Hailed by The New York Times as "a passionately felt, deeply poetic book," the moving autobiographical work of Edward Abbey, considered the Thoreau of the American West, and his passion for the southwestern wilderness. Desert Solitaire is a collection of vignettes...

For much of history, soil has played a major, and often central, role in the lives of humans. Entire societies have risen, and collapsed, through the management or mismanagement of soil; farmers and gardeners worldwide nurture their soil to provide their plants with water, nutrients, and protection...

THE CLASSIC THAT LAUNCHED THE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT "Rachel Carson is a pivotal figure of the twentieth century...people who thought one way before her essential 1962 book Silent Spring thought another way after it."--Margaret Atwood Rarely does a single book alter the course of...

The true value of ecosystems to world economies.

The idea of a balance of nature has been a dominant part of Western philosophy since before Aristotle, and it persists in the public imagination and even among some ecologists today. In this lively and thought-provoking book, John Kricher demonstrates that nature in fact is not in balance, nor...

Until about 13,000 years ago, North America was home to a menagerie of massive mammals. Mammoths, camels, and lions walked the ground that has become Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles and foraged on the marsh land now buried beneath Chicago's streets. Then, just as the first humans reached the...

The Winds of Changeplaces the horrifying carnage unleashed on New Orleans, Mississippi, and Alabama by Hurricane Katrina in context. Climate has been humanity's constant, if moody, companion. At times benefactor or tormentor, climate nurtured the first stirrings of civilization and then repeatedly...

One of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year * A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Century Winner of the James Beard Award Author of How to Change Your Mind and the #1 New York Times Bestsellers In...

"I read this wide-ranging and thoughtful book while sitting on the banks of the Ganges near Varanasi--it's a river already badly polluted, and now threatened by the melting of the loss of the glaciers at its source to global warming. Four hundred million people depend on it, and there's no backup...

A provocative look at how the disappearance of the world's great predators has upset the delicate balance of the environment, and what their disappearance portends for the future, by an acclaimed science journalist. It wasn't so long ago that wolves and great cats, monstrous fish and...

A penetrating, page-turning tour of a post-human Earth In The World Without Us, Alan Weisman offers an utterly original approach to questions of humanity's impact on the planet: he asks us to envision our Earth, without us.In this far-reaching narrative, Weisman explains how...

Traces the processes that produce new species, explains the importance of biodiversity, and recommends steps to help preserve diversity and improve the general quality of life.