Washoe County Library System

"Back in America after twenty years in Britain, Bill Bryson decided to reacquaint himself with his native country by walking the 2,100-mile Appalachian Trail, which stretches from Georgia to Maine. The AT offers an astonishing landscape of silent forests and sparkling lakes--and to a writer with the comic genius of Bill Bryson, it also provides endless opportunities to witness the majestic silliness of his fellow human beings. For a start there's...

This work, a collection of essays on the natural world during a year spent in the Blue Ridge valley of Virginia, reflects the author's interactions with her wilderness surroundings. The author takes us through a year of on-foot explorations through her own landscape, bringing anecdotes, curiosities, and insights about all she observes and experiences. In the summer, she stalks muskrats in the creek and thinks about wave mechanics; in the fall, she...

"At its heart is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings – who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Is a River Alive? takes the reader on an exhilarating exploration of the past, present and futures of this ancient, urgent concept. The book flows first to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened by goldmining. Then, to the wounded...

Explores the possibility of a more mutually beneficial relationship with nature through the stories of the small-scale harvests of seven uncommon products. Illustrations.

This fascinating book tells the story of how one museum changed ideas about dinosaurs, dynasties, and even the story of life on earth. The Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, now celebrating its 150th anniversary, has remade the way we see the world. Delving into the museum's storied and colorful past, award-winning author Richard Conniff introduces a cast of bold explorers, roughneck bone hunters, and visionary scientists. Some became famous...

Collects sixty-seven informational charts exploring habitats, food chains, animal anatomy, and other facets of the natural world.

Traces the story of natural history as reflected by the lives, observations, and discoveries of some of the world's leading naturalists, including Alexander von Humboldt, Charles Darwin, and Aristotle.