Nonfiction
See Bears Up Close from the Comfort of Your Sofa
Professional naturalist, wildlife photographer, and author Stan Tekiela explores some of North America's most desolate areas, pursuing smart, powerful, and resourceful creatures: bears. With his instinct for being in the right place at the right time, Stan utilizes rare opportunities to capture some of the most compelling images of his career. Through this book, you can enter the world of these powerful creatures through stunning photos and personal anecdotes from Stan's journeys into the wild. Share in his travels and develop a new appreciation and respect for bears.
"Unusual and fascinating... Read this book and enter into another world."-- Jane GoodallIn this sensuous and moving memoir, a young man forms a powerful connection with deer while living alone in the woods for seven years.Geoffroy Delorme does not fit in the human world. As a boy, he dreams of transforming into a fox so he can escape into the forest. As he gets older, he disappears into the woods at night, drawn to the rhythms of animal life. One night, an encounter with a deer changes his life: from then on, he knows he wants to live among them. Delorme becomes a creature of the forest. He learns to live without a tent or sleeping bag and forage for whatever food he can find. He blends in with the deer and, slowly, they accept him into their world. He witnesses their births and deaths, courtship and battles, ostracism and friendship over the cycles of their lives. Among the deer, he experiences the beauty, pain, fear, and joy of a life lived as a part of nature, not separate from it.In his final year in the forest, Delorme meets a woman walking through the trees. He knows he can stay in the forest and die with his friends--or he can leave, and speak their truth to a human world that desperately needs to hear it. Deer Man is a moving story of what it's like to be an outsider and how forming connections with the natural world can help us feel less alone. A unique and powerful window into how far one human is willing to go to understand an animal, Deer Man asks us to never take for granted the flora and fauna of our world, and to work for their protection in whatever ways we can.
What's to be done about a jaywalking moose? A bear caught breaking and entering? A murderous tree? Three hundred years ago, animals that broke the law would be assigned legal representation and put on trial. These days, as New York Times best-selling author Mary Roach discovers, the answers are best found not in jurisprudence but in science: the curious science of human-wildlife conflict, a discipline at the crossroads of human behavior and wildlife biology.
Roach tags along with animal-attack forensics investigators, human-elephant conflict specialists, bear managers, and "danger tree" faller blasters. Intrepid as ever, she travels from leopard-terrorized hamlets in the Indian Himalaya to St. Peter's Square in the early hours before the pope arrives for Easter Mass, when vandal gulls swoop in to destroy the elaborate floral display. She taste-tests rat bait, learns how to install a vulture effigy, and gets mugged by a macaque.
Combining little-known forensic science and conservation genetics with a motley cast of laser scarecrows, langur impersonators, and trespassing squirrels, Roach reveals as much about humanity as about nature's lawbreakers. When it comes to "problem" wildlife, she finds, humans are more often the problem--and the solution. Fascinating, witty, and humane, Fuzz offers hope for compassionate coexistence in our ever-expanding human habitat.
This "important and timely" (Drew Faust, Harvard Magazine) #1 New York Times bestseller examines the legacy of slavery in America--and how both history and memory continue to shape our everyday lives.
Beginning in his hometown of New Orleans, Clint Smith leads the reader on an unforgettable tour of monuments and landmarks--those that are honest about the past and those that are not--that offer an intergenerational story of how slavery has been central in shaping our nation's collective history, and ourselves.
It is the story of the Monticello Plantation in Virginia, the estate where Thomas Jefferson wrote letters espousing the urgent need for liberty while enslaving more than four hundred people. It is the story of the Whitney Plantation, one of the only former plantations devoted to preserving the experience of the enslaved people whose lives and work sustained it. It is the story of Angola, a former plantation-turned-maximum-security prison in Louisiana that is filled with Black men who work across the 18,000-acre land for virtually no pay. And it is the story of Blandford Cemetery, the final resting place of tens of thousands of Confederate soldiers.
A deeply researched and transporting exploration of the legacy of slavery and its imprint on centuries of American history, How the Word Is Passed illustrates how some of our country's most essential stories are hidden in plain view--whether in places we might drive by on our way to work, holidays such as Juneteenth, or entire neighborhoods like downtown Manhattan, where the brutal history of the trade in enslaved men, women, and children has been deeply imprinted.
Informed by scholarship and brought to life by the story of people living today, Smith's debut work of nonfiction is a landmark of reflection and insight that offers a new understanding of the hopeful role that memory and history can play in making sense of our country and how it has come to be.
Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
Winner of the Stowe Prize
Winner of 2022 Hillman Prize for Book Journalism
A New York Times 10 Best Books of 2021
A New York Times bestseller!
National Book Award finalist Sy Montgomery reflects on the personalities and quirks of 13 animals--her friends--who have profoundly affected her in this stunning, poetic, and life-affirming memoir featuring illustrations by Rebecca Green.
Understanding someone who belongs to another species can be transformative. No one knows this better than author, naturalist, and adventurer Sy Montgomery. To research her books, Sy has traveled the world and encountered some of the planet's rarest and most beautiful animals. From tarantulas to tigers, Sy's life continually intersects with and is informed by the creatures she meets.
This restorative memoir reflects on the personalities and quirks of thirteen animals--Sy's friends--and the truths revealed by their grace. It also explores vast themes: the otherness and sameness of people and animals; the various ways we learn to love and become empathetic; how we find our passion; how we create our families; coping with loss and despair; gratitude; forgiveness; and most of all, how to be a good creature in the world.
Perfect gift for the holiday season.Engaging back matter showcases personal black-and-white photos of Sy and the animals she so lovingly depicts.Don't miss Sy Montgomery's other books including Of Time and Turtles, The Soul of an Octopus, and The Hawk's Way.