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....

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

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.

A groundbreaking study that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of the Europeans in 1492....

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....

A thrilling book about the abounding queerness of the natural world that challenges our expectations of what is normal, beautiful, and possible.

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....

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....

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture

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....

In this lyrical, radically expansive self-portrait, celebrated poet, author, and lecturer Sophie Strand explores—with searing insight and honesty—the intersecting spaces of her own chronic illness, the complex ecology of a changing world, and the very nature of the stories we tell ourselves.

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....

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....

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....

An engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals “pests” and others not—from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons—and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as well as our place in the natural world.

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 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....

All ancient and indigenous peoples insisted their knowledge of plant medicines came from the plants themselves and not through trial-and-error experimentation....

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

In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s groundbreaking environmental classic Silent Spring, an award-winning entomologist and conservationist explains the importance of insects to our survival and offers a clarion call to avoid a looming ecological disaster of our own making....

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

A former endangered species biologist looks at the ongoing sixth mass extinction through the prism of human behavior, personal experience, ecology, evolutionary biology, and contemporary conservation efforts....

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....

While politicians, entrepreneurs, and even school children could tell you that sustainability is an important and nearly universal value, many of them, and many of us, may struggle to define the term, let alone trace its history....