Natural Science

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they...

John Muir was an early proponent of a view we still hold today—that much of California was pristine, untouched wilderness before the arrival of Europeans. But as this book demonstrates, what Muir was really seeing when he admired the grand vistas of Yosemite and the gold and purple flowers carpeting the Central Valley were the fertile gardens of the Sierra Miwok and Valley Yokuts Indians, modified and made productive by centuries of harvesting, tilling, sowing, pruning, and burning.

From three-inch fang blennies to thirty-foot prehistoric crocodiles, from gaboon vipers to Neanderthals, Bite is a fascinating journey through the natural, scientific, and cultural history of something right in front of—or in—our faces: teeth. In Bite, zoologist Bill Schutt makes a...

There is no precedent in postwar American history for the destruction of the town of Paradise, California. On November 8, 2018, the community of 27,000 people was swallowed by the ferocious Camp Fire, which razed virtually every home and killed at least 85 people. Fire in Paradise is a dramatic and moving narrative of the disaster based on hundreds of in-depth interviews with residents, firefighters and police, and scientific experts.

Roderick Nash's classic study of changing attitudes toward wilderness during American history, as well as the origins of the environmental and conservation movements, has received wide acclaim since its initial publication in 1967. For the fifth edition, Nash has written a new preface and epilogue that brings Wilderness and the American Mind into dialogue with contemporary debates about wilderness.

This eye-opening book offers a "clear and captivating" (Dr. Kris Verburgh​)scientific deep dive into how plants and animals have already unlocked the secrets to immortality–and the lessons they hold for us all. Recent advances in medicine and technology have expanded our understanding of...

Christmas Island. The Russian Arctic. Argentine Patagonia. Japan. Cuba. British Columbia. Dylan Tomine takes us to the far reaches of the planet in search of fish and adventure, with keen insight, a strong stomach and plenty of laughs along the way. Closer to home, he wades deeper into his...

It is not your imagination: water crises are more frequent. Our twentieth-century systems for providing the water that grows food, sustains cities, and supports healthy ecosystems are failing to meet the demands of growing population and the challenges brought on by climate change. But the grim news reports—of empty reservoirs, withering crops, failing ecosystems—need not be cause for despair, argues award-winning author David Sedlak.

Let There Be Water illustrates how Israel can serve as a model for the United States and countries everywhere by showing how to blunt the worst of the coming water calamities. Even with 60 percent of its country made of desert, Israel has not only solved its water problem; it also has an abundance of water. Israel even supplies water to its neighbors - the Palestinians and the Kingdom of Jordan - every day.

Next to a continent or in the middle of the ocean, all islands are surrounded by water. These landforms can be rock, sand, or even coral. Listen to Islands to learn about life on these isolated places.

For years, America's national parks have provided public breathing spaces in a world in which such spaces are steadily disappearing, which is why close to 300 million people visit the parks each year. Now, to honor the centennial of the National Park Service, Terry Tempest Williams, the author of the beloved memoir When Women Were Birds, returns with The Hour of Land, a literary celebration of our national parks, what they mean to us, and what we mean to them.

The fascinating, often surprising story of how a simple black rock altered the course of history. Yet the mundane mineral that built our global economy, and even today powers our electrical plants, has also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction. In this remarkable book, Barbara Freese takes us on a rich historical journey that begins three hundred million years ago and spans the globe.

J. M. Adovasio has spent the last thirty years at the center of one of our most fiery scientific debates: Who were the first humans in the Americas, and how and when did they get there? At its heart, The First Americans is the story of the revolution in thinking that Adovasio and his fellow archaeologists have brought about, and the firestorm it has ignited.

When an earthquake flattens New York City, the devastation is phenomenal and loss of life beyond comprehension. The world is in shock. Only the chosen few can see it. A firefighter, newspaperman, thief, engineer, bride and a priest are all strangers across the country and are all thrown together. All of them believe it is the beginning of the end. Together they work diligently to try to save humanity and stop the inevitable. But is it already too late?

Despite their cultural influence, the grand narrative of the dinosaur story is rarely told. Most of us have heard of Stegosaurus and Tyrannosaurus, but these two dinosaurs lived more than eighty million years apart—a greater span of time than the entire post-T. rex history of the planet. Furthermore, we often know even less about the environments these animals lived in. The Shortest History of the Dinosaurs tells the full story, a 230-million-year epic of small beginnings, spectacular golden periods, and eventual global domination.

The Everglades was America's last frontier, a wild country long after the West was won. In this book Michael Grunwald chronicles how a series of visionaries tried to drain and "reclaim" it and how Mother Nature refused to bend to their will; in the most harrowing tale, a 1928 hurricane drowned 2,500 people in the Everglades. But the Army Corps of Engineers finally tamed the beast with levees and canals, converting half the Everglades into sprawling suburbs and sugar plantations.

"A diamond is forever." Who among us doesn't recognize this slogan and, with it, the fascination that diamonds hold in our collective imagination as emblems of royalty, glamor, and eternal love? Rachelle Bergstein's cultural biography illuminates the enticing, often surprising story of our society's enduring obsession with diamonds - and the people who have worked tirelessly to ensure their continued allure.

Ash is technically a fire mage, but he can't do much. Turning his bedroom lights on and off without having to get out of bed isn't exactly awe inspiring, not when anyone with the right gadget could clap and do the same thing. Worse, sometimes he senses something bigger and brighter lurking under his skin, and it feels so familiar he knows it has to be his magic, but then he burps or sneezes, and the feeling passes. So it's probably just allergies . . . or gas. Yeah . . . Not exactly brimming with magical oomph. Not anymore. It sucks.

Most of us give little thought to the hidden systems that bring us water and take it away when we’re done. But these underappreciated marvels of engineering face an array of challenges that cannot be solved without a fundamental change to our relationship with water.

Rescue of the Bounty is the harrowing story of the sinking and rescue of Bounty - the tall ship used in the classic 1962 film Mutiny on the Bounty - which was caught in the path of Hurricane Sandy with 16 aboard.