Nature Writing

'Laugh-out-loud funny and surprisingly emotional ... will bring joy' - The Scotsman 'Jamie Lafferty embarks on an epic quest - in which the journey is at least as entertaining as the end result' - Stephen Moss, author of Ten Birds That Changed the World 'Highly entertaining and gloriously...

Among the most beautiful and deadly mountains in the world, Mount Washington has challenged adventurers for centuries with its severe weather. From the days when gentlefolk ascended the heights in hoop skirts and wool suits to today’s high-tech assaults on wintry summits, this audiobook offers extensive and intimate profiles of people who found trouble on New Hampshire’s Presidential Range, from the 19th century through the present day.

It is hard to top the pleasure of a woodland walk in Spring unless of course you have a lyric poet as your guide. Now that is possible with Poets of Nature. Let Walt Whitman, John Keats, Emily Dickinson, Henry David Thoreau, Emily Bronte, and Ralph Waldo Emerson take you into that realm of Nature "where we seldom wander".

Charlotte Runcie has always felt pulled to the sea, lured by its soothing, calming qualities but also enlivened and inspired by its salty wildness. When she loses her beloved grandmother and becomes pregnant with her first child, she feels its pull even more intensely. In Salt on Your Tongue Charlotte explores what the sea means to us and particularly what it has meant to women through the ages.

An accessible and compelling story of a scientist's discovery of plant communication and how it influenced her research and changed her life. In this "phytobiography"--a collection of stories written in partnership with a plant--research scientist Monica Gagliano reveals the dynamic role plants...

If fresh water is to be treasured, the Great Lakes are the mother lode. No bodies of water can compare to them. One of them, Superior, is the largest lake on earth, and the five lakes together contain a fifth of the world's supply of standing fresh water. Their surface area of 95,000 square miles is greater than New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island combined. They are so vast that they dominate much of the geography, climate, and history of North America. In one way or another, they affect the lives of tens of millions.

Upending everything we thought we knew about sun exposure, this trenchant investigation into the “zero-sun policy” sounds the call on the many health benefits of the sun, and what we risk when we minimize our exposure. A quiet revolution is transforming our understanding of sunlight’s...

‘After I finished this book I alarmed my family by going into the garden and climbing the apple tree.’ – Damian Whitworth, The Times ‘One of the publishing sensations of the year … For anyone who has ever felt a little overwhelmed in a big city, or wanted to step out of the rat race...

There is the Cornwall Lamorna Ash knew as a child – the idyllic, folklore-rich place where she spent her summer holidays. Then there is the Cornwall she discovers when, feeling increasingly dislocated in London, she moves to Newlyn, a fishing town near Land’s End. This Cornwall is messier and harder; it doesn’t seem like a place that would welcome strangers. Before long, however, Lamorna finds herself on a week-long trawler trip with a crew of local fishermen, afforded a rare glimpse into their world, their warmth and their humour.

In The Last Empty Places, bestselling author Peter Stark takes the listener to four of the most remote, wild, and unpopulated areas of the United States outside of Alaska, and mainly not part of protected wilderness: the rivers and forests of Northern Maine; the rugged, unpopulated region of Western Pennsylvania, that lies only a short distance from the East's big cities; the haunting canyons of Central New Mexico; and the vast, arid basins of Southeast Oregon.

In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building.

In No Shortage of Good Days John Gierach takes listeners from the Smokies in Tennessee to his home waters in Colorado, from the Canadian Maritimes to Mexico - saltwater or fresh, it's all fishing and all irresistible. As always he writes perceptively about a wide range of subjects: the charm of familiar waters, the etiquette of working with new fishing guides, night fishing when the trout and the mosquitoes are both biting, and fishing snobbery, a pitfall he seems to have largely avoided.

Banff is one of the most renowned tourist destinations in Canada and the most popular in the Canadian Rockies. It is the oldest national park in Canada, the second in North America (following Yellowstone in Wyoming) and the third oldest park in the world (following Royal in Australia). It encompasses 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 square miles) including the Lake Louise area and part of the Icefields Parkway.

नीलकंठ एक मोर की कहानी है। महादेवी वर्मा ने इसे बड़े सरस और आत्मीय ढंग से लिखा है। इस सुंदर गद्य से गुज़रते हुए हम नीलकंठ के बचपन से लेकर उसके वयस्क मयूर बनने तक की यात्रा में साथ हो लेते हैं। हम उससे ऐसा जुड़ाव महसूस करने लगते हैं कि नीलकंठ का गुस्सा, उसकी उदासी और उसका प्यार हमें महसूस होने लगता है। इस संस्मरण के परिदृश्य में लेखिका का पशु पक्षियों के प्रति अनुराग भी जैसे गूँजता रहता है।

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.

A revelatory dive into the overlooked history of grass and the astonishing ways it has shaped human history Try, if you can, to imagine a world without grass. There would be no lawns or athletic fields, no blooming meadows or rolling wheat fields, no sweeping savannas or steppes. Gone too would...

Winner of the 2015 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award: “Horwitz’s dogged reporting…combined with crisp, cinematic writing, produces a powerful narrative…. He has written a book that is instructive and passionate and deserving a wide audience” (PEN Award Citation). Six years...

In this compelling narrative, O'Connor seeks out neuroscientists, anthropologists and master navigators to understand how navigation ultimately gave us our humanity. Biologists have been trying to solve the mystery of how organisms have the ability to migrate and orient with such precision - especially since our own adventurous ancestors spread across the world without maps or instruments. O'Connor goes to the Arctic, the Australian bush and the South Pacific to talk to masters of their environment who seek to preserve their traditions at a time when anyone can use a GPS to navigate.

Understanding someone who belongs to another species can be transformative. No one knows this better than author, naturalist, and adventurer Sy Montgomery. To research her books, Sy has traveled the world and encountered some of the planet's rarest and most beautiful animals. From tarantulas to tigers, Sy's life continually intersects with and is informed by the creatures she meets. This restorative memoir reflects on the personalities and quirks of 13 animals - Sy's friends - and the truths revealed by their grace.

In Outlandish, acclaimed travel writer Nick Hunt takes us across landscapes that should not be there, wildernesses found in Europe yet seemingly belonging to far-off continents: a patch of Arctic tundra in Scotland; the continent's largest surviving remnant of primeval forest in Poland and Belarus; Europe's only true desert in Spain; and the fathomless grassland steppes of Hungary.