Encounters with the Archdruid

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.

A Sand County Almanac: With Essays on Conservation from Round River

Aldo Leopold · 269 pages

First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as a trenchant book, full of vigor and bite, A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with an outspoken and highly ethical regard for Americas relationship to the land. Written with an unparalleled understanding of the ways of nature, the book includes a section on the monthly changes of the

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 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 But many scientists have come to see this as an outdated dream that thwarts bold new plans to save the environment and prevents us from having a fuller relationship with nature.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

Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life

George Monbiot · 319 pages

"George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism that shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalize and enrich our lives. Challenging what he calls his "ecological boredom," Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife, and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayak

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.

Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America

Jon Mooallem · 352 pages

Journalist Jon Mooallem has watched his little daughter's world overflow with animals butterfly pajamas, appliquéd owls--while the actual world she's inheriting slides into a great storm of extinction. Half of all species could disappear by the end of the century, and scientists now concede that most of America's endangered animals will survive only if conservationists keep rigging the world aroun

Ecology of a Cracker Childhood

Janisse Ray · 285 pages

A memoir of a childhood, spend in an isolated Georgia community of Crackers, that grew into a passion to save the vanishing longleaf pine ecocystem in which she was raised.

Silent Spring

Rachel Carson · 320 pages

"An important, controversial account ... of the way in which man's use of poisons to control insect pests and unwanted vegetation is changing the balance of nature." Booklist.

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

Untamed: The Wildest Woman in America and the Fight for Cumberland Island

Will Harlan · 313 pages

"A combination of Henry David Thoreau and Jane Goodall, Carol [Ruckdeschel] is a self-taught scientist who has become a tireless defender of sea turtles on Cumberland Island, a national park off the coast of Georgia ... In recent years, Carnegie heirs and the National Park Service have clashed with Carol over the island's future. What happens when a dirt-poor naturalist with only a high-school dip

Being Caribou: Five Months on Foot with an Arctic Herd

Karsten Heuer · 238 pages

In April 2003, newlyweds Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison embarked on a five-month research journey to migrate more than 2,000 miles with a herd of 120,000 Porcupine Caribou.

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.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life

Barbara Kingsolver, Steven L. Hopp, Camille Kingsolver · 384 pages

Bestselling author Barbara Kingsolver returns with her first nonfiction narrative that will open your eyes in a hundred new ways to an old truth: You are what you eat."As the U.S. population made an unprecedented mad dash for the Sun Belt, one carload of us paddled against the tide, heading for the Promised Land where water falls from the sky and green stuff grows all around. We were about to begi

American Earth: Environmental Writing Since Thoreau

Bill McKibben · 973 pages

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 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.

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

The Beast in the Garden: The True Story of a Predator's Deadly Return to Suburban America

David Baron · 277 pages

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

William Souder · 496 pages

A Buzz in the Meadow: The Natural History of a French Farm

Dave Goulson · 288 pages

This book is a conservationist's deeply personal and fascinating reflection on owning and revitalizing a farm in rural France. A Sting in the Tale, Dave Goulson's account of a lifetime studying bees, was a powerful call to arms for nature lovers everywhere. Brilliantly reviewed, it was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize for the best nonfiction book of the year, and debuted the already renown

Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food

Paul Greenberg · 284 pages

In the majority of cultures around earth, many have at least one species of fish that is a staple of their diet, or holds a religious, spiritual, or philosophical meaning. In the book, Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food by Paul Greenberg, the author supports an explanation as to why we, as humans, have such a love affair with not only fish but the open ocean. Mr. Greenberg, who is a dev

The Living Great Lakes: Searching for the Heart of the Inland Seas

Jerry Dennis · 308 pages

"If fresh water is a treasure, the Great Lakes are the mother lode. No bodies of water can compare to 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 ten thousand miles of shoreline bound seven states and a Canadian province and are longer than the entire Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States;

Braiding Sweetgrass

Robin Wall Kimmerer

A botanist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation espouses having an understanding and appreciation of plants and animals.