A Dartmouth anthropologist whose team discovered two ancient human species explores how our evolution toward bipedalism rendered us dominant, innovative, more compassionate, and more susceptible to health problems.

"In this book, Tim Dee tells the story of four green fields spread around the world: their grasses, their hedges, their birds, their skies, and both their natural and human histories. These four fields-walkable, mappable, man-made, mowable, knowable, but also secretive, mysterious, wild, contested, and changing-play central roles in the sweeping panorama of world history and in the lives of individuals. In Dee's telling, a field is never just a setting...

In humanity's more than 100,000 year history, we have evolved from vulnerable creatures clawing sustenance from Earth to a sophisticated global society manipulating every inch of it. In short, we have become the dominant animal. Why, then, are we creating a world that threatens our own species? What can we do to change the current trajectory toward more climate change, increased famine, and epidemic disease?

Renowned Stanford scientists Paul...

"It is 500 years in the future and Earth is no longer populated by humans. The new guardians of Earth, the genetically engineered Erta, have reversed climate change. They are now faced with a dilemma; if they reintroduce the rebellious and violent Homo Sapiens, all of their work will be undone. They decide to raise one final child; a sole human to help decide if humanity should again inherit the Earth. But the quiet and clinical Ima finds that there...

"The average American spends ninety percent of their time indoors, and children are no exception. Today, kids can spend up to seven hours per day looking at screens. Not only does this phenomenon have consequences for our kids' physical and mental health, it calls into question their ability to understand and engage with anything beyond the built environment. We can talk about environmental stewardship, but until more people make meaningful contact...

"Discover who's living in your own backyard. More than half of all humans now live in cities, with a mixture of plants, animals, and fungi that have never been together before. Yet not only do few of us see and appreciate these creatures, we often try to eradicate them. What if understanding urban species could help preserve our connection to nature? Secret Life of the City introduces us to corvids, songbirds, ants, pigeons, bats, sparrows, lichens,...

After Earth was destroyed mankind created a fighting elite to save their species, enhanced humans such as Idris. In the silence of space they could communicate, mind-to-mind, with the enemy. Then their alien aggressors, the Architects, simply disappeared. The war over, its heroes forgotten, Idris has neither aged nor slept since they remade him. He scrapes by on a freelance salvage vessel, to avoid the attention of greater powers. Now, fifty years...

In this work, the author, a field biologist explains the rules by which ecosystems thrive, shining light on a set of ecological balancing acts that he calls "green equilibria," rules which keep our world vibrant, verdant, and ecologically intact. To explain the idea of "green equilibrium," he draws on a range of examples, including coral reefs off the densely populated Philippines, the isolated and thickly forested valleys of Papua New Guinea, the...

"As a leading researcher in the field of biology, Robin Wall Kimmerer understands the delicate state of our world. But as an active member of the Potawatomi nation, she senses and relates to the world through a way of knowing far older than any science. In Braiding Sweetgrass, she intertwines these two modes of awareness--the analytic and the emotional, the scientific and the cultural--to ultimately reveal a path toward healing the rift that grows...

Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams explore through intimate and thought-provoking dialogue one of the most sought after and least understood elements of human nature: hope. Drawing on decades of work that has helped expand our understanding of what it means to be human and what we all need to do to help build a better world, the book touches on vital questions, including: How do we stay hopeful when everything seems hopeless? How do we cultivate hope...