Underland: a Deep Time Journey by Robert Macfarlane

$45.00 AUD

Category: Nature

The highly anticipated new book from the internationally bestselling, prize-winning author of Landmarks, The Lost Words and The Old Ways Discover the hidden worlds beneath our feet... In Underland, Robert Macfarlane takes us on a journey into the worlds beneath our feet. From the ice-blue depths of G reenland's glaciers, to the underground networks by which trees communicate, from Bronze Age burial chambers to the rock art of remote Arctic sea-caves, this is a deep-time voyage into the planet's past and future. Global in its geography, gripping in its voice and haunting in its implications, Underland is a work of huge range and power, and a remarkable new chapter in Macfarlane's long-term exploration of landscape and the human heart. 'Macfarlane has invented a new kind of book, really a new genre entirely' The Irish Times 'He is the great nature writer, and nature poet, of this generation' Wall Street Journal 'Macfarlane has shown how utterly beautiful a brilliantly written travel book can still be' Observer onThe Old Ways 'Irradiated by a profound sense of wonder... Few books give such a sense of enchantment; it is a book to give to many, and to return to repeatedly' Independent onLandmarks  ...Show more

Written in Stone : Reading the Rocks of the Great Ocean Road by Philomena Manifold

$49.95 AUD

Category: Nature

The Solace of Open Spaces by Gretel Ehrlick

$19.99 AUD

Category: Nature

City of Trees: Essays on Life, Death and the Need for a Forest by Sophie Cunningham

$24.99 AUD

Category: Nature

How do we take in the beauty of our planet while processing the losses? What trees can survive in the city? Which animals can survive in the wild? How do any of us-humans, animals, trees-find a forest we can call home? In these moving, thought-provoking essays Sophie Cunningham considers the meaning of trees and our love of them. She chronicles the deaths of both her fathers, and the survival of P-22, a mountain lion in Griffith Park, Los Angeles; contemplates the loneliness of Ranee, the first elephant in Australia; celebrates the iconic eucalyptus and explores its international status as an invasive species. City of Trees is a powerful collection of nature, travel and memoir writing set in the context of global climate change. It meanders through, circles around and sometimes faces head on the most pressing issues of the day. It never loses sight of the trees. ...Show more

A Farmer's Diary - A Year at High House Farm by Sally Urwin

$29.99 AUD

Category: Nature

'It's beautiful weather today - I sit down outside the lambing shed with my back up against a pen and savour the spring sunshine. All the sheep are bedded up and everyone is fed and watered. No ewe is lambing, and I have half an hour to myself. I stretch out my feet in my wellies and push them into the warm straw ...'Sally Urwin and her husband Steve own High House Farm in Northumberland, which they share with Mavis the Sheepdog, one very fat pony, and many, many sheep. Set in beautiful, wild landscape, and in use for generations, it's the perfect setting for Sally's (sometimes brutally) honest and charming account of farming life. From stock sales to lambing sheds, and out in the fields in driving snow and hot summer days, A Farmer's Diary reveals the highs, lows and hard, hard work involved in making a living from the land. Filled with grit and humour, newborn lambs and local characters, this is the perfect book for anyone who has ever wondered what it's like on the other side of the fence. ...Show more

The Secret World of Farm Animals by Jeffrey Masson

$22.99 AUD

Category: Nature

'An unbelievably inspiring book' Peter Wohlleben, author of The Hidden Life of Trees Did you know that pigs frequently throw tantrums? That chickens are capable of complex communication? That sheep know their own names? That cows grieve when their calves are taken away from them? Jeffrey Masson delves d eep into the mysterious world of farm animals and reveals just how sophisticated these creatures truly are - capable of joy, sadness, love and friendship - just like us. ...Show more

Mama's Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What they Teach Us by Frans De Waal

$32.99 AUD

Category: Nature

Frans de Waal has spent four decades at the forefront of animal research. Following up on the best-selling Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?, which investigated animal intelligence, Mama's Last Hug delivers a fascinating exploration of the rich emotional lives of animals.Mama's Last Hug begins with the death of Mama, a chimpanzee matriarch who formed a deep bond with biologist Jan van Hooff. When Mama was dying, van Hooff took the unusual step of visiting her in her night cage for a last hug. Their goodbyes were filmed and went viral. Millions of people were deeply moved by the way Mama embraced the professor, welcoming him with a big smile while reassuring him by patting his neck, in a gesture often considered typically human but that is in fact common to all primates. This story and others like it form the core of de Waal's argument, showing that humans are not the only species with the capacity for love, hate, fear, shame, guilt, joy, disgust, and empathy. De Waal discusses facial expressions, the emotions behind human politics, the illusion of free will, animal sentience, and, of course, Mama's life and death. The message is one of continuity between us and other species, such as the radical proposal that emotions are like organs: we don't have a single organ that other animals don't have, and the same is true for our emotions. Mama's Last Hug opens our hearts and minds to the many ways in which humans and other animals are connected, transforming how we view the living world around us. ...Show more

Owls: Journeys Around the World by David Hollands

$35.00 AUD

Category: Nature

David Hollands first became aware of owls as a young boy upon hearing the quavering hoot of the Tawny Owl which lived, out of sight, in the woods near his home. Their secrets remained undiscovered but then he came across some spectral Barn Owls in an ancient English barn. These were the first owls that he had watched at close quarters and photographed in the night. It was a magical experience and, by then, that first awareness had progressed and become a lifelong passion. David Hollands came to Australia in 1961and for a while, the demands of running a medical practice put a brake on other activities. Nevertheless, his fascination for birds, owls and photography could never remain submerged for long and, in 1999, he completed 'Birds of the Night' - a comprehensive study in words and photographs of Australia's owls, frogmouths and nightjars. However, David's owl studies continued. There were owls to be pursued around the world and he set out to find and photograph as many as possible. By his own admission, he has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. The author's love of birds extends beyond owls and he has also written books on Australia's Birds of Prey and on Kingfishers and Kookaburras. All three books won the Whitley Award for the Best Illustrated Australian Natural History book of that year. ...Show more

Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out? by Bill McKibben

$34.99 AUD

Category: Nature | Reading Level: 4 Non Fiction

Thirty years ago Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about climate change. Now he broadens the warning: the entire human game, he suggests, has begun to play itself out. Bill McKibben's groundbreaking book The End of Nature - issued in dozens of languages and long regarded as a classic - was the first book to alert us to global warming. But the danger is broader than that: even as climate change shrinks the space where our civilization can exist, new technologies like artificial intelligence and robotics threaten to bleach away the variety of human experience. Falter tells the story of these converging trends and of the ideological fervor that keeps us from bringing them under control. And then, drawing on McKibben's experience in building 350.org, the first truly global citizens movement to combat climate change, it offers some possible ways out of the trap. We're at a bleak moment in human history -- and we'll either confront that bleakness or watch the civilization our forebears built slip away. Falter is a powerful and sobering call to arms, to save not only our planet but also our humanity. ...Show more

The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future by David Wallace-Wells

$29.99 AUD

Category: Nature

The signs of climate change are unmistakable even today, but the real transformations have hardly begun. We've been taught that warming would be slow-but, barring very dramatic action, each of these impacts is likely to arrive within the length of a new mortgage signed this year. What will it be like to live on a pummeled planet? What will it do to our politics, our economy, our culture and sense of history? And what explains the fact we have done so little to stop it? These are not abstract questions but immediate and pressing human dramas, dilemmas and nightmares. In The Uninhabitable Earth, David Wallace-Wells undertakes a new kind of storytelling and a new kind of social science to explore the era of human history on which we have just embarked. ...Show more

The Feather Thief - Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century (PB) by Kirk Wallace Johnson

$19.99 AUD

Category: Nature

As heard on NPR's This American Life "Absorbing . . . Though it's non-fiction, The Feather Thief contains many of the elements of a classic thriller." --Maureen Corrigan, NPR's Fresh Air "One of the most peculiar and memorable true-crime books ever." --Christian Science Monitor A rollicking true-crime a dventure and a captivating journey into an underground world of fanatical fly-tiers and plume peddlers, for readers of The Stranger in the Woods, The Lost City of Z, and The Orchid Thief. On a cool June evening in 2009, after performing a concert at London's Royal Academy of Music, twenty-year-old American flautist Edwin Rist boarded a train for a suburban outpost of the British Museum of Natural History. Home to one of the largest ornithological collections in the world, the Tring museum was full of rare bird specimens whose gorgeous feathers were worth staggering amounts of money to the men who shared Edwin's obsession: the Victorian art of salmon fly-tying. Once inside the museum, the champion fly-tier grabbed hundreds of bird skins--some collected 150 years earlier by a contemporary of Darwin's, Alfred Russel Wallace, who'd risked everything to gather them--and escaped into the darkness. Two years later, Kirk Wallace Johnson was waist high in a river in northern New Mexico when his fly-fishing guide told him about the heist. He was soon consumed by the strange case of the feather thief. What would possess a person to steal dead birds? Had Edwin paid the price for his crime? What became of the missing skins? In his search for answers, Johnson was catapulted into a years-long, worldwide investigation. The gripping story of a bizarre and shocking crime, and one man's relentless pursuit of justice, The Feather Thief is also a fascinating exploration of obsession, and man's destructive instinct to harvest the beauty of nature. ...Show more

Mrs Moreau's Warbler: How Birds Got Their Names by Stephen Moss

$22.99 AUD

Category: Nature

Swallow and starling, puffin and peregrine, blue tit and blackcap. We use these names so often that few of us ever pause to wonder about their origins. What do they mean? Where did they come from? And who created them? The words we use to name birds are some of the most lyrical and evocative in the Engl ish language. They also tell incredible stories: of epic expeditions, fierce battles between rival ornithologists, momentous historical events and touching romantic gestures. Through fascinating encounters with birds, and the rich cast of characters who came up with their names, in Mrs Moreau's Warbler Stephen Moss takes us on a remarkable journey through time. From when humans and birds first shared the earth to our fraught present-day coexistence, Moss shows how these names reveal as much about ourselves and our relationship with the natural world as about the creatures they describe. ...Show more