Nature Biography

Professor David Wilson has spent his professional life working with violent men - especially men who have committed murder. Aged 29 he became, at that time, the UK's youngest ever prison governor in charge of a jail, and his career since then has seen him sat across a table with all sorts of killers: sometimes in a tense interview; sometimes sharing a cup of tea (or something a little stronger); sometimes looking them in the eye to tell them that they are psychopaths.

For over a decade, Ben Garrod has studied chimpanzees to find ways to protect and conserve them. We join Ben on a journey that has taken him around the world, studying eastern chimps in the humid forests of Uganda and the critically endangered western chimps of Liberia. In his trademark infectious, lighthearted style, Ben describes encounters with chimpanzees that highlight the different threats they face.

Journalist Diana Kapp has crisscrossed this country writing for and about empowered girls, girls who expect to be leaders, founders, and inventors. This book takes it a step further. It says to girls: While you’re striving to be CEOs and world leaders, consider solving the biggest challenge of our lifetime, too - because you can do both at the same time, and here are 34 women doing just that.

Once a killing ground for whalers hunting a leviathan they called the "devilfish," the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja, Mexico, is now an environmental and spiritual sanctuary—the only place in the world where animals in their natural aquatic environment routinely seek out human contact. A nursery for the gray whale since before recorded history, the lagoon and its stories, told here by James Michael Dorsey, illuminate the magic of human connection to animals, and what those bonds teach us about ourselves and our purpose on this shared planet.

Dieses Hörbuch vereint folgende drei phantastische wie auch abenteuerliche Erzählungen von Reinhold Messner...

Naturalist Joe Hutto’s latest adventures in wildlife observation take him to Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains. Hutto is living in a tent at 12,000 feet, where blizzards occur in July and where human wants become irrelevant—and human needs can become a matter of life and death—to study the Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep.

Ron Fawcett is a natural-born climber. In 1969, while still at school in his native Yorkshire, he tied into a climbing rope for the first time and was instantly hooked. From that moment on, it seemed nothing else in his life mattered nearly as much as his next vertical fix... Fawcett found the pressures of the limelight too much to bear, and at the end of the 1980s he faded from view. Now, for the first time, he tells his extraordinary story, of how his love of nature and the outdoors developed into a passion for climbing that took him to the top - and almost consumed him.

Nature took on a new importance for thousands of people when the coronavirus pandemic arrived in Britain, providing solace in a time of great anxiety - not least because the crisis struck at the beginning of spring, the season of hope and renewal, and furthermore, in an extraordinary conjunction, the spring of 2020 turned out to be the loveliest spring ever recorded in Britain. Three nature writers, living like everyone else under lockdown, but walking out each day to exercise, resolved to record their experiences of the coronavirus spring, in widely contrasting parts of the country.

A special audio edition for children age 11 and above. "We are all given second chances every day of our lives, but we don't usually take them. Then I met Bob." James Bowen was a homeless musician, busking on the streets of London to survive. But the moment he met an injured stray cat with ginger fur and big green eyes, his life began to change. Together James and Bob the cat faced the world - and won. A purrfectly true "tail" of love and friendship to make you smile!

In the wake of a significant breakup, Luke Turner is visited by familiar demons, including depression and guilt surrounding his bisexual identity, experiences of sexual abuse, and confusion brought on by an intensely religious upbringing. With nowhere to turn, Turner seeks refuge in London’s Epping Forest, where unexpected, elusive threats seem to have replaced its former comforts. No stranger to compulsion, Turner finds himself repeatedly drawn to the woods, eager to uncover its secrets and investigate an old family rumor of illicit behavior that once happened there.

In the winter of 1959, a group of nine young and experienced hikers embarked on a journey into the Ural Mountains of Russia. Although they had previously undertaken cold-weather trips, this particular expedition would tragically be their last. During their trek, the hikers encountered something unexpected in the supposedly desolate region, resulting in the demise of the entire group. The exact events of that fateful night remain unknown, but the incident has since become one of the world's most perplexing mysteries.

Eighteen years ago, Stanford MBA Michele Raffin pulled off the road to help an injured dove, a momentary impulse that ignited in her a fervent commitment to saving vulnerable bird species. Today, her suburban home plays host to Pandemonium Aviaries, one of the largest avian rescue sanctuaries and endangered breeding facilities in the country, with a maze of 54 individual aviaries that house over 40 species, 14 of which are listed as threatened with extinction.

From the time he was a small boy in Vermont, Wilson Bentley saw snowflakes as small miracles. And he determined that one day his camera would capture for others the wonder of the tiny crystal. Bentley's enthusiasm for photographing snowflakes was often misunderstood in his time, but his patience and determination revealed two important truths: No two snowflakes are alike; and each one is startlingly beautiful.

Ocean Country is an adventure story, a call to action, and a poetic meditation on the state of the seas. But most importantly it is the story of finding true hope in the midst of one of the greatest crises to face humankind: the rapidly degrading state of our environment. After a near-drowning accident in which she was temporarily paralyzed, Liz Cunningham crisscrosses the globe in an effort to understand the threats to our dazzling but endangered oceans.

On the night of April 9, 1997, Warren Macdonald, a fit and experienced bushwalker, set out to climb Mount Bowen on Hinchinbrook Island, an unspoiled tropical paradise off the Australian coast. These would be his last steps as a fully intact human being: a freak rock fall pinned him for two days alone under a one-ton boulder, resulting in a double leg amputation. A Test of Will is a story both tragic and inspiring, conveying the horror of what happened and the extraordinary spirit that helped Macdonald survive a seemingly impossible ordeal.

When the worst earthquake to hit Nepal in living memory strikes on 25 April 2015, Jules Mountain is shivering in his tent at Base Camp. To reach the summit of Everest has been a life-long dream, one which he is more determined than ever to realise, having won his battle with cancer two years earlier. The climbers are faced with an impossible set of decisions: to get to a safe zone as quickly as possible? To try to be of assistance in the relief effort? To push on despite everything?

Whether sailing across the ocean, hiking through the jungle, or climbing the highest volcanic peaks, everywhere Alexander went, he observed the land, animals, and culture. And where others saw differences, Alexander spotted connections.

Michael Branch “earned his whiskers” in the Great Basin Desert of northwestern Nevada, where he lives off the grid with his wife and two curious little girls. Shifting between pastoral passages on beauty found in the desert and humorous tales of being a father, Raising Wild offers an intimate portrait of a landscape where mountain lions and ground squirrels can threaten in equal measure. With Branch’s distinct lyricism and wit, this barren landscape becomes a place resonant with the rattle of snakes, the plod of pronghorn antelope, and the rustle of juniper trees.

A deeply moving story of the beauty and brutality of life, and death, on the world's most unpredictable and perilous mountain. Sitting just lower than Everest at 8,611 meters above sea level on the China-Pakistan border, the Savage Mountain claims the lives of even the most experienced climbers. Alongside severe altitude, the weather is notoriously volatile and the climb relentlessly steep. A staggering one in four attempts result in death on the mountain.

Maggie has spent basically every summer of her 15-year-old life at the 100-year-old Camp Bellflower for Girls, set deep in the heart of Appalachia. She's from Atlanta, she's never kissed a guy, she's into Backstreet Boys, and her long summer days are full of a pleasant, peaceful nothing - until one confounding moment. A split-second of innocent physical contact pulls Maggie into a gut-twisting love for an older, wiser, and, most surprising of all (at least to Maggie), female counselor named Erin.