"Gives the reader a sense of lost New York, of the incredibly rich and biologically diverse ecosystem that once was the lower Hudson River estuary." —Ted Steinberg, author of Gotham UnboundHeartbeats in the Muck traces the incredible arc of New York Harbor's environmental history. Once a pristine estuary bristling with oysters and striped bass and visited by sharks, porpoises, and seals, the harbor has been marked by centuries of rampant industrial...

This essay collection draws on natural history, urban ecology, and environmental politics to consider New York City's complex relationship to nature.How can a hawk nesting above Fifth Avenue become a citywide phenomenon? Why does a sudden butterfly migration at Coney Island energize the community? What makes the presence of a community garden or an empty lot ripple so differently through the surrounding neighborhood? Is the city an oasis or a desert for biodiversit...

That one could “walk drishod on the backs” of schools of salmon, shad, and other fishes moving up Atlantic coast rivers was a not uncommon kind of description of their migratory runs during early Colonial times. Accounts tell of awe-inspiring numbers of spawners pushing their way upriver, the waters “running silver,” to complete life cycles that once replenished critical marine fisheries along the Eastern Seaboard. This is a hugely important, fascinating, and unique look at the fish of Nor...

What did New York look like four centuries ago? An extraordinary reconstruction of a wild island from the forests of Times Square to the wetlands downtown.Named a Best Book of the Year by Library Journal , New York Magazine , and San Francisco ChronicleOn September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson first set foot on the land that would become Manhattan. Today, it's difficult to imagine what he saw, but for more than a decade, landscape ecolo...

The Book That Launched an International MovementFans of The Anxious Generation will adore Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv's groundbreaking New York Times bestseller. “An absolute must-read for parents.” —The Boston Globe“It rivals Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring.” —The Cincinnati Enquirer“I like to play indoors better ’cause that’s where all the elect...

Did you know...The average person eats up to 430 insects a year?Dinosaurs used bad breath as a weapon?A soccer player runs about 7 miles per game?An ear of corn always has an even number of rows?Want to perplex your parents and flabbergast your friends with the who, what, where, why, how, and "yuck!" about the world we live in? Then you need this all-in-one collection of the weirdest, most fascinating, and sometimes just icky truths out there! Y...

Migratory songbirds are disappearing at a frightening rate. By some estimates, we may have already lost almost half the songbirds that filled the skies only 40 years ago. Following the birds on their 10,000-kilometre migratory journey, Bridget Stutchbury looks at the most threatening factors in their extinction, from pesticides, still a major concern decades after Rachel Carson first raised the alarm, to the destruction of vital habitat; from the bright lights and structures in our cities—...

In 2007, a massive, concentrated deposit of dinosaur fossils, some of theoldest ever found, were discovered in the mountain ridges of northernBritish Columbia, near an old coal mining town. The site contained thelargest number of tyrannosaur teeth ever found with another species, anunfortunate lambeousaur who¹d been scavenged by a pack of hyena-likejuvenile predators millions of years ago. The small group of paleontologistsdigging the site have had to keep its location a secret to protect ...

Fishing from beach or rocky coastline presents challenges not faced by anglers who head out to sea. Written to open new frontiers to the old hand and provide advice to novice surf fishermen, The Complete Book of Surf Fishing will be a boon to all coastline anglers. Author and licensed charter captain Al Ristori covers the basics of traditional surfcasting, with well-illustrated instruction on casting big rods in big water. He covers the gamut of tackle that does duty in the surf-c...

For many of us, thinking about the future conjures up images of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road: a post-apocalyptic dystopia stripped of nature. Richard Louv, author of the landmark bestseller Last Child in the Woods, urges us to change our vision of the future, suggesting that if we reconceive environmentalism and sustainability, they will evolve into a larger movement that will touch every part of society.This New Nature Movement taps into the restorative powers of t...

**New York Times BestsellerWinner of the Los Angeles Times Book PrizeWinner of the J. Anthony Lukas Award"Nimbly splices together history, science, reporting and personal experiences into a taut and cautiously hopeful narrative.… Egan’s book is bursting with life (and yes, death)." —Robert Moor, New York Times Book Review**The Great Lakes—Erie, Huron, Michigan, Ontario, and Superior—hold 20 percent of the world’s supply of surface fr...

Upriver and Downstream gathers seventy columns about fishing—from freshwater to saltwater, from small ponds to the Great Lakes, from the Pacific Northwest to post-Soviet Russia—written for the “Outdoors” column of the New York Times.Contributors include such celebrated names as Nick Lyons, Thomas McGuane, Nelson Bryant, Peter Kaminsky, Ernest Schweibert, and Robert H. Boyle. Short, evocative, informative, and entertaining, here are pieces about fly-fishing for wil...