The author records his observations of nature during the year he spent in a Cape Cod beach house.

One of America's most important and influential naturalists, John Muir was a formative figure in the country's conservation movement and the establishment of the national park system. He was also a gifted storyteller, and in this series of essays he reminisces about his early years. Muir relates the circumstances that inspired and nurtured his fascination with the natural world, from his boyhood in Scotland to his years at the University of Wisconsin,...

A British naturalist and his wife acquire a menagerie of animals and set up their own zoo in this delightful memoir by the author of the Corfu Trilogy.
For many years I had wanted to start a zoo. . . . Any reasonable person smitten with an ambition of this sort would have secured the zoo first and obtained the animals afterwards. But throughout my life I have rarely if ever achieved what I wanted by tackling it in a logical...

As a young boy, Charles Darwin hated school and was often scolded for conducting “useless” experiments. Yet his passion for the natural world was so strong that he suffered through terrible seasickness during his five-year voyage aboard The Beagle. Darwin collected new creatures from the coasts of Africa, South America, and the Galapagos Islands, and expanded his groundbreaking ideas that would change people's understanding of the natural...

This edition of Darwin’s life story restores previously censored passages on religion and the scientist’s opinions of his contemporaries.
Darwin wrote his autobiography in 1876, at the age of sixty-seven, hoping it would prove interesting to his children and grandchildren. Preparing the book for a wider audience, his family initially sought to protect his legacy by removing passages they found too personal or controversial....

Inspirational and magical, this is the story of a boy who grows up determined to save the world from its most savage ecological predator: man himself.

Published in 1789, The Natural History of Selborne was written by Gilbert White, an English naturalist and clergyman. It comprises White's letters to fellow naturalists and friends, documenting the flora and fauna of his home town in Hampshire.The book is considered one of the earliest and most influential works of natural history in the English language. In both its parts, White meticulously observes and describes the various species of

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A brief biography of English naturalist responsible for the advancement of the science of evolution. Two hundred years after Charles Darwin's birth (February 12, 1809), this thoroughly illustrated, yet concise biography reveals the great scientist as husband, father, and friend. Tim M. Berra tells the fascinating story of the man and the idea that changed everything. Berra discusses Darwin's revolutionary scientific work, its impact on modern-day...

"For readers of Late Migrations and Vesper Flights From the acclaimed author of How to Catch a Mole, this meditative memoir explores the wisdom of plants, the joys of manual labor, and the natural cycle of growth and decay that runs through both the garden's life and our own. Marc Hamer has nurtured the same 12-acre garden in the Welsh countryside for over two decades. The garden is vast and intricate. It's rarely visited, and only Hamer knows of...

Darwin's revolutionary career is the perfect vehicle for historian Paul Johnson. Marked by the insightful observation, spectacular wit, and highly readable prose for which Johnson is so well regarded, Darwin brings the gentleman-scientist and his times brilliantly into focus. From Darwin's birth into great fortune to his voyage aboard the Beagle, to the long-delayed publication of his masterpiece, Johnson delves into what made this Victorian gentleman...