Animals are more integrated into the human world than I thought. We enjoy their company, are inspired by their skills and intelligence, and fear their ferocity. Roman’s book explains how animals shape our surroundings in powerful ways.
I found myself saying “No, Way!” multiple times throughout the book. For example, seabirds create clouds above islands from the vapors released from their poop. Tiny insects called ‘midges’ fertilize fields with their dead bodies to the tune of one hundred pounds per acre. Across the animal kingdom, 21 seconds is consistently the time it takes to empty a bladder!
From this book, I learned how essential animals are to keeping the world healthy. Animals, says Roman, “are the beating heart of the planet.”
NAMED A TOP-TEN BEST BOOK OF 2023 BY SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN
A “fascinating” exploration (Elizabeth Kolbert) of how ecosystems are sculpted and sustained by animals eating, pooping, and dying—and how these fundamental functions could help save us from climate catastrophe.
If forests are the lungs of the planet, then animals migrating across oceans, streams, and mountains—eating, pooping, and dying along the way—are its heart and arteries, pumping nitrogen and phosphorus from deep-sea gorges up to mountain peaks, from the Arctic to the Caribbean. Without this conveyor belt of crucial, life-sustaining nutrients, the world would look very different.
Women are often left out of tales of exploration and adventure. Melissa Sevigny sets things straight by telling the story of Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter’s scientific expedition to the Grand Canyon in 1938.
Clover and Jotter were serious botanists with a plan to document the species at the bottom of the world-famous chasm. I found it hard to believe the obstacles placed in their way, from the reluctance to sponsor a women’s expedition on such a dangerous river to the incredulous newspapermen who would show up at resupply points doubting they were still alive. Clover and Jotter triumphed over all the obstacles. I didn’t just enjoy the science and the politics; I enjoyed that Sevigny laid down a marker for women and girls everywhere.
In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off down the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious expedition leader and three amateur boatmen. With its churning rapids, sheer cliffs and boat-shattering boulders, the Colorado River was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. But for Clover and Jotter, it held a tantalising appeal: no one had surveyed the Grand Canyon's plants, and they were determined to be the first.
Through the vibrant letters and diaries of the two women, science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny traces their forty-three-day journey, during which they ran rapids, chased…
Bryce Andrews previously wrote an award-winning book about the life of a cowboy, Badluck Way. In this one, he digs deeper into the West as he decides what to do with a Smith and Wesson revolver his grandfather left him.
I gasped at the honesty of a man who both loves and rejects the culture of violence symbolized by his handgun. I, too, love the American West. But it is a land of contradictions. It has flourished through love, determination, and ingenuity, but parts of it are built on death and destruction.
Andrews eventually forged the gun into a tool for planting trees. The gun's magazine is still visible in the blade of a tool he now uses for restoration and healing.
“Beautifully observed. . . This jewel of a book belongs on the shelf with our best Western writers—Norman MacLean, Pam Houston, and Annie Proulx.”—John Vaillant, bestselling author of The Tiger and The Golden Spruce
From the award-winning author of Down from the Mountain, a memoir of inheritance, history, and one gun’s role in the violence that shaped the American West—and an impassioned call to forge a new way forward
Bryce Andrews was raised to do no harm. The son of a pacifist and conscientious objector, he moved from Seattle to Montana to tend livestock and the land as a cowboy.…
My book describes the recovery of fifteen wildlife species back from the brink of extinction. I travel across Europe and North America to learn how the successes have happened. I meet the people who made the recoveries possible and suffer numerous surprises along the way.
The book shows how a recovering animal allows us to see them with fresh eyes. Attitudes towards them have often changed, and we know more about how to share the landscape. Some turn out to be wildlife superstars. Beavers, for example, teach us how to restore rivers that are buffered against floods. Sea otters show us how to capture carbon from the atmosphere and sequester it safely on the ocean floor. We learn how tenacious beasts can save themselves.... and can save us.
