Showing results by publisher "Highbridge Audio" in Nature & Ecology

Written by one of the world's leading dinosaur experts, Uncovering Dinosaur Behavior is a foundational work on the subject and an invaluable reference for anyone interested in these amazing creatures.

When Linda Kohanov wrote The Tao of Equus over twenty years ago, she posed questions that few were asking: Do horses make choices? How do they seem to know what people are thinking and feeling? Are horses spiritual beings? What do they have to teach people? Why are women so attracted to horses? The answers, detailed in this extraordinary chronicle that synthesizes science, behavioral research, and personal insight, transformed how we think about one of humanity's oldest companions and established Kohanov at the vanguard of the emerging field of animal-assisted learning/therapy.

Every great drink starts with a plant. Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley. Gin was born from a conifer shrub when medieval physicians boiled juniper berries with wine to treat stomach pain. The Drunken Botanist uncovers the surprising botanical history and fascinating science and chemistry of over 150 plants, flowers, trees, and fruits (and even a few fungi).

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.

A deft blend of science reporting and travel writing, The Journeys of Trees explores the evolving movements of forests by focusing on five trees: giant sequoia, ash, black spruce, Florida torreya, and Monterey pine.

In Why Whales Sing, bioacoustician and cognitive scientist Eduardo Mercado transforms our understanding of these enigmatic sounds and proposes a groundbreaking theory that challenges decades of established science.

Despite the flames of record-breaking temperatures licking at our feet, most people fail to fully grasp the gravity of environmental overheating. What acquired habits and conveniences allow us to turn a blind eye with an air of detachment? Using examples from the hottest places on earth, Heat, a History shows how scientific methods of accounting for heat and modern forms of acclimatization have desensitized us to climate change.

The stars and constellations are among the few remaining objects that appear to us just as they appeared to our distant ancestors. From anywhere on Earth, a person may view the celestial panorama simply by stepping outside at night and gazing upward. This nonfiction narrative presents the tales of the 48 classical constellations, compiled from literature spanning a thousand years from Homer to Claudius Ptolemy. These age-old tales have captured the human imagination from ancient times to the present.

Over thousands of years, the Mississippi watershed was home to millions of Indigenous people who regarded "the great river" with awe and respect, adorning its banks with astonishing spiritual earthworks. But European settlers and American pioneers had a different vision: the river was a foe to conquer. In this landmark work of natural history, Boyce Upholt tells the epic story of human attempts to own and contain the Mississippi River, from Thomas Jefferson's expansionist land hunger through today's era of environmental concern

Since first domesticating the chicken thousands of years ago, humans have become exceptionally adept at raising them for food. Yet most people rarely interact with chickens or know much about them. In Under the Henfluence, culture reporter Tove Danovich explores the lives of these quirky, mysterious birds who stole her heart the moment her first box of chicks arrived at the post office.

They destroy plant diseases. They break down toxins. They plough the earth. They transform forests. They’ve survived two mass extinctions, including the one that wiped out the dinosaur. Not bad for a creature that’s deaf, blind, and spineless. Who knew that earthworms were one of our planet’s most important caretakers? Or that Charles Darwin devoted his last years to studying their remarkable achievements?

In Here Comes the Sun, world-renowned author Bill McKibben tells the story of our sudden spike in power from the sun and wind. McKibben traces the arrival of plentiful, inexpensive solar energy, which, if it accelerates, gives us a chance not just to limit climate change’s damage, but to reorder the world on saner and more humane grounds. Getting there means overcoming obstacles like Big Oil, but McKibben sees a chance for a new civilization: one that looks up to the sun, every day, as the star that fuels our world.

Part travelogue, part natural history, part science, and part psychology, this absorbing book shows us how we can reinvigorate our lives, reduce everyday stress, and bring out the best in ourselves when we heed the wisdom of trees.

What can fossilized teeth tell us about our ancient life expectancy? What can big data on fossils reveal about farming's problematic role in human evolution? How can simple geometric comparisons of skull and pelvic fossils suggest an origin to our social nature? In Close Encounters with Humankind, paleoanthropologist Sang-Hee Lee explores some of our biggest evolutionary questions from unexpected new angles. Through a series of entertaining, bite-sized chapters, we gain new perspectives into our first hominin ancestors, our first steps on two feet, and more.

In 2018, lumps of frozen soil, collected from the bottom of the world's first deep ice core and lost for decades, reappeared in Denmark. When geologist Paul Bierman and his team first melted a piece of this unique material, they were shocked to find perfectly preserved leaves, twigs, and moss. That observation led them to a startling discovery: Greenland's ice sheet had melted naturally before, about 400,000 years ago.

The great auk is one of the most tragic and documented examples of extinction. A flightless bird that bred primarily on the remote islands of the North Atlantic, the last of its kind were killed in Iceland in 1844. Gisli Pálsson draws on firsthand accounts from the Icelanders who hunted the last great auks to bring to life a bygone age of Victorian scientific exploration while offering vital insights into the extinction of species.

Fact: Pigeons are amazing, and until recently, humans adored them. We've kept them as pets, held pigeon beauty contests, raced them, used them to carry messages over battlefields, harvested their poop to fertilize our crops—and cooked them in gourmet dishes. Now, with A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, listeners can rediscover the wonder. Equal parts field guide and quirky history, it covers behavior: Why they coo; how they flock; how they preen, kiss, and mate (monogamously); and how they raise their young (on chunky pigeon milk).

It's five o'clock in the morning and still dark. Swimming outside the wave break off the Catalina coast, training for her next long-distance swim (she has already crossed the English Channel twice), 17-year-old Lynne Cox senses that something is following her. She worries that it might be a great white shark.

John Hanson Mitchell has long written about his garden outside of Boston, and about the plants and animals with whom he shares this land. In 2022, the United Nations and others started reporting the true severity of the climate crisis as the Earth passed a point of no return. All across the globe it was the worst year on record for climate-related disasters. Mitchell, like so many, felt overwhelmed. He looked to the story of Voltaire's Candide, and settled on the famous aphorism from that book: "We must cultivate our garden."