Nature Biography

Wilderness guide and lifelong Alaskan Bjorn Dihle weaves personal experience with historical and contemporary accounts to explore the world of brown bears - from encounters with the Lewis and Clark Expedition to frightening attacks including the famed death of Timothy Treadwell, the controversies related to bear hunting, the animal's place in native cultures, and the impacts on the species from habitat degradation and climate change.

This gripping account of courage, achievement, and heartbreaking loss tells the story of Bonington's Boys, a band of climbers who reinvented mountaineering during the three decades after Everest's first ascent. The boyish, fanatically driven Chris Bonington's inner circle included a dozen of the most renowned climbers, who took increasingly terrible risks on now legendary expeditions to the world's most fearsome peaks, and paid an enormous price. Most of them died in the mountains, leaving behind the hardest question of all: Was it worth it?

A dazzling journey into the hidden lives of synanthropes, the wild animals who've found ingenious ways to survive and thrive in human communities—from award-winning writer and epidemiologist Dan Werb Synanthropes have always been an immutable part of the tapestry of our lives. They are the...

In the spirit of his father's beloved classic, A River Runs through It, comes John N. Maclean’s true chronicle of his family and their bond with Montana's Blackfoot River—a profound and beautiful story about the power of place to bind generations, past and present “Maclean’s...

Kneeling in a muddy field, clutching something soft and blue-black, Marc Hamer vows he will stop trapping moles - forever. In this earnest, understated, and sublime work of nonfiction literature, the molecatcher shares what led him to this strange career: from sleeping among hedges as a homeless teen, to toiling on the railway, to weeding windswept gardens in Wales. Hamer infuses his wanderings with radiant poetry and stark, simple observations on nature’s oft-ignored details.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER A guide for living outdoors and communing with the natural world—under the open skies. ""I believe in sleeping outdoors, surrounded by tall fir trees, darkness and cold. Lying on my back and looking up at the stars, watching my breath form thin clouds."" Under the...

Joe Simpson, with just his partner Simon Yates, tackled the unclimbed west face of the remote 21,000 foot Siula Grande in the Peruvian Andes in June of 1995. But before they reached the summit, disaster struck. A few days later, Simon staggered into base camp, exhausted and frostbitten, to tell their non-climbing companion that Joe was dead.

Hangdog Days vividly chronicles the era when rock climbing exploded in popularity, attracting a new generation of talented climbers eager to reach new heights via harder routes and faster ascents. This contentious, often entertaining period gave rise to sport climbing, climbing gyms, and competitive climbing-indelibly transforming the sport. Jeff Smoot was one of those brash young climbers, and here he traces the development of traditional climbing "rules," enforced first through peer pressure, then later through intimidation and sabotage.

Yellowstone is America's premier national park. Today Yellowstone is often a byword for conservation, natural beauty, and a way for everyone to enjoy the great outdoors. But it was not always this way. Wonderlandscape presents a new perspective on Yellowstone, the emotions that various natural wonders and attractions evoke, and how this explains the park's relationship to America as a whole.

On a clear May afternoon at the end of his junior year at Harvard, Howard Axelrod played a pick-up game of basketball. In a skirmish for a loose ball, a boy's finger hooked behind Axelrod's eyeball and left him permanently blinded in his right eye. A week later, he returned to the same dorm room, but to a different world. A world where nothing looked solid, where the distance between how people saw him and how he saw had widened into a gulf.

Five million steps. 157 days. 2,200 miles. From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping rumination on life, nature, and tragedy as the author recounts his two through-hikes—33 years apart—of the Appalachian Trail and a haunting, life-changing...

For famed cinematographer, adventurer, and mountaineer David Breashears, the terrifying experiences on Mount Everest during the deadly 1996 season became the defining moment of his life. By 1995, Breashears had already twice reached Mt. Everest's summit. Then he faced the greatest challenge of his life: to scale the 29,028-foot peak while hauling a giant IMAX camera to film the documentary Everest.

In the wake of a significant breakup, Luke Turner is visited by familiar demons, including depression and guilt surrounding his bisexual identity, experiences of sexual abuse, and confusion brought on by an intensely religious upbringing. With nowhere to turn, Turner seeks refuge in London’s Epping Forest, where unexpected, elusive threats seem to have replaced its former comforts. No stranger to compulsion, Turner finds himself repeatedly drawn to the woods, eager to uncover its secrets and investigate an old family rumor of illicit behavior that once happened there.

An attachment-first path to lasting recovery: build the love, safety, and belonging that keep you sober—and help your relationships thrive Practical, body-based tools for dating, intimacy, and partnership in sobriety Recovery isn't just about staying sober—it's about learning to love and be...

From one of the world’s leading concussion researchers, a revolutionary evidence-based guide to healing from a traumatic brain injury Concussions are one of the most debilitating medical episodes a person can have, and one of the most mysterious. More than 40 million Americans will suffer one...

A wrenching, lyrical memoir by Skins and Game of Thrones star Hannah Murray, exploring the spiritual awakening that turned into a mental breakdown, and the healing made possible when we learn to save ourselves He sat me down in a chair and he told me, in no uncertain terms, that magic is real...

As the celebrated author of Akenfield, Ronald Blythe, turns 100 this year, Next to Nature brings together a seasonal collection from the very best of a lifetime of writing. Ronald Blythe lives at the end of an overgrown farm track deep in the rolling countryside of the Stour Valley, on the...

Examining the cultural belief that our animal instincts are to be corrected or corralled, nature advocate and rewilding facilitator Vanessa Chakour explores our inner and outer landscapes through the lens of wild animals. How can wolves, misunderstood in myths but vital to ecosystems, teach us...

In the tradition of The Emperor of All Maladies and The Noonday Demon, a moving, eye-opening exploration of PTSD Just as polio loomed over the 1950s, and AIDS stalked the 1980s and ’90s, posttraumatic stress disorder haunts us in the early years of the twenty-first century. Over a decade into...

Mysterious, graceful, and ever-clever, otters have captivated our imaginations, despite the fact that few people have encountered one in the wild. In Otter Country, celebrated nature writer Miriam Darlington captures the fascination she's had for these playful animals since childhood, and chronicles her immersive journey into their watery world. Over the course of a single year, Darlington takes listeners on a winding expedition in pursuit of these elusive creatures—from her home in Devon, England, and through the wilds of Scotland, Wales, the Lake District, and the countryside of Cornwal