Best of
Nature
1953
The Man Who Planted Trees
Jean Giono - 1953
In the foothills of the French Alps the narrator meets a shepherd who has quietly taken on the task of planting one hundred acorns a day in an effort to reforest his desolate region. Not even two world wars can keep the shepherd from continuing his solitary work. Gradually, this gentle, persistent man's work comes to fruition: the region is transformed; life and hope return; the world is renewed.
The Silent World
Jacques-Yves Cousteau - 1953
Cousteau, Philippe Tailliez, and the great civilian diver Frédéric Dumas, plunged into the Mediterranean with the first aqualung, co-invented by Cousteau.In this fascinating report, Cousteau and Dumas tell what it is like to be “menfish” swimming in the deep twilight zone with sharks, mantas, morays, whales, and octopi. They tell of exploring sunken ships and of the treasures they brought up. They describe ventures into an inland water cave that all but claimed their lives, and their crazy human-guinea-pig experiment with underwater explosions. Cousteau writes brilliantly of his audacious 50-fathom dive into the zone of rapture, where divers become like drunken gods; and of the 396-foot dive that took a brave companion's life.Cousteau, Dumas, and their courageous teams of divers have used their new techniques of exploration to make important discoveries in almost every branch of science. In The Silent World they share with us the greatest undersea experience men have ever had.
Horn of the Hunter: The Story of an African Safari
Robert Ruark - 1953
No other book can give you the feel of Africa like this one can.
Jungle Lore
Jim Corbett - 1953
Jungle Lore is the closest Jim Corbett ever came to an autobiography, revealing his life-long passion for the people, jungle, and animals of the Kumaon hills in the Himalayan foothills, and his despair at humanity's estrangement from its environment.
A Natural History of Western Trees
Donald Culross Peattie - 1953
One of two genuine classics of American nature writing now in paperback; the other is A Natural History of Trees of Eastern and Central North America.
The Overloaded Ark
Gerald Durrell - 1953
It is the chronicle of a six months collecting trip to the West African colony of British Cameroon - now Cameroon - (Dec 1947 - Aug 1948) - that Durrell made with the highly regarded aviculturist and ornithologist John Yealland.Their reasons for going on the trip were twofold: "to collect and bring back alive some of the fascinating animals, birds, and reptiles that inhabit the region," and secondly, for both men to realise a long cherished dream to see Africa.Its combination of comic exaggeration and environmental accuracy, portrayed in Durrell's light, clever prose, made it a great success. It launched Durrell's career as a writer of both non-fiction and fiction, which in turn financed his work as a zookeeper and conservationist.The Bafut Beagles and A Zoo in My Luggage are sequels of sorts, telling of his later returns to the region.
The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honey Bee
Karl von Frisch - 1953
Circle of the Seasons: The Journal of a Naturalist's Year
Edwin Way Teale - 1953
Reptiles and Amphibians
Herbert S. Zim - 1953
Describes 212 species of turtles, snakes, frogs, salamanders and their relatives.
Man or Matter
Ernst Lehrs - 1953
Now a classic, this is the fundamental text for those seeking a "Spiritual Understanding of Nature on the Basis of Goethe's Method of Training Observation and Thought." Working out of a detailed history of science, Lehrs reveals to the reader not only how science has been inescapably led to the illusions it holds today, but more importantly, how the reader may correct in himself these misconceptions brought into his world view through modern education.