Nature & Environment

‘It seemed a simple and interesting idea: what plants would you choose if starting a garden from scratch, given that you were only allowed to propagate them from seed? ... The emphasis is on childish simplicity of approach, and economy of outlay.’ – James Fenton In this light-hearted gardening book, James Fenton describes a hundred plants he would choose to grow from seed. Flowers for colour, size, or exotic interest; herbs and meadow flowers; climbing vines and tropical species… Here is a ha...

Nature, money, work, care, food, energy, and lives: these are the seven things that have made our world and will shape its future. In making these things cheap, modern commerce has transformed, governed, and devastated Earth. In A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things, Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore present a new approach to analyzing today's planetary emergencies. Bringing the latest ecological research together with histories of colonialism, indigenous struggles, slave revolts, and other...

See the world. Then make it better. I am David Attenborough. At time of writing, I am 93 years old. I've had an extraordinary life. It's only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world - but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day - the loss of our planet's wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline. A Life o...

From the plains of ancient Mesopotamia to the rolling hills of medieval England to the vast sheep farms of modern-day Australia, sheep have been central to the human story. Starting with our Neolithic ancestors' first forays into sheep-rearing nearly 10,000 years ago, these remarkable animals have fed us, clothed us, changed our diet and languages, helped us to win wars, decorated our homes, and financed the conquest of large swathes of the earth. Enormous fortunes and new, society-changing i...

Illustrated by Jean-Marc Rochette At sixteen, bivouacked on a mountainside beneath a sky filled with stars, Jean-Marc Rochette has already begun measuring himself against some of Europe's highest peaks. The Aiguille Dibona, the Coup de Saber, La Meije: the summits of the Massif des Ecrins, to which he escapes as a teenager, spark both exhilaration and fear. At times, they are a playground for adventure. At others, they are a battlefield. The young climber is acutely aware that death lurks in ...

Eight inspiring chapters cover key elements for the 'biophilic home', including materials, views, colour and natural light. Each section explores the links between home, health and happiness, drawing on environmental research and neuroscience while making practical suggestions for bringing the natural world into your home. Bring nature indoors with flowers and plants, rediscover the innate pleasure of real fires and fresh air, and learn how to improve your mood and sleep patterns with dynamic...

An evocative and richly illustrated exploration of flowers and how, over the centuries, they have given us so much sustenance, meaning, and pleasure. The bright yellow of a marigold and the cheerful red of a geranium, the evocative fragrance of a lotus or a saffron-infused paella-there is no end of reasons to love flowers. Ranging through the centuries and across the globe, Kasia Boddy looks at the wealth of floral associations that has been passed down in perfumes, poems, and paintings; in t...

Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings-asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass-offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requi...

Hokkien Button is no ordinary dog. She was trained as a therapy pet who understands Hokkien, winning the hearts of many. When Fiona first meets Button, something clicks. Here is a loveable dog who is being mistreated and unloved. So Fiona decides to steal her, and they soon transform each other’s lives. In fact, Fiona used to have a terrible fear of dogs—so how does she become the founder of Hope Dog Rescue, saving strays and finding them forever homes? For her part, Button learns affection a...

Bees are like oxygen: ubiquitous, essential, and, for the most part, unseen. While we might overlook them, they lie at the heart of relationships that bind the human and natural worlds. In Buzz, the award-winning author of Feathers and The Triumph of Seeds takes us on a journey that begins 125 million years ago, when a wasp first dared to feed pollen to its young. From honeybees and bumbles to lesser-known diggers, miners, leafcutters, and masons, bees have long been central to our harvests, ...

Every year, air pollution prematurely kills seven million people around the world, in rich countries and poor ones. It is strongly linked to strokes, heart attacks, many kinds of cancer, premature birth and dementia, among other ailments. In Choked, Beth Gardiner travels the world to meet the scientists who have transformed our understanding of pollution's effects on the human body, and to trace the economic forces and political decisions that have allowed it to remain at life-threatening lev...

Cats, be they much loved pets or inscrutable creatures, lend themselves to stories and literary invention. Classic Cat Stories is a beautiful anthology that includes fairy tales and fables from the likes of Rudyard Kipling and Charles Perrault as well as comic tales from Saki and E. F. Benson. Cats, of course, have always had a dark and mysterious side which is explored to chilling effect by the likes of Edgar Allan Poe in The Black Cat and H. P. Lovecraft in The Cats of Ulthar. But above all...

From the grit of a frontier man's dog, from pampered lapdog to wayward mongrel, from faithful guard dog to strong willed pet they're all here in Classic Dog Stories - the perfect gift for dog lovers everywhere. In this entertaining collection, dogs of all kinds are brought to life. Working dogs, dogs who are mistreated by humans, dogs who save lives and the ones that make us laugh; they all leap and bound on the page in stories by our most accomplished writers, including Mark Twain, Virginia ...

Climate change: watershed or endgame? In this compelling new book, Noam Chomsky, the world’s leading public intellectual, and Robert Pollin, a renowned progressive economist, map out the catastrophic consequences of unchecked climate change—and present a realistic blueprint for change: the Green New Deal. Together, Chomsky and Pollin show how the forecasts for a hotter planet strain the imagination: vast stretches of the Earth will become uninhabitable, plagued by extreme weather, drought, ri...

Illustrated by Jonathan Woodward Every creature in the ocean – from the tiny snail to the enormous blue whale – depends on water for survival. This beautifully illustrated book introduces children to the animals that live in the world’s waters. Hardback: 32 PagesProduct Dimensions: 230 x 290 mmISBN: 9781912756018 Published by Liontree Publishing

Illustrated by Jonathan Woodward Every creature in the forest – from the tiny beetle to the giant bear – depends on trees for survival. This wonderful introduction to the natural world is full of facts about animals and wildlife in the forests of the globe. Hardback: 32 PagesProduct Dimensions: 230 x 290 mmISBN: 9781912756025 Published by Liontree Publishing

From the Common Swift, which can stay in the air continuously without landing for up to ten months at a time, to the tiny Goldcrest, Europe’s smallest bird, which can lay a clutch of a dozen eggs in two weeks totaling one-and-one-half times its body weight, the class of animals we call birds is filled with incredible feats of beauty, intellect, and wonder. With enthralling facts, humorous anecdotes, and gorgeous artwork, artist Misha Blaise pays loving homage to these amazing beings that popu...

What should I wear? It’s one of the fundamental questions we ask ourselves every day. More than ever, we are told it should be something new. Today, the clothing industry churns out 80 billion garments a year and employs every sixth person on Earth. Historically, the apparel trade has exploited labor, the environment, and intellectual property—and in the last three decades, with the simultaneous unfurling of fast fashion, globalization, and the tech revolution, those abuses have multiplied ex...

There is no real evidence that humans ever 'domesticated' cats. Rather, it seems that at some point cats saw the potential value to themselves of humans. John Gray's wonderful new book is an attempt to get to grips with the philosophical and moral issues around the uniquely strange relationship between ourselves and these remarkable animals. Feline Philosophy draws on centuries of philosophy, from Montaigne to Schopenhauer, to explore the complex and intimate links that have defined how we re...

'There's a new story in the making, one in which the consequences of our actions add up - and every contribution is meaningful.' If climate change is the biggest threat humanity has ever faced, then why are we doing so little? Will the corona pandemic make it worse or better? And where do we go from here? Drawing on the latest climate science, Jelmer Mommers helps you find hope in the midst of the climate crisis. He describes how we got here, what possible futures await us, and how you can he...

Illustrated by Hao @ Black Mongrels Welcoming a new hooman (human) into a dog's life can be a tricky affair. Hoomans need to be taught the fundamentals of doggie behaviour in order to integrate successfully into our world. This book is a useful go-to guide put together by a rescued ex-breeding dog to help inexperienced canines cope with the stress of adopting a new person. From picking the right home to basic leash training, communication and safety to exercises to keep your hooman healthy an...

Humankind's fascination with the animal kingdom began as a matter of survival - differentiating the edible from the toxic, the ferocious from the tractable. Since then, our compulsion to catalogue wildlife has played a key role in growing our understanding of the planet and ourselves, inspiring religious beliefs and evolving scientific theories. The book unveils wild truths and even wilder myths about animals, as perpetuated by zoologists - revealing how much more there is to learn, and unlea...

At just fifteen, Greta Thunberg became one of today's most prominent climate change activists—her impassioned calls for action on global warming have captured hearts and minds around the world. In this inspiring interview, Thunberg discusses the irrefutable facts surrounding climate change, the need to hold political figures and lawmakers accountable, and why every person has the power to make a difference.Hardback: 80 PagesProduct Dimensions: 114 x 178 mmISBN: 9781797202747Published by Chron...

Pocket Change Collective is a series of small books with big ideas from today's leading activists and artists. In this installment, Earth Guardians Youth Director and hip-hop artist Xiuhtezcatl Martinez shows us how his music feeds his environmental activism and vice versa. Martinez visualizes a future that allows us to direct our anger, fear, and passion toward creating change. Because, at the end of the day, we all have a part to play. Paperback: 64 PagesProduct Dimensions: 110 x 160 mmISBN...

Investing responsibly is one of the most powerful ways that you can fight climate change. No longer a niche sector for rebel fund managers, conscious investing has the potential to raise huge sums of money to the companies and organisations on the front line fighting the climate crisis and make investors positive returns in the process. In this essential introduction to green investing, Alice Ross shows you how you can turn your savings and pensions, however big or small, into a force for cha...

All across the world, irreplaceable habitats are under threat. Unique ecosystems of plants and animals are being destroyed by human intervention. From the tiny to the vast, from marshland to meadow, and from Kent to Glasgow to India to America, they are disappearing. Irreplaceable is not only a love letter to the haunting beauty of these landscapes and the wild species that call them home, including nightingales, lynxes, hornbills, redwoods and elephant seals, it is also a timely reminder of ...

In Letters of Note: Cats, Shaun Usher collects together the most engaging missives that celebrate, eulogise, rail against and analyse the idiosyncratic ways of our feline companions. Includes letters by Nikola Tesla, Elizabeth Taylor, Charles Dickens, Anne Frank, T.S. Eliot, Raymond Chandler, John Cheever, Florence Nightingale, Rachel Carson, Jack Lemmon & many more.Paperback: 144 PagesProduct Dimensions: 111 x 178 mm ISBN: 9781786895547Published by Canongate

Learn how to care for your own houseplant giants, from the glorious Fiddle Leaf Fig and impressive Banana Plant to the ever-popular Monstera - this book will cover 45 favourites and include everything you need to know about creating your own indoor jungle. Little Book, Big Plants will not only instruct you on how to best care for your gentle giants, but will also show you how to encourage growth and make your own natural fertiliser as you increase the size of your collection. Colourful, fun a...

Today many of us live indoor lives, disconnected from the natural world as never before. And yet nature remains deeply ingrained in our language, culture and consciousness. For centuries, we have acted on an intuitive sense that we need communion with the wild to feel well. Now, in the moment of our great migration away from the rest of nature, more and more scientific evidence is emerging to confirm its place at the heart of our psychological wellbeing. So what happens, asks acclaimed journa...

The official death toll of the 1986 Chernobyl accident, 'the worst nuclear disaster in history', is only 54, and stories today commonly suggest that nature is thriving there. Yet award-winning historian Kate Brown uncovers a much more disturbing story, one in which radioactive isotopes caused hundreds of thousands of casualties, and the magnitude of the disaster has been actively suppressed. For years after, Soviet scientists, bureaucrats and civilians were documenting staggering increases in...

The story of Chernobyl is more complex, more human, and more terrifying than the Soviet myth. Adam Higginbotham has written a harrowing and compelling narrative which brings the 1986 disaster to life through the eyes of the men and women who witnessed it firsthand. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews conducted over the course of more than ten years, as well as letters, unpublished memoirs, and documents from recently-declassified archives, this book makes for a masterful non-fiction th...

In the remote mountains of Scotland, in high-tech bunkers in South Dakota and in the lush valleys of New Zealand, small groups of determined men and women are getting ready. They are environmentalists who fear the ravages of climate change; billionaire entrepreneurs dreaming of life on Mars; and right-wing conspiracists yearning for a lost American idyll. One thing unites them: their certainty that we are only years away from the end of civilization as we know it. Not unconcerned himself by t...

Hope, as Emily Dickinson famously wrote, is the thing with feathers. Erik Anderson, on the other hand, regards our obsession with birds as too sentimental, too precious. Birds don't express hope. They express themselves. But this tension between the versions of nature that lodge in our minds and the realities that surround us is the central theme of Bird. This is no field guide. It's something far more unusual and idiosyncratic, balancing science with story, anatomy with metaphor, habitat wit...

What is the environment, this elusive object that impacts us so profoundly--our odds to be born; the way we look, feel, and function; and how long and comfortable we may live? The environment is not only everything we see around us but also, at a lesser scale, a hailstorm of molecules large and small that constantly penetrates our bodies, simultaneously nourishing and threatening our health. The concept of oneness with our surroundings urges a reckoning of what we are doing to 'the environmen...

The ocean comprises the largest object on our planet. Retelling human history from an oceanic rather than terrestrial point of view unsettles our relationship with the natural environment. Our engagement with the world's oceans can be destructive, as with today's deluge of plastic trash and acidification, but the mismatch between small bodies and vast seas also emphasizes the frailty and resilience of human experience. From ancient stories of shipwrecked sailors to the containerized future of...

Did you know that an octopus has three hearts? And that they are particularly intelligent, with some being known to use tools? Dive into this fascinating illustrated guide all about the aliens of the deep. From the truly terrifying giant Pacific octopus to the inventive common octopus, find out where they live, what they eat and how we can protect them.Hardback: 40 PagesProduct Dimensions: 230 x 290 mmISBN: 9781912497195Published by Flying Eye Books

For more than twenty years Naomi Klein's books have defined our era, chronicling the exploitation of people and the planet and demanding justice. On Fire gathers for the first time more than a decade of her impassioned writing from the frontline of climate breakdown, and pairs it with new material on the staggeringly high stakes of what we choose to do next. Here is Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but a...

Saving the environment is our collective duty. With each passing day, climate change is causing Pacific islands to disappear into the sea, accelerating the extinction of species at alarming proportions and aggravating a water shortage that has affected the entire European continent. In short, climate change can no longer be denied - it threatens our existence on earth. In this inspiring new book, the Dalai Lama, one of the most influential figures of our time, calls on political decision-make...

illustrated by Ji-Won Lee Where does all the plastic waste go? Journey through the life cycle of plastic - how plastics are produced, the many uses of plastics throughout the last century, how our plastic use has spiralled out of control, and what we can do about it. Paperback: 36 PagesProduct Dimensions: 230 x 285 mmISBN: 9781912854325 Published by Scribe Publications

illustrated by Ben Newman Join your helpful guide, Professor Astro Cat, as he takes a dive from the seashore all the way to the ocean floor. From whales to deep-sea vents, there's so much to discover on this Deep-Sea Voyage.Hardback: 64 PagesProduct Dimensions: 290 x 290 mmISBN: 9781912497126Published by Flying Eye Books

Illustrated by Ben Wood Ever wonder why pigeons always act so weird? It's because they're out there chasing the bad guys and saving your butts! The REAL PIGEONS are a team of crime-fighters who battle baddies wherever they go! But fighting crime is hard when the city mayor has BANNED all birds, a BREAD MONSTER is on the loose and EVIL BUNNIES are taking over! Can the Real Pigeons save the day when they're the ones in trouble? No-one can protect a city like Rock, Frillback, Tumbler, Homey and ...

Illustrated by Ben Wood Ever wonder why pigeons always act so weird? It's because they're out there chasing the bad guys and saving your butts! More pigeons are fighting crime than ever before. But the REAL PIGEONS still have lots of mysteries to untangle! Who stole a rare jewel from the world's FURRIEST museum? Will a hungry weasel track down a hidden ENDANGERED BIRD before the REAL PIGEONS can? And how did an ancient tree VANISH overnight? No-one can protect a city like Rock, Frillback, Tum...

Downsizing. 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 th...

What can I do to help save endangered animals? How can I eat healthy? Why do I need to cover my mouth when I cough? What do I do if I’m being bullied? With information on problems both large and small, Chelsea Clinton breaks down the concepts of health, hunger, climate change, endangered species and bullying, so that readers can understand the world around them, and how they can make a difference in their own lives, as well as in their communities and the world at large. With comic drawings t...

Ponds: small bodies of water, both naturally formed and artificial, home to wondrous, multitudinous life-forms. Ponds define our childhood: frogspawn, goldfish, feeding the ducks, but also our village life, our farms, our landscape. And they are multi-layered - from carp circling the bottom to water boatmen, coot, and birds dragonflies overhead. In Still Water, John immerses himself in the murky depths, both literarily and figuratively, to explore the still waters of the British countryside t...

In a centuries-old tradition, farmers in north-western Iceland scour remote coastal plains for the down of nesting eider ducks. High inside a cast cave in Borneo, men perched on rickety ladders collect swiftlets' nests, a delicacy believed to be a cure for almost anything. These luxury products are two of the seven natural wonders whose stories Harvest tells: eiderdown, vicuna wool, sea silk, vegetable ivory, civet coffee, guano and edible birds' nests. It follows their journey from the wilde...

Carbon. It's in the fibers in your hair, the timbers in your walls, the food that you eat, and the air that you breathe. It's worth billions of dollars as a luxury and half a trillion as a necessity, but there are still mysteries about the element that can be both diamond and coal. Where does it come from, what does it do, and why, above all, does life need it? With poetic storytelling, Robert M. Hazen leads us on a global journey through the origin and evolution of life's most essential and ...

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together a group of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live. In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it i...