Nature Biography

Stephen Alter was raised by American missionary parents in the hill station of Mussoorie, in the foothills of the Himalayas, where he and his wife Ameeta, now live. Their idyllic existence was brutally interrupted when four armed intruders invaded their house and viciously attacked them, leaving them for dead. The violent assault and the trauma of almost dying left him questioning assumptions he had lived by since childhood. For the first time, he encountered the face of evil and the terror of the unknown.

The award-winning creator of popular survival stories turns his attention to his own real life adventures in Minnesota and Alaska as he prepares for the grueling Iditarod sled dog race.

At 28,251 feet, K2 might be almost 800 feet shorter than Everest, but it’s a far harder climb. It will kill you on the way up and the way down. Mick Conefrey guides us through the early story of the legendary mountain and the extraordinary attempts that led up to its first ascent in 1954 - these are tales of riveting drama and unimaginable tragedy.

An abiding love of nature lies at the root of all of Rabindranath Tagore’s works. Thousands of pages have been written in appreciation of his writings on nature. However, Tagore has not commonly been considered relevant to the current environmental debate. Using the lens of ecocriticism, the author shows us how Tagore brings up important issues regarding the imbalanced relationship between man and nature, decades before the concept had been formally introduced.

Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina - a place "easy to pass by on the way somewhere else" - has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, listeners meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be "the rare bird, the oddity".

The Last Great Mountain tells the story of the first ascent of Kangchenjunga the third highest but reputedly the hardest mountain in the world. It was an astonishing achievement for a British team led by Everest veteran Charles Evans. Drawing on interviews, diaries and unpublished accounts, Mick Conefrey begins his story in 1905 with the disastrous first attempt on the mountain by a team led by Aleister Crowley, explores the three dramatic German expeditions of the the late 1920s and brings it all to a climax 50 years later with the first ascent by Joe Brown and George Band.

Wishing to leave behind the quiet isolation of her Orkney island life, Amy Liptrot books a one-way flight to Berlin. Searching for new experiences, inspiration and love, she rents a loftbed in a shared flat and looks for work. She explores the streets, nightclubs and parks and seeks out the city’s wildlife—goshawks, raccoons and hooded crows. She looks for love through the screen of her laptop. Over the course of a year, Amy makes space, hoping for the unexpected. And it comes with an erotic jolt, in the form of a love affair that obsesses her.

In this collection of his finest work from such magazines as Outside and Smithsonian, Krakauer explores the subject from the unique and memorable perspective of one who has himself battled peaks like K2, Denali, Everest, and, of course, Eiger.

In Seed to Dust, Marc Hamer paints a beautiful portrait of the garden that “belongs to everyone.” He describes a year in his life as a country gardener, with each chapter named for the month he’s in. As he works, he muses on the unusual folklores of his beloved plants. He observes the creatures who scurry and hide from his blade or rake. And he reflects on his own life: living homeless as a young man, his loving relationship with his wife and children, and - now - feeling the effects of old age on body and mind.

Professor Patricia Wiltshire is a forensic ecologist, her days spent at crime scenes collecting samples, standing over dead bodies in a mortuary, or looking down her microscope for evidence. Working at the interface of where the criminal and natural world interact, Patricia has been involved in some of the most high-profile murder cases. Now, through a study of her most infamous, and fascinating cases—including the murder of Sarah Payne, and the Soham murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman—Patricia will show us how she finds the answers to some of the worst crimes imaginable.

Alone on the Wall recounts the most astonishing achievements of Honnold's extraordinary life and career, brimming with lessons on living fearlessly, taking risks, and maintaining focus even in the face of extreme danger. Now Honnold tells, for the first time and in his own words, the story of his three hours and 56 minutes on the sheer face of El Cap, which Outside called "the moon landing of free soloing.... A generation-defining climb. Bad ass and beyond words.... One of the pinnacle sporting moments of all time."

Raging ambition. Towering egos. Competition under a veneer of courtesy. Heroic effort combined with plagiarism, theft, exaggeration, and fraud. This was the state of bird study in eastern North America during the early 1800s, as a handful of intrepid men raced to find the last few birds that were still unknown to science. The most famous name in the bird world was John James Audubon, who painted spectacular portraits of birds. But although his images were beautiful, creating art was not his main goal. Instead, he aimed to illustrate (and write about) as many different species as possible.

What happens when a burnt-out tech professional ditches the comforts of modern life and hikes 2,650 miles across the Pacific Crest Trail from Mexico to Canada? A head-on collision of midlife crisis and wilderness reality, where he’s never felt more alive. Somewhere between blisters, bear poop, and resupply, it clicks. Those cryptic ideas of Zen and Taoism he skimmed almost two decades ago—about ‘simplicity’ and ‘attachment, ’ the kind most of us flag as hippie nonsense, actually started making a whole lot of sense.

Who could resist living for a year with a raccoon who is just about your best friend?

In this delightful memoir, Sterling North recalls his year with Rascal - a very mischievous and resourceful raccoon. Virtually everywhere Sterling goes, Rascal is there, and life is filled with one adventure after another.

For half a century, Bob Brown has been standing up to the powerful interests who would put profit before planet. In Defiance, he draws on this experience to inspire a new generation of individual and collective action. He reflects on the people and places that have shaped him, celebrates the irreplaceable beauty and value of nature and shares what motivates him to keep fighting.

Laird Hamilton has been hailed as the world's greatest big-wave surfer. His first book, Force of Nature, allows listeners a rare glimpse inside the unique philosophy that has created his circumstances, and not the other way around. After all, this is a man whose biological father abandoned him shortly after he was born; whose first job was working on a pig farm; who dropped out of school in 11th grade. And then the career decision: surfer.

In Seven Dirty Words, journalist and cultural critic James Sullivan tells the story of Alternative America from the 1950s to the present, from the singular vantage point of George Carlin, the Catholic boy for whom nothing was sacred.

The Wild Rose ends with the dramatic Barn Fire Incident in which the author and his steady new young Barb stallion, Punk, pull a flame stunned mare out of a burning barn, just seconds before the whole burning structure collapses, then together they both drive straight out of that book and into a new life in the next book. This third book in the trilogy brings the story far away from all those troubled times, ins and outs, and hardships and betrayals involved in the author’s effort to gather up those old style Indian Ponies of his youth.

Girl in the Woods is Aspen Matis' exhilarating true-life adventure of hiking from Mexico to Canada - a coming of age story, a survival story, and a triumphant story of overcoming emotional devastation. On her second night of college, Aspen was raped by a fellow student. Overprotected by her parents who discouraged her from telling of the attack, Aspen was confused and ashamed.

In the tradition of Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Orchid Thief, Stronghold is Tucker Malarkey’s eye-opening account of one of the world’s greatest fly fishermen and his crusade to protect the world’s last bastion of wild salmon. From a young age, Guido Rahr was a misfit among his family and classmates, preferring to spend his time in the natural world. When the salmon runs of the Pacific Northwest began to decline, Guido was one of the few who understood why.