A brilliant young environmental journalist argues that we must innovate and adapt to save planet Earth in this enlightening “trip around the world to meet people working out new ways for humanity to live as well as survive” (The New York Times Book Review).With the historical perspective of The Song of the Dodo and the urgency of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, The Unnatural World chronicles a disparate band of unlikely heroes: ...

In the history of planet earth, mass species extinctions have occurred five times, about once every 100 million years. A "sixth extinction" is known to be underway now, with over 200 species dying off every day. Not only that, but the cause of the sixth extinction is also the source of single biggest threat to human life: our own inventions.What this bleak future will truly hold, though, is much in dispute. Will our immune systems be attacked by so-called super bugs, always evolvin...

The green movement used to protect the earth from mankind; now they need to protect mankind from the earth. In Whole Earth Discipline, Stewart Brand argues that in order to do this, they urgently need to abandon much conventional environmental wisdom, and embrace new science and engineering. Cities are actually greener than the countryside, he argues, and urbanization should be encouraged; we must invest massively in nuclear energy; and genetic engineering has the potential to sti...

_________________'A superbly crafted, diligently compressed vision of a world spiralling towards destruction' - Observer'Kolbert mesmerises with her poetic cadence in this riveting view of the apocalypse already upon us' - Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'The most frightening book I've read this century' - Times Literary Supplement_________________Eli...

"An audacious and concrete proposal…Half-Earth completes the 86-year-old Wilson’s valedictory trilogy on the human animal and our place on the planet." —Jedediah Purdy, New RepublicIn his most urgent book to date, Pulitzer Prize–winning author and world-renowned biologist Edward O. Wilson states that in order to stave off the mass extinction of species, including our own, we must move swiftly to preserve the biodiversity of our planet. In this "vi...

By looking backward at the course of great extinctions, a paleontologist sees what the future holds.More than 200 million years ago, a cataclysmic event known as the Permian extinction destroyed more than 90 percent of all species and nearly 97 percent of all living things. Its origins have long been a puzzle for paleontologists. During the 1990s and the early part of this century, a great battle was fought between those who thought that death had come from above and those who thou...

The Palaeozoic or Primary Era spans a period of time ranging from 542 million to 251 million years ago. The name Paleozoic, derives from the fact that, in the past, it was considered the first geological age. The Paleozoic covers a range of about 300 million years, giving rise to many forms of life, until the appearance of thecodonts, commonly believed to be the ancestors of dinosaurs.

When a farmer in Spain captured a two-headed snake in 2002, scientists wanted to study it. When National Geographic Daily News published a story about the discovery, people wanted to read all about it. More than a million people clicked on the site and kept coming back for more unbelievably true stories. An Internet sensation was born. Since then, more than 100 million individuals have clicked on stories put together by David Braun and his crack team of editors for National Geographic Dail...

In its 4.5 billion–year history, life on Earth has been almost erased at least half a dozen times: shattered by asteroid impacts, entombed in ice, smothered by methane, and torn apart by unfathomably powerful megavolcanoes. And we know that another global disaster is eventually headed our way. Can we survive it? How?As a species, Homo sapiens is at a crossroads. Study of our planet’s turbulent past suggests that we are overdue for a catastrophic disaster, ...

One of America's great nature-writers explores the magic and science of feathers.**“An illuminating study of an evolutionary marvel.” ―**EconomistWinner of the John Burroughs MedalFeathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. From flying dinosaurs to showgirls on the Las Vegas Strip, their story spans hundreds of millions of years—yet has never been fully told. In Feathers

WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING“Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture.” —Science FridayThe author of Sounds Wild and Broken and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s most magnificent networkers — trees...

This is not just the story of one continent and how it formed, it is the tale of how our world came to be the way it is, and how it might become something else in the future. An understanding of the earth sciences is essential to understanding our place on this ball of rock, and Ghost Mountains and Vanished Continents, replete with fascinating information and anecdotes, both personal and geological, provides that understanding in a wonderfully readable form.Today we are altering our...