Book picks similar to
National Audubon Society Field Guide to Fishes, Whales and Dolphins by National Audubon Society
reference
field-guide
science
nature
Stalking the Wild Asparagus
Euell Gibbons - 1962
His book includes recipes for vegetable and casserole dishes, breads, cakes, muffins and twenty different pies. He also shows how to make numerous jellies, jams, teas, and wines, and how to sweeten them with wild honey or homemade maple syrup.
The Wisdom of Trees
Max Adams - 2018
In a beautifully written sequence of essays, anecdotes, and profiles of species from yew to scots pine, Max Adams explores both the amazing biology of trees and humanity’s relationship with wood and forest across the centuries. Embellished with images from John Evelyn’s classic Sylva (1664), this beautifully designed gift book offers both a natural and a cultural history of trees, and will delight anyone who cares about the natural world and our interaction with it.
Deep Into Yellowstone: A Year's Immersion in Grandeur and Controversy
Rick Lamplugh - 2017
During the year as they cross-country ski, hike, bicycle, canoe, and backpack into Yellowstone's grandeur, Rick digs into important controversies: the outrage over the proposed removal of grizzlies from the endangered species list; the dispute over hunting park wolves along Yellowstone's border; the debate about whether wolves help or harm the ecosystem and the economy; the fight to stop the slaughter of park bison; the overuse of the park; and their community's battle to prevent gold mining on the park's border. Rick ends the year with a stronger love for Yellowstone's grandeur, a deeper knowledge of the controversies threatening the park, and a desire to inspire readers to protect our nation's first national park.
Ivory, Apes & Peacocks: Animals, Adventure and Discovery in the Wild Places of Africa
Alan Root - 2012
He began his career making films for the TV series "Survival," which started wildlife film-making as we know it, and is responsible for numerous groundbreaking documentaries and natural history discoveries -- from being the first person to film hippos and crocodiles underwater and the wildebeest migrating to observing that hyenas hunt. His friends and colleagues have included George and Joy Adamson and David Attenborough; he showed Dian Fossey her first mountain gorilla. His wife and long-term collaborator was Joan Root, who was tragically murdered in 2006 in retaliation for her environmental campaigning in Kenya. In "Ivory, Apes & Peacocks," Alan tells the story of his life's work, from his arrival in Kenya as a young boy (furious at having to leave behind Britain's birds) to his game-changing films, which looked at whole ecosystems (baobab trees, termite mounds) rather than the Big Five animals. Along the way we encounter Sally the pet hippo and Emily the house-proud chimp as well leopard and snake bites, ballooning adventures and amphibious cars. In this extraordinary memoir we look at Africa's wonders through the eyes of a visionary, live through hair-raising adventure and personal tragedy and also bear witness to a natural world now largely lost from view.
Sightings: Extraordinary Encounters with Ordinary Birds
Sam Keen - 2007
In Sightings, a collection of essays, bird watching forms the basis for observations spiritual and soulful, witty and wise. He describes his childhood ramblings in the silence of the Tennessee wilderness as feeling distinctly more spiritualthan the hard pews of his grandmother's church. Later in life, the presumed extinction and subsequent rediscovery of the Ivory-billed Woodpecker prompts a meditation on the nature of the sacred. Blessed with moments of beauty and the insight to recognize them as such, Keen translates the marvels of nature into the language of heart and soul.
The Quiet World: Saving Alaska's Wilderness Kingdom, 1879-1960
Douglas Brinkley - 2011
Brinkley explores the colorful diversity of Alaska’s wildlife, arrays the forces that have wreaked havoc on its primeval arctic refuge—from Klondike Gold Rush prospectors to environmental disasters like the Exxon-Valdez oil spill—and documents environmental heroes from Theodore Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower and beyond. Not merely a record of Alaska’s past, Quiet World is a compelling call-to-arms for sustainability, conservationism, and conscientious environmental stewardship—a warning that the land once called Seward’s Folly may go down in history as America’s Greatest Mistake.
Whale Nation
Heathcote Williams - 1988
Will he speak soft words unto thee?'
Job 41
Whale Nation is a hymn to the beauty, intelligence and majesty of the largest mammal on earth. A 'green classic' read with natural resonance by its author, it rarely fails to strike a chord in the heart of those concerned with the abuse of our planet. It is joined by additional content devoted to a fascinating account of whale history.Music: Mendelssohn, Holst, Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Debussy, Ciurlionis, The Song of the Humpback Whale
The Golden Shore: California's Love Affair with the Sea
David Helvarg - 2013
Author David Helvarg takes the reader on both a geographic and literary journey along the 1,100-mile Pacific coastline, from the Oregon border to the San Diego/Tijuana international border fence and out into its whale-, seal-, and shark-rich offshore seamounts, rock isles, and kelp forests.Part history, part travelogue, part love letter, The Golden Shore tells the story of California’s majestic coastline and ocean. Helvarg captures the spirit of the Californian coast, its mythic place in American culture, and its role in a state whose ongoing natural disasters and unremitting sense of renewal are intimately linked to its deep connection with an ever-changing sea.
The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans
Cynthia Barnett - 2021
They were money before coins, jewelry before gems, art before canvas.In The Sound of the Sea, acclaimed environmental author Cynthia Barnett blends cultural history and science to trace our long love affair with seashells and the hidden lives of the mollusks that make them. Spiraling out from the great cities of shell that once rose in North America to the warming waters of the Maldives and the slave castles of Ghana, Barnett has created an unforgettable account of the world’s most iconic seashells. She begins with their childhood wonder, unwinds surprising histories like the origin of Shell Oil as a family business importing exotic shells, and charts what shells and the soft animals that build them are telling scientists about our warming, acidifying seas.From the eerie calls of early shell trumpets to the evolutionary miracle of spines and spires and the modern science of carbon capture inspired by shell, Barnett circles to her central point of listening to nature’s wisdom—and acting on what seashells have to say about taking care of each other and our world.
Camping & Wilderness Survival, 2nd: The Ultimate Outdoors Book
Paul Tawrell - 2001
This guide covers everything from fire making to first aid, building shelters, winter travel and much more. “
Camping & Wilderness Survival
actually lives up to the hype of its subtitle. The Ultimate Outdoors Book is the fullest and finest work in the field since Horace Kephart’s timeless Camping and Woodcraft was published almost a century ago. ...I have read voraciously on camping and the outdoors all my life and possess a personal library of several thousand volumes in this field. Tawrell’s Camping & Wilderness Survival is, quite simply, one of the finest works of its sort I have ever encountered.”- Jim Casada: Special to the News & Record, Greensboro, NC
Our Native Bees: North America’s Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Save Them
Paige Embry - 2018
Through interviews with farmers, gardeners, scientists, and bee experts, Our Native Bees explores the importance of native bees and focuses on why they play a key role in gardening and agriculture. The people and stories are compelling: Paige Embry goes on a bee hunt with the world expert on the likely extinct Franklin’s bumble bee, raises blue orchard bees in her refrigerator, and learns about an organization that turns the out-of-play areas in golf courses into pollinator habitats. Our Native Bees is a fascinating, must-read for fans of natural history and science and anyone curious about bees.
Oceana: Our Endangered Oceans and What We Can Do to Save Them
Ted Danson - 2011
But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe—the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the complete collapse of the world's major commercial fisheries.In Oceana, Danson details his journey from joining a modest local protest in the mid-1980s to oppose offshore oil drilling near his Southern California neighborhood to his current status as one of the world's most influential oceanic environmental activists, testifying before congressional committees in Washington, D.C., addressing the World Trade Organization in Zurich, Switzerland, and helping found Oceana, the largest organization in the world focused solely on ocean conservation.In his incisive, conversational voice, Danson describes what has happened to our oceans in just the past half-century, ranging from the ravages of overfishing and habitat destruction to the devastating effects of ocean acidification and the wasteful horrors of fish farms. Danson also shares the stage of Oceana with some of the world's most respected authorities in the fields of marine science, commercial fishing, and environmental law, as well as with other influential activists.Combining vivid, personal prose with an array of stunning graphics, charts, and photographs, Oceana powerfully illustrates the impending crises and offers solutions that may allow us to avert them, showing you the specific courses of action you can take to become active, responsible stewards of our planet's most precious resource—its oceans.
The River Cottage Mushroom Handbook
John Wright - 2007
The handbook is completed by more than 30 simple and delicious mushroom recipes from the River Cottage team. With color photographs throughout, line drawings, and a user-friendly Key, this comprehensive and collectable guide is destined to be an indispensable household reference.
The 25 Weirdest Animals in the World! Amazing facts, photos and video links to the strangest creatures on the planet. (Amazing Animals Series)
I.P. Factly - 2012
Using video links, IP Factly's Amazing Animal series has been designed to encourage and bolster independent reading. The animals are accompanied by pictures and facts plus video links so children can see the animals and how they behave.
Of Wolves and Men
Barry Lopez - 1978
Lopez’s classic, careful study has won praise from a wide range of reviewers and improved the way books on wild animals are written. Of Wolves and Men explores the uneasy interaction between wolves and civilization over the centuries, and the wolf's prominence in our thoughts about wild creatures. Drawing upon an impressive array of literature, history, science, and mythology as well as extensive personal experience with captive and free-ranging wolves, Lopez argues for the wolf's preservation and immerses the reader in its sensory world, creating a compelling portrait of the wolf both as a real animal and as imagined by different kinds of men. A scientist might perceive the wolf as defined by research data, while an Eskimo hunter sees a family provider much like himself. For many Native Americans the wolf is also a spiritual symbol, a respected animal that can strengthen the individual and the community. With irresistible charm and elegance, Of Wolves and Men celebrates careful scientific fieldwork, dispels folklore that has enabled the Western mind to demonize wolves, explains myths, and honors indigenous traditions, allowing us to understand how this remarkable animal has become so prominent for so long in the human heart.