As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home, but no matter where she was transplanted she was able to turn to our world's fierce and funny creatures for guidance. The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, she found that this was the way with wonder:...

An award-winning best-seller from the UK recounts how the author, an experienced falconer grieving the sudden death of her father, endeavored to train for the first time a dangerous goshawk predator as part of her personal recovery. "As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's tortured masterpiece, The Goshawk, which describes White's struggle...

As an author, naturalist, and adventurer, National Book Award finalist Sy Montgomery has traveled the world and encountered some of the planet's rarest and most beautiful animals. This memoir reflects on the personalities and quirks of thirteen animals she has known. It also explores vast themes: the otherness and sameness of people and animals; the various ways we learn to love and become empathetic; how we create families; how we cope with loss...

A collection of essays from the father of the American transcendentalism, including "Nature," "Self-Reliance," "Love," and "Art." Ralph Waldo Emerson's famous essay "Nature" declared that understanding nature was the key to understanding God and reality, and laid the groundwork for transcendentalism. His legacy of boldly questioning the doctrine of his day and connecting with nature will resonate with today's readers in search of meaning and enlightenment....

"Harvey. Maria. Irma. Sandy. Katrina. We live in a time of unprecedented hurricanes and catastrophic weather events, a time when it is increasingly clear that climate change is neither imagined nor distant--and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In this highly original work of lyrical reportage, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic,...

Among the writers to emerge during the mid-19th century transcendental movement, Henry David Thoreau is perhaps the most popular and recognizable, thanks in no small part to his book Walden. After spending two years in a self-built cabin in the woods -- on the property of fellow writer and transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson -- the Massachusetts-born author, poet and philosopher put on paper his experiences among nature, listening to the sounds...

“Uprooted reveals how a late-life uprooting changed Dickey as a gardener.” —The Wall Street Journal
When Page Dickey moved away from her celebrated garden at Duck Hill, she left a landscape she had spent thirty-four years making, nurturing, and loving. She found her next chapter in northwestern Connecticut, on 17 acres of rolling fields and woodland around a former Methodist church. In Uprooted,

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"A personal, lyrical, and idiosyncratic ode to our national parks"-- "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...

During his two-year residence at Walden Pond, Henry David Thoreau became keenly aware of the natural world that surrounded him. Entries from his journals reflect his soulful, in-depth observations of local wildlife, and his remarks on birds are particularly plentiful and poetic. This book, originally published as Notes on New England Birds in 1910 and edited and arranged by Francis H. Allen, collects Thoreau's thoughts on the various bird species...

"Walden (first published as Walden; or, Life in the Woods) is an American book written by noted transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau, a reflection upon simple living in natural surroundings. The work is part personal declaration of independence, social experiment, voyage of spiritual discovery, satire, and manual for self-reliance. First published in 1854, it details Thoreau's experiences over the course of two years, two months, and two days in...