Showing results by publisher "Tantor Media" in Nature & Ecology

Murray Morgan's classic history of the Olympic Peninsula, originally published in 1955, evokes a remote American wilderness "as large as the state of Massachusetts, more rugged than the Rockies, its lowlands blanketed by a cool jungle of fir and pine and cedar, its peaks bearing hundreds of miles of living ice that gave rise to swift rivers alive with giant salmon."

Xia, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, investigates the impacts of engineered landscapes, the market pressures of development, and the ecological activism and political scrimmages that have carved our contemporary coastline—and foretell even greater changes to our shores. From the beaches of the Mexican border up to the sheer-cliffed North Coast, the voices of Indigenous leaders, community activists, small-town mayors, urban engineers, and environmental scientists commingle. Together, they chronicle the challenges and urgency of forging a climate-wise future.

Birding for Boomers is a friendly, accessible, and humorous guide to discovering the joys of bird watching. Beginning birders of all ages will get answers to every question they may have, like which birds like feeders, the difference between a finch and a flicker, or which birding app to use. The guide also helps birders plan everything from local explorations to exciting "bird-cations."

Somewhere between myths and hard facts you find Nome, poised also between yesterday and tomorrow. Drawing on his background in anthropology and an equal passion for history, Michael Engelhard surveys the seam that links two neighboring continents through the lens of one pivotal city. The region's legacy of millennia shines on pages enriched by this writer's recollections—from mammoths to Cold War monuments, from a spa turned orphanage, to cyclist miners and shaman hoards.

Wildfire shares the drama, hardships, and experiences of the firefighters who try, sometimes in vain, to prevent destruction when a spark flares out of control. Hansen tells the rich and frightening stories of the firefighters themselves and the challenges they face: a safety system struggling to keep up with fire seasons that are lengthening, fires that are becoming more extreme, and agencies that are struggling to cover the bills.

Master naturalist Nancy Lawson takes listeners on a fascinating tour of the vibrant web of nature outside our back door—where animals and plants perceive and communicate using marvelous sensory abilities we are only beginning to understand. Organized into chapters investigating each of their five senses, Lawson's exploration reveals a remarkable world of interdependent creatures with amazing capabilities.

The impact of an asteroid led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Could another giant cosmic missile soon be heading our way? In Target Earth, acclaimed Dutch astronomy writer Govert Schilling provides a full account of what we know, and need to know, about all the extraterrestrial matter constantly bombarding our planet—from microscopic dust particles and space debris to massive meteorites, comets, and asteroids.

In Climate Hope, journalist David Geselbracht blends in-depth research, expert interviews, and on-the-ground reporting in multiple countries, revealing remarkable efforts to identify the causes and impacts of climate change—and devise crucial ways to address them. The scale of the challenge is clear in the range of fields he covers, from glaciology and climate science to law and diplomacy. But in drawing these approaches together, he shares stories of hope, awe, and wonder that encourage us to confront this long-term, world-warping phenomenon with a renewed sense of purpose and possibility.

The eastern oyster, the humble bivalve and delicious treat, are the living bones of the Chesapeake, as well as the ecological and historical lifeblood of the region. When colonists first sailed these impossibly abundant shores, they described massive shoals of foot-long oysters but the bottomless appetite of the Gilded Age and great fleets of skipjacks took their toll. Disease, environmental pressures and overconsumption decimated the population by the end of the twentieth century.

Rights of Nature laws are becoming a vital tool for addressing environmental injustice. From New Zealand and India to Ecuador and Bolivia, advocates have successfully secured legal rights for rivers, forests, and mountains. Granting rights to nature has the potential to expand environmental protections, strengthen indigenous rights, promote sustainable development, and alter how humans relate to nature. Despite these promises, rights of Nature laws have met with greater resistance in some countries than in others.

A Pagan Polemic curates the evolving perspective of Jack Loeffler—itinerant wanderer, environmental warrior, storyteller, and story collector—whose true education began when he was marched into the Nevada desert one day at dawn to play "The Stars and Stripes Forever" during an atomic bomb test a scant few miles away. Since that day in 1957, Jack's mission in life has been to record peoples of the borderlands and to bring "indigenous mindedness" to the forefront of the conversation about our precarious environments and our decaying planet.

Following in the tracks of the first uproarious and beloved bird book in the series, this hilarious sequel ventures beyond to identify the stupidest birds around the world. Featuring birds from North and South America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, author Matt Kracht identifies the dumb birds that manage to live all over the freaking place with snarky yet accurate names. Offering a balance of fact and wit, this uproarious profanity-laden handbook will appeal to hardcore birders and casual bird lovers (and haters) alike.

Spanning more than a century of Indian history, and decidedly transnational in reference, this audiobook offers rich resources for considering the threat of climate change today.

Guess what: Bees are incredible. Extreme bee enthusiast and bestselling author Matt Kracht is here to set the record straight with this helpful guidebook to all things bees.

Time is up. The climate crisis is no longer a future to be feared, but a devastating reality. We see it in the wildfires in California and floods across Britain—the "once in a generation" extreme weather events that now happen every year. In a world where those in charge are constantly letting us down, real change in our lifetime means taking power into our own hands. The task ahead of us is daunting, but the emergence of a new wave of movements focused on climate justice, equality, and solidarity also brings hope.

When the sun has set, things get interesting with wild animals. Where people wait for buses during the day, a family of raccoons rummages through the trash can. Foxes and skunks search for food; fireflies send flashing signals to potential mates; owls and bats fly overhead. Night is not just a time, but a diverse habitat that we still know too little about. Wildlife biologist Sophia Kimmig is on the trail of the secrets of the night.

Young countercultural back-to-the-land settlers flocked to northwestern California beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, unregulated cannabis production proliferated on Indigenous lands. As of 2021, the California cannabis economy was valued at $3.5 billion. In Settler Cannabis, Kaitlin Reed demonstrates how this "green rush" is only the most recent example of settler colonial resource extraction and wealth accumulation. Reed shares this history to inform the path toward an alternative future.

If you could pose one question to a dolphin, what would it be? And what might a dolphin ask you? For forty years, researcher and author Denise L. Herzing has investigated these and related questions of marine mammal communication. But the dolphins are not the only ones talking, and in this wide-ranging and accessible book, Herzing explores the astonishing realities of interspecies communication, a skill that humans currently lack.

The story of Chicago is often likened to that of a phoenix rising out of the ashes of the Great Fire. Yet that infamous event was only part of the destruction that has shaped Chicago's identity. This unique history explores the calamities that have befallen the Windy City, such as the 1954 killer water surge that swept in on a calm summer day; the 1967 tornado that ripped through rush hour traffic; the 1886 Haymarket Square riot that put Chicago on the anarchist map; and many other acts of nature and human folly.

Nature writer David Gessner chronicles the year-long odyssey of Flaco, the Eurasian eagle-owl who escaped from Central Park Zoo and captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of followers around the world. Though he'd spent his life in a cage, Flaco learned to survive in New York City by eating rats, squirrels, and birds. He was an immigrant coming from elsewhere to make it in the big city. Central Park, the island of green in an urban sea, was his new home territory.