Nature

Nothing fills us with a sense of wonder like fossils. What looks at first like a simple rock is in fact a clue that reveals the staggering diversity of ancient environments, the winding pathways of evolution, and the majesty of a vanished earth. But as much as one might daydream of digging a hole in the backyard and finding a Tyrannosaurus, only a few places contain these buried treasures, and when a scientist comes across a remnant of prehistoric life, great care must be taken. What do budding paleontologists need to know before starting their search?

In Fantastic Fossils, Donald R. Prothero offers an accessible, entertaining, and richly illustrated guide to the paleontologist’s journey. He details the best places to look for fossils, the art of how to find them, and how to classify the major types. Prothero provides expert wisdom about typical fossils that an average person can hope to collect and how to hunt fossils responsibly and ethically. He also explores the lessons that both common and rarer discoveries offer about paleontology and its history, as well as what fossils can tell us about past climates and present climate change. Captivating illustrations by the paleoartist Mary Persis Williams bring to life hundreds of important specimens. Offering valuable lessons for armchair enthusiasts and paleontology students alike, Fantastic Fossils is an essential companion for all readers who have ever dreamed of going in search of traces of a lost world.

An Indies Introduce Selection for Winter/Spring 2022

Kerri ní Dochartaigh was born in Derry, on the border of the North and South of Ireland, at the very height of the Troubles. She was brought up on a council estate on the wrong side of town—although for her family, and many others, there was no right side. One parent was Catholic, the other was Protestant. In the space of one year, they were forced out of two homes. When she was eleven, a homemade bomb was thrown through her bedroom window. Terror was in the very fabric of the city, and for families like ní Dochartaigh’s, the ones who fell between the cracks of identity, it seemed there was no escape.

In Thin Places, a luminous blend of memoir, history, and nature writing, ní Dochartaigh explores how nature kept her sane and helped her heal, how violence and poverty are never more than a stone’s throw from beauty and hope, and how we are, once again, allowing our borders to become hard and terror to creep back in. Ní Dochartaigh asks us to reclaim our landscape through language and study, and remember that the land we fight over is much more than lines on a map. It will always be ours, but—at the same time—it never really was.

Updated with a new introduction from Robin Wall Kimmerer, the special edition of Braiding Sweetgrass, reissued in honor of the fortieth anniversary of Milkweed Editions, celebrates the book as an object of meaning that will last the ages. 

Beautifully bound with a new cover featuring an engraving by Tony Drehfal, this edition includes a deckled edge and five brilliantly colored illustrations by artist Nate Christopherson. In increasingly dark times, we honor the experience that more than 350,000 readers in North America have cherished about the book—gentle, simple, tactile, beautiful, even sacred—and offer an edition that will inspire readers to gift it again and again, spreading the word about scientific knowledge, indigenous wisdom, and the teachings of plants. 

As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together to take us on “a journey that is every bit as mythic as it is scientific, as sacred as it is historical, as clever as it is wise” (Elizabeth Gilbert).

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings—asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass—offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings will we be capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learn to give our own gifts in return.

My First Summer in the Sierra is the incredible true story of John Muir’s iconic time spent working in the California mountain range of the Sierra Nevada’s. In this republished edition, read about his experience that shaped so much of environmental stewardship today.

In the summer of 1869, a young John Muir joined a crew of shepherds working in the foothills of California’s Sierra Nevada mountains. Spending countless hours working with the group, Muir also worked tirelessly to advocate for the land’s protection. His efforts eventually transpired into the founding of Yosemite Valley as a national park, a landmark event in the history of United States environmentalism. A glimpse into Muir’s private journals, My First Summer in the Sierra is the remarkable retelling of his time there. Full of humorous anecdotes and insightful prose, John Muir personal narrative will likely inspire you to pack up your belongings and head for the mountains.

Since our inception in 2020, Mint Editions has kept sustainability and innovation at the forefront of our mission. Each and every Mint Edition title gets a fresh, professionally typeset manuscript and a dazzling new cover, all while maintaining the integrity of the original book.

With thousands of titles in our collection, we aim to spotlight diverse public domain works to help them find modern audiences. Mint Editions celebrates a breadth of literary works, curated from both canonical and overlooked classics from writers around the globe.

Protecting special places in danger of being changed forever requires urgent action. It’s time for bold conservation strategies to boost land protection around the world.

Bold conservation goals require strategic action. In Protecting the Places We Love: Conservation Strategies for Entrusted Lands and Parks, conservationist and geospatial designer Breece Robertson applies her conservation experience, real-world examples, and myriad resources to deliver a vision for success and clear guidance for conservation groups large and small to achieve their goals.

The goals of these strategies are familiar: support species, habitats, and natural resources and healthy, livable communities that are climate resilient and socially cohesive, all without high costs. Robertson's tools, many of them free, feel quickly accessible, effective, and adaptable to a new or existing conservation strategy. Readers finish this book feeling confident about integrating existing practices with geospatial data and modern applications.

With the smart analysis and targeted action explained in Protecting the Places We Love, readers will better identify places needing protection and better understand how to maximize partnerships, inspire, educate, and engage communities and donors, and produce better results.

See the vision and learn to:

• create maps that tell compelling stories to stakeholders and the public
• analyze park system equity and access and show the economic benefits
• map, model, and analyze land characteristics to enhance biodiversity, connectivity, and climate resilience
• use maps and data to gain insights for fundraising, program initiatives, policy, advocacy, finances, and marketing.  

Protecting the Places We Love is perfect for citizens, and for conservation advocates and professionals at small to medium-sized land trusts, conservation organizations, and park agencies. Examples from land protection organizations all over the globe provide field-tested approaches to improve strategic effectiveness. Robertson provides a vision, strategies, and resources that can take your conservation efforts to the next level.

GIS for Science, Volume 3: Maps for Saving the Planet, highlights real-world examples of scientists creating maps about saving life on Earth and preserving biodiversity.   

With Earth and the natural world at risk from various forces, geographic information system (GIS) mapping is essential for driving scientifically conscious decision-making about how to protect life on Earth. In volume 3 of GIS for Science, explore a collection of maps from scientists working to save the planet through documenting and protecting its biodiversity.  

In this volume, learn how GIS and data mapping are used in tandem with 

• global satellite observation
• forestry
• marine policy
• artificial intelligence
• conservation biology, and
• environmental education

to help preserve and chronicle life on Earth. This volume also spotlights important global action initiatives incorporating conservation, including Half-Earth, 30 x 30, AI for Earth, the Blue Nature Alliance, and the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. 

The stories presented in this third volume are ideal for the professional scientist and conservationist and anyone interested in the intersection of technology and the conservation of nature. The book’s contributors include scientists who are applying geographic data gathered from the full spectrum of remote sensing and on-site technologies. The maps and data are brought to life using ArcGIS® software and other spatial data science tools that support research, collaboration, spatial analysis, and science communication across many locations and within diverse communities. The stories shared in this book and its companion website present inspirational ideas so that GIS users and scientists can work toward preserving biodiversity and saving planet Earth before time runs out. 

Social changes through urban gardening and farming

Gardens are often spaces of hope, expected to solve many problems in a city including food insecurity and climate resilience. In fact, there has been a historical trend of urban gardening gaining popularity during times of crisis. Gardens of Hope is the story of urban gardening in New Orleans in the decade after Hurricane Katrina. Yuki Kato highlights the impact urban gardens have on communities after disasters and the efforts of well-intended individuals envisioning alternative futures in the form of urban farming.

Drawing on repeated interviews with residents who began cultivation projects in New Orleans between 2005 and 2015, Kato explains how good intentions and grit were not enough to implement or sustain urban gardeners’ visions for the post-disaster city’s future. Coining the term “prefigurative urbanism,” Kato illustrates how individuals tried to realize alternative ways of living and working in the city through pragmatism and innovation. Gardens of Hope asks key questions about what inspires and enables individuals to pursue prefigurative urbanism and about the potential and limitations of this form of civic engagement to bring about short- and long-term changes in cities undergoing transformation, from gentrification, post-pandemic recovery, to climate change.

Winner, 2025 Catholic Media Association Book Awards: Inclusion in the Church

Explores the contours of Latinx Catholic environmentalism

Home-based conservationist measures such as cultivating backyard gardens, avoiding consumerism, and limiting waste are widespread among Spanish-speaking Catholics across the United States. Yet these home-based conservationist practices are seldom recognized as “environmental” because they are enacted by working-class immigrant communities and do not conform to the expectations of mainstream environmentalism.

In Falling in Love with Nature, Amanda J. Baugh tells the story of American environmentalism through a focus on Spanish-speaking Catholics, shedding light on environmental actors who have been hidden in plain sight. While dominant narratives about environmental activism include minorities, primarily in the realm of environmental racism and injustice, Baugh demonstrates that minority communities are not merely victims of environmental problems. They can be active agents who express love for nature based on inherited family traditions and close relationships with the land. Baugh shows that Spanish-speaking Catholics have values that have been overlooked in global discourses, grassroots movements, and the highest echelons of the US Catholic Church. By drawing attention to the environmental knowledge that is already abundant within Spanish-speaking Catholic communities, Falling in Love with Nature challenges readers to rethink their assumptions about who can be an environmental leader and what counts as environmentalism.

Examines how cultural narratives of time are intimately connected to the challenges and disruptions of ecological time

The environmental crisis is, in many ways, a crisis of time. From the distress cries of birds that no longer know when to migrate, to the rapid dying of coral reefs, to the quickening pace of extreme weather events, the patterns and timekeeping of the natural world are falling apart. We have broken nature’s clocks.

Lying hidden at the root of this problem are the cultural narratives that shape our actions and horizons of thought, but as Paul Huebener shows, we can bring about change by developing a critical literacy of time. Moving from circadian rhythms and the revival of ancient frozen bacteria to camping advertisements and the politics of oil pipelines, Nature’s Broken Clocks turns to works of fiction and poetry, examining how cultural narratives of time are connected to the problems of ecological collapse and what we might do to fix them.

"Urgent and profound, Nature's Broken Clocks is essential reading for anyone interested in time and the environment." —Nicholas Bradley, author of Rain Shadow

“Nature's Broken Clocks will inspire readers to reflect deeply on our manipulations of time, and on the impact of our shifting temporal imaginations and practices on the ecosphere.” —Sarah Wylie Krotz, Assistant Professor, Department of English and Film Studies, University of Alberta

A provocative rethinking of how humans and fire have evolved together over time—and our responsibility to reorient this relationship before it's too late.​

The Pyrocene tells the story of what happened when a fire-wielding species, humanity, met an especially fire-receptive time in Earth's history. Since terrestrial life first appeared, flames have flourished. Over the past two million years, however, one genus gained the ability to manipulate fire, swiftly remaking both itself and eventually the world. We developed small guts and big heads by cooking food; we climbed the food chain by cooking landscapes; and now we have become a geologic force by cooking the planet.

Some fire uses have been direct: fire applied to convert living landscapes into hunting grounds, forage fields, farms, and pastures. Others have been indirect, through pyrotechnologies that expanded humanity's reach beyond flame's grasp. Still, preindustrial and Indigenous societies largely operated within broad ecological constraints that determined how, and when, living landscapes could be burned. These ancient relationships between humans and fire broke down when people began to burn fossil biomass—lithic landscapes—and humanity's firepower became unbounded. Fire-catalyzed climate change globalized the impacts into a new geologic epoch. The Pleistocene yielded to the Pyrocene.

Around fires, across millennia, we have told stories that explained the world and negotiated our place within it. The Pyrocene continues that tradition, describing how we have remade the Earth and how we might recover our responsibilities as keepers of the planetary flame.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE AND THE BOARDMAN TASKER AWARD FOR MOUNTAIN LITERATURE

With great lyricism, Anna Fleming charts two parallel journeys: learning the craft of traditional rock climbing and the developing appreciation of the natural world it brings her. Through the story of her progress from terrified beginner to confident lead climber, she shows us how placing hand and foot on rock becomes a profound new way into the landscape.

Anna takes us from the gritstone rocks of the Peak District and Yorkshire to the gabbro pinnacles of the Cuillin, the slate of North Wales and the high plateau of the Cairngorms. Each landscape, and each type of rock, brings its own challenges and invites us into the history of a place.

An expert on the buffalo tells the history of this keystone species through extensive research and beautiful photographs.

The mere mention of the buffalo instantly brings to mind the vast herds that once roamed the North American continent, and few wild animals captivate our imaginations as much as the buffalo do. Once numbering in the tens of millions, these magnificent creatures played a significant role in structuring the varied ecosystems they occupied. For at least 24,000 years, North American Indigenous Peoples depended upon them, and it was the abundance of buffalo that initially facilitated the dispersal of humankind across the continent.

With the arrival of Europeans and their rapacious capacity for wildlife destruction, the buffalo was all but exterminated. In a span of just thirty years during the mid-1800s, buffalo populations plummeted from more than 30 million to just twenty-three. And with them went all of the intricate food webs, the trophic cascades, and the inter-species relationships that had evolved over thousands of years.

Despite this brush with extinction, the buffalo survived, and isolated populations are slowly recovering. As this recovery proceeds, the relationships the animals once had with thousands of species are being re-established in a remarkable process of ecological healing. The intricacy of those restored relationships is the subject of this book.

Based on author Wes Olson’s thirty-five years of working intimately with bison—and featuring Johane Janelle’s stunning photography—The Ecological Buffalo is a story that takes the reader on a journey to understand the myriad connections this keystone species has with the Great Plains.

Argues for the cause of protecting native grasslands and reconciliation on the Great Plains

Towards a Prairie Atonement addresses the question of our relationship with the land by enlisting the help of a Metis Elder and revisiting the history of one corner of the Great Plains.

This book's lyrical blend of personal narrative, prairie history, imagery, and argument begins with the cause of protecting native grasslands on community pastures. As the narrative unfolds, however, Trevor Herriot, the award-winning author of Grass, Sky, Song and River in a Dry Land, finds himself recruited into the work of reconciliation.

Facing his own responsibility as a descendent of settlers, he connects today's ecological disarray to the legacy of Metis dispossession and the loss of their community lands. With Indigenous and settler people alienated from one another and from the grassland itself, hope and courage are in short supply. This book offers both by proposing an atonement that could again bring people and prairie together.

A charmingly illustrated nature guide to Ocean Beach and the coastal ecology of San Francisco.

Grab your beach blanket and your puffy jacket (this is San Francisco, after all) and get ready to see Ocean Beach like never before. Longtime local surfer and scientist Eddy Rubin celebrates this magical sandy stretch through stories of its animals and plants and the natural and human forces that have shaped this coastal environment. From sand dollars and seaweed to the snowy plovers in the dunes, and stretching out to the seals and whales offshore, Rubin profiles twenty-nine local flora and fauna with wonder and curiosity. To explain the why and how, he also teaches readers about the weather and geological forces that have created this unique sandy ecology. Lifetime lovers of Ocean Beach and new neighbors alike will delight in Rubin's guide, brought vividly to life by more than forty full-color artworks by illustrator Greg Wright. With this guide, Rubin invites readers to explore the place where ocean and land meet, to learn from surfers and fishermen about what's out in the waves, and to protect this shared expanse of sandy shoreline.

Learn about the wildlife of the Bay Area from a lifelong protector of endangered species, and enjoy the wild ride.

Jeff Miller's quirky guide to the coolest animal neighbors in the Bay Area will have you gawking at elk, whooping with cranes, and crowning yourself a crossing guard for newts before you know it. Join Jeff on a local safari to meet more than sixty species of mammals, birds, fish, reptiles, amphibians, and insects, and discover the fascinating and sometimes bizarre mating, feeding, and athletic antics of our most charismatic animals.

Portraits by Obi Kaufmann, the renowned conservationist artist who created The California Field Atlas, bring each animal to vivid life alongside fun facts, comical photos, and maps to help you scope out the best spots to find your furred, feathered, slimy, and slithery friends. Imbued with the author’s deep compassion for the well-being of our local fauna, Bay Area Wildlife reveals why each of these creatures matters, as well as the threats that loom over our region's incredible biodiversity.

Turning a blind eye to the dangers of the wild can have deadly consequences.

Growing up on a northern trap line, Harold Johnson was taught to keep his distance from wolves. For decades, wolves did the same for humans. But now this seems to be changing.

In 2005, twenty-two-year-old Kenton Carnegie was killed in a wolf attack near his work camp. Part story, part forensic analysis, Cry Wolf examines this and other attacks, showing how we fail to take this apex predator seriously at our own peril.

A groundbreaking collection that explores human–animal relations and deaths with depth and hope

When Animals Die is an innovative collection of essays that delves into the intricate and uneasy dynamics between humans and other-than-human animals, particularly concerning animal deaths, which are predominantly caused by humans. This groundbreaking book brings together prominent scholars from various disciplines to address the challenging field of animal death studies, incorporating perspectives from social sciences, humanities, biological sciences, and perspectives from beyond academia.

The collection explores profound questions about the experience of animal death for both animals and humans. It examines how humans rationalize animal deaths and utilize deceased animals, and sheds light on the interconnectedness of animal death with issues like race, colonialism, gender, capitalism, and other systems of inequality that humans have established and perpetuated.

By confronting these pertinent issues, When Animals Die seeks to deepen our awareness of the relationship between animal death and humanity’s involvement in it. While grappling with the reality of humans’ impact on the earth, the collection offers hope for an alternative future that does not entail the mutual destruction of human and other-than-human animals.

How scientific advances in genetic modification will fundamentally change the natural world

The process of manipulating the genetic material of one animal to include the DNA of another creates a new transgenic organism. Several animals, notably goats, mice, sheep, and cattle are now genetically modified in this way. In Our Transgenic Future, Lisa Jean Moore wonders what such scientific advances portend. Will the natural world become so modified that it ceases to exist? After turning species into hybrids, can we ever get back to the original, or are they forever lost? Does genetic manipulation make better lives possible, and if so, for whom?

Moore centers the story on goats that have been engineered by the US military and civilian scientists using the DNA of spiders. The goat’s milk contains a spider-silk protein fiber; it can be spun into ultra-strong fabric that can be used to manufacture lightweight military body armor. Researchers also hope the transgenically produced spider silk will revolutionize medicine with biocompatible medical inserts such as prosthetics and bandages. Based on in-depth research with spiders in Florida and transgenic goats in Utah, Our Transgenic Future focuses on how these spidergoats came into existence, the researchers who maintain them, the funders who have made their lives possible, and how they fit into the larger science of transgenics and synthetics. This book is a fascinating story about the possibilities of science and the likely futures that may come.

Why do poets write about animals? What can poetry do for animals and what can animals do for poetry? In some cases, poetry inscribes meaning on animals, turning them into symbols or caricatures and bringing them into the confines of human culture. It also reveals and revels in the complexity of animals. Poetry, through its great variety and its inherently experimental nature, has embraced the multifaceted nature of animals to cross, blur, and reimagine the boundaries between human and animal.

In Poetry and Animals, Onno Oerlemans explores a broad range of English-language poetry about animals from the Middle Ages to the contemporary world. He presents a taxonomy of kinds of animal poems, breaking down the categories and binary oppositions at the root of human thinking about animals. The book considers several different types of poetry: allegorical poems, poems about “the animal” broadly conceived, poems about species of animal, poems about individual animals or the animal as individual, and poems about hybrids and hybridity. Through careful readings of dozens of poems that reveal generous and often sympathetic approaches to recognizing and valuing animals’ difference and similarity, Oerlemans demonstrates how the forms and modes of poetry can sensitize us to the moral standing of animals and give us new ways to think through the problems of the human-animal divide.

An illustrated obsession, a guidebook, a kaleidoscope of life on the wing.

"If you live in the Bay Area and wish to know the butterflies, this is the only field guide you'll ever need." —Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

Liam O'Brien has spent three decades chasing, learning about, protecting, occasionally catching, and always loving butterflies. Here, he shares his capacious knowledge of California butterflies through a treasure trove of stories and 700 gorgeous, hand-drawn illustrations—featuring both adult forms and caterpillars—of the 135 species that live in the greater Bay Area. This sumptuous book also shares practical tips for finding and identifying all the butterflies who call the Bay Area home. Learn which plants nurture Silver-spotted Skippers, which trail to hike to see Swallowtails flitting creek-side, and why so many butterflies cluster on hilltops. Share in the joy that O'Brien brings to the study of butterflies, and join the community scientists contributing to our understanding of Monarchs, Metalmarks, and Marbles—and what they need to survive and thrive in our busy Bay Area.

Interspecies Ethics explores animals' vast capacity for agency, justice, solidarity, humor, and communication across species. The social bonds diverse animals form provide a remarkable model for communitarian justice and cosmopolitan peace, challenging the human exceptionalism that drives modern moral theory. Situating biosocial ethics firmly within coevolutionary processes, this volume has profound implications for work in social and political thought, contemporary pragmatism, Africana thought, and continental philosophy.

Interspecies Ethics develops a communitarian model for multispecies ethics, rebalancing the overemphasis on competition in the original Darwinian paradigm by drawing out and stressing the cooperationist aspects of evolutionary theory through mutual aid. The book's ethical vision offers an alternative to utilitarian, deontological, and virtue ethics, building its argument through rich anecdotes and clear explanations of recent scientific discoveries regarding animals and their agency. Geared toward a general as well as a philosophical audience, the text illuminates a variety of theories and contrasting approaches, tracing the contours of a postmoral ethics.

How do we know that mammals lived alongside the dinosaurs? What proves that whales evolved from four-legged land animals and are related to hippos? Did hunting by humans or climate change cause the extinction of mammoths? How far back would we need to go to see that horses were once almost identical to tapirs and rhinos?

Donald R. Prothero takes readers on a journey through the history of mammals, opening a window onto the worlds of some of the most incredible and peculiar animals that ever lived. He tells the dramatic stories of fossil findings and the paleontologists who unraveled them, showing how scientific ingenuity advanced our knowledge of both ancient and present-day mammals. Alongside iconic animals like mastodons, dire wolves, and sabertoothed cats, Prothero introduces readers to a vast range of little-known prehistoric creatures. Some resemble their living relatives, but with a twist: short-necked giraffes, camels without humps, rhinos without horns, bear-sized beavers. Others are like nothing alive today, such as chalicotheres, which look like a cross between a horse and gorilla but with claws, and uintatheres, which one scientist compared to “giant horned bunnies.” Lively and informative, The Story of the Mammals in 25 Discoveries highlights the wonder, beauty, and strangeness of the creatures that have shared our world.

Enter a fungal wonderland to reconnect with nature.

Welcome to the Mycoverse of Los Angeles! In this wondrous guide to common local mushrooms, Aaron Tupac opens Angelenos' eyes to the mycelial ties that bind us all together. From the San Gabriel Mountains, across the sprawling metropolis, and clear out to the coast, Southern California is teeming with fungal life, whose underground networks support an array of ecosystems. Organized by habitat, and featuring full color photos to aid in identification, this guide will help you spot and marvel at mushrooms burgeoning throughout the cityscapes, sand dunes, oak forests, and deserts that surround us. These fungal friends have lessons to teach us, too: through loving observations and stories, Tupac shares our latest understanding of mushrooms' radical reciprocity, vibrant gender fluidity, and the incredible imaginative possibilities that fungi bring into our lives.

A mind- and soul-expanding manifesto on connecting more deeply with the land called California.

Obi Kaufmann, author of The California Field Atlas and The State of Fire, now presents a gorgeous and provocative manifesto calling for a revived look at the Golden State. As Kaufmann writes, the popular idea of California as a place of novelty, riches, and self-reinvention has been shaped by 250 years of European American settlement. This view is so often rooted in economic exploitation, destruction of the land, and attempts at erasing Native histories. As climate breakdown accelerates and natural disasters escalate, Kaufmann calls on us to see the land we call California with fresh eyes. The boundless complexity of the flora and fauna around us prompts bold, imaginative questions: What words might connect us more deeply with the places where we live? What if a watershed can think? What if a forest has a mind of its own? Across six chapters full of wisdom and heart, Kaufmann tells poignant personal stories from his fifty years living in California. Designed in a handsome pocket-size format, and featuring watercolor maps and illustrations drawn from across Kaufmann's career, California Inside Out is a call for awe and action.

Pause, reflect, and encounter the natural world through the meditative writings of Margaret Fuller.

For Margaret Fuller—one of the most original American thinkers of the 19th century—nature was both refuge and revelation, a place where the outer world and inner life met. “Nature is a perpetual motion,” she wrote, “and her path is beauty.” A leading voice of the Transcendentalist movement, Fuller found in prairies, rivers, mountains, and gardens a language for the soul and a way of seeing that invited stillness, awareness, and wonder.

The Meditations of Margaret Fuller gathers 59 carefully selected passages from her essays, travel writings, and reflections, drawn from works such as Summer on the Lakes and her contributions to The Dial. Moving from wide-open landscapes to quiet moments of inward reflection, these meditations remind us that “every path is attractive” and that meaning often reveals itself when we pause to truly observe. This timeless collection provides moments of clarity, calm, and contemplation. It speaks to readers seeking peace, perspective, and renewal in the natural world.

Book Features:

• Lyrical reflections on landscapes that awaken the mind and spirit
• Meditative passages drawn from Fuller’s most celebrated writings
• Observations that link the rhythms of nature with spiritual and emotional insight
• Contemplative companion for quiet reading and mindful moments
• Royalties from this edition are donated to support causes aligned with Margaret Fuller’s enduring values

Identify wild shrubs in eastern North America with this pocket-size guide.

If you enjoy learning about native plants, gardening with regional species, or simply understanding the shrubs you encounter outdoors, then being able to identify wild shrubs is an essential skill. Shrub Finder by Dorcas S. Miller is a practical tool for getting started with shrub identification. This compact booklet helps readers identify common native shrubs found throughout the eastern half of North America.

The booklet provides a dichotomous key to identifying woody plants. Simply answer a series of simple questions about leaf arrangement, leaf shape and margins, flower position, and fruit type. Along the way, professional illustrations highlight key features and help to guide you to a positive identification in eastern Canada and the US states of Alabama, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and parts of Florida, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Book Features:

• More than 180 species of shrubs and shrub families
• Professional line illustrations with key markings for identification
• Small format that fits into a pocket or pack

Enter a fungal wonderland to reconnect with nature.

Welcome to the Mycoverse of Los Angeles! In this wondrous guide to common local mushrooms, Aaron Tupac opens Angelenos' eyes to the mycelial ties that bind us all together. From the San Gabriel Mountains, across the sprawling metropolis, and clear out to the coast, Southern California is teeming with fungal life, whose underground networks support an array of ecosystems. Organized by habitat, and featuring full color photos to aid in identification, this guide will help you spot and marvel at mushrooms burgeoning throughout the cityscapes, sand dunes, oak forests, and deserts that surround us. These fungal friends have lessons to teach us, too: through loving observations and stories, Tupac shares our latest understanding of mushrooms' radical reciprocity, vibrant gender fluidity, and the incredible imaginative possibilities that fungi bring into our lives.

A mind- and soul-expanding manifesto on connecting more deeply with the land called California.

Obi Kaufmann, author of The California Field Atlas and The State of Fire, now presents a gorgeous and provocative manifesto calling for a revived look at the Golden State. As Kaufmann writes, the popular idea of California as a place of novelty, riches, and self-reinvention has been shaped by 250 years of European American settlement. This view is so often rooted in economic exploitation, destruction of the land, and attempts at erasing Native histories. As climate breakdown accelerates and natural disasters escalate, Kaufmann calls on us to see the land we call California with fresh eyes. The boundless complexity of the flora and fauna around us prompts bold, imaginative questions: What words might connect us more deeply with the places where we live? What if a watershed can think? What if a forest has a mind of its own? Across six chapters full of wisdom and heart, Kaufmann tells poignant personal stories from his fifty years living in California. Designed in a handsome pocket-size format, and featuring watercolor maps and illustrations drawn from across Kaufmann's career, California Inside Out is a call for awe and action.

With a new cover, more extensive index, and list of organizations, the new edition of Wildflowers of the Appalachian Trail,a National Outdoor Book Award winner, is the go-to resource for anyone interested in the wildflowers found along the 2,190-mile-long Appalachian National Scenic Trail. Stunning full-page color photos by Joe Cook and Monica Sheppard accompany the detailed descriptions by author Leonard M. Adkins that include: bloom season, leaves and stem description, geographic range of growth, and location of the flower along the AT. Also included for many of the 94 flowers profiled in the book is the fascinating role the flower has played through history and its value in folklore as well as modern medicine.

Identify marine fish of the Pacific Coast with this pocket-size guide.

Whether you’re snorkeling with your family or on a fishing trip in the Pacific, you’re bound to encounter a variety of marine wildlife. If you’re curious about the fish you see, then Pacific Coast Fish Finder by Ron Russo is just what you need. With the handy, easy-to-use book, you can identify common marine fish, sharks, and rays by sight.

The booklet begins with introductions to fish anatomy and biology, followed by an at-a-glance identification chart to fish species by shape and a guide to shark teeth. A field guide section presents 130 marine fish, organized by families such as sharks, salmon, rockfish, and tunas. Professional illustrations by Ann Caudle and visual descriptions help you to identify each species.

Book Features:

• Simple guide to marine fish identification
• 130 species of common fish, sharks, and rays
• Introductions to fish anatomy, biology, distribution, and more
• Professional illustrations with key markings for identification
• Small format that fits into a pocket or pack

This guide is applicable to the West Coast states of Alaska, California, Oregon, and Washington, as well as coastal Baja California and Canada.

Identify wildflowers of the Rocky Mountains with this pocket-size guide.

You can appreciate and enjoy nature’s beautiful wildflowers! If you’re curious about the flowers that you encounter, then Rocky Mountain Flower Finder by Janet L. Wingate, Ph.D., is just what you need. With the handy, easy-to-use booklet, you can identify wildflowers below the treeline in the Rocky Mountains.

The booklet provides a dichotomous key to identifying herbaceous wildflowers and showy weeds. Simply answer a series of simple questions about the color, shape, and appearance of the plant. Along the way, Janet’s professional illustrations help to guide you to a positive identification.

This guide is applicable to the foothill, montane, subalpine, and semidesert shrubland zones in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming, as well as southern Alberta, Canada.

Book Features:

• Step-by-step guide to identifying wildflowers
• More than 300 species
• Professional line illustrations with key markings for identification
• Small format that fits into a pocket or pack

Identify native trees of the Pacific Coast—from southwestern Canada to northwestern Mexico—with this pocket-size guide.

You can appreciate and enjoy beautiful native trees, plus some widely planted non-native trees, of the Pacific Coast! If you’re curious about the trees that you see, then the Pacific Coast Tree Finder by Tom Watts is just what you need. With the handy, easy-to-use booklet, you can identify trees in the coastal regions of western North America.

The book provides a dichotomous key to identifying trees. Simply answer a series of simple questions about the location, appearance, branches, needles/leaves, and more. Along the way, Tom’s professional illustrations help to guide you to a positive identification.

This guide is applicable to the coastal regions of California, Oregon, and Washington, as well as southwestern British Columbia and northwestern Baja California.

Book Features:

• Step-by-step guide to tree identification
• More than 100 species of trees
• Professional line illustrations with key markings for identification
• Small format that fits into a pocket or pack

Slow down, breathe deep, and walk with Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) as he guides you into meditations on reflection, reverence, and the timeless wisdom of Native American spirituality.

Some truths are not taught but remembered—in stillness, in solitude, in the sacred hush of the natural world. In Meditations of Ohiyesa, Dr. Charles A. Eastman (Ohiyesa) guides us back to the truths that live beneath words. Raised in traditional Dakota ways during the late 1800s and later educated in the formal institutions of a very different world, Charles moved between cultures with grace, offering rare insight into Indigenous thought and reverence. His reflections on nature and spirit embodied the rhythms of a life lived in harmony with the land.

Meditations of Ohiyesa collects 60 of Eastman’s most resonant writings on nature, community, prayer, and Indigenous philosophy. Each passage opens a doorway: to silence, to humility, to the deep understanding that nature is not separate from us but part of us. These writings offer inspiration, as well as practical guidance for anyone seeking a more mindful, rooted way of living. Read it slowly. Return to it often. Carry it with you into the woods—or into a quiet moment of your day.

Inside you’ll find:

• Reflections on the sacredness of nature and our place within it
• Core Dakota values of generosity, humility, and spiritual connection
• Powerful critique of modern materialism and disconnection
• Authentic Indigenous teachings, shared with clarity, grace, and emotional depth

Royalties from this edition are donated to the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribal Health Center, supporting community well-being.

Identify native trees of the Rocky Mountain regions of southwestern Canada and the western United States with this pocket-size guide.

You can appreciate and enjoy beautiful native trees of the Rocky Mountains! If you’re curious about the trees that you see, then the Rocky Mountain Tree Finder by Tom Watts and Bridget Watts is just what you need. With the handy, easy-to-use booklet, you can identify trees in the Rocky Mountain regions of western North America.

The book provides a dichotomous key to identifying native trees. Simply answer a series of simple questions about the location, appearance, branches, needles/leaves, and more. Along the way, Tom’s professional illustrations help to guide you to a positive identification.

This guide is applicable to the mountain regions of Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, as well as Alberta and British Columbia.

Book Features:

• Step-by-step guide to tree identification
• More than 90 species of trees
• Professional line illustrations with key markings for identification
• Small format that fits into a pocket or pack