Mostrando resultados por Editor "Recorded Books" en Naturaleza y Ecología

Since its publication in 1977, The Unsettling of America has been recognized as a classic of American letters. In it, Wendell Berry argues that good farming is a cultural and spiritual discipline. Today’s agribusiness, however, takes farming out of its cultural context and away from families. As a result, we as a nation are more estranged from the land - from the intimate knowledge, love, and care of it.

Man’s struggle against the sea is a theme that has created some of the world’s most exciting stories. Now, in the tradition of Moby Dick comes a New York Times best seller destined to become a modern classic. Written by journalist Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm combines an intimate portrait of a small fishing crew with fascinating scientific data about boats and weather systems.

Because rivers and lakes are commonly turbid and murky, many creatures that live there are invisible to traditional wildlife film-makers. So although many people are familiar with the inhabitants of tropical reefs, and even the deep oceanic trenches, it is the water right under our noses that we know least about. And yet these creatures at the top of the freshwater food chain are every bit as spectacular—and dangerous—as those that prowl the oceans.

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.

Once, we humans could only observe evolution. Suddenly, we had conquered it. And yet, in Life as We Made It, evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro argues that - despite how amazing our new technologies are - our ability to alter the course of evolution isn’t new. What is new is that where once we shaped evolution through brute force, we can now do it as artisans. That power comes not a moment too soon. If we are going to survive in the next few centuries, we must revise the book of life.

Most historians study the smallest slivers of time, emphasizing specific dates, individuals, and documents. But what would it look like to study the whole of history, from the big bang through the present day - and even into the remote future? How would looking at the full span of time change the way we perceive the universe, the earth, and our very existence? These were the questions David Christian set out to answer when he created the field of "Big History", the most exciting new approach to understanding where we have been, where we are, and where we are going.

In Cow Hug Therapy, Ellie Laks recounts the extraordinary journey that started with her first teacher, Buddha—not the religious figure, but a rescued miniature Hereford cow. One evening Buddha wrapped her neck around an exhausted and upset Ellie and transferred a singular form of healing and comfort with an incredible impact. Understanding that this was something to be shared with others, Ellie developed Cow Hug Therapy, a groundbreaking approach to emotional healing that has proved effective for trauma, illness, disabilities, addiction, grief, and stress.

When Chet and Bernie happen upon a prison work crew that includes Frenchie Boutette, an old criminal pal they sent up the river, getting a new case is the last thing they expect. But Frenchie, who comes from an old Louisiana family full of black sheep, needs help finding his one law-abiding relative, his brother Ralph, a reclusive inventor who has gone missing with his houseboat.

Few fish are as beloved, or as obsessed over, as the American shad. Although shad spend most of their lives in salt water, they enter rivers by the hundreds of thousands in the spring and swim upstream heroic distances in order to spawn, then return to the ocean.

Co-author of the best-selling Mrs. Murphy novels, Rita Mae Brown launches a new series with this first mystery featuring Baxter the wirehaired dachshund. When Baxter and his owner, Mags, leave New York for Nevada, they find themselves embroiled in a real head scratcher. First, the local water-pumping station is sabotaged. Then, a murdered man’s bones - dating back to the 1800s - are unearthed in a barn owned by Mags’ great-aunt.

From the man behind the popular Wired series "Absurd Creature of the Week", a fun, fascinating collection of unique animals and the unbelievable evolutionary traits they use to survive the most extreme scenarios: zombie ants mind-controlled by a fungus; beautiful salamanders that can regenerate any part of their bodies including their brains; and much more.

An underwater exploration that overturns myths about fishes and reveals their complex lives, from tool use to social behavior. There are more than 30,000 species of fish - more than all mammals, birds, reptiles, and amphibians combined. But for all their breathtaking diversity and beauty, we rarely consider how fish think, feel, and behave.

Temple Grandin’s professional training as an animal scientist and her history as a person with autism have given her a perspective like that of no other expert in the field. Grandin and coauthor Catherine Johnson present their powerful theory that autistic people can often think the way animals think—putting autistic people in the perfect position to translate “animal talk.”

First published in 1962, Silent Spring can single-handedly be credited with sounding the alarm and raising awareness of humankind's collective impact on its own future through chemical pollution. No other book has so strongly influenced the environmental conscience of Americans and the world at large.

At the onset of World War II, Williams formed Elephant Company and was instrumental in defeating the Japanese in Burma and saving refugees, including on his own "Hannibal Trek." Billy Williams became a media sensation during the war, telling reporters that the elephants did more for him than he was ever able to do for them, but his story has since been forgotten.

"Ants are the most warlike of all animals, with colony pitted against colony.... Their clashes dwarf Waterloo and Gettysburg", writes Edward O. Wilson in his most finely observed work in decades. In a myrmecological tour to such far-flung destinations as Mozambique and New Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico's Dauphin Island and even his parents' overgrown yard back in Alabama, Wilson thrillingly evokes his nine-decade-long scientific obsession with more than 15,000 ant species.

Richard Louv's landmark book, Last Child in the Woods, inspired an international movement to connect children and nature. Now Louv redefines the future of human-animal coexistence. Our Wild Calling explores these powerful and mysterious bonds and how they can transform our mental, physical, and spiritual lives, serve as an antidote to the growing epidemic of human loneliness, and help us tap into the empathy required to preserve life on Earth.

In a time when our relationship to the natural world is ruled by the violence and greed of unbridled consumerism, Wendell Berry speaks out in these prescient essays, drawn from his 50-year campaign on behalf of American lands and communities. The writings gathered in The World-Ending Fire are the unique product of a life spent farming the fields of rural Kentucky with mules and horses, and of the rich, intimate knowledge of the land cultivated by this work.

No one is better than Dr. Marc Bekoff at turning state-of-the-art animal science into practical, digestible information. His subjects include dog care, dog cognition and emotions, and dog-human relationships, and though he has impressive scientific credentials and much technical expertise, this is the accessible book that every dog lover should have.

Author Mark Kurlansky pleasantly surprised the world with this engaging best-seller that garnered rave reviews from critics and casual readers alike. His subject for this whimsical biography is the codfish, a species remarkable for its influence on humanity. Cod, Kurlansky argues, has driven economic, political, cultural and military thinking for centuries in the lands surrounding the Atlantic Ocean. Nations like England and Germany have waged wars for cod.