Earth Science History

“[Kathleen Jamie’s] essays guide you softly along coastlines of varying continents, exploring caves, and pondering ice ages until the narrator stumbles over — not a rock on the trail, but mortality, maybe the earth’s, maybe our own, pointing to new paths forward through the forest.”...

Earth is embroiled in its sixth major extinction event—this time caused not by asteroids or volcanos, but by us. At bottom, preventing this sixth extinction is a spiritual and philosophical problem, for it is the assumptions defining us and our relation to earth that are driving the devastation. Those assumptions insist on a fundamental separation of human and earth that devalues earth and enables our exploitative relation to it.

Published in 1961, the year of Frantz Fanon's death, The Wretched of the Earth is both a powerful analysis of the psychological effects of colonization and a rallying cry for violent uprising and independence. The book rejects colonial assumptions that the people of colonized countries need to be guided by their European colonizers because they are somehow less evolved or civilized. Fanon argues that violence is justified to purge colonialism not just from the countries themselves, but from the very souls of their inhabitants.

Mass Extinction Number 6: The End of Our Time on Earth is a sobering and powerful exploration of the ongoing ecological collapse unfolding in the 21st century—a catastrophe not caused by an asteroid or supervolcano, but by us. In the tradition of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, Ronald Baldwin brings a unique blend of investigative clarity, emotional urgency, and narrative power to this stark warning about humanity’s role in triggering the sixth mass extinction event in Earth’s history.

How deep do sharks swim? Have more people been into space than the deep ocean? And what effect are we having on the health of our seas? In Ask an Ocean Explorer, marine biologist of over 20 years and advisor for the BBC's Blue Planet II, Dr Jon Copley, explains the science and wonder of the deep ocean.

This is the true story of a Harvard graduate who forsook his studies for two years of the grueling life of an ordinary seaman. This exciting tale was the first to realistically describe the lives of the roughly treated, poorly paid sailors of the merchant marine.

In the old, abandoned Greyford house on the outskirts of the Mayfield School for Girls, Delany would be completely and purposefully alone...or so she thought. Yet there was more to this house than first met the eye: There were secret passages and hidden treasures, lost and forgotten with the passing of time, and a room...a fantastic and otherworldly sort of room, which she had decided to call "the Window Room". This is a story about the dangerous and mysterious adventures she found there.

Which famous national park features a geyser that shoots water 185 feet into the air and thousands of American bison? Journey into the history of Yellowstone and its famous wildlife, canyons, rivers, forests, and more in this audiobook for young listeners! From the #1 New York Times Best-Selling...

The year is 2393, and the world is almost unrecognizable. Clear warnings of climate catastrophe went ignored for decades, leading to soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, widespread drought, and the disaster now known as the Great Collapse of 2093. Dramatizing science in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, The Collapse of Western Civilization reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do, providing a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate-change literature.

As in all his books, Heckler draws from personal experience: training his horse, cultivating presence in aikido dojos, consulting with business executives, raising children. A masterful and encompassing book, Holding the Center develops from the fulcrum of the self in the natural world. Many of...

Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden was one of the highest-profile personalities among the Apollo astronauts, renowned for his outspokenness and potent views but also recognized as a warm and well-liked person who devoted much of his life after retiring from NASA to sharing his spaceflight experiences.

What past climate change can tell us about our future: a warning and a rallying-cry Why winding the clock back 50 million years is a bad idea The Fate of the World is a 4.6 billion-year history of the earth, which shows the deep roots of our current climate crisis. It puts contemporary global...

Wheeler is Britain's foremost woman travel writer. Glowing Still is the story of her travelling life - what is 'important, revealing or funny' - in a notoriously testosterone-laden field. Growing up among blue-collar Conservatives in Bristol where 'we didn't know anyone who wasn't like us', Wheeler knew she needed to get away. In her twenties she began a dramatic escape: Pole to Pole, via Poland. Glowing Still recalls happy days on India's Puri Express; an Antarctic lavatory through which a seal popped up (hot fishy breath!); and the louche life of a Parisian shopgirl.

A fascinating, comprehensive, accessible account of conodont fossils—one of paleontology's greatest mysteries. Simon J. Knell takes the listener on a journey through 150 years of scientific thinking, imagining, and arguing. Slowly the animal begins to reveal traces of itself: its lifestyle, its remarkable evolution, its witnessing of great catastrophes, its movements over the surface of the planet, and finally its anatomy. Today the conodont animal remains perhaps the most disputed creature in the zoological world.

This is the story of the Universe including life as we know it.

In December 1872, HMS Challenger embarked on the first round-the-world oceanographic expedition. Its goal: to shine a light on the mysteries of the deep sea. For the next four years, Challenger's naturalists explored the oceans, encountering never-before-seen marvels of marine life. The expedition’s achievements are the stuff of legend. It identified major ocean currents and defining features of the seafloor. It measured worldwide sea temperatures and chemistry. And, most spectacularly of all, it collected nearly five thousand sea creatures and plants new to science.

Este libro es mucho más que una simple colección de datos; es una puerta a las maravillas ocultas del conocimiento. A través de sus páginas, descubrirás hechos tan asombrosos como inesperados, que te harán repensar lo que crees saber sobre el mundo. Cada curiosidad está diseñada para despertar tu imaginación y ofrecerte una nueva perspectiva sobre el mundo que nos rodea. Si alguna vez te has preguntado por qué ciertos patrones se repiten en la naturaleza o cómo ciertos eventos históricos cambiaron el curso de la humanidad, aquí encontrarás respuestas que te sorprenderán.

Himalaya is one of the world's most extraordinary geophysical, historical, environmental and social regions. Historian John Keay introduces us to the myriad mysteries of this vast, confounding and utterly fascinating corner of the planet, and makes the case that it is one of our most essential—and endangered—wonders. For centuries, Himalaya has captivated an illustrious succession of admirers, from explorers, surveyors and sportsmen, to botanists and zoologists, ethnologists and geologists, missionaries and mountaineers.

Over the past few years, devastating tsunamis off the coast of the Indian Ocean have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even more alarmingly, scientists predict that these tsunamis, as well as a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, will be striking with even greater frequency and may eventually threaten Hawaii, California, and Oregon.

The year is 1801, and some of the future’s best and brightest want to lead an army of aborigines and freed slaves against the European oppressors. Others prefer a more peaceful strategy to stem the inevitable yet catastrophic industrial revolutions. Meanwhile, a team of twin assassins roams the planet in search of targets, and the artificial intelligence they all rely on is contaminated and becoming unreliable.