Nature

The 19th century spawned a unique breed of men who took pride in their woodsmen skills and rough codes of conduct. They called themselves lumberers, shantymen, timber beasts, les bucherron – and, more recently, lumberjacks, working in the vast forests of eastern Canada and British Columbia.

Across the country, farm boys would go to the woods, lumbering being the only winter work available. Immigrants – Swedes and Finns more often than not – resumed the trades they had learned so well in the forests of northern Europe. They broke the cold, hard monotony of camp life with songs, tall tales and card games.

Within these pages, author Donald MacKay allows us a glimpse into that moment in our heritage when men entered the virgin forest to carve out an industry from the seemingly endless array of pine, spruce, maple and balsam fir found there.

"[Donald] MacKay's book has many virtues. His prose is clean. He lets the surviving pioneers talk for themselves when they have something to say, but never allows them to get too windy. He separates legends and half-truths from facts ..."
– The Montreal Star

"... a superb marriage of text and pictures, a nostalgic but not sentimental discussion of one of Canada's primary industries, logging."
– The Globe and Mail

"It's marvellous material of a type often ignored by historians ... Such books may do more to help us understand ourselves than all the academic tomes together."
– Atlantic Insight

Quetico Park in northwestern Ontario celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2009. Long-recognized as a gem among parks, Quetico contains some of the largest stands of old-growth red and white pine in Canada , as well as a diversity of fascinating lichens, carnivorous plants in specialized habitats.

The author presents an insightful look into Quetico's natural history as he examines the adapations that have allowed moose, white-tailed deer, wolves and other mammals to survive. The human history of the park is also explored, beginning with the Objiwa living there when the area was designated as a park, followed by accounts of trappers, loggers, miners, park rangers, and poachers.

Beginning with the retreat of the glaciers, the author combines his thorough research into Quetico's long and varied history with the threads of his own extensive involvement with the park. The result is a splendid tribute to a very special place.

A holistic appraisal of 24 of the best-loved trees of Europe and North America, presented with stunningly beautiful paintings, drawings and photographs.

Trees are one of Earth's oldest life forms; silent witnesses to human evolution and the passing of time. Many people today are unaware of their significance in Earth's ecology, their medicinal and nutritional properties, or the veneration bestowed on them by ancient peoples.

This book captures all these elements in an inspiring holistic appraisal. Hageneder looks in detail at 24 of Europe and North America's best-loved trees: their physical characteristics, their healing powers, the traditions associated with them and how they have inspired human beings through the ages.

Beautifully illustrated with black and white photographs and illustrations.

Even in the brick and concrete heart of our cities, nature finds a way. Birds and mammals, insects, plants and trees—they all manage to thrive in the urban jungle, and Bob Gilbert is their champion and their chronicler. He explores the hidden wildlife of the inner city and its edgelands, finding unexpected beauty in the cracks and crannies, and uncovering the deep and essential relationship that exists between people and nature when they are bound together in such close proximity.

Beginning from Poplar, the East End area in which he lives, Bob explores, in particular, our relationship with the trees that have helped shape London; from the original wildwood through to the street trees of today. He draws from history and natural history, poetry and painting, myth and magic, and a great deal of walking, observing and listening. 

Beautifully written, passionate and defiant, Ghost Trees tells the secrets and stories of the urban wildscape, of glorious nature resilient and resurgent on our very doorsteps.

Morningside Heights, the institutional heart of New York City, is also one of the city's most architecturally distinguished neighborhoods. The high plateau that forms Morningside Heights is geographically isolated within the city and remained largely undeveloped even as neighboring Harlem and the Upper West Side became prestigious residential communities. At the end of the nineteenth century, institutions relocated to the plateau where sizable plots were available at a convenient distance from the built-up city. In 1887 Episcopal Bishop Henry Potter announced plans for the construction of a great cathedral at the edge of the plateau. The cathedral was soon followed by Columbia College and St. Luke's Hospital, which contemplated grand complexes, and by newer institutions such as Barnard College and Teachers College that were intent on establishing a presence in the rapidly growing city. Thus, Morningside Heights became indelibly associated with New York's educational, medical, and religious foundations, and was appropriately dubbed "the Acropolis of New York."

In this extensively illustrated book, Andrew S. Dolkart explores the architecturally varied complexes built by these organizations. He traces the successes and failures of each building project, as trustees and supporters struggled to raise funds in order to construct great campuses in a city where residents were not always generous in their support of such endeavors. Commissioning designs from some of city's and the nation's leading architects, the Morningside Heights institutions created a richly diverse ensemble of buildings.

The book tells the stories of the excitement surrounding the initial plans for an Episcopal cathedral and the ultimate failure of this grandiose project; the efforts of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to build a rival nondenominational church (Riverside Church); the development of Charles McKim's inspired designs for Columbia's campus; the efforts of Barnard and Teachers College to build impressive campuses adjacent to Columbia; and the later projects of Union and Jewish theological seminaries and the Institute of Musical Art (late the Julliard School) to erect buildings that would be part of the larger institutional concentration, but world provide each with a unique architectural identity.

Dolkart also traces the history of the surrounding residential neighborhood, providing the first comprehensive analysis of the design and construction the early-twentieth-century speculative apartment houses that typify so many New York neighborhoods. Based on extensive research and incorporating more than 200 photographs, Morningside Heights will appeal to anyone interested in architecture, urban development, or the history of New York City, as well as those associated with the neighborhood or its institutions.

This is the ultimate field guide to the trees and landscapes of Central Park, with a lively, authoritative text and over 900 color photographs, botanical plates, and extraordinarily detailed maps.

Under the direction of the Central Park Conservancy, the park's landscapes have been painstakingly restored to achieve the effects envisioned more than 150 years ago by the park's designers, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. This book highlights the leading role that trees play in defining 22 of these landscapes and chronicles the history of each of more than 200 tree species and varieties present in the park—where it came from and where the most outstanding specimens are located.

Besides being a superb guide to the world's greatest center-city park, this book is a highly informative guide to most of the tree species commonly encountered in the eastern United States. Anyone who loves trees will find this book a very rewarding read, full of fascinating details and beautiful illustrations.

Central Park Trees and Landscapes is divided into two major sections:

"The Landscapes" opens with a geological account of Manhattan Island—from its position 500 million years ago on the edge of the proto–North American continent to its emergence about 15,000 years ago from the Laurentide Ice Sheet. The effects that human inhabitants had on the ecology of the island are described—from the burning of field stubble by Native Americans to the clearing of forest trees by Europeans. Next, the narrative focuses on the land that would eventually become Central Park—how it was saved from being dissected by John Randel's rigid street grid and how Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux became the park's designers. The heart of the section is devoted to the construction of the park in the late 1850s and 1860s. Twenty-two of the park's grand landscapes are pictured in dozens of photographs and in seven detailed maps pinpointing nearly 20,000 trees. Readers can identify each tree on the maps by species using the Tree Maps Key (located on the back of the front flap).

"The Tree Guide" contains informative essays full of intriguing botanical and historical facts on over 200 of the park's tree species and varieties. Each two-page entry features illustrations of leaves, fruits, flowers, and bark as well as a striking portrait photograph of a park tree. The entries are organized into groups by leaf shapes shown on an easy-to-use identification key (located inside the front cover).

• In-depth information about how wildlife coexists with the environment
• Detailed discussions of mammals, birds, fish, invertebrates, fungi, and plants
• Detailed map of wilderness areas in Southeast Alaska
• More than 200 black-and-white illustrations
• A bibliography, list of common and scientific names, and an index

• More than 100 new illustrations, many never before published, as well as new maps and photos
• Major expansion of sections on geology, old-growth forests, marine mammals, and amphibians
• Fifty-two new sidebars—written in the first person to give the text a more personal touch­—that describe recent findings or experiences.
• Sweeping updates and elaborations to chapter narratives—often thanks to technology unknown in 1992.

The Great Alaska Nature Factbook describes the diversity of plants and animals in Alaska. Illustrated with line drawings, the text has entries for the 105 species of mammals, nearly 300 birds, and 1,500 species of plants. The author also provides an overview of the six regions and the natural features such as the Bering Land Bridge, mineral deposits, and hot springs. It is a field guide or "minature encyclopedia" of facts and trivia about Alaska. Index and Further readings are also included.

En estos momentos, en la oscura humedad de un tronco hueco, crece un hongo. Parece inverosímil, pero ese hongo tiene el mismo ancestro que tú, y tu relación con él no solo es genética: también es gastronómica, espiritual, religiosa y comercial.

Desde el agárico blanco, que «provoca la orina» y baja la fiebre de la malaria, hasta los hongos bailarines de la película Fantasía de Disney, pasando por Alicia en el país de las maravillas y el hongo de Chernóbil que se alimenta de la radiación, este compendio con más de 180 entradas te transportará a un universo increíble.

No es una exageración: este año encontrarás muy pocos libros más interesantes que este. No importa en qué año leas esto.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

"This little book is big fun."—Michael Pollan

An illustrated mini-encyclopedia of fungal lore, from John Cage and Terence McKenna to mushroom sex and fairy rings

Fungipedia presents a delightful A–Z treasury of mushroom lore. With more than 180 entries—on topics as varied as Alice in Wonderland, chestnut blight, medicinal mushrooms, poisonings, Santa Claus, and waxy caps—this collection will transport both general readers and specialists into the remarkable universe of fungi.

Combining ecological, ethnographic, historical, and contemporary knowledge, author and mycologist Lawrence Millman discusses how mushrooms are much more closely related to humans than to plants, how they engage in sex, how insects farm them, and how certain species happily dine on leftover radiation, cockroach antennae, and dung. He explores the lives of individuals like African American scientist George Washington Carver, who specialized in crop diseases caused by fungi; Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit, who was prevented from becoming a professional mycologist because she was a woman; and Gordon Wasson, a J. P. Morgan vice-president who almost single-handedly introduced the world to magic mushrooms. Millman considers why fungi are among the most significant organisms on our planet and how they are currently being affected by destructive human behavior, including climate change.

With charming drawings by artist and illustrator Amy Jean Porter, Fungipedia offers a treasure trove of scientific and cultural information. The world of mushrooms lies right at your door—be amazed!

The Santa Cruz Mountains, an area covering almost 1,400 square miles from San Francisco southward to the Monterey County line, are a part of the Coast Range of Central California. The Mountains and the adjacent lowlands have a rich vascular flora, and about 1,800 species, subspecies, varieties, forms, and hybrids of ferns, conifers, and flowering plants, distributed among 168 families, have been reported from the region. This comprehensive flora, the first of the area, is designed for use by both the serious beginner and the trained botanist.

The flora is illustrated by 250 line drawing and ten photographs. In addition, there is a map of the Santa Cruz Mountains area and a stratigraphic profile of the rock formations. The stratigraphic profile and a section on geology have been contributed by Dr. Earl E. Brabb of the United States Geological Survey.

Distributional notes, keys to families, genera, and species, pertinent synonymy, a glossary of technical terms, an index of place names, and common0name and scientific-name indexes form the body of the text. The Introduction contains a description of the geography of the Santa Cruz Mountains and adjacent lowlands, seconds on the geology and climate, a brief discussion and analysis of the vegetation and floristic affinities of the area, and a history of past botanical collecting. A selected list of references has been appended to allow the interested individual to pursue his studies further.

This handy field guide is designed for use by both amateur and professional botanists, biologists, gardeners, and naturalists. The full colour field guide includes over 400 species of water and wetland plants found across Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the northern United States.
Since many of the northern wetland plants are circumpolar in distribution, Water and Wetland Plants of the Prairie Provinces will also be useful in other parts of Canada, the United States, and Eurasia.

An explanation of how an invasive cactus from Mexico became a source of income in Africa

While there are many studies of the global influence of crops and plants, this is perhaps the first social history based around a plant in South Africa. Plants are not quite historical actors in their own right, but their properties and potential help to shape human history. Plants such as prickly pear tend to be invisible to those who do not use them, or at least on the peripheries of people's consciousness. This book explains why they were not peripheral to many people in the Eastern Cape and why a wild and sometimes invasive cactus from Mexico, that found its way around the world over 200 years ago, remains important to African women in shacks and small towns. The central tension at the heart of this history concerns different and sometimes conflicting human views of prickly pear. Some accepted or enjoyed its presence; others wished to eradicate it. While commercial livestock farmers initially found the plant enormously valuable, they came to see it as a scourge in the early twentieth century as it invaded farms and commonages. But for impoverished rural and small town communities of the Eastern Cape it was a godsend. In some places it still provides a significant income for poor black families. Debates about prickly pear - and its cultivated spineless variety - have played out in unexpected ways over the last century and more. Some scientists, once eradicationists, now see varieties of spineless cactus as plants for the future, eminently suited to a world beset by climate change and global warming. The book also addresses central problems around concepts of biodiversity. How do we balance, on the one hand, biodiversity conservation with, on the other, a recognition that plant transfers - and species transfers more generally - have been part of dynamic production systems that have historically underpinned human civilizations. American plants such as maize, cassava and prickly pear have been used to create incalculable value in Africa. Transferred plants are at the heart of many agricultural systems, as well as hybrid botanical and cultural landscapes, sometimes treasured, that are unlikely to be entirely reversed. Some of these plants displace local species, but are invaluable for local livelihoods. Prickly Pear explores this dilemma over the long term and suggests that there must be a significant cultural dimension to ideas about biodiversity. The content of Prickly Pear is based on intensive archival research, on interviews conducted in the Eastern Cape by the authors, as well as on their observations of how people in the area use and consume the plant.

Enhance and enrich your spiritual journey with the power of herbs.

Herbs have been essential to spiritual beliefs and practices throughout time and history. From Christian Scripture to Hindu observances, Jewish ritual to early Islamic literature, Native American traditions to Buddhist symbolism, plants are seen as a blessing from God and a way to remain in harmony with Spirit.

In this fun, informative and engaging guide, you will be delighted by the history of the religious and spiritual use of herbs in many faith traditions and inspired by creative ideas on how to use herbs for spiritual growth. Unique and soul-strengthening activities can teach you how to:

• Create herbal art inspired by your faith
• Craft herbal wreaths, pillows and soaps from herbs selected for their spiritual qualities
• Prepare herbal teas, infused oils, meals and condiments with herbs chosen for their ability to nurture, strengthen and heal
• Make candles infused with herbs that promote balance and centering
• Nourish the soul with herbal sachets and potpourri
• Use incense and smudge sticks to imbue clarity and purity
• Design a simple herb garden of plants chosen from among different spiritual traditions
• Construct spaces in which to use herbs for reflection and meditation

As a little girl in Pangnirtung, Nunavut, Aalasi learned from her mother how to identify and harvest plants. Later, a mother herself, and living in Niaqunnguuq (Apex), she continued the practice, living off the land and passing her knowledge on to the next generation. In this introductory guide to traditional plant use—originally published as Walking with Aalasi—Aalasi shares her memories and knowledge of eighteen plants commonly found in the Canadian Arctic.
From plant identification and environmentally respectful collection to traditional uses and recipes, Edible and Medicinal Arctic Plants teaches readers how to reap the benefits of the natural world around them.

Explore the fascinating world of Nunavut's varied plant life in this richly visual, informative book.

Through beautiful photographs and a broad range of information including traditional knowledge about plant use compiled through interviews with Inuit elders readers will learn about the appearances, adaptations, life cycles, and habitats of the diverse array of plants that live in the North.

Far beyond a barren land of ice and snow, this book will introduce readers to the beautiful variations of plant life that abound on the tundra.

"Offering clear and comprehensive instructions for low-tech growing for a range of budgets, interests, and scales, this book offers practical inspiration and a sense that "hey, I can do this!"
–— DANIELLE STEVENSON, owner, DIY Fungi

DIY Mushroom Cultivation is full of proven, reliable, low-cost techniques for home-scale cultivation that eliminate the need for a clean-air lab space to grow various mushrooms and their mycelium.

Beautiful full-color photos and step-by-step instructions accompany a foundation of mushroom biology and ecology to support a holistic understanding of the practice. Growing techniques are applicable year-round, for any space from house to apartment, and for any climate, budget, or goal. Techniques include:

• Setting up a home growing space
• Inexpensive, simple DIY equipment
• Culture creation from mushroom tissue or spores
• Growing and using liquid cultures and grain spawn
• Growing mushrooms on waste streams Indoor fruiting
• Outdoor mushroom gardens and logs
• Harvesting, processing, tinctures, and cooking.

Whether you hunt mushrooms or dream about growing and working with them but feel constrained by a small living space, DIY Mushroom Cultivation is the ideal guide for getting started in the fascinating and delicious world of fungiculture.

“A comprehensive and personal tome on the production, business, promotion, and problem solving for the independent mushroom grower.” —Taylor Lockwood, renowned mushroom expert & photographer

Most supermarket mushrooms are bland and boring; products of an industrial process which typically relies on expensive equipment and harmful pesticides. Many people would like to add more flavorful and diverse fungi to their diets, but lack the knowledge or confidence to gather or grow their own. Do-it-yourself cultivation is a fun, exciting way to incorporate a variety of mushrooms into a sustainable lifestyle.

Mycelial Mayhem is a straightforward, no-nonsense resource for the aspiring mushroom grower. This practical guide cuts through much of the confusion surrounding methods and techniques, helping the hobbyist or farmer to:

• Select regionally appropriate species for the home garden, farm-scale production, or an edible landscape
• Practice sustainable, environmentally friendly cultivation techniques, such as companion planting, to combat common garden pests and diseases
• Choose a successful, proven business approach to maximize profit and minimize frustration

Many people find that DIY mushroom cultivation is not nearly as complicated as they expect, but a knowledgeable and experienced mentor is crucial to success. Whether your goal is to harvest homegrown gourmet mushrooms for your table, supplement your income by selling to friends and neighbors, or start a full-fledged niche business, Mycelial Mayhem is packed with the advice and resources you need to succeed with this rewarding and valuable crop.

“After reading Mycelial Mayhem’s approachable primer to this age-old art I’m ready to invite the mysterious and captivating kingdom of fungi right into my own home.” —Langdon Cook, author of The Mushroom Hunters

Cities pose formidable obstacles to nonhuman life. Vast expanses of asphalt and concrete are inhospitable to plants and animals; traffic noise and artificial light disturb natural rhythms; sewage and pollutants imperil existence. Yet cities teem with life: In rowhouse neighborhoods, tiny flowers bloom from cracks in the sidewalk. White clover covers lawns, its seeds dispersed by shoes and birds. Moths flutter and spiders weave their webs near electric lights. Sparrows and squirrels feast on the scraps people leave behind. Pairs of red-tailed hawks nest on window ledges. How do wild plants and animals in urban areas find mates? How do they navigate the patchwork of habitats to reproduce while avoiding inbreeding? In what ways do built environments enable or inhibit mating?

This book explores the natural history of sex in urban bacteria, fungi, plants, and nonhuman animals. Kenneth D. Frank illuminates the reproductive behavior of scores of species. He examines topics such as breeding systems, sex determination, sex change, sexual conflict, sexual trauma, sexually transmitted disease, sexual mimicry, sexual cannibalism, aphrodisiacs, and lost sex. Frank offers a guide to urban reproductive diversity across a range of conditions, showing how understanding of sex and mating furthers the appreciation of biodiversity. He presents reproductive diversity as elegant but vulnerable, underscoring the consequences of human activity. Featuring compelling photographs of a multitude of life forms in their city habitats, this book provides a new lens on urban natural history.

For the seriously dedicated as well as the merely curious ’shroomer, Alaska’s Mushrooms is a wide-ranging guide to the fungi of the Last Frontier.

The book, featuring detailed descriptions of 114 species, includes: color photographs; family and common names; genus and species; striking field characters; both a macro- & micro-description; habitat and role; edibility, taste, and odor; look-alikes, and comments. This comprehensive collection also provides:

• information on mushroom seasons and habitats
• hints for collecting mushrooms for food and study
• tips on how to tell the real mushrooms from their “imposters”
• directions for making spore prints (an essential test for identifying mushrooms)
• hundreds of black-and-white line drawings
• a section listing all poisonous mushrooms by toxin groups
• a list of frequently asked questions
• a range map of Alaska’s biogeographic zones

Alaska’s Mushrooms provides authoritative natural history, informative color photographs, and black-and-white line drawings for clear identification, and lively notes from the field. It’s a must-have for anyone who has a passion for hunting mushrooms.

The Ultimate Succulents Book for Gardeners and Crafters

#1 New Release in Cacti & Succulents, Ornamental Plants, Gardening, Horticulture, and Landscape

We know—killing your plants succs. A crash course on all things succulents, this engaging and easy-to-use succulents book offers everything you need to know so you can both successfully grow these gorgeous plants and create cool crafts with them, too. You’ll find everything you need to know from cacti plant care to specific projects for decorating with plants.

A go-to reference for anyone trying to grow and maintain succulents. The ultimate guide to propagating, growing, and styling succulents and cacti both indoors and out, Succulent Style is as informative as it is gorgeous. Designed for millennials who want to stop killing their plants and for DIY types who want to learn about designing with succulents, Succulent Style is full of succulent growing techniques for beginners as well as for knowledgeable gardeners looking to expand their gardening skills. This beautifully photographed compendium makes the perfect addition to any coffee table or bookshelf.

Succulent ideas for your home and garden. Whether you want to learn how to care for a cactus indoor or how to style plants, you’ll find tons of tips and tricks inside. Start designing succulents with fun projects like succulent garlands, wall art, wreaths, succulent bouquets, potted arrangements as well as many other cool things.

Inside, you’ll also find:

• A detailed compilation of succulent varieties
• Instructions on how to propagate and plant cacti and succulents
• Tips to integrate succulents into outdoor and indoor design

If you’re looking for a succulents plants book or cactus book—like A Beginner's Guide to Succulent Gardening, Essential Succulents, The Gardener's Guide to Succulents, or Cacti and Succulents Handbook—then you’ll love Succulent Style.

“Raw, visionary, lucid, and mystical, Cacophony of Bone speaks of the connection between all things, and the magic that can be found in everyday life.”—Katherine May, bestselling author of Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Two days after the winter solstice, Kerri ní Dochartaigh and her partner moved to a remote cottage in the heart of Ireland. They were looking for a home, somewhere to settle into a stable life. Then the pandemic arrived, and their secluded abode became a place of enforced isolation. What was meant to be the beginning of an enriching new chapter was instead marked by uncertainty and fear. The seasons still passed, the swallows returned, the rhythms of the natural world went on, but in many ways, everything was forever changed. Mapping the circle of a year—a journey from one place to another, field notes of a life—Kerri tells the story of a changed life in a changed world. And for Kerri there would be one more change: a baby, longed for but utterly, beautifully unexpected.

Intensely lyrical and deeply moving, Cacophony of Bone is an ode to a year, a place, the natural world, and most of all to a love that transformed a life. Guided by a voice that is utterly singular, this book is “raw, visionary, lucid, and mystical” (Katherine May), a meditation on home, the deepening of family, and the connections that sustain us.

Long a fire continent, Australia now finds itself at the leading edge of a fire epoch.

Australia is one of the world’s fire powers. It not only has regular bushfires, but in no other country has fire made such an impact on the national culture.

Over the past two decades, bushfires have reasserted themselves as an environmental, social, and political presence.

The Still-Burning Bush traces the ecological and social significance of the use of fire to shape the environment through Australian history, beginning with Aboriginal usage, and the subsequent passing of the firestick to rural colonists and then to foresters, to ecologists, and back to Indigenes.

Each transfer kindled public debate not only over suitable fire practices but also about how Australians should live on the land. In Australia, the 2019–2020 season have heightened the sense of urgency behind this discussion, as the megafires of recent decades and the serial conflagrations in California have for Americans.

The Still-Burning Bush examines the global changes that are affecting Australia (and the world). Especially pertinent is the concept of a Pyrocene—the idea that humanity’s cumulative fire practices are fashioning the fire equivalent of an ice age.

A Stanford University Press classic.

A Stanford University Press classic.

A Stanford University Press classic.

“Hands-down one of the most beautiful books of the year.” —NPR
A New York Times Bestseller
Barnes & Noble Book of the Year

Beloved author Aimee Nezhukumatathil's celebrated work of nonfiction, now including additional essays and illustrations. 

As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance.

“What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions in order to fully appreciate the world’s gifts.

Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, World of Wonders is a book of sustenance and joy.

Here is Connemara, experienced at a walker’s pace. From cartographer Tim Robinson comes the second title in the Seedbank series, a breathtakingly intimate exploration of one beloved place’s geography, ecology, and history.

We begin with the earth right in front of his boots, as Robinson unveils swaths of fiontarnach—fall leaf decay. We peer from the edge of the cliff where Robinson’s house stands on rickety stilts. We closely examine an overgrown patch of heather, a flush of sphagnum moss. And so, footstep by footstep, moment by moment, Robinson takes readers deep into this storied Irish landscape, from the “quibbling, contentious terrain” of Bogland to the shorelines of Inis Ní to the towering peaks of Twelve Pins.

Just as wild and essential as the countryside itself are its colorful characters, friends and legends and neighbors alike: a skeletal, story-filled sheep farmer; an engineer who builds bridges, both physical and metaphorical; a playboy prince and cricket champion; and an enterprising botanist who meets an unexpected demise. Within a landscape lie all other things, and Robinson rejoices in the universal magic of becoming one with such a place, joining with “[t]he sound of the past, the language we breathe, and our frontage onto the natural world.”

Situated at the intersection of mapmaking and mythmaking, Listening to the Wind is at once learned and intimate, elegiac and magnificent—an exceptionally rich “book about one place which is also about the whole world” (Robert Macfarlane).

“Filled with nuggets of wisdom and provocative questions.” —ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS

Rick Bass’s dog, Colter, is the brown dog of the Yaak. Described by Bass as a creature almost mythic, the dog charges through the mountain valleys following the scent of game. In this book, Bass gives a history of his years with Colter—including vignettes about interactions with well-known writers Jim Harrison and Barry Lopez—as a way of understanding what is intuitive in himself and his quest to create art.

Civilising Grass is a socio-cultural analysis of the lawn on the South African highveld, exploring the complex relationship between landscape and power in the country’s colonial, modernist and post-apartheid eras

Drawing from eco-criticism, queer theory, art history and postcolonial studies, this book offers a lively and provocative reading of texts and illustrations to reveal the racial and gendered aspects of ‘natural’ environments. It argues that the lawn, an ordinary and often overlooked feature of South African everyday life, is neither natural nor innocent. Rather, like other colonial landscapes, the lawn functions as a site of commonplace violence, of oppression, dispossession and segregation. This book explores an eclectic archive of artistic, literary and architectural lawns between 1886 and 2017, analysing poems, maps, gardening blogs, adverts, ethnographies and ephemera, as well as literature by Koos Prinsloo, Marlene van Niekerk and Ivan Vladislavic. In addition, Civilising Grass includes colour reproductions of lawn artworks by David Goldblatt, Lungiswa Gqunta, Pieter Hugo, Anton Kannemeyer, Sabelo Mlangeni, Moses Tladi and Kemang Wa Lehulere. Examination of these and other works reveals the organic relationship between lawn and wildness, and between lawn and human/non-human actors – thereby providing rich and unexpected insights into South African society past and present.

'Remarkable' Robert Macfarlane
'Gorgeous' Amy Liptrot
'Urgent and nourishing' Jessica J. Lee

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.

In lyrical, powerful prose, Small Bodies of Water weaves together memories, dreams and nature writing. Exploring everything from migration, food, family, earthquakes and the ancient lunisolar calendar, Nina reflects on a girlhood spent growing up between two cultures, and what it means to belong.

For the last thirty years John Lister-Kaye has taken the same circular walk from his home deep in a Scottish glen up to a small hill loch. Each day brings a new observation or an unexpected encounter - a fragile spider's web, an osprey struggling to lift a trout from the water or a woodcock exquisitely camouflaged on her nest - and every day, on his return home, he records his thoughts in a journal.

Drawing on this lifetime of close observation, At The Water's Edge encourages us to look again at the nature around us, to discover its wildness for ourselves and to respect and protect it.

The Almaguin Highlands is a region that was once coveted for its game, silver birch and majestic white pine. For centuries this area stretched up to the shores of Lake Nipissing and embraced an unbroken forest that remained largely intact save where lakes, streams and beaver meadows punctuated the forest floor. In 1900, the northernmost areas of the District of Parry Sound were still not accessible by even a conventional roadway. Homesteaders, their claims precariously strung along the Pickerel River, relied on the waterway as their transportation route. What must it have been like at the outset for the lumbermen who cut down the white pine? And how did the settlers-those intrepid folk who trekked across the district with only the lumberjack's blazed trails for a guide-cope in the wilderness?

Almaguin Chronicles explores the relationship between lumbering and settlement throughout the Parry Sound District-the last frontier of this part of Ontario. Throughout, rare archival photographs and excerpts from unpublished memoirs augment the text.

Growing Up in the Oil Patch chronicles the adventures and achievements of some of the most colourful, ambitious people of their time: statesmen, scoundrels, visionaries and developers. Participants all in the growing oil patch!

The author presents a highly readable, informative and entertaining account of the early years in the development of Canada's gas and oil industry. Based upon five years of research, interviews, and his fortuitous discovery of a rare, historically important scribbler, John Schmidt traces the paths of two enterprising American-born drillers, "Frosty" Martin and "Tiny" Phillips, whose drive and ingenuity were encouraged by British and Canadian promoters and financiers. Their entrepreneurial spirit took them initially to Leamington, Ontario, and ultimately into the heart of the oil patch in Western Canada.

On October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel battered southern Ontario, leaving in its wake a terrible toll: thousands homeless, million in property damage, and, worst of all, 81 people dead. Hazel destroyed bridges, submerged towns, and drowned unsuspecting Ontarians in their homes and cars. Raymore Drive in Weston was decimated when the Humber River swelled by eight feet, taking the lives of 32 residents in only one hour. In Etobicoke, five volunteer firemen drowned while trying to reach marooned motorists. Towns and villages from Toronto north to Timmins felt Hazel's fury.

After the storm, people walked the now-surreal streets of their towns: cars upside-down and wrapped in power lines, iceboxes and dead cows hanging from trees, houses flattened, toys and furniture floating down the street.

On the 50th anniversary of the storm, Jim Gifford has captured that fatal night in the voices of those who survived it, from residents who lived along the surging Humber River to a policeman who rescued families from their rooftops to firemen and Boy Scouts who searched for victims along the riverbanks. Including more than 100 never-before-published photographs, Hurricane Hazel: Canada's Storm of the Century documents one of the worst natural disasters in Canadian history.

Proposing a series of innovative steps towards better understanding human lives at the interstices of water and land, this volume includes eight ethnographies from deltas around the world. The book presents ‘delta life’ with intimate descriptions of the predicaments, imaginations and activities of delta inhabitants. Conceptually, the collection develops ‘delta life’ as a metaphor for approaching continual and intersecting sociocultural, economic and material transformations more widely. The book revolves around questions of hydrosociality, volatility, rhythms and scale. It thereby yields insights into people’s lives that conventional, hydrological approaches to deltas cannot provide.

A consistent problem that confronts disaster reduction is the disjunction between academic and expert knowledge and policies and practices of agencies mandated to deal with the concern. Although a great deal of knowledge has been acquired regarding many aspects of disasters, such as driving factors, risk construction, complexity of resettlement, and importance of peoples’ culture, very little has become protocol and procedure. Disaster Upon Disaster illuminates the numerous disjunctions between the suppositions, realities, agendas, and executions in the field, goes on to detail contingencies, predicaments, old and new plights, and finally advances solutions toward greatly improved outcomes.

Everywhere in the world communities and nations organize themselves in relation to water. We divert water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to our homes, workplaces, irrigation canals, and hydro-generating stations. We use it for bathing, swimming, recreation, and it functions as a symbol of purity in ritual performances. In order to facilitate and manage our relationship with water, we develop institutions, technologies, and cultural practices entirely devoted to its appropriation and distribution, and through these institutions we construct relations of class, gender, ethnicity, and nationality. Relying on first-hand ethnographic research, the contributors to this volume examine the social life of water in diverse settings and explore the impacts of commodification, urbanization, and technology on the availability and quality of water supplies. Each case study speaks to a local set of issues, but the overall perspective is global, with representation from all continents.

• By an acclaimed author in his field
• Challenges the ideas of our modern scientific culture
• Far-reaching consequences for how we understand and relate to the natural world

Our scientific culture, which gave birth to modern technology, is in desperate need of change. Science has largely meant groups of specialists working in separate disciplines, seeking answers to narrowly defined questions which have little or nothing to do with the living world. The last few years, however, have seen a shift to a more integrated, holistic approach to how we view and understand our world. 

There is still much work to be done. Most modern people have come to accept a fragmented culture whereby science isolates us from the natural world. As a result, we feel we can govern it and dominate it as we please. Brian Goodwin, acclaimed author of How the Leopard Changed Its Spots, argues for a view of nature as complex, interrelated networks of relationships. He proposes that, in order for us to once again work with nature to achieve true sustainability on our planet, we need to adopt a new science, new art, new design, new economics and new patterns of responsibility. We must be willing to pay nature its due: to recognise what we owe to the natural world and resist exploiting it solely for our own ends.

This is an ambitious, wide-ranging book with far-reaching consequences, and will be essential reading for all those interested in how nature and human culture can co-exist in the future.

As human society continues to develop, we have increased the risk of large-scale disasters. From health care to infrastructure to national security, systems designed to keep us safe have also heightened the potential for catastrophe. The constant pressure of climate change, geopolitical conflict, and our tendency to ignore what is hard to grasp exacerbates potential dangers. How can we prepare for and prevent the twenty-first-century disasters on the horizon?

Rethinking Readiness offers an expert introduction to human-made threats and vulnerabilities, with a focus on opportunities to reimagine how we approach disaster preparedness. Jeff Schlegelmilch identifies and explores the most critical threats facing the world today, detailing the dangers of pandemics, climate change, infrastructure collapse, cyberattacks, and nuclear conflict. Drawing on the latest research from leading experts, he provides an accessible overview of the causes and potential effects of these looming megadisasters. The book highlights the potential for building resilient, adaptable, and sustainable systems so that we can be better prepared to respond to and recover from future crises. Thoroughly grounded in scientific and policy expertise, Rethinking Readiness is an essential guide to this century’s biggest challenges in disaster management.

A definitive collection of Henry David Thoreau’s major essays, annotated and introduced by Lewis Hyde.

Diverging from the long-standing custom of separating Thoreau’s politics from his interest in nature, renowned author Lewis Hyde brings together essays that highlight the ways in which these two strands of thought were intertwined. Here, natural history begins not with fish and birds, but with a dismissal of the political world, and condemnation of slavery concludes with a meditation on the water lilies blooming on the Concord River.

This definitive edition includes Thoreau’s most famous essays, “Civil Disobedience” and “Walking,” along with lesser-known masterpieces such as “Wild Apples,” “The Last Days of John Brown,” and an account of Thoreau’s 1846 journey into the Maine wilderness to climb Mount Katahdin—an essay that ends on a unique note of sublimity and terror in the face of raw nature. While Thoreau’s ideal reader was expected to be politically engaged in current affairs and well versed in Greek, Latin, poetry, and travel narrative, Hyde’s inviting annotations clarify many of Thoreau’s references and recreate the contemporary context of the day, when the nation’s westward expansion was bringing to a head the racial tensions that would result in the Civil War.

Hyde deems Thoreau’s writing prophetic because “the prophet speaks of things that will be true in the future because they are true in all time.” Thoreau’s revelatory writing coupled with the luminous insights from Hyde—“one of our country’s greatest public thinkers” (Lawrence Weschler)—make The Essays of Henry David Thoreau essential reading at a moment in our nation’s history when his subversiveness, foresight, and lyricism are badly needed.

Find connection with the land and feed your family locally, seasonally, and sustainably

Nourish your family from nature's pantry. Foraging as a Way of Life documents twelve months of wildcrafting, featuring five different plants each month for a full year of abundant, local, and seasonal eating. Enhance your sense of self-sufficiency while increasing food security, protecting habitat, and connecting with the land.

Full-color and lavishly illustrated, this accessible, in-depth resource features:

• Accurate and detailed descriptions of herbs, mushrooms, berries, and other wild plants to avoid confusion and inspire confidence when determining plant identification.
• Foraging recipes for remedies, tonics, syrups, and unique handcrafted dishes incorporating wild ingredients—feast on rosehip soup with pan-fried dandelion flowers, followed by birch- bark cookies or chicory chocolate bars.
• Extensive guidance for safe processing or consumption of each species, including cautions, lookalikes, and tips for sustainable harvesting.

Drawing on the author's field experience and her study of herbalism and ethnobotany, Foraging as a Way of Life is designed to inspire readers to share the exuberance and joy of wild foods while finding nourishment and connection in their local fields or forests. A must for every gardener who would like to gather dinner while weeding, for those wishing to learn sustainable harvesting while hiking, or for anyone who wants to create healthy, foraged meals while living lightly on the planet.

A remarkable record of the Sterkfontein Caves and the fossils found

This guide to Sterkfontein is the second in a series of short books on South Africa's World Heritage Sites. Written by specialists and generously illustrated, the series aims to provide accurate and accessible introductions to the sites, and to make the visit more meaningful and enjoyable for uninformed visitors. Mapungubwe was published in 2005.
Sterkfontein provides an easy-to-read overview of the geological and fossil history of the Sterkfontein Valley. The remarkable record contained in the Sterkfontein Caves, comprising thousands of animal, plant and hominid fossils, is simply presented and current debates are explained. The use of visual markers from Sterkfontein enables visitors to identify essential features and formations.
Wits University Press will be publishing iSterkfontein in isiZulu translation in 2009.

A coffee-table book full of amazing pictures of unique fossils of early hominids

The unique fossils featured in Caves of the Ape-Men were excavated at cave sites which today are clustered within the first World Heritage Site to be proclaimed in South Africa under the auspices of UNESCO. This full-color, coffee table book includes excellent visuals of the area, a brief account of its history, and an accessible assessment of its importance for understanding the emergence of hominids - the early creatures transitional between the great apes and man - and, later, some of the earliest representatives of our own species. The publication is based on short text boxes interspersed with illustrations of key fossil specimens as old as four million years. Also included are reconstructions of how these hominids might have appeared and the dramatic landscapes within which they were discovered. Three scientific books on different aspects of the Cradle of Humankind World Heritage Site have appeared recently. No informative, lavishly illustrated book has, however, been produced for purchase by the many international and local tourists who visit the area. As Sterkfontein is the richest single fossil hominid site in the world it deserves to be promoted as one of the foremost tourist attractions in Africa, along with half a dozen other local sites also immensely rich in fossil specimens. Together, these sites proclaim South Africa as one of the key areas which saw the emergence of human ancestors in the distant past.

This book pulls literature together to examine the quality of climate governance based in the experience of Global South regions—Africa, Latin America, and Caribbean. While these regions are resilient, the IPCC 2022 Report indicates that the effects of climate change are crippling their thinly structured governance systems and limited capacities. For example, in addition to environmental devastation, loss of life, and livelihoods, these regions have endured most of the “loss and damage” due to climate change impacts. How are they responding? What are the outcomes? And where do they go from here?

Given this background, the book’s goal is to question assumptions about climate governance patterns, systems, institutions, and processes in these regions, using comparative analytical techniques while distilling information about policy outcomes that other approaches do not provide. It argues that these regions and individual countries within them have a lot to learn from and about each other rather than look to the Global North and wealthy countries for economic, political, and administrative models that hardly match their lived experience and ontological outlooks. In doing so, it aspires to promote a fruitful South-South policy-related dialogue via scholarly exchanges and also contribute to advance the study and practice of international and comparative public administration. From this perspective, scholars, researchers, educators, public managers, and practitioners will find the book relevant to and useful for their respective endeavors.

Curing the Coral

Explore the vibrant underwater ecosystems that depend on coral reefs and learn the science behind restoring their health. Discover the diverse marine life that thrives among coral, the complex relationships within coral reef ecosystems, and the techniques scientists use, such as micro fragging and outplanting, to rejuvenate reefs.

Follow engaging stories of real-life conservation efforts, from Belize’s coral reefs to the Florida Keys. Travel alongside Summer Collins as she navigates challenges, celebrates conservation victories, and inspires communities to participate actively in protecting and revitalizing coral reefs.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Insight into threats like coral bleaching and climate change.
• Step-by-step processes for planting coral reefs.
• Inspirational stories showcasing youth leadership in marine biology.

If you’re passionate about marine biology, eager to participate in ocean conservation, or simply fascinated by marine life, this book shows you how you can help protect our planet’s coral reefs.

Dive in and become a coral reef hero!

“Offering a deeply necessary, clear-eyed look at who we are as flesh-and-bone bodies during the climate crisis, this is a book that searches and finds meaning in both the hard truths and the value of wonder.”—Ada Limón

In this luminous collection of essays, Ellen Wayland-Smith probes the raw edges of human existence, those periods of life in which our bodies remind us of our transience and the boundaries of the self dissolve.

From the Old Testament to Maggie Nelson, these explorations are grounded in a rich network of associations. In an essay on the postpartum body, Wayland-Smith interweaves her experience as a mother with accounts of phantom limbs and Greek mythology to meditate on moments when pieces of our being exist outside our bodies. In order to comprehend diagnoses of depression and breast cancer, she delves into LA hippie culture’s love affair with crystals and Emily Dickinson’s geological poetry. Her experience with chemotherapy leads to reflection on Western medicine and its intolerance of death and the healing capacity of nature. And throughout, she challenges the false separation between the human and the “primeval, animal mode of being.”

At once intimate and expansive, The Science of Last Things peels back layers of human thought and behavior, breaking down our modern conceptions of individuality and reframing us as participants in a world of astounding elegance and mystery.

"McNeil's deeply felt observations offer a transporting, thought-provoking lens on nature. It's captivating stuff." Publishers Weekly

"Meditative and sumptuous… Latitudes is a rich, textured portrait of the natural world and a plaintive reflection on the destruction of climate change." Foreword Reviews

"Full of lived experience, this book ponders the question of our own animal relationship with the planet, between what we know and what we feel, between mind and body, instinct and intellect." Julia Bell, author of Massive and Hymnal

"Her shimmering prose brings into sharp focus the beauty of the remote places where we can glimpse – and sometimes hear – what our planet was like before us. And what it might be in the silence that will come after the frenzy of human dominance." Margie Orford

Relating thirty years of living in and writing about some of the world's last remaining wild places, Latitudes is a thrilling and thought-provoking exploration of a changing planet. At once memoir, journal and travelogue of Earth's wildernesses, Latitudes ranges across the Antarctic, the Arctic, the savannahs and deserts of Africa, the Southern and Atlantic oceans and the boreal forests of Canada.

Latitudes is a powerful, innovative book of creative non-fiction that tracks one writer's life-long experience of reckoning with an age of dramatic ecological loss. It shows us the importance of listening to the living world that is speaking to us, if we open ourselves to hear its voice.

Biophilia—the love of life—encompasses the drive to survive, a sense of kinship with all life-forms, and an instinct for beauty. In this unconventional book, Kay Harel uses biophilia as a lens to explore Charles Darwin’s life and thought in deeply original ways. In a set of interrelated essays, she considers how the love of life enabled him to see otherwise unseen evolutionary truths.

Harel traces the influence of biophilia on Darwin’s views of dogs, facts, thought, emotion, and beauty, informed by little-known material from his private notebooks. She argues that much of what Darwin described, envisioned, and felt was biophilia in action. Closing the book is a profile of Darwin’s marriage to Emma Wedgwood, his first cousin, a woman gifted in music and medicine who shared her husband’s love of life.

Harel’s meditative, playful, and lyrical musings draw on the tools of varied disciplines—aesthetics, astronomy, biology, evolutionary theory, history of science, philosophy, psychiatry, and more—while remaining unbounded by any particular one. Taking unexpected paths to recast a figure we thought we knew, this book offers readers a different Darwin: a man full of love, joy, awe, humility, curiosity, and a zest for living.

As a farmer with decades spent working in fields, Scott Chaskey has been shaped by daily attention to the earth. A leader in the international Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) movement, he has combined a longstanding commitment to food sovereignty and organic farming with a belief that humble attention to microbial life and diversity of species provides invaluable lessons for building healthy human communities.  

Along the way, even while planning rotations of fields, ordering seeds, tending to crops and their ecosystems, Chaskey was writing. And in this lively collection of essays, he explores the evolution of his perspective—as a farmer and as a poet. Tracing the first stage in his development back to a homestead in Maine, on the ancestral lands of the Abenaki, he recalls learning to cultivate plants and nourish reciprocal relationships among species, even as he was reading Yeats and beginning to write poems. He describes cycling across Ireland, a surprise meeting with Seamus Heaney, and, later, farming in Cornwall’s ancient landscape of granite, bramble, and windswept trees. He travels to China for an international conference on Community Supported Agriculture, reading ancient wilderness poetry along the way, and then on to the pueblo of Santa Clara in New Mexico, where he joins a group of Indigenous women harvesting amaranth seeds. Closer to home on the Southfork of Long Island, he describes planting redwood saplings and writing verse under the canopy of an American beech.

“Enlivened by decades of work in open fields washed by the salt spray of the Atlantic”—words that describe his prose as well as his vision of connectedness—Scott Chaskey has given us a book for our time. A seed of hope and regeneration.

In the second volume of his beloved Connemara trilogy, cartographer Tim Robinson continues to unearth the stories of this rich landscape in Ireland—weaving placelore, etymology, geology, and the meeting of sea and shore into the region’s mythologies.

From the northern fiord waters of Killary Harbour to the southern sea-washed islands of Slyne Head, western Connemara awes with a rugged landscape: sloping cliffs, towering mountains, and the ever-present thudding of the Atlantic. And here, within the earth, resides the record of the past; stones with ash-grey centers reveal volcanic episodes, a series of mysteriously arranged quartz boulders reminds us of the ancient secrets held in the soil, and a long-disappeared lake filled in by sand lies beneath a golf course, waiting to be rediscovered.

Mapping more than geography, Tim Robinson charts Connemara’s deep relationship to those who have inhabited its surface. The Last Pool of Darkness brims with tales of ghosts, centuries-old land disputes, periods of religious and political upheavals, philosophers entranced by the isolating landscape, poets, mathematicians, artists, fantastical smugglers, the discovery of botanical rarities, trickster fairies, and the delicate balance between humans and nature. Not merely a “certain tract of the Earth’s surface” but “an accumulation of connotations,” Robinson’s Connemara offers readers an opportunity to travel across space and time.

A work of great precision and tenderness, The Last Pool of Darkness is an enchanting addition to the Seedbank series and next chapter in “one of the most remarkable non-fiction projects undertaken in English” (Robert Macfarlane).

A multicultural anthology, edited by Susan O’Connor and Annick Smith, about the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world.

A hearth is many things: a place for solitude; a source of identity; something we make and share with others; a history of ourselves and our homes. It is the fixed center we return to. It is just as intrinsically portable. It is, in short, the perfect metaphor for what we seek in these complex and contradictory times—set in flux by climate change, mass immigration, the refugee crisis, and the dislocating effects of technology.

Featuring original contributions from some of our most cherished voices—including Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, Pico Iyer, Natasha Trethewey, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Chigozie Obioma—Hearth suggests that empathy and storytelling hold the power to unite us when we have wandered alone for too long. This is an essential anthology that challenges us to redefine home and hearth: as a place to welcome strangers, to be generous, to care for the world beyond one’s own experience.

From the memories of a childhood marked by extreme poverty, mental illness, and restrictive fundamentalist Christian rules, Janisse Ray crafted a “heartfelt and refreshing” (New York Times) memoir that has inspired thousands to embrace their beginnings, no matter how humble, and to fight for the places they love. This new edition updates and contextualizes the story for a new generation and a wider audience desperately searching for stories of empowerment and hope.

Ray grew up in a junkyard along U.S. Highway 1, hidden from Florida-bound travelers by hulks of old cars. In language at once colloquial, elegiac, and informative, Ray redeems her home and her people, while also cataloging the source of her childhood hope: the Edenic longleaf pine forests, where orchids grow amid wiregrass at the feet of widely spaced, lofty trees. Today, the forests exist in fragments, cherished and threatened, and the South of her youth is gradually being overtaken by golf courses and suburban development.

A contemporary classic, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood is a clarion call to protect the cultures and ecologies of every childhood.

“Teaches us how to be the best kind of human beings.” —ECLECTICA

As a boy in Colorado, Robert Michael Pyle fell in love with alpine heights and the butterflies that float above the tree line. This early passion sparked a career in conservation that took Pyle across the globe—until he realized that he was no longer as intimate with the natural world that first spurred him to action.

Walking the High Ridge is a journey through Pyle’s “unruly pack of interests”—biology, nature conservation, and literature—to his decision finally to choose the life that would give free reign to his scientific and creative impulses and keep him “as much as possible, out of doors.”

“The essential feature of the prairie is its horizon, which you can neither walk to nor touch.”

When there is no summit to reach nor farther shore to attain­­—only a constantly receding point between earth and sky to follow—a journey proceeds as much into one’s own mind as it does into the natural world. Sauntering through the tall grasses of the prairie, Paul Gruchow engages in just such a boundless journey, exploring simultaneously the subtle beauty of the Great Plains and the mind’s astonishment as such grandeur.

Charting one cycle of seasons, Journal of a Prairie Year reveals countless cycles of thought: the innumerable sounds of winter snow beg us to understand its song; the fecundity of spring questions the accuracy of naming its abundance; the tenacity of prairie roots in a summer drought contrast with the shallow roots of our culture; and the mortality of fall mirrors our steady destruction of a once seemingly infinite expanse.

The result is equal parts phenology and philosophy, a blend of natural and human history from a writer who “makes empty places full and a reader’s imagination soar” (Washington Post): calling us to remember a threatened world, and urging us to reach for its unmarred horizon.

Travelogue, cultural meditation, and love story, On the Ice casts a panoramic view on one of the oddest communities in one of the most extreme places on earth.

Negative 70-degree weather. Canned food that dates back at least a decade. Wind storms powerful enough to lift a human off the ground. Extremely unfashionable clothing. Welcome to Antarctica, the farthest-away place in the world.

Hoping to get away from the complexities of her life, Gretchen Legler arrives at McMurdo Station with the intention of researching the landscape; what she finds, instead, is a zany population of misfits and dreamers. Populated by people from all walks of life—bankers, MBAs, therapists, carpenters, scientists, laborers, and military brass—the individuals that Legler meets have gone to Antarctica to escape everything from parking tickets to angry spouses.

Part sociological study, part historiography, and part love story, On the Ice is an exploration of one of the most unexplored places on earth and the people who are drawn to it.

“Gruchow is an ideal guide to the BWCA.” —ISTHMUS BOOKS QUARTERLY

Organized by the seasons of the year, Boundary Waters explores the natural and soul-sustaining beauty of the largest roadless area east of the Rocky Mountains: the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, a vast network of forest and thousands of lakes, isolated and pristine, straddling the border between northern Minnesota and Ontario.

Throughout Boundary Waters, Paul Gruchow skis, backpacks, and canoes through the Boundary Waters and its environs, including Sea Gull Lake, Isle Royale National Park, the Grand Portage Trail, Quetico Provincial Park (Canada), and Voyageurs National Park. Drawing on the works of Thoreau and Wendell Berry, Gruchow turns his naturalist’s eye on this wilderness full of wolves, moose, and loons, contemplating the richness of our natural heritage and our need to share its treasures with others.

Boundary Waters is a testament to Gruchow’s magnificent ability to explores the relationship of person to place, illuminating not only our lands, but our souls.