process.

With A Furious Sky, Eric Jay Dolin has created a vivid, sprawling account of our encounters with hurricanes, from the nameless storms that threatened Columbus's New World voyages to the destruction wrought in Puerto Rico by Hurricane Maria. Weaving a story of shipwrecks and devastated cities, of heroism and folly, Dolin introduces a rich cast of unlikely heroes and puts us in the middle of the most devastating storms of the past, none worse than the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, which killed at least 6,000 people, the highest toll of any natural disaster in American history.

Yorkshire, it has been said, is 'a continent unto itself'. It is southern Britain in microcosm, where mountain, plain, coast, downs, fen and heath lie side by side. Richard Morris weaves history, travelogue and ecology to explore this landscape in legend, literature and popular regard. Morris considers different ways to come to Yorkshire - in a poem, through an image, on holiday.

In February 1910, a monstrous blizzard centered on Washington State hit the Northwest, breaking records. The world stopped - but nowhere was the danger more terrifying than near a tiny town called Wellington, perched high in the Cascade Mountains, where a desperate situation evolved minute by minute: two trainloads of cold, hungry passengers and their crews found themselves marooned without escape, their railcars gradually being buried in the rising drifts.

The loss of walking as an individual and a community act has the potential to destroy our deepest spiritual connections, our democratic society, our neighborhoods, and our freedom. But we can change the course of our mobility. And we need to. Delving into a wealth of science, history, and anecdote, from our deepest origins as hominins to our first steps as babies, to universal design and social infrastructure, A Walking Life shows exactly how walking is essential, and how deeply reliant our brains and bodies are on this simple pedestrian act - and how we can reclaim it.

In The Sea Is Not Made of Water, Adam Nicolson explores the natural wonders of the intertidal and our long human relationship with it. The physics of the seas, the biology of anemone and limpet, the long history of the Earth, and the stories we tell of those who have lived here: all interconnect in this zone where the philosopher, scientist and poet can meet and find meaning.

The Devil's Liar is the ninth in the best-selling Psychic Surveys series, that feature plot twists, compelling characters, and a mystery at its dark heart. As a young woman, Theo was confronted by the spirit of a child who had killed other children, but decided she could be of no help, shutting down all possibility of further communication. Now older and wiser, Theo comes to regret that decision and wants to make amends, involving the Psychic Surveys team in her quest.

More than any other writer, Gilbert White (1720-1793) has shaped the relationship between man and nature. A hundred years before Darwin, White realised the crucial role of worms in the formation of soil and understood the significance of territory and song in birds. His precise, scrupulously honest, and unaffectedly witty observations led him to interpret animals’ behaviour in a unique manner. Here, a collection of his letters to Daines Barrington and Thomas Pennant.

If we are, in part, a product of our genes, can free will exist? Incisive and engaging, this indispensable tour of evolutionary biology runs the gamut of contemporary debates, from science and religion to our place in the universe.

It's been 15 years since the world fell apart under the onslaught of a vampire horde. Nothing is the same. The suckers own the night, and survivors of the apocalypse move about only by day. Earth has been reduced to ashes as evil has taken it over piece by piece. Few have been able to stand against the onslaught. Except for a rare breed of warriors seeking to eradicate the scourge that plagues Earth.