Nature Writing

Leaving her garden to the mercy of the slugs, award-winning writer Alys Fowler set out in an inflatable kayak to explore Birmingham's canal network, full of little-used waterways where huge pike skulk and kingfishers dart. Her book is about noticing the wild everywhere and what it means to see beauty where you least expect it. What happens when someone who has learned to observe her external world in such detail decides to examine her internal world with the same care?

In Sightlines, Kathleen Jamie reports from the field - from her native Scottish "byways and hills" to the frigid Arctic in 14 enthralling essays. She dissects whatever her gaze falls upon - vistas of cells beneath a hospital microscope, orcas rounding a headland, the aurora borealis lighting up the frozen sea. In so doing, she questions what, exactly, constitutes "nature", and upends the idea that it is always picturesque. Written with precision, subtlety, and wry humor, Sightlines urges the listener: "Keep looking, even when there's nothing much to see."

Though Christians affirm that the Old Testament bears witness to Christ, how the Old Testament writers did this is a matter of extensive debate. Furthermore, Christian biblical scholars also debate the degree to which contemporary interpreters of the Bible can follow the hermeneutics of the New Testament authors in using the Old Testament to point to the person and work of Jesus Christ. Five Views on Christ in the Old Testament is the first book to bring together in conversation the major views on how the Old Testament points to Christ.

One dark and stormy winter night, outside his remote New England farmhouse, Hal Borland heard howling. At the door were a half-starved black-and-white mutt and his puppy companion. While reluctant to welcome these uninvited guests into their home, Hal and his wife gave them refuge, finally naming them Pat and Mike. When a local boy lost his dog, and the Borland's gave Mike to him, Pat's strong personality blossomed, and he becomes a treasured companion and member of the family.

Ever since he was young, Levison Wood has been fascinated by elephants and their fight for survival. Whilst trekking the Nile he saw these beasts up close, and in The Last Giants, he finally satisfies his desire to learn more about the majestic African elephant. In The Last Giants, he teams up with local trackers to gain insight into how this iconic species survives, camps out in the wild, meets the people and tribes living on the migration's path, and joins the park rangers whose job it is to protect these land goliaths.

Stephanie White, from Charlotte NC, made up her mind to tackle the three individual 200-mile distance races known as the Triple Crown of 200’s. This includes the Bigfoot 205 mile race, Tahoe 200 mile race, and the Moab 240 mile race. While trying to figure out how to train for these races, she decided to do a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail and learned so much about herself and life, in general, along the way.

At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.

Told with Thoreauian poeticism and appreciation to detail, Morgan Bulkeley Sr. guides the listener through the wonders of one of the World's most beautiful natural landscapes: that of the Berkshires of Massachusetts.

The Earth is trying to teach us to live better. To lead richer, happier lives. Will we continue down the limited path of the mechanical mind? Or will we tune into ultimate intelligence? The same intelligence that allows blood to flow through our veins, bees to pollinate flowers, birds to fly south, salmon to spawn, whales to migrate, caterpillars to become butterflies, the Earth to rotate, the moon to orbit, and the rest of nature to function perfectly of its own accord?

Elemental, fierce, and full of wonder, the Cairngorm mountains are the high and rocky heart of Scotland. To know them would take forever, to love them demands a kind of courageous surrender. In The Hidden Fires, Merryn Glover undertakes that challenge with Nan Shepherd as companion and guiding light. Following in the footsteps and contours of The Living Mountain, she explores the same landscapes and themes as Shepherd's seminal work

Nina Mingya Powles first learned to swim in Borneo - where her mother was born and her grandfather studied freshwater fish. There, the local swimming pool became her first body of water. Through her life there have been others that have meant different things, but have still been, in their own way, home: from the wild coastline of New Zealand to a pond in northwest London. This collection of essays explores the bodies of water that separate and connect us, as well as everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar to butterflies.

Unabridged selections from George Mallory's collected writings on his mountaineering - and his motivations. Famously impelled to climb Mount Everest simply because it was there, Mallory made three attempts to be the first to reach its summit, and perished on the third. His writing reveals the emotional life of the mountaineer. With eloquence, Mallory captures the struggles and the rewards involved, the climber's sense of triumph, and experiences of staggering beauty.

While birding literature is filled with tales of expert observers spotting rare species in exotic locales, John Yow reminds us that the most fascinating birds can be the ones perched right outside our windows. In thirty-five engaging and sometimes irreverent vignettes, Yow reveals the fascinating lives of the birds we see nearly every day. Following the seasons, he covers forty-two species, discussing the improbable, unusual, and comical aspects of his subjects' lives.

This time our intrepid explorer hikes the breathtaking 186 miles of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path. A stunning and dramatic landscape of soaring rocky clifftops and sprawling white sands. Join him as he encounters a plethora of amazing wildlife from peregrine falcons to razorbills, from seals to wild ponies. Not to mention the dashed impressive bracing vistas and stormy seas, of course.

Not far from Seattle skyscrapers live 150-year-old clams, more than 250 species of fish, and underwater kelp forests as complex as any terrestrial ecosystem. For millennia, vibrant Coast Salish communities have lived beside these waters dense with nutrient-rich foods, with cultures intertwined through exchanges across the waterways. Transformed by settlement and resource extraction, Puget Sound and its future health now depend on a better understanding of the region's ecological complexities.

On my 23rd birthday, my father gave me an envelope which I figured would be a gift certificate for something outdoors. But to my surprise, it was an airline ticket to Atlanta! My confusion turned into huge excitement when he said, "We are going to hike the Appalachian Trail in less than 50 days. Get ready son." At first, I thought I should just write this book like a journal of what we did. But then my father suggested that I should write it like a guidebook that can help anyone from a beginner to an advanced hiker.

There is the Cornwall Lamorna Ash knew as a child – the idyllic, folklore-rich place where she spent her summer holidays. Then there is the Cornwall she discovers when, feeling increasingly dislocated in London, she moves to Newlyn, a fishing town near Land’s End. This Cornwall is messier and harder; it doesn’t seem like a place that would welcome strangers. Before long, however, Lamorna finds herself on a week-long trawler trip with a crew of local fishermen, afforded a rare glimpse into their world, their warmth and their humour.

Have you ever wanted to visit Machu Picchu, or witness the Northern Lights? To explore remote landscapes where no boot has tread, no shutter ever snapped? You can.... Before he became Green Giant on the Appalachian Trail, Gary Sizer was a Marine, a computer nerd, and a guy with a problem. No matter how much time he spends outside, it's never enough. Whether being thrashed by drill instructors at Parris Island or drenched by a squall in a high tundra, the same calming thought always prevailed: It's good to be outside.

For readers and viewers of The Perfect Storm, opening this long-awaited work by Sebastian Junger will be like stepping off the deck of the Andrea Gail and into the inferno of a fire burning out of control in the steep canyons of Idaho. Here is the same meticulous prose brought to bear on the inner workings of a terrifying elemental force; here is a cast of characters risking everything in an effort to bring that force under control.

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed west face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into base camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead.