Here are 70 books that Why Things Bite Back fans have personally recommended if you like
Why Things Bite Back.
Shepherd is a community of 11,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
Shepherd is reader supported. When you buy books, we may earn an affiliate commission.
I am a New York Times bestselling author of six books, including The Mosquito: A Human History of Our Deadliest Predator. My works have been published globally in more than fifteen languages. I hold a PhD from the University of Oxford, served as an officer in the Canadian and British Armies, and have appeared in numerous documentaries, television programs, and podcasts. I am an associate professor of history (and, as a true Canadian, head coach of the hockey team) at Colorado Mesa University.
This book brought the shamefully neglected field of Indigenous studies to a general audience through a compelling and readable narrative. As someone passionate (and teaches and writes) about this topic, it makes my list for changing the landscapes of our collective understanding of Indigenous peoples and their proud histories, cultures, traditions, and contributions.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • A groundbreaking work of science, history, and archaeology that radically alters our understanding of the Americas before the arrival of Columbus in 1492—from “a remarkably engaging writer” (The New York Times Book Review).
Contrary to what so many Americans learn in school, the pre-Columbian Indians were not sparsely settled in a pristine wilderness; rather, there were huge numbers of Indians who actively molded and influenced the land around them. The astonishing Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan had running water and immaculately clean streets, and was larger than any contemporary European city. Mexican cultures created corn in a specialized…
I‘m a pediatrician in Reno, the fastest-warming city in the US. I also have a background in environmental science. I’ve seen the impacts of climate change on children first-hand, especially the impact of worsening wildfire smoke from “mega-fires” in California. It is impossible for me to look at babies and children suffering the impacts of worsening smoke, smog, allergies, heat, natural disasters, and infectious diseases and not see that the most powerful industry in history has unloaded the cost of their business onto the least powerful. I am passionate about this topic because I see climate change as a crime against children, who are especially vulnerable to its effects.
I loved this bookbecause of its discussion of paleontology (which has always interested me) and the extinctions prior to this one. But I also loved Kolbert’s description of the history of paleontology itself—specifically, how the discovery of fossils triggered a crisis in our understanding of ourselves and our world.
Like some of my other selections, this book made me think about humanity’s relationship to the planet and the other life we share it with.
Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth.
Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs.
Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing.
The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most…
I’m an English professor in New England whose research and teaching interests focus on the Shakespearean Stage and the Environmental Humanities. As an educator, I’m always looking for ways to romanticize the impact that literature can have on the world—either politically, ideologically, or physically. The story that Kim Todd shares about the European Starling proliferating in North America because of a Shakespeare-loving member of a New York Acclimatization Society has changed the way that I look at birds, at Shakespeare, and the world. It has encouraged me to find other stories like this one to share with my students—and to tell a few of my own.
In addition to providing a fascinating biological history of North America, this book is also extremely well-written.
Its chapters offer history lessons of North American landscape and ecosystems, disguised as lyrical essays that focus on a series of unlikely non-human protagonists (or antagonists, depending on how you look at them)—including hessian flies, gypsy moths, pigeons, starlings, and honeybees.
These stories matter because they remind us of how great our illusion of control is, especially when it comes to the natural world, and how far the consequences of even the most well-intentioned actions can reach. It also showed me how engaging a story can be when the human characters are resigned to the margins.
A bewitching look at nonnative species in American ecosystems, by the heir apparent to McKibben and Quammen. Mosquitoes in Hawaii, sea lampreys in the Great Lakes, mountain goats in the Olympic Mountains of Washington State--not one of these species is native to the environment in which it now flourishes, sometimes disastrously. Kim Todd's Tinkering with Eden is a lyrical, brilliantly written history of the introduction of exotic species into the United States, and how the well-meaning endeavors of scientists, explorers, and biologists have resulted in ecological catastrophe. Todd's amazingly assured voice will haunt her readers, and the stories she tells--the…
I am an early medieval European historian who, in the last decades, branched out into environmental history. Having grown up in semi-rustic conditions, I have always been curious about rural things and past agricultural practices. I watch carefully as plows slice through fields, mind how birds and bees weave together their ecosystems, and pay attention to the phases by which trees put on and take off their leaves. Now a professional historian, my job involves reading a lot of rural and environmental history, so I have developed a good sense of books that mix academic rigor and approachability.
This book is the most exciting treatment of Columbus’ "discovery" of the Americas because it takes seriously the underlying biology. Now a classic, this was a pioneering study in 1972 that the master environmental historian had a hard time publishing. It is crisply written with hardly a wasted word and teaches you of the wiles of the dandelion, of what travels caught in the fur of dogs or the hooves of horses, and especially in the guts and bloodstream of all organisms as they move from one ecosystem to another.
In the wake of the Covid pandemic, Crosby’s is an important reminder that what moves across space in integrated market systems is not just commodities and that the communities created by trade are also biological communities.
Thirty years ago, Alfred Crosby published a small work that illuminated a simple point, that the most important changes brought on by the voyages of Columbus were not social or political, but biological in nature. The book told the story of how 1492 sparked the movement of organisms, both large and small, in both directions across the Atlantic. This Columbian exchange, between the Old World and the New, changed the history of our planet drastically and forever.
The book The Columbian Exchange changed the field of history drastically and forever as well. It has become one of the foundational works…
Menno Schilthuizen is a Dutch evolutionary biologist and ecologist with more than thirty years of research experience under his belt, feeling at home in tropical rainforests as well as in urban greenspaces. He writes in a humorous and accessible manner for the general public about the ways in which the world's ecosystems are shifting and evolving under an increasing human presence. He works and teaches at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in Leiden, the Netherlands.
Fred Pearce, veteran editor of New Scientist, takes on an exploration of what invasive species really are. In doing so, he reveals that many of our engrained opinions regarding these 'exotics' is based on flawed ecology, ecological xenophobia, and ill-founded conservatism. Sure, some invasive species should be fought to save cherished native species from extinction, but Pearce shows us that this should never be the knee-jerk reaction to any immigrant species.
Veteran environmental journalist Fred Pearce used to think of invasive species as evil interlopers spoiling pristine 'natural' ecosystems. Most conservationists would agree. But what if traditional ecology is wrong, and true environmentalists should be applauding the invaders?
In The New Wild, Pearce goes on a journey to rediscover what conservation should really be about. He explores ecosystems from Pacific islands to the Australian outback to the Thames estuary, digs into the questionable costs of invader species, and reveals the outdated intellectual sources of our ideas about the balance of nature.
Keeping out alien species looks increasingly flawed. The new ecologists…
I’ve been trying to balance a need to help make the world a better place with my own small expertise as a musician and teacher. So I’ve played music with birds, whales, and bugs, taught philosophy to engineers for decades, written many books and released many albums, and traveled all over the world learning what people are doing to improve things. I need to find words to read that encourage me and lift me out of the looming pull of depressing statistics and real suffering that we all read about every day. I hope change is possible, and I urge everyone to work toward it in their own specific and unique ways.
Like Lisa Wells, I’ve spent years looking up to many possible heroes in my dream of making the world a better place. So much inspiration out there, and yet all our heroes become flawed the more we learn about them. How to remain hopeful when we find out the truth? Only through poetry, art, beauty, intensity. One of the finest books of the year, impossible to categorize.
"An essential document of our time." ―Charles D’Ambrosio, author of Loitering
In search of answers and action, the award-winning poet and essayist Lisa Wells brings us Believers, introducing trailblazers and outliers from across the globe who have found radically new ways to live and reconnect to the Earth in the face of climate change
We find ourselves at the end of the world. How, then, shall we live?
Like most of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by increasingly urgent news of climate change on an apocalyptic scale. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes, but…
As a fiction writer and animal studies scholar, I’m always looking for strange historical anecdotes about human/animal relationships and literary works that help me view humanity’s complex historical relationship with our fellow creatures through fresh eyes. As these books show, whenever humans write about animals, we also write about personhood, bodily autonomy, coexistence, partnership, symbiosis, spectacle, sentience, and exploitation—themes perpetually relevant to what it means to be human!
Grounded in philosophy and law, Thalia Field’s book explores how human/animal relationships are codified by human systems. Like Field’s other ecocritical work, this one is formally bold, blurring the lines between lyric essay and poetry.
I am particularly intrigued by 'Happy/That You Have The Body (The Mirror Test),' where Field uses the legal concept of habeas corpus and the Mirror Self-Recognition test to discuss the rights of a captive elephant named Happy, isolated from her own kind for 40 years.
This book is exactly the kind of animal writing I love because each piece asks loudly why “some animals are more equal than others.”
Whether investigating refugee parrots, indentured elephants, the pathetic fallacy, or the revolving absurdity of the human role in the "invasive species crisis," Personhood reveals how the unmistakable problem between humans and our nonhuman relatives is too often the derangement of our narratives and the resulting lack of situational awareness. Building on her previous collection, Bird Lovers, Backyard, Thalia Field's essayistic investigations invite us on a humorous, heartbroken journey into how people attempt to control the fragile complexities of a shared planet. The lived experiences of animals, and other historical actors, provide unique literary-ecological responses to the exigencies of injustice and…
I am the author of Bee People and the Bugs They Love, an adjunct instructor at the Cornell University Master Beekeeping Program, a master beekeeper, former vice president of the New Jersey Beekeepers Association, and I have written multiple articles featured in the widely circulated Bee Culture Magazine. As president of the Northeast NJ Beekeepers—a position that I held for over a decade—I founded the “Honey Cup," an annual honey tasting competition. I have promoted beekeeping throughout the Northeast by speaking to everyone from school children to gardening clubs and civic organizations, and have led beekeeping seminars across the Northeast and at The New York Botanical Garden.
If you want to keep bees and only plan on buying one “how-to” beekeeping book, then The Beekeeper’s Handbook is for you. Filled with lots of basic information to get you started, this how-to book goes further and also provides in-depth/technical information that you’ll need after you have been keeping bees for a few years and have a strong foundation of beekeeping knowledge, but are still looking for more. This easy-to-follow handbook has plenty of step-by-step information that will come in handy for beekeepers of all experience levels. If you’re serious about bee-ing a beekeeper, this book is a must-have!
Diana Sammataro and Alphonse Avitabile have created the best single-volume guide to the hobby and profession of beekeeping. The Beekeeper's Handbook provides step-by-step instructions for setting up an apiary, handling bees, and working throughout the season to maintain a healthy colony and a generous supply of honey. Various colony care options and techniques are explained so that beekeepers can make the best choices for their hives.
The Beekeeper's Handbook is an invaluable resource for both beginner and veteran beekeepers. This fully updated and expanded fifth edition includes: Hand-drawn instructional diagrams that provide step-by-step instructions Updated research regarding the health and…
As a UK nature writer and amateur naturalist, I have a fascination with the natural world. If it squeaks, buzzes, croaks, hisses, or tweets, I want to know more about it. I enjoy books that are both captivating and easy to understand, and I’m at my happiest when uncovering unusual facts and exploring the rich folklore surrounding our wildlife. As a writer, I contribute to magazines focusing on nature and wildlife-friendly gardening. I also teach creative writing and have authored a book celebrating the wonders of our UK wildlife. I live in Dorset and find endless joy in observing and nurturing whatever wanders or flies into my overgrown garden.
In the summer, this book takes over from British Wildlife as my favourite reference book that doesn’t bamboozle me with science. I nearly always find the insect I’m looking for and then inevitably spend half an hour lost in details of the plants it eats or places it lives.
I wouldn’t want to be without this book, and I regularly buy it as a present for friends and family.
A photographic field guide to 1,500 species of insects found in Britain A photographic field guide to all the common and some unusual species of insects across Britain that the keen amateur naturalist is likely to spot. Approximately 1,500 species are illustrated with clear photographs chosen for their help in identification. / Details of distribution for each insect, and whether it is common or rare / Includes photographs of larvae / Each section is coded with a symbol for easy reference / Information on easily confused species / All the information on the species together in the same place Insect…
I’ve been reading science fiction and fantasy, and specifically space opera, since I was seven and first discovered The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet. I read my way through every book in the school library and public library that dealt with aliens, space travel, starships, and especially adventure.
Esen is a shapechanger, a young one. While exploring a world considered ‘safe’ by her matriarch, she is captured by the natives. Her only hope of rescue is to betray her species' strict rules and reveal her true nature to her fellow prisoner, a human.
I adore Esen as a character. She is very relatable. I also love the breadth and scope of species and habitats and worlds in this series. Julie Czerneda is one of my favorite authors. Her storytelling skills shine. Esen is definitely not human, but Czerneda creates such a warm character you can’t help but love her. Beholder’s Eye is part coming-of-age but mostly a darn good science fiction adventure.
United in their natural form they are one, sharing all their memories, experiences, and lives. Apart they are six, the only existing members of their ancient race, a species with the ability to assume any form once they understand its essence.
Their continued survival in a universe filled with races ready to destroy anyone perceived as different is based on the Rules. And first among those Rules is: Never reveal your true nature to another being. But when the youngest among them, Esen-alit-Quar, receives her first independent assignment to a world considered safe to explore, she stumbles into a trap…
