Muir went from impassioned author to leading activist. He would popularize glaciers unlike anybody else, and be to glaciers what Jacques Cousteau would be to the oceans and Carl Sagan to the starsThe book also offers an environmental caveat on global climate change and the glaciers' retreat alongside a beacon of hope: Muir shows us how one person changed America, helped it embrace its wilderness, and in turn, gave us a better world.In 2005, Californians had to choose a design for its commemorative quarter. Hundreds of submissions – the iconic Hollywood sign above Hollywood Hills, the 1849 Gold Rush, the Golden Gate Bridge, etc. – fell away until one remained: an image of John Muir.  2014 will mark the 100th anniversary of Muir’s death. Muir’s legacy is that he reordered our priorities and contributed to a new scientific revolution that was picked up a generation later by Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, and is championed today by influential writers like E.O. Wilson and Jared Diamond.Heacox takes us into how Muir changed our world, advanced the science of glaciology and popularized geology. How he got people out there. How he gave America a new vision of Alaska, and of itself.

    As the news gradually seeped out of the USSR and the extent of the disaster was realized, it became clear how horribly wrong things had gone. Dozens died - two from the explosion and many more from radiation illness during the following months - while scores of additional victims came down with acute radiation sickness. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated from the most contaminated areas. The prognosis for Chernobyl and its environs - succinctly dubbed the Zone of Alienation - was grim.Today, 20 years after the worst nuclear power plant accident in history, intrepid journalist Mary Mycio dons dosimeter and camouflage protective gear to explore the world's most infamous radioactive wilderness. As she tours the Zone to report on the disaster's long-term effects on its human, faunal, and floral inhabitants, she meets pockets of defiant local residents who have remained behind to survive and make a life in the Zone. And she is shocked to discover that the area surrounding Chernobyl has become Europe's largest wildlife sanctuary, a flourishing - at times unearthly - wilderness teeming with large animals and a variety of birds, many of them members of rare and endangered species. Like the forests, fields, and swamps of their unexpectedly inviting habitat, both the people and the animals are all radioactive. Cesium-137 is packed in their muscles and strontium-90 in their bones. But quite astonishingly, they are also thriving.If fears of the Apocalypse and a lifeless, barren radioactive future have been constant companions of the nuclear age, Chernobyl now shows us a different view of the future. A vivid blend of reportage, popular science, and illuminating encounters that explode the myths of Chernobyl with facts that are at once beautiful and horrible, Wormwood Forest brings a remarkable land - and its people and animals - to life to tell a unique story of science, surprise and suspense.

    News and World Report, The Christian Science Monitor, the L.A. Times and The Denver Post.- Publication to coincide with the Good Friday anniversary of the disaster.

    Nature enthusiasts and fans of fine literature alike will find Beautiful Swimmers a timeless and enchanting study in the tradition of Rachel Carson and Annie Dillard. In these pages, we are immersed not only in the world of the Chesapeake's most intriguing crustaceans, but in the winds and tides of the Bay itself and the struggles of the watermen who make their living in pursuit of the succulent, pugnacious blue crab. "This is a book of rare grace and meditation, one that ranges from adventure to zoology, with no small measure of mystery and history." --Miami Herald "Beautiful Swimmers is wonderful to read and a distinguished addition to our literature." --Larry McMurtry

    From the recycling miracles in the soil; an army of predators ridding us of unwanted pests; an abundance of life creating a genetic codebook that underpins our food, pharmaceutical industries and much more, it has been estimated that these and other services are each year worth about double global GDP. Yet we take most of Nature's services for granted, imagining them free and limitless ... until they suddenly switch off.

     Where do clouds come from? Why do they look the way they do? And why have they captured the imagination of timeless artists, Romantic poets, and every kid who's ever held a crayon? Journalist and lifelong sky watcher Gavin Pretor-Pinney reveals everything there is to know about clouds, from history and science to art and pop culture. Cumulus, nimbostratus, and the dramatic and seemingly surfable Morning Glory cloud are just a few of the varieties explored in this smart, witty, and eclectic tour through the skies. Generously illustrated with striking photographs and line drawings featuring everything from classical paintings to lava lamps, children's drawings, and Roman coins, The Cloudspotter's Guide will have science and history buffs, weather watchers, and the just plain curious floating on cloud nine.

    Cahalan’s meticulous research and thoughtful interviews have made this book the authoritative source for Abbey scholars and fans alike.” —Doug Peacock, author, environmentalist activist and explorer, and the inspiration for Hayduke in The Monkey Wrench Gang He was a hero to environmentalists and the patron saint of monkeywrenchers, a man in love with desert solitude. A supposed misogynist, ornery and contentious, he nevertheless counted women among his closest friends and admirers. He attracted a cult following, but he was often uncomfortable with it. He was a writer who wandered far from Home without really starting out there. James Cahalan has written a definitive biography of a contemporary literary icon whose life was a web of contradictions. Edward Abbey: A Life sets the record straight on "Cactus Ed," giving readers a fuller, more human Abbey than most have ever known. It separates fact from fiction, showing that much of the myth surrounding Abbey—such as his birth in Home, Pennsylvania, and later residence in Oracle, Arizona—was self-created and self-perpetuated. It also shows that Abbey cultivated a persona both in his books and as a public speaker that contradicted his true nature: publicly racy and sardonic, he was privately reserved and somber. Cahalan studied all of Abbey's works and private papers and interviewed many people who knew him—including the models for characters in The Brave Cowboy and The Monkey Wrench Gang—to create the most complete picture to date of the writer's life. He examines Abbey's childhood roots in the East and his love affair with the West, his personal relationships and tempestuous marriages, and his myriad jobs in continually shifting locations—including sixteen national parks and forests. He also explores Abbey's writing process, his broad intellectual interests, and the philosophical roots of his politics. For Abbey fans who assume that his "honest novel," The Fool's Progress, was factual or that his public statements were entirely off the cuff, Cahalan's evenhanded treatment will be an eye-opener. More than a biography, Edward Abbey: A Life is a corrective that shows that he was neither simply a countercultural cowboy hero nor an unprincipled troublemaker, but instead a complex and multifaceted person whose legacy has only begun to be appreciated. The book contains 30 photographs, capturing scenes ranging from Abbey's childhood to his burial site.

    Making use of remarkable scientific discoveries that transform our understanding of how natural systems work, George Monbiot explores a new, positive environmentalism that shows how damaged ecosystems on land and at sea can be restored, and how this restoration can revitalize and enrich our lives. Challenging what he calls his “ecological boredom,” Monbiot weaves together a beautiful and riveting tale of wild places, wildlife, and wild people. Roaming the hills of Britain and the forests of Europe, kayaking off the coast of Wales with dolphins and seabirds, he seeks out the places that still possess something of the untamed spirit he would like to resurrect.He meets people trying to restore lost forests and bring back missing species—such as wolves, lynx, wolverines, wild boar, and gray whales—and explores astonishing evidence that certain species, not just humans, have the power to shape the physical landscape. This process of rewilding, Monbiot argues, offers an alternative to a silent spring: the chance of a raucous summer in which ecological processes resume and humans draw closer to the natural world.

    Eight years later, a schoolteacher who lived four miles away gave birth to a boy whose cherubic smile belied the fast growing tumors that soon riddled his face and chest. The doctors predicted he would not reach his first birthday. They were wrong, but that was only one of many surprises that would eventually come to light in Toms River, culminating in 2001 with a record legal settlement believed to top $35 million and an unprecedented government study confirming the existence of a long-suspected cluster of childhood cancer linked to polluted water and air. A detective story rooted in a scientific quest thousands of years old, Toms River is a tale of dumpers at midnight and deceptions in broad daylight, of corporate avarice and government neglect, and of a few brave individuals who would not keep silent.

    The pages take the reader on a wild narrative ride through the world of squid science and adventure, along the way addressing some riddles about what intelligence is, and what monsters lie in the deep. In addition to squid, both giant and otherwise, Kraken examines other equally enthralling cephalopods, including the octopus and the cuttlefish, and explores their otherworldly abilities, such as camouflage and bioluminescence. Accessible and entertaining, Kraken is also the first substantial volume on the subject in more than a decade and a must for fans of popular science.

    Prosek travels the globe to tell the story of the eel--from New York to New Zealand; from Europe to Japan and the small island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, where freshwater eels are worshipped by members of the eel clan.