On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson, Author of Silent Spring

The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World

Andrea Wulf · 484 pages

From the Prologue... When nature is perceived as a web, its vulnerability also becomes obvious. Everything hangs together. If one thread is pulled, the whole tapestry may unravel. After he saw the devastating environmental effects of colonial plantations at Lake Valencia in Venezuela in 1800, Humboldt became the first scientist to talk about harmful human-induced climate change. Deforestation t

Encounters with the Archdruid

John McPhee · 245 pages

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard a

Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai (Frances Foster Books)

Claire A. Nivola · 32 pages

All The Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West

David Gessner · 354 pages

"Archetypal wild man Edward Abbey and proper, dedicated Wallace Stegner left their footprints all over the western landscape. Now, ... nature writer David Gessner follows the ghosts of these two remarkable writer-environmentalists from Stegner's birthplace in Saskatchewan to the site of Abbey's pilgrimages to Arches National Park in Utah, braiding their stories and asking how they speak to the liv

Beyond the Hundredth Meridian: John Wesley Powell and the Second Opening of the West

Wallace Stegner · 438 pages

Wangari's Trees of Peace: A True Story from Africa

Jeanette Winter · 32 pages

This true story of Wangari Maathai, environmentalist and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is a shining example of how one woman's passion, vision, and determination inspired great change.

The Man Who Planted Trees: Lost Groves, Champion Trees, and an Urgent Plan to Save the Planet

Jim Robbins · 236 pages

Describes the efforts of a former alcoholic nurseryman, whose near-death experience prompted him to attempt to find the best specimens of the U.S.'s 872 known species of trees and use them to propagate their offspring around the world.

The Legacy of Luna: The Story of a Tree, a Woman, and the Struggle to Save the Redwoods

Julia Butterfly Hill · 256 pages

The woman who spent more than two years living in Luna, a thousand-year-old redwood in Humboldt County, California, tells the story of protecting old growth forests, siege by opponents, threatening weather, and unexpected support from around the world.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

Elizabeth Kolbert · 336 pages

From the author of Field Notes from a Catastrophe, a powerful and important work about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a compelling account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

The Third Plate: Field Notes on the Future of Food

Dan Barber · 486 pages

"Renowned chef Dan Barber introduces a new kind of cuisine that represents the future of American dining in THE THIRD PLATE. Barber explores the evolution of American food from the "first plate," or industrially-produced, meat-heavy dishes, to the "second plate" of grass-fed meat and organic greens, and says that both of these approaches are ultimately neither sustainable nor healthy. Instead, Bar

The Organic Machine: The Remaking of the Columbia River

Richard White · 130 pages

In The Organic Machine, Richard White, a distinguished historian and leading scholar of the American West, explores the intimate relationship between nature and mankind along the Columbia River. Working on the cutting edge of environmental and social history, White demonstrates how, over the centuries, both native peoples and settlers have continually remade the river, treating it as a machine des

Wilderness and the American Mind

Roderick Nash · 426 pages

Our Only World: Ten Essays

Wendell Berry · 187 pages

"In this new collection of [ten] essays, Berry confronts head-on the necessity of clear thinking and direct action. Never one to ignore the present challenge, he understands that only clearly stated questions support the understanding their answers require. For more than fifty years we've had no better spokesman and no more eloquent advocate for the planet, for our families, and for the future of

The Journey Home: Some Words in Defense of the American West

Edward Abbey, Jim Stiles · 242 pages

A collection of essays on the American West covers such issues as urban growth, the gentrification of the small-town West, and wilderness preservation.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau

Bill McKibben · 973 pages

The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light

Paul Bogard · 337 pages

Describes how ever-present, modern artificial lights have changed the way humans experience darkness and bemoans the fact that the primal dark sky can no longer influence science and art.

Lab Girl

Hope Jahren · 408 pages

An illuminating debut memoir of a woman in science; a moving portrait of a longtime friendship; and a stunningly fresh look at plants that will forever change how you see the natural world Acclaimed scientist Hope Jahren has built three laboratories in which she’s studied trees, flowers, seeds, and soil. Her first book is a revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also so much more. Lab

The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks

Terry Tempest Williams · 416 pages

"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 W

The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea

Callum Roberts · 405 pages

Who can forget the sense of wonder with which they discovered as a child the creatures of the deep? In this vibrant hymn to the sea, one of the world's foremost conservation biologists, known as the "Rachel Carson of the fish world" (The New York Times), takes us back in time to tell the story of man and the sea, from the earliest traces of water on earth to the oceans as we know them today. If yo

The Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World

Emma Marris · 210 pages

"For decades people have unquestioningly accepted the idea that our goal is to preserve nature in its pristine, pre-human state. But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature. Humans have changed the landscapes they inhabit since prehistory, and climate change means ev

The Lost Language of Plants: The Ecological Importance of Plant Medicine to Life on Earth

Stephen Harrod Buhner · 330 pages

"Enraged, Energized, Exultant. You won't know how to feel after reading Stephen Harrod Buhner's The Lost Language of Plants. This is a devastating expose about how we are polluting our environment with the pharmaceuticals that Western medicine has developed to heal us. We are ingesting Prozac, Premarin, and antibiotics whether we want to or not." "Yet, as we foul air and water with toxic residues

Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-scale Permaculture

Toby Hemenway · 231 pages

Whatever size yard or garden you have to work with, you can apply basic permaculture principles to make it more diverse, more natural, more productive, and more beautiful. Best of all, once it's established, an ecological garden will reduce or eliminate most of the backbreaking work that's needed to maintain the typical lawn and garden.

Desert Solitaire

Edward Abbey · 270 pages

An account of the author's experiences, observations, and reflections as a seasonal park ranger in southeast Utah. When Desert Solitaire was first published in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. Rude and sensitive. Thought-provoking and mystical. Angry and loving. Both Abbey and this book are all of these and more. Here, the legendary author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey's Road an