Science Geography

Tag along on this New York Times bestselling “witty, entertaining romp” (The New York Times Book Review) as Eric Weiner travels the world, from Athens to Silicon Valley—and back through history, too—to show how creative genius flourishes in specific places at specific times. In this...

Marco Polo (1254-1324), is probably the most famous Westerner who traveled on the "Silk Road." His journey through Asia lasted 24 years. He traveled the whole of China and returned to tell the tale, which became one of the world's greatest travelogues.

The Gilded Age is the collaborative work of Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirized the era that followed the Civil War. This period is often referred to as the “Gilded Age” because of this book. The corruption and greed that was typical of the time is exemplified through two fictional narratives: one, of the Hawkins, a poor family from Tennessee that tries to persuade the government to purchase their seventy-five thousand acres of unimproved land.

Veganism as an ethics and a practice has a recorded history dating back to Antiquity. Yet, it is only recently that researchers have begun the process of formalizing the study of veganism. Whereas occasional publications have recently emerged from sociology, history, philosophy, cultural studies, or critical animal studies, a comprehensive geographical analysis is missing. Until now.

Published in 1951, The Sea Around Us is one of the most remarkably successful books ever written about the natural world. This classic work remains as fresh today as when it first appeared. Carson's writing teems with stunning, memorable images - the newly formed Earth cooling beneath an endlessly overcast sky, the centuries of nonstop rain that created the oceans, giant squids battling sperm whales hundreds of fathoms below the surface, and incredibly powerful tides moving 100 billion tons of water daily in the Bay of Fundy.

In Oneness vs. the 1%, Vandana Shiva takes on the billionaires club of Gates, Buffet, and Zuckerberg, as well as other modern empires whose blindness to the rights of people, and to the destructive impact of their construct of linear progress, have wrought havoc across the world. Their single-minded pursuit of profit has undemocratically enforced uniformity and monocultures, division and separation, monopolies and external control - over finance, food, energy, information, health care, and even relationships.

All canyons are deep, steep valleys, but there is more to these landforms than meets the eye! Rivers form some canyons, while the movement of Earth's crust forms others. To get to the bottom of the Grand Canyon in Arizona, you'd have to travel more than a mile!

Give beginning listeners all the need-to-know information about hills, including their characteristics, how they form, and where they can be found around the world.

Otto and Sheed are the local sleuths in their zany Virginia town, masters of unraveling mischief using their unmatched powers of deduction. And as the summer winds down and the first day of school looms, the boys are craving just a little bit more time for fun, even as they bicker over what kind of fun they want to have. That is, until a mysterious man appears with a camera that literally freezes time.

Visit the Sunflower State! Learn about Kansas' history, geography, weather, people, and more in this book that's all about our 34th state.

Welcome to Peru! Hike through the clouds to ancient cities of the Andes Mountains. Hear the calls of birds in the Amazon rain forest. Learn about the people, places, and traditions of this beautiful South American country.

"With humor and lyrical grace," Kathleen Norris meditates on a place in the American landscape that is at once desolate and sublime, harsh, and forgiving, steeped in history and myth (San Francisco Chronicle). A combination of reporting and reflection, Dakota reminds us that wherever we go, we chart our own spiritual geography.

Born to a wealthy family in northern Sri Lanka, Logathasan Tharmathurai and his family lost everything during the long and brutal Sri Lankan Civil War. In January 1985, at the age of 18, he left his home in a desperate bid to build a new life for himself and his family abroad after a deeply traumatic encounter with a group of Sinhalese soldiers.

Growth has been both an unspoken and an explicit aim of our individual and collective striving. It governs the lives of microorganisms and galaxies; it shapes the capabilities of our extraordinarily large brains and the fortunes of our economies. Growth is manifested in annual increments of continental crust, a rising gross domestic product, a child's growth chart, the spread of cancerous cells. In this magisterial book, Vaclav Smil offers systematic investigation of growth in nature and society, from tiny organisms to the trajectories of empires and civilizations.

In this inspiring manifesto, an internationally renowned ecologist makes a clear case for why protecting nature is our best health insurance, and why it makes economic sense.

Today's most urgent problems are fundamentally global. They require nothing less than concerted, planetwide action if we are to secure a long-term future. But humanity's story has always been on a global scale. Sachs takes listeners through a series of seven distinct waves of technological and institutional change, starting with the original settling of the planet by early modern humans through long-distance migration and ending with reflections on today's globalization.

What plants and animals grow strong surrounded by water? Find out what lives in wetland habitats.

What plants and animals call grassy flatlands home? Find out what lives in grassland habitats.

Take a trip to the Sunshine State! Learn about Florida's history, weather, geography, people, and more in this book that's all about our 27th state.

King cobras slither across the ground. Learn all about these venomous snakes and their habitats in King Cobras.