Every object around us contains the history of all the people and places that brought it here. But rarely is that history explored. In this book, instead of breaking an object apart to reveal those stories, they are told by building the object a guitar named Storyteller from scratch.The text and illustrations reveal the rich lives of the people, places, and projects that breathed life into it. The stories range from people who were pioneers in landscape restoration to thos...

The NASA Kepler and K2 missions have made fundamental, paradigm-changing advances in essentially every area of astrophysics and planetary science. While known for their breakthrough discoveries in exoplanets – especially small rocky worlds orbiting in the habitable zone of their host suns – these missions have also continued to make numerous scientific advances in solar system science, stellar astrophysics and extragalactic astronomy. This book is devoted to the Kepler and K2 missions and ...

The most ancient and least disturbed forest ecosystem in eastern North America clings to the vertical cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment. Prior to 1988 it had escaped detection even though the entire forest was in plain view and was being visited by thousands upon thousands of people every year. The reason no one had discovered the forest was that the trees were relatively small and lived on the vertical cliffs of the Niagara Escarpment. The Last Stand reveals the c...

Beginning in the late 1980s, a series of improbable bark beetle outbreaks unsettled iconic forests and communities across western North America. An insect the size of a rice kernel eventually killed more than 30 billion pine and spruce trees from Alaska to New Mexico. Often appearing in masses larger than schools of killer whales, the beetles engineered one of the world's greatest forest die-offs since the deforestation of Europe by peasants between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries.

A comprehensive history of the continent, "full of engaging and attention-catching information about North America's geology, climate, and paleontology" ( The Washington Post Book World).Here, "the rock star of modern science" tells the unforgettable story of the geological and biological evolution of the North American continent, from the time of the asteroid strike that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago to the present day (Jared Diamond, Pulit...

Nature's Year is an almanac of key events in nature occurring in Central and Eastern Ontario, a region that extends from the Bruce Peninsula and Georgian Bay in the west to Ottawa and Cornwall in the east. The book is a chronicle of the passing seasons designed to inform cottagers, gardeners, photographers, suburban backyard birders, and nature enthusiasts alike as to what events in nature to expect each month of the year.Whatever your interest may be -- birds, mammals, am...

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...

The Man Who Planted Trees is the inspiring story of David Milarch’s quest to clone the biggest trees on the planet in order to save our forests and ecosystem—as well as a hopeful lesson about how each of us has the ability to make a difference.“When is the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago. The second best time? Today.”—Chinese proverbTwenty years ago, David Milarch, a northern Michigan nurseryman with a penchant for hard living,...

Donald R. Prothero's science books combine leading research with first-person narratives of discovery, injecting warmth and familiarity into a profession that has much to offer nonspecialists. Bringing his trademark style and wit to an increasingly relevant subject of concern, Prothero links the climate changes that have occurred over the past 200 million years to their effects on plants and animals. In particular, he contrasts the extinctions that ended the Cretaceous period, which wiped ...

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZEONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEARA NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERA NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTThe 10th-anniversary edition of the instant classic, The Sixth Extinction, now with a new epilogue. Kolbert blends intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes.

A tale of obsession so fierce that a man kills the thing he loves most: the only giant golden spruce on earth.When a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an uninhabited island in the Pacific Northwest, they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. Five months earlier, logger-turned-activist Grant Hadwin had plunged naked into a river in British Columbia's Queen Charlotte Islands, towing a chainsaw. When his night's work was done, a unique ...

Fear of bears seems almost to be part of what it is to be human. Our species emerged out of the depths of time into a world already populated by these great carnivores. Before we mastered iron and later developed firearms, we had few defences against bears—only watchful caution and elaborate ceremonies and sacrifices to ward off fear.Where human populations grow, bears have traditionally dwindled or disappeared. But when we return to the wild, to places where bears still survive, a...