Showing titles in Ecology

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the book’s first publication, David Attenborough has revisited Life on Earth, completely updating and adding to the original text, taking account of modern scientific discoveries from around the globe....

When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us? As a species we are shaped by our environment. Geological forces drove our evolution in East Africa; mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece; and today voting behaviour in the United States follows the bed of an ancient sea. The human story is the story of these forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents.

The Sunday Times Bestseller A new, fully updated narrative edition of David Attenborough’s seminal biography of our world, The Living Planet. Nowhere on our planet is devoid of life. Plants and animals thrive or survive within every extreme of climate and habitat that it offers. Single species...

Birds. Over 9,000 species, the most widespread of all animals: on icebergs, in the Sahara or under the sea, at home in our gardens or flying for over a year at a time. Earthbound, we can only look and listen, enjoying their lightness, freedom and richness of plumage and song. David Attenborough has been watching and learning all his life. His classic book, now fully updated with the latest discoveries in ornithology, is a brilliant introduction to bird behaviours around the world: what they do and why they do it.

Brought to you by Penguin. 'Wonderful, mind-broadening... a journey to alternative realities as extraordinary as any you'll find in science fiction' - The Times, Book of the Week Humans have three or four colour-detecting cones in their retinas. Mantis shrimp have 16. In fact, their eyes seem to...

From the author of Apocalyptic Planet, an unsparing, vivid, revelatory travelogue through prehistory that traces the arrival of the First People in North America 20,000 years ago and the artifacts that enable us to imagine their lives and fates. This book upends our notions of where these people came from and who they were.

Brigit Strawbridge Howard was shocked the day she realized she knew more about the French Revolution than she did about her native trees. And birds. And wildflowers. And bees. The thought stopped her — quite literally — in her tracks. But that day was also the start of a journey, one filled with silver birches and hairy-footed flower bees, skylarks, and rosebay willow herb, and the joy that comes with deepening one’s relationship with place.

In a book that will recalibrate our view of this defining feature of our planet, physicist Helen Czerski dives deep to illuminate the murky depths of the ocean engine, examining the messengers, passengers and voyagers that live in it, travel over it, and survive because of it. From the ancient Polynesians who navigated the Pacific by reading the waves to permanent residents of the deep such as the Greenland shark that can live for hundreds of years, she explains the vast currents, invisible ocean walls and underwater waterfalls that all have their place in the ocean's complex system.

Sunday Times Bestseller ‘A paradigm-smashing chronicle of joyous entanglement’ Charles Foster Waterstones Non-Fiction Book of the Month (September) Are trees social beings? How do trees live? Do they feel pain or have awareness of their surroundings? In The Hidden Life of Trees Peter...

Random House presents the audiobook edition of The Inner Life of Animals by Peter Wohlleben, read by Thomas Judd. Mother deer that grieve? Horses that feel shame? Squirrels that adopt their grandchildren? We humans tend to assume that we are the only living things able to experience feelings...

Framed by the author’s personal experience with backyard hens, Chickens: Their Natural and Unnatural Histories explores the history of the chicken from its descent from the dinosaurs to the space-age present. En route, Lembke surveys chickens in ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the 19th century, and modern times, including the role of chickens in Jewish and Muslim practices. She also investigates the birds’ contributions to science and their jaunty appearances in literature.

Penguin presents the audiobook edition of The Human Planet, A Pelican Book, by Simon L. Lewis and Mark A. Maslin, read by Roy McMillan. Meteorites, methane, mega-volcanoes and now human beings; the old forces of nature that transformed Earth many millions of years ago are joined by another: us...

A blueprint for a more balanced, sustainable world by King Charles III. This compassionate and insightful book shines a light on our new monarch’s deep interest in the world around us. Long before the phrase climate change was a universal catchphrase, our new monarch, King Charles III was...

Presents meditation journeys with specific plant and tree spirits, such as Mugwort, Rosemary, Dandelion, Yew, Elder, and Wormwood Details how to achieve a calm mind, cleanse your energy field, and connect with your heart in preparation for meditating with the plants Includes a...

"One of the greatest thinkers of our age" (The Guardian) presents a new way of living—one modeled on nature's design instead of capitalism's—for fans of Guns, Germs, and Steel and Doughnut Economics It has often been said that it is easier to imagine the end of the world than it is to...

In Eager, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat. Today, a growing coalition of "Beaver Believers" recognizes that ecosystems with beavers are far healthier, for humans and non-humans alike, than those without them.

Roger Deakin, author of the immortal Waterlog and Wildwood, was a man of unusually many parts. A born writer who nonetheless took decades to write his first book, Roger was also variously—and sometimes simultaneously—maverick ad-man, seller of stripped pine furniture on the Portobello Road, cider-maker, teacher, environmentalist, music promoter, and filmmaker. But above all he was the restorer of ancient Walnut Tree Farm in Suffolk.

In this classic work that continues to inspire its many fans, James Lovelock deftly explains his idea that life on Earth functions as a single organism. Written for the non-scientist, Gaia is a journey through time and space in search of evidence with which to support a new and radically different model of our planet. In contrast to conventional belief that living matter is passive in the face of threats to its existence, the book explores the hypothesis that the Earth's living matter - air, ocean, and land surfaces - forms a complex system that has the capacity to keep the Earth a fit place for life.

In Wilderlands, archaeologist Eloise Kane unearths 12,000 years of our changing relationship with and influence on the landscape. Through prehistory, Roman occupation, the Middle Ages and beyond, we see the unfamiliar beasts of our old wild make way for species such as brown hare and fallow deer, now romanticised as eternal symbols of the British countryside, but introduced much later than we might think. Places free from our influence haven't existed for a very long time. But Eloise Kane invites us to rethink our definition of the wild - not as separate from us.

When we use chemical fertilizers, we injure the microbial life that sustains plants and then become increasingly dependent on an arsenal of toxic substances. Teaming with Microbes offers an alternative to this vicious circle and details how to garden in a way that strengthens, rather than destroys, the soil food web. You’ll discover that healthy soil is teeming with life - not just earthworms and insects, but a staggering multitude of bacteria, fungi, and other microorganisms.