Ecology

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science....

Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law.

The past is past, but it does leave clues, and Thomas Halliday has used cutting-edge science to decipher them more completely than ever before. In Otherlands, Halliday makes sixteen fossil sites burst to life....

Award-winning Atlantic staff writer Zoë Schlanger delivers a groundbreaking work of popular science that probes the hidden world of the plant kingdom....

When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems....

Drawing on his decades of field research and up-to-the-minute understanding of the latest science, renowned geologist Andrew H. Knoll delivers a rigorous yet accessible biography of Earth, charting our home planet's epic 4.6 billion-year story....

Doug Tallamy, the New York Times bestselling author of Nature's Best Hope and Bringing Nature Home, reveals the ecological importance of the mighty oak tree....

The nation’s greatest voice, David Attenborough, reads a brand-new edition of Life on Earth, now available as an audiobook for the first time....

From number one New York Times best-selling author Michael Pollan, a radical challenge to how we think about drugs, and an exploration into the powerful human attraction to psychoactive plants - and the equally powerful taboos....

From a New York Times bestselling nature writer comes a celebration of what goes on outside in the dark, from blooming moon gardens to nocturnal salamanders, from glowing foxfire and synchronous fireflies that blink in unison like an orchestra of light.

Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of aging across the animal kingdom, and our own timeless quest for the fountain of youth....

Crow Planet reminds us that we do not need to head to faraway places to encounter "nature". Rather, even in the suburbs and cities where we live we are surrounded by wild life such as crows, and through observing them we can enhance our appreciation of the world's natural order....

For centuries, people have been returning to the same tired nature-versus-nurture debate, trying to determine what we learn and what we inherit. In Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man Test, biologist Marlene Zuk goes beyond the binary....

In The Secret Wisdom of Nature, master storyteller and international sensation Peter Wohlleben takes listeners on a thought-provoking exploration of the vast natural systems that make life on Earth possible....

When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains plants and then become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of toxic substances. Teaming with Microbes offers an alternative to this vicious circle....

Joe Roman reveals how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying—and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe....

Environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the United States and around the world to investigate how roads have transformed our planet....

When we talk about human history, we often focus on great leaders, population forces, and decisive wars. But how has the earth itself determined our destiny? Our planet wobbles, driving changes in climate that forced the transition from nomadism to farming....

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers....

In an age when dire problems like the Flint water crisis or the California drought bring ever more attention to the indispensability of safe, clean, easily available water, The Death and the Life of the Great Lakes is a powerful paean to what is arguably our most precious resource....

Teaming with Nutrients explains how nutrients move into plants and what both macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients do once inside. It shows organic gardeners how to provide these essentials....

Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts....

Animal scientists have long considered domestic livestock to be too dumb to know how to eat right, but the lifetime research of animal behaviorist Fred Provenza and his colleagues has debunked this myth....

In The Wayfinders, Wade Davis leads us on a thrilling journey to celebrate the wisdom of the world's indigenous cultures....

Peter Wohlleben turns to the future and provides an illuminating manifesto on ancient forests: how they adapt to climate change by passing their wisdom through generations, and why our future lies in protecting them.

Robert Macfarlane brings his glittering style to a profound work of travel writing, reportage, and natural history. Is a River Alive? is a joyful, mind-expanding exploration of an ancient, urgent idea: that rivers are living beings who should be recognized as such in imagination and law. Macfarlane takes listeners on three unforgettable journeys teeming with extraordinary people, stories, and places: to the miraculous cloud-forests and mountain streams of Ecuador, to the wounded creeks and lagoons of India, and to the spectacular wild rivers of Canada.

Locked in ice for more than twenty thousand years, the lands that now make up Britain and Ireland were some of the last settled by humans. The earliest people, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers like Cheddar Man, arrived around eleven thousand years ago to find dense forests. While they lived lightly, they did introduce fire, which they used to create clearings, and this was the beginning of the reshaping of Britain’s forests.

If you live on a rapidly changing planet, you'd be wise to learn how it works. The giant old forests on a skinny stretch of land on the far west coast of North America have a lot to say about living in a twitchy world.

What can nature teach us about living together? Investigating eight symbiotic relationships trying to survive the climate and biodiversity crises, Sophie Pavelle explains why it has never been more vital for us to understand symbiosis. Symbiotic relationships regulate ecosystems, strengthen resilience and bind pivotal connections. Species living together in symbiosis is no accident – these dynamics evolved.

In Escaping Nature, Orrin H. Pilkey and his coauthors offer concrete suggestions for how to respond to the threats posed by global climate change. They argue that while we wait for the world’s governments to get serious about mitigating climate change we can adapt to a hotter world through technological innovations, behavioral changes, nature-based solutions, political changes, and education.