English Environmental History

An extraordinary exposé of the industry flooding our world with plastic—and now ramping up to make more than ever “A compelling true-crime story.” —Zoë Schlanger, The New York Times Book Review “Deeply researched, sharply written, and totally compelling.” —Elizabeth Kolbert...

Year 2197. Earth is suffering from the consequences of an environmental catastrophe. Cities the size of continents are drowning in a toxic industrial fog. Max Bourne is a typical teenager. Like billions of other people, he is forced to live in the protective shell of the individual life support module. His habitat is the virtual Layer. But one day, circumstances force the young man to leave the in-mode. He has no idea that fate will lead him through unimaginable hardships, bring him face to face with military AIs, and teach him to survive in the distant Outlands.

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...

Now a National Bestseller! Climate change is real but it’s not the end of the world. It is not even our most serious environmental problem. Michael Shellenberger has been fighting for a greener planet for decades. He helped save the world’s last unprotected redwoods. He co-created the...

A NEW YORKER BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR A sweeping and captivatingly told history of clothing and the stuff it is made of—an unparalleled deep-dive into how everyday garments have transformed our lives, our societies, and our planet. “We learn that, if we were a bit more curious about our...

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...

A Sweeping History of the Great State of New Jersey New Jersey has always been more than a place between New York and Philadelphia. From the Lenape who first inhabited its river valleys to the diverse communities that make it America's most multicultural state, New Jersey has served as a laboratory for the American experiment—pioneering industry, immigration, suburbanization, and environmental protection. The Garden State traces New Jersey's remarkable journey from Revolutionary battlefield to industrial powerhouse, from Ellis Island gateway to suburban frontier. Here are the stories of ...

“A provocative and page-turning work of true crime.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “A provocative, eerily lyrical study of the heyday of American serial killers . . . A true-crime story written with compassion, fury, and scientific sense.” —Kirkus (starred review) Named a Most...

From the host of the Travel Channel’s “The Wild Within.” A hunt for the American buffalo—an adventurous, fascinating examination of an animal that has haunted the American imagination. In 2005, Steven Rinella won a lottery permit to hunt for a wild buffalo, or American bison, in the...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An urgent wake-up call about the future of emerging viruses and a gripping account of the doctors and scientists fighting to protect us, told through the story of the deadly 2013–2014 Ebola epidemic “Crisis in the Red Zone reads like a thriller. That the...

An unforgettable spiritual journey through the Himalayas... IN 1973, Peter Matthiessen and field biologist George Schaller traveled high into the remote mountains of Nepal to study the Himalayan blue sheep and possibly glimpse the rare and beautiful snow leopard. Matthiessen, a student of Zen...

In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s.

When painter Winslow Homer first sailed into the Gulf of Mexico, he was struck by its "special kind of providence." Indeed, the Gulf presented itself as America's sea - bound by geography, culture, and tradition to the national experience - and yet, there has never been a comprehensive history of the Gulf until now. And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the 21st century.

In the dramatic narratives that comprise The Republic of Nature, Mark Fiege reframes the canonical account of American history based on the simple but radical premise that nothing in the nation's past can be considered apart from the natural circumstances in which it occurred. Revisiting historical icons so familiar that schoolchildren learn to take them for granted, he makes surprising connections that enable readers to see old stories in a new light.

Our solar system is a dynamic arena where asteroids careen off course and solar winds hurl charged particles across billions of miles of space. Yet we seldom consider how these events, so immense in scale, influence our fragile blue planet: Earth.

New York Times bestselling author and acclaimed presidential historian Douglas Brinkley chronicles the rise of environmental activism during the Long Sixties (1960-1973), telling the story of an indomitable generation that saved the natural world under the leadership of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon...

A prize-winning science writer reveals the intricate ways that the elements are woven into our culture, history, and language in stories of discovery and discoverers; of rituals and values; of exploitation and celebration; and of superstition as well as science Like the alphabet, the calendar or...

From prehistory to the present-day conservation movement, Stephen Pyne explores the efforts of successive American cultures to master wildfire and to use it to shape the landscape. A timely environmental classic. Pyne was named by Science magazine as "the world's leading authority on the history of fire." The narrator of Fire in America, Jack de Golia, served as a firefighter with the National Park Service and then as a fire information officer for the NPS, Bureau of Land Management and US Forest Service.

“Imagine The Leftovers, but with honey” (Elle), and in the spirit of Station Eleven and Never Let Me Go, this “spectacular and deeply moving” (Lisa See, New York Times bestselling author) literary novel follows three generations of beekeepers from the past, present, and future, weaving a...

An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future. From award-winning writer Leila Philip, Beaverland is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that...