Natural History Nonfiction

One of our most innovative, popular thinkers takes on-in exhilarating style-one of our key questions: Where do good ideas come from?...

The Royal Society's Science Book of the Year "...Henry Gee presents a pithy, fascinating account of the stages of biological evolution. He's a deliberate, engaged narrator whose slow pacing will require adaptation. This and creative background music and sound effects (dinosaur sounds?) create a...

W.G. Sebald's military classic, ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF DESTRUCTION, will now be available for the first time in audio! On the Natural History of Destruction is W.G. Sebald's harrowing and precise investigation of one of the least examined "silences" of our time. In it, the acclaimed novelist...

A revolutionary new history that reveals how climate change has dramatically shaped the development—and demise—of civilizations across time Global warming is one of the greatest dangers mankind faces today. Even as temperatures increase, sea levels rise, and natural disasters escalate, our...

The best-selling author of Born to Run now travels to the Mediterranean, where he discovers that the secrets of ancient Greek heroes are still alive and well on the island of Crete, and ready to be unleashed in the muscles and minds of casual athletes and aspiring heroes everywhere. After...

Winner of the National Book Award This bestselling, groundbreaking exploration of the Far North is a classic of natural history, anthropology, and travel writing. The Arctic is a perilous place. Only a few species of wild animals can survive its harsh climate. In this modern classic, Barry Lopez...

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...

In Flirtin’, Calliope is now a full-time dino romance author. She is wildly in love with her narrator/astronomer boyfriend and hoping to win big at her first Las Vegas book signing. But when Ralph is the one to hit the jackpot instead of her, their own happily ever after needs a rewrite.

Book 9 in the Our Scary History series, this volume continues the focus on real events that ripped the land apart and left permanent marks on history. Reports and accounts from deadly volcanoes, floods, earthquakes, and disasters that reshaped entire regions between 1750 and 1930, drawn from historical records of the time. Many of these events occurred before modern rescue equipment, trained emergency crews, or coordinated relief systems existed. In avalanches, floods, collapses, and sinkholes, entire groups of people sometimes vanished without trace. Survivors reported hearing voices ...

Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies. People love what’s natural: it’s the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to...

WINNER OF THE TENNESSEE BOOK AWARD FOR NONFICTION A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A riveting courtroom drama about the victims of one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history—and the country lawyer determined to challenge the notion that, in America, justice can be...

In this masterful account in the spirit of Bill Bryson and Ian Frazier, a longtime deep-sea diver masterfully weaves together the science and history of Earth's last remaining frontier: the sea.In an age of unprecedented exploration and innovation, our oceans remain largely unknown, and...

The six exquisite stories in Natural History are set largely in a small community in central New York state and portray some of her most beloved characters, spanning the decades between the Civil War to the present day. Told with Andrea Barrett's characteristic elegance, passion for science, and wonderful eye for the natural world, the psychologically astute and moving stories gathered in this collection evoke the ways women's lives and expectations—in families, in work, and in love—have shifted across a century and more.

‘Windswept is a wonderful work, prose painted in bold, bright strokes like a Scottish Colourist's canvas’ ROBERT MACFARLANE ‘An instant classic of British nature-writing’ SUNDAY TELEGRAPH A few years ago, Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on...

In this exhilarating look at cities, past and future, Ben Wilson proposes that, in our world of rising seas and threatening weather, the natural world may prove the city's savior. Since the beginning of civilization, humans have built cities to wall nature out, then glorified it in beloved but...

How can a single tree help build cars, protect doctors, power industries, and change the way people move across the planet? The Amazing Rubber Tree: How One Plant Changed the World takes readers on a fascinating journey through science, history, and innovation—starting with a living tree in the rainforest and ending with the rubber products we use every day. Young readers will explore: How rubber trees grow and why they produce latex How people learned to tap trees without cutting them down The transformation of liquid latex into solid rubber Rubber’s role in transportation, medicine, ...

Brought to you by Penguin. **LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION 2026* The Genius of Trees tells the mind-expanding global story of the inventive and astonishing ways trees learned to shape our natural world. Over hundreds of millions of years, from prehistoric forests to the trees...

"At once lyrical and exacting, clear-sighted and deeply informed—a beautiful book." —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of Under a White Sky A profound and poetic reflection on the cyclical nature of life, what happens when we break that cycle, and how to repair it—told through the fate of...

In 1936, ironically after one of the coldest winters on record, North America experienced a heat wave that remains unmatched today. Thanks to a combination of an unusually warm sea surface in the Atlantic and Pacific, stagnating low-pressure, drought and poor farming techniques, temperatures...

"Sounding appropriately David Attenborough-esque, Dugald Bruce-Lockhart narrates this in-depth look at the lives of 10 species of seabirds." — AudioFile Magazine Life itself could never have been sustainable without seabirds. As Adam Nicolson writes: "They are bringers of fertility, the...