Have you ever wondered why we stop to watch the orange glow that arrives before sunset, or why we flock to see cherry blossoms bloom in spring? Is there a reason that people -- regardless of gender, age, culture, or ethnicity -- are mesmerized by baby animals, and can't help but smile when they see a burst of confetti or a cluster of colorful balloons? We are often made to feel that the physical world has little or no impact on our inner joy. Increasingly,...

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this groundbreaking book, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for history's broadest patterns. Here, at last, is a world history that really is a history of all the world's peoples, a unified narrative of human...

"From rural Alaska to coastal Florida, a vivid account of Americans working to protect the places they call home in an era of climate crisis"--

"A book for middle-school-aged children about previous extinctions and possible threats to humans, from volcanoes, to asteroids, to pollution and diseases"--

" How we come to feel at home in our towns and cities is what Warnick sets out to discover in This Is Where You Belong. She dives into the body of research around place attachment--the deep sense of connection that binds some of us to our cities and increases our physical and emotional well-being--then travels to towns across America to see it in action. Inspired by a growing movement of placemaking, she examines what its practitioners are doing to...

"Marine Corps Master Sgt. Jerry Ensminger was a devoted Marine for nearly twenty-five years... As a drill instructor he lived and breathed the 'Corps' and was responsible for indoctrinating thousands of new recruits with its motto Semper Fidelis or 'Always Faithful.' When Jerry's nine-year old daughter Janey died of a rare type of leukemia, his world collapsed. As a grief-stricken father, he struggled for years to make sense of what happened. His...

In The Edge of Extinction, Jules Pretty explores life and change in a dozen environments and cultures across the world, taking us on a series of remarkable journeys through deserts, coasts, mountains, steppes, snowscapes, marshes, and farms to show that there are many different ways to live in cooperation with nature. From these accounts of people living close to the land and close to the edge emerge a larger story about sustainability and the future...