Science Ecology

As Brits we pride ourselves as stoic defenders, boasting a record of resistance dating back to 1066. Yet, even a cursory examination of the natural world reveals that while interlopers of the human variety may have been kept at bay, our islands have been invaded, conquered and settled by an endless succession of animals, plants, fungi and other alien lifeforms that apparently belong elsewhere. Indeed it’s often hard to work out what actually is native, and what is foreign.

On the afternoon of July 13, 1977, having become the first climbers to reach the summit of the Ogre, Doug Scott and Chris Bonington began their long descent. In the minutes that followed, any feeling of success from their achievement would be overwhelmed by the start of a desperate fight for survival. And things would only get worse.

When you turn on the tap or twist the cap, you might not give a second thought to where your drinking water comes from. But how it gets from the ground to your glass is far more complex than you might think. Is it safe to drink tap water? Should you feel guilty buying bottled water? Is your water vulnerable to terrorist attacks? With springs running dry and reservoirs emptying, where is your water going to come from in the future? In Drinking Water, Duke professor James Salzman shows how drinking water highlights the most pressing issues of our time.

Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, and other mysteries.

Roger Fouts fulfilled humankind's age-old dream of talking to animals by pioneering communication with chimpanzees through sign language. Now, in Next of Kin, Fouts tells the dramatic story of his odyssey from novice researcher to celebrity scientist and caretaker of a family of chimpanzees, to his impassioned awakening as a crusader for the rights of animals.

On August 21, 2017, more than 10 million Americans will experience an awe-inspiring phenomenon: the first total eclipse of the sun in America in almost 40 years. In Sun Moon Earth, astronomer Tyler Nordgren illustrates how this most seemingly unnatural of natural phenomena was transformed from a fearsome omen to a tourist attraction. From the astrologers of ancient China and Babylon to the high priests of the Maya, Sun Moon Earth takes us around the world to show how different cultures interpreted these dramatic events.

It is elemental, mysterious, precious, destructive. It is the subject of countless poems and paintings; the top of the weather report; the source of all the world's water. Yet this is the first audiobook to tell the story of rain.

In this paradigm-shattering book, biologist Mark W. Moffett draws on findings in psychology, sociology, and anthropology to explain the social adaptations that bind societies. He explores how the tension between identity and anonymity defines how societies develop, function, and fail. Surpassing Guns, Germs, and Steel and Sapiens, The Human Swarm reveals how mankind created sprawling civilizations of unrivaled complexity - and what it will take to sustain them.

When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles—invited by ship’s captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship’s naturalist—he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history.

In Birding Under the Influence, Dorian Anderson, a neuroscience researcher on a pressure-filled life trajectory, walks away from the world of elite institutions, research labs, and academic publishing. In doing so, he falls in love and discovers he has freed himself to embrace his lifelong passion for birding.

Even if we've never had direct contact with one, we will have seen one, or at the very least, heard one. For those of us who live in the Western world, it is more than likely that one sleeps in our house, possibly even on our bed. I'm talking, of course, of the dog. Yet, this animal, which lives alongside 500 million of us all over the world - as an invaluable partner and a trusted confidant - presents us with one great unsolved mystery: how did this relationship - the most complex and enduring of any between human and animal - start in the first place?

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?” He answers this fundamental question of our time initially by listening lovingly to rivers and the land they pulse through in his adopted home of Montana.

In January 2006, a month or two after my father died, I thought I saw him again - a momentary impression of an old man, a little stooped, setting off for a walk in his characteristic fawn corduroys and shabby quilted jacket. After teenage rifts it was walking that brought us closer as father and son, and this ghost of Dad has been walking at my elbow since his death, as I have ruminated on his great love of walking, his prodigious need to do it - and how and why I walk myself.

In The Ocean’s Menagerie, world-renowned marine ecologist Dr. Drew Harvell takes us diving from Hawaii to the Salish Sea, from St. Croix to Indonesia, to uncover the incredible underwater “superpowers” of spineless creatures: we meet corals many times stronger than steel or concrete, sponges who create potent chemical compounds to fight off disease, and sea stars who garden the coastlines, keeping all the other nearby species in perfect balance.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately.” And so it began. Henry David Thoreau, at 27, built a tiny, one-room cabin in the woods — on land owned by his friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson — and began his two-year experiment in frugality on the shore of Walden Pond. He wasn’t seeking isolation so much as simplicity, to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.”

Countless reports from credible individuals suggest that something shocking may be stalking the woods of the southern United States—something massive, bipedal, and covered in hair. Tales of these Southern Sasquatch creatures—such as the one made famous by the 1972 horror movie The Legend of Boggy Creek—date back to the very origins of Deep South history and are reported even today.

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

Well, Cool Earth Facts for Kids has all of those facts and more! Made for kids eight and up, and younger ambitious learners, this audiobook breaks down all of the planet's coolest and most interesting processes! Designed to help create a foundation for a broad understanding of Earth's natural history and functions, this audiobook includes chapters on the following:

Eco-friendly living made simple. As a lifestyle guide and an introduction to sustainable living, Sustainable Badass shows you why and how to minimize your consumption while effortlessly making your habits greener.

The never-before-told story of the horned rabbit - the myths, the hoaxes, the very real scientific breakthrough it inspired - and how it became a cultural touchstone of the American West.