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76 Featured Titles

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Exam Copy
Desert Solitaire

Written by Edward Abbey


Format: Paperback, 352 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: January 12, 1985
Price: $7.99
ISBN: 978-0-345-32649-2 (0-345-32649-0)

Drawn from the author's journals while contemplating the desert, Desert Solitaire is a poetic study of man's happiness in dry lands. Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within... Read more >

Exam Copy
Moon By Whale Light
And Other Adventures Among Bats,Penguins, Crocodilians, and Whales
Written by Diane Ackerman


Format: Trade Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: September 29, 1992
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-74226-5 (0-679-74226-3)

In a rare blend of scientific fact and poetic truth, the acclaimed author of A Natural History of the Senses explores the activities of whales, penguins, bats, and crocodilians, plunging headlong into nature and coming up with highly entertaining treasures. Read more >

Exam Copy
The Rarest of the Rare
Vanishing Animals, Timeless Worlds
Written by Diane Ackerman


Format: Trade Paperback, 208 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 14, 1997
Price: $12.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-77623-9 (0-679-77623-0)

Ackerman journeys in search of monarch butterflies and short-tailed albatrosses, monk seals, and golden lion tamarin monkeys: the world's rarest creatures and their vanishing habitats. She delivers a rapturous celebration of other species that is also a warning to our own. Traveling from the Amazon rain forest to a forbidding island... Read more >

Exam Copy
Born Free
A Lioness of Two Worlds
Written by Joy Adamson


Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Pantheon
On Sale: May 16, 2000
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-375-71438-2 (0-375-71438-3)

There have been many accounts of the return to the wild of tame animals, but since its original publication in 1960, when the New York Times hailed it as a "fascinating and remarkable book," Born Free has stood alone in its power to move us.

Joy Adamson's story of a lion cub... Read more >

Exam Copy
In the Land of White Death

Written by Valerian Albanov
Preface by Jon Krakauer
Translated by Alison Anderson
Introduction by David Roberts


Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Modern Library
On Sale: September 4, 2001
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-78361-9 (0-679-78361-X)

In 1912, six months after Robert Falcon Scott and four of his men came to grief in Antarctica, a thirty-two-year-old Russian navigator named Valerian Albanov embarked on an expedition that would prove even more disastrous. In search of new Arctic hunting grounds, Albanov's ship, the Saint Anna, was frozen fast in... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Sisters of the Earth
Women's Prose and Poetry About Nature
Written by Lorraine Anderson


Format: Trade Paperback, 496 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: December 9, 2003
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3321-8 (1-4000-3321-7)

Sisters of the Earth is a stirring collection of women’s writing on nature: Nature as healer. Nature as delight. Nature as mother and sister. Nature as victim. Nature as companion and reminder of what is wild in us all. Here, among more than a hundred poets and prose writers, are Diane... Read more >

Exam Copy
Shadow Mountain
A Memoir of Wolves, a Woman, and the Wild
Written by Renee Askins


Format: Trade Paperback, 336 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: January 6, 2004
Price: $15.95
ISBN: 978-0-385-48226-4 (0-385-48226-4)

“The wolves of North America have their Jane Goodall, and her name is Renée Askins…. An eloquent plea for nature unrestrained.” —Outside Magazine

“Delightful…fun to read. The seamless way Askins weaves the natural world into her narrative brings to mind Terry Tempest Williams’s memoir Refuge.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Demonstrates the... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
The Audubon Reader

Written by John James Audubon
Edited by Richard Rhodes


Format: Hardcover, 656 pages
Publisher: Everyman's Library
On Sale: April 11, 2006
Price: $27.50
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4369-9 (1-4000-4369-7)

This unprecedented anthology of John James Audubon’s lively and colorful writings about the American wilderness reintroduces the great artist and ornithologist as an exceptional American writer, a predecessor to Thoreau, Emerson, and Melville.

Audubon’s award-winning biographer, Richard Rhodes, has gathered excerpts from his journals, letters, and published works, and has organized them... Read more >

Exam Copy
Heart Of The Land
Essays on Last Great Places
Written by Joseph Barbato and Lisa Weinerman


Format: Trade Paperback, 320 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: February 13, 1996
Price: $17.00
ISBN: 978-0-679-75501-2 (0-679-75501-2)

From Thomas McGuane on Idaho's Snake River to Louise Erdrich on the tallgrass prairies of her native North Dakota to Carl Hiaasen combing the imperiled fishing grounds of the Florida Keys, some of the country's finest writers celebrate the geography that The Nature Conservancy has designated as "Last Great Places." Read more >

Exam Copy
The Last Flight of the Scarlet Macaw
One Woman's Fight to Save the World's Most Beautiful Bird
Written by Bruce Barcott


Format: Hardcover, 336 pages
Publisher: Random House
On Sale: February 5, 2008
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6293-5 (1-4000-6293-4)

“The first time we came here I didn’t know what to expect,” she told me as we paddled upstream. “What we found just blew me away. Jaguars, pumas, river otters, howler monkeys. The place was like a Noah’s Ark for all the endangered species driven out of the rest of Central... Read more >
Also available as an eBook and a trade paperback.

Exam Copy
The Great Work
Our Way into the Future
Written by Thomas Berry


Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Three Rivers Press
On Sale: November 14, 2000
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-0-609-80499-5 (0-609-80499-5)

Thomas Berry is one of the most eminent cultural historians of our time. Here he presents the culmination of his ideas and urges us to move from being a disrupting force on the Earth to a benign presence. This transition is the Great Work — the most necessary and most ennobling... Read more >

Exam Copy
Providence of a Sparrow
Lessons from a Life Gone to the Birds
Written by Chris Chester


Format: Trade Paperback, 304 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: April 13, 2004
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3385-0 (1-4000-3385-3)

“There’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow.” —William Shakespeare, Hamlet

B fell twenty-five feet from his nest into the life of Chris Chester. The encounter was providential for both of them.

B and Chester spent hours together playing games like bottle-cap fetch or hide-and-seek. They learned “words” in each... Read more >

Exam Copy
Grayson

Written by Lynne Cox


Format: Hardcover, 160 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: August 1, 2006
Price: $16.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-26454-1 (0-307-26454-8)

In Grayson Lynne Cox tells the story of a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel).

It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was in 55-degree water as... Read more >

Exam Copy
The End of the Long Summer
Why We Must Remake Our Civilization to Survive on a Volatile Earth
Written by Dianne Dumanoski


Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Publisher: Crown
On Sale: July 14, 2009
Price: $25.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-39607-5 (0-307-39607-X)

Climate change is happening, and it is the result of human activity: our fossil fuels, our global growth, our seemingly insatiable desire to consume. Despite the common belief that global warming will be a gentle escalator ride to a balmier climate, research reveals that Earth’s history is one of massive instability... Read more >
Also available as an eBook and a trade paperback.

Exam Copy
Poetry for the Earth

Written by Sara Dunn


Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
On Sale: March 17, 1992
Price: $19.00
ISBN: 978-0-449-90599-9 (0-449-90599-3)

The poetic concern for nature has been, in the words of Anna Akhmatova, "wild in our breast for centuries." Poetry for the Earth collects an astonishing diversity of poetic response to the environment, from eras and places as diverse as classical Greece, Elizabethan England, 17th century Japan, contemporary Africa, and modern... Read more >

Exam Copy
Lasso the Wind
Away to the New West
Written by Timothy Egan


Format: Trade Paperback, 288 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: October 26, 1999
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-78182-0 (0-679-78182-X)

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

Winner of the Mountains and Plains Book Seller's Association Award

"Sprawling in scope. . . . Mr. Egan uses the past powerfully to explain and give dimension to the present." --The New York Times

"Fine reportage . . . honed and polished until it reads... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
The Future of Ice
A Journey Into Cold
Written by Gretel Ehrlich


Format: Trade Paperback, 224 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: November 8, 2005
Price: $13.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3435-2 (1-4000-3435-3)

This book was written out of Gretel Ehrlich’s love for winter—for remote and cold places, for the ways winter frees our imagination and invigorates our feet, mind, and soul—and also out of the fear that our “democracy of gratification” has irreparably altered the climate.

Over the course of a year, Ehrlich... Read more >

Exam Copy
This Cold Heaven
Seven Seasons in Greenland
Written by Gretel Ehrlich


Format: Trade Paperback, 400 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: January 7, 2003
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-75852-5 (0-679-75852-6)

For the last decade, Gretel Ehrlich has been obsessed by an island, a terrain, a culture, and the treacherous beauty of a world that is defined by ice. In This Cold Heaven she combines the story of her travels with history and cultural anthropology to reveal a Greenland that few of... Read more >

Exam Copy
On Thin Ice
The Changing World of the Polar Bear
Written by Richard Ellis


Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: November 17, 2009
Price: $28.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-27059-7 (0-307-27059-9)

Polar bears—fierce and majestic—have captivated us for centuries. Feared by explorers, revered by the Inuit, and beloved by zoo goers everywhere, polar bears are a symbol for the harsh beauty and muscular grace of the Arctic. Today, as global warming threatens the ice caps’ integrity, the polar bear has also come... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Tuna
A Love Story
Written by Richard Ellis


Format: Hardcover, 352 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: July 15, 2008
Price: $27.95
ISBN: 978-0-307-26715-3 (0-307-26715-6)

The author of The Book of Sharks, Imagining Atlantis, and Encyclopedia of the Sea turns his gaze to the tuna—one of the biggest, fastest, and most highly evolved marine animals and the source of some of the world’s most popular delicacies—now hovering on the brink of extinction. In recent years, the... Read more >
Also available as an eBook and a trade paperback.

Exam Copy
Tuna
Love, Death, and Mercury
Written by Richard Ellis


Format: Trade Paperback, 368 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: July 14, 2009
Price: $16.00
ISBN: 978-0-307-38710-3 (0-307-38710-0)

Famed marine researcher and illustrator Richard Ellis brings us a work of scientific achievement that will forever change the way we think about fish, fishing, and the dangers inherent in the seafood we eat.

The bluefin tuna is one of the world's biggest, fastest, and most highly evolved marine animals, as... Read more >
Also available as an eBook and a hardcover.

Exam Copy
The Man Who Walked Through Time
The Story of the First Trip Afoot Through the Grand Canyon
Written by Colin Fletcher


Format: Trade Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: Vintage
On Sale: May 14, 1989
Price: $14.95
ISBN: 978-0-679-72306-6 (0-679-72306-4)

The remarkable classic of nature writing by the first man ever to have walked the entire length of the Grand Canyon. Read more >

Exam Copy
Foxfire 12

Written by Foxfire Fund, Inc.


Format: Trade Paperback, 576 pages
Publisher: Anchor
On Sale: September 14, 2004
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-1-4000-3261-7 (1-4000-3261-X)

In 1966, in the Appalachian Mountains of Northeast Georgia, a group of teachers and their students founded a quarterly magazine that they named Foxfire, after a phosphorescent lichen. In 1972, several articles from the magazine were published in book form and the acclaimed Foxfire series began. Almost forty years later, the... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Wallace Stegner and the American West

Written by Philip L. Fradkin


Format: Hardcover, 384 pages
Publisher: Knopf
On Sale: February 12, 2008
Price: $27.50
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4391-0 (1-4000-4391-3)

Wallace Stegner was the premier chronicler of the twentieth-century western American experience, and his novels, the Pulitzer Prize–winning Angle of Repose and the National Book Award–winning The Spectator Bird, brought the life and landscapes of the West to national and international attention. Now, in this illuminating biography, Philip L. Fradkin goes... Read more >
Also available as an eBook.

Exam Copy
Planetwalker
22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence.
Written by John Francis


Format: Hardcover, 288 pages
Publisher: National Geographic
On Sale: April 8, 2008
Price: $26.00
ISBN: 978-1-4262-0275-9 (1-4262-0275-X)

2008 Freshman English Common Reading Selection for University of South Carolina Upstate

When the struggle to save oil-soaked birds and restore blackened beaches left him feeling frustrated and helpless, John Francis decided to take a more fundamental and personal stand—he stopped using all forms of motorized transportation. Soon after embarking on this... Read more >
Also available as an eBook and a trade paperback.
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