The Puma Years: A Memoir of Love and Transformation in the Bolivian Jungle


Laura Coleman - 2021
    Fate landed her at a wildlife sanctuary on the edge of the Amazon jungle where she was assigned to a beautiful and complex puma named Wayra. Wide-eyed, inexperienced, and comically terrified, Laura made the scrappy, make-do camp her home. And in Wayra, she made a friend for life.They weren’t alone, not with over a hundred quirky animals to care for, each lost and hurt in its own way: a pair of suicidal, bra-stealing monkeys, a frustrated parrot desperate to fly, and a pig with a wicked sense of humor. The humans, too, were cause for laughter and tears. There were animal whisperers, committed staff, wildly devoted volunteers, handsome heartbreakers, and a machete-wielding prom queen who carried Laura through. Most of all, there were the jungle—lyrical and alive—and Wayra, who would ultimately teach Laura so much about love, healing, and the person she was capable of becoming.Set against a turbulent and poignant backdrop of deforestation, the illegal pet trade, and forest fires, The Puma Years explores what happens when two desperate creatures in need of rescue find one another.

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 Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living


Helen Nearing - 1970
    This couple abandoned the city for a rural life with minimal cash and the knowledge of self reliance and good health.

The Soul of the Rhino: A Nepali Adventure with Kings and Elephant Drivers, Billionaires and Bureaucrats, Shamans and Scientists and the Indian Rhinoceros


Hemanta Mishra - 2008
     The Soul of the Rhino is the spirited yet humble account of Mishra’s unique personal journey. Fresh out of university in the 1970s, Mishra embarks on his conservation work with the help of an ornery but steadfast elephant driver, the Nepalese royal family, and handfuls of  like-minded scientists whose aim is to protect the animal in the foothills of the Himalayas. Yet, in spite of decades spent creating nature reserves and moving rhinos to protected areas, arm-wrestling politicians, and raising awareness for the cause, Mishra is still fearful about the future of the Indian Rhino. To this day, Nepal is overrun by armed insurgents, political violence, and poachers who could kill off this magnificent creature for good.   Filled with candor and bittersweet humor, Mishra re-creates his journey on behalf of the rhino, an ugly yet enchanting, terrifying yet delicate creature. The first book of its kind to delve into the multi-layered political labyrinths of South Asian wildlife conservation, and one man’s endurance in the face of it all, The Soul of the Rhino is sure to win over yourheart and soul.

The Circumference of Home: One Man's Yearlong Quest for a Radically Local Life


Kurt Hoelting - 2010
    If I can’t change my own life in response to the greatest challenge now facing our human family, who can? And if I won’t make the effort to try, why should anyone else? So I’ve decided to start at home, and begin with myself. The question is no longer whether I must respond. The question is whether I can turn my response into an adventure. After realizing the gaping hole between his convictions about climate change and his own carbon footprint, Kurt Hoelting embarked on a yearlong experiment to rediscover the heart of his own home: He traded his car and jet travel for a kayak, a bicycle, and his own two feet, traveling a radius of 100 kilometers from his home in Puget Sound. This “circumference of home” proved more than enough. Part quest and part guidebook for change, Hoelting’s journey is an inspiring reminder that what we need really is close at hand, and that the possibility for adventure lies around every bend.

The Well-Gardened Mind: The Restorative Power of Nature


Sue Stuart-Smith - 2020
    But when we get our hands in the earth we connect with the cycle of life in nature through which destruction and decay are followed by regrowth and renewal. Gardening is one of the quintessential nurturing activities and yet we understand so little about it. The Well-Gardened Mind provides a new perspective on the power of gardening to change people’s lives. Here, Sue Stuart-Smith investigates the many ways in which mind and garden can interact and explores how the process of tending a plot can be a way of sustaining an innermost self. Stuart-Smith’s own love of gardening developed as she studied to become a psychoanalytic psychotherapist. From her grandfather’s return from World War I to Freud’s obsession with flowers to case histories with her own patients to progressive gardening programs in such places as Rikers Island prison in New York City, Stuart-Smith weaves thoughtful yet powerful examples to argue that gardening is much more important to our cognition than we think. Recent research is showing how green nature has direct antidepressant effects on humans. Essential and pragmatic, The Well-Gardened Mind is a book for gardeners and the perfect read for people seeking healthier mental lives.

The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future


Naomi Oreskes - 2014
    What ensues when soaring temperatures, rising sea levels, drought, and mass migrations disrupt the global governmental and economic regimes? The Great Collapse of 2093.This work is an important title that will change how readers look at the world. Dramatizing climate change in ways traditional nonfiction cannot, this inventive, at times humorous work reasserts the importance of scientists and the work they do and reveals the self-serving interests of the so called "carbon industrial complex" that have turned the practice of sound science into political fodder. The authors conclude with a critique of the philosophical frameworks, most notably neo-liberalism, that do their part to hasten civilization's demise.Based on sound scholarship yet unafraid to tilt at sacred cows in both science and policy, this book provides a welcome moment of clarity amid the cacophony of climate change literature. It includes a lexicon of historical and scientific terms that enriches the narrative and an interview with the authors.

Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo


Kate Jackson - 2007
    Culled from the mud-spattered pages of her journal, this is her unvarnished account of her adventures and research.

Letters to a Young Scientist


Edward O. Wilson - 2013
    Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career--both his successes and his failures--and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans' depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being's modest place in the planet's ecosystem in his readers.

The Ecology of Wisdom: Writings by Arne Naess


Arne Næss - 2008
    This collection amasses a definitive group of Naess' most important works in which he calls for nonviolent, cooperative action to protect the Earth. Rich with observations, insights, and anecdotes, Naess' writings draw from Eastern religious practices, Gandhian nonviolent direct action, and Spinozan unity systems. Playful and compassionate in tone, Ecology of Wisdom showcases Naess' exceptional enthusiasm, wit, and spiritual fascination with nature, while educating each of us about the steps we must take to rescue the planet and illuminating the relevance of this important environmental advocate.

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants


Robin Wall Kimmerer - 2013
    As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these lenses of knowledge together to show that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world. For only when we can hear the languages of other beings are we capable of understanding the generosity of the earth, and learning to give our own gifts in return.

Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale


Adam Minter - 2019
    Decluttering. A parent's death. Sooner or later, all of us are faced with things we no longer need or want. But when we drop our old clothes and other items off at a local donation center, where do they go? Sometimes across the country-or even halfway across the world-to people and places who find value in what we leave behind.In Secondhand, journalist Adam Minter takes us on an unexpected adventure into the often-hidden, multibillion-dollar industry of reuse: thrift stores in the American Southwest to vintage shops in Tokyo, flea markets in Southeast Asia to used-goods enterprises in Ghana, and more. Along the way, Minter meets the fascinating people who handle-and profit from-our rising tide of discarded stuff, and asks a pressing question: In a world that craves shiny and new, is there room for it all?Secondhand offers hopeful answers and hard truths. A history of the stuff we've used and a contemplation of why we keep buying more, it also reveals the marketing practices, design failures, and racial prejudices that push used items into landfills instead of new homes. Secondhand shows us that it doesn't have to be this way, and what really needs to change to build a sustainable future free of excess stuff.

This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook


Extinction Rebellion - 2019
    Now you can become part of the movement - and together, we can make history.It's time. This is our last chance to do anything about the global climate and ecological emergency. Our last chance to save the world as we know it.Now or never, we need to be radical. We need to rise up. And we need to rebel.Extinction Rebellion is a global activist movement of ordinary people, demanding action from Governments. This is a book of truth and action. It has facts to arm you, stories to empower you, pages to fill in and pages to rip out, alongside instructions on how to rebel - from organising a roadblock to facing arrest.By the time you finish this book you will have become an Extinction Rebellion activist. Act now before it's too late.

On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon


Alan Tennant - 2004
    From the windswept flats of the Texas barrier islands to the Artic and then south again into the Caribbean, On the Wing provides a hilariously picaresque and bumpy flight.

The Anthropocene Reviewed


John GreenJohn Green - 2021
    In this remarkable symphony of essays adapted and expanded from his ground-breaking, critically acclaimed podcast, John Green reviews different facets of the human-centered planet - from the QWERTY keyboard and Halley's Comet to Penguins of Madagascar - on a five-star scale.Complex and rich with detail, the Anthropocene's reviews have been praised as 'observations that double as exercises in memoiristic empathy', with over 10 million lifetime downloads. John Green's gift for storytelling shines throughout this artfully curated collection about the shared human experience; it includes beloved essays along with six all-new pieces exclusive to the book.