Showing results by publisher "----RM Alexander" in Nature & Ecology

On June 21, 2016, Pacific Gas & Electric Company announced a plan to shutter California’s last nuclear power plant, Diablo Canyon, in 2025. The plan was hailed by environmental groups and politicians around the country. Then, suddenly, the state’s Democratic establishment reversed the decision, and in 2024 the Biden-Harris administration awarded the plant $1.1 billion in credits to extend its life. What happened in between? In Atomic Dreams, journalist and lifelong environmentalist Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow unearths the surprising answers—and the deep-seated conflicts behind them.

An adrenaline-fueled travel memoir of life in the wild among the planet’s most ferocious and fascinating predators. Over the last forty years, bestselling science-fiction writer Alan Dean Foster has journeyed around the globe to encounter nature’s most fearsome creatures. His travels have taken him into the heart of the Amazon rain forest on the trail of deadly tangarana ants, on an elephant ride across the sweeping green plains of central India in search of the elusive Bengal tiger, and into the waters of the Australian coast to come face-to-face with great white sharks. Packed with pulse-pounding adventure and spiked with rapier wit, Predators I Have Known is a thrilling look at life and death in the wild.

First published more than 50 years ago, this award-winning classic brings Rachel Carson's unique vision to a new generation of listeners. The Sense of Wonder is Carson's intimate account of adventures with her young nephew, Roger, as they enjoy walks along the rocky coast of Maine and through dense forests and open fields, observing wildlife, strange plants, moonlight, and storm clouds, and listening to the "living music" of insects in the underbrush.

Rich with insight and packed with tales of birds and of people, this book reveals the great auk’s life before humanity, its death on the killing shores of the North Atlantic, and the unrelenting subsequent quest for its remains. Tim Birkhead’s research has revealed previously unimagined aspects of the bird’s life and also, unexpectedly, its afterlife; in a curious twist, Birkhead found himself the recipient of the archive of the man who accumulated more great auk skins and eggs than anyone else.

Why We Love Dogs, Eat Pigs, and Wear Cows offers an absorbing look at what social psychologist Melanie Joy calls carnism, the belief system that conditions us to eat certain animals when we would never dream of eating others. Carnism causes extensive animal suffering and global injustice, and it drives us to act against our own interests and the interests of others without fully realizing what we are doing.

Reeling from the pain of devastating miscarriages and suffering from PTSD after military adventures in Afghanistan, Merlin and his wife Lizzie decide to leave the bustle of London and return to Merlin’s childhood home, a Cornish hill farm called Cabilla in the heart of Bodmin Moor. There, they are met by unexpected challenges: a farm slipping ever further into debt, the discovery that the overgrazed and damaged woods running throughout the valley are in fact one of the UK’s last remaining fragments of Atlantic temperate rainforest, and the sudden and near catastrophic strickening by Covid.

Weaving decades of field observations with exciting new discoveries about the brain, Carl Safina's landmark book offers an intimate view of animal behavior to challenge the fixed boundary between humans and nonhuman animals.

A nature therapy session for the soul—encounter the benevolence of the living world through 12 essays on the Earth-healing powers of self-compassion and empathy.

Humpback whales are among the most intelligent animals on Earth. Some scientists believe they might even surpass humans in self-awareness, empathy, and communication skills. In this episode, we swim with a whale as he teams up with other humpbacks to use bubbles to catch fish, rescues a sea lion, and puts his own spin on melodies sung by whales across the Pacific Ocean. This is the world in its natural state, defined by seasons, routines, and cycles. By the time this whale is ready to close one eye and go to sleep, you will be too.

Charting how this world came to be, Your Life is Manufactured reveals the seismic impact manufacturing has had on our lives and the natural world, exploring how it could offer us a path to a truly sustainable, more equitable future. In doing so, Minshall grants us the ability to make better choices for ourselves, our communities and the planet.

James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia hypothesis and the greatest environmental thinker of our time, has produced an astounding new theory about future of life on Earth. He argues that the anthropocene - the age in which humans acquired planetary-scale technologies - is, after 300 years, coming to an end. A new age - the novacene - has already begun.

James Herriot has captivated millions of readers and television viewers with tales of the triumphs, disasters, pride and sometimes heartache that filled his life as a vet in the Yorkshire Dales. "Every Living Thing" shines with the captivating storytelling that has made James Herriot a favourite the world over. Here is a book for all those who find laughter and joy in animals, and who know and understand the magic of wild places and beautiful countryside.

In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a literary devotional: fifty-two chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year, to the lingering bluebirds of December, revisiting the nest box they used in spring—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief: joy in the ongoing pleasures of the natural world, and grief over winters that end too soon and songbirds that grow fewer and fewer.

Hoof Beats transforms our understanding of both horses and humanity's ancient past and asks us to consider what our relationship with horses means for the future of humanity and the world around us.

The author of the beloved number one best seller The Shepherd's Life returns with a stirring history of family, loss and the land over three generations on a Lake District farm. James Rebanks was taught by his grandfather to work the land the old way. Their family farm in the Lake District hills was part of an ancient agricultural landscape: a patchwork of crops and meadows, of pastures grazed with livestock and hedgerows teeming with wildlife. And yet, by the time James inherited the farm, that landscape had profoundly changed.

It is difficult to conceive of the vast scale of the history of life on Earth, from the very first living organisms sparking into life in hydrothermal deep-sea vents to the dizzying diversity of life today. The evolution of life is a sweeping epic of a tale, with twists and turns, surprising heroes and unlikely survivors. The Earth beautifully distils this complex story into a meaningful scale. In taking a closer look at 47 carefully selected organisms over 15 periods in our planetary history, this audiobook tells the whole story of life on Earth.

Acclaimed nature writer Susan Hand Shetterly opens a window into the world of this fascinating organism by providing an elegant, often poetic, look at life on the rugged shore of the Gulf of Maine. Shetterly offers a close look at the life cycle of seaweed and introduces us to the men and women who farm and harvest it - and their increasingly difficult task of protecting this critical natural resource against forces both natural and man-made.

Ants have been walking the Earth since the age of the dinosaurs. Today there are one million ants for every one of us. The closer you get to ants, the more human they look: they build megacities, grow crops, raise livestock, tend their young and infirm, and even make vaccines. They also have a darker side: they wage war, enslave rivals and rebel against their oppressors. From fearsome army ants, who stage 12-hour hunting raids where they devour thousands, to gentle leafcutters gardening in their peaceful underground kingdoms, every ant is engineered by nature to fulfil a role.

In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to "read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least, sleep to my heart's content," but when Christiane arrives she is shocked to realize that they are to live in a tiny ramshackle hut on the shores of a lonely fjord, hundreds of miles from the nearest settlement, battling the elements every day, just to survive.

Paul Lamb is a hedgelayer. From the end of summer until the birds begin to nest in the spring, his primary employment is the maintenance and restoration of hedgerows. This book, following the rhythm of the seasons, describes Paul’s life on the road and the practical aspects of his job, including the highs and the lows. It is about practising a craft with skill and preserving it for future generations, and celebrating the glory of the landscape he loves so much.