"When twenty-two-year-old aspiring geologist Charles Darwin boarded the HMS Beagle in 1831 with his microscopes and specimen bottles-invited by ship's captain Robert FitzRoy who wanted a travel companion at least as much as a ship's naturalist-he hardly thought he was embarking on what would become perhaps the most important and epoch-changing voyage in scientific history. Nonetheless, over the course of the five-year journey around the globe in often...

The inspiration for The Durrells in Corfu, a Masterpiece production on public television: A naturalist’s account of his childhood on the exotic Greek island.
 
When the Durrells could no longer endure the gray English climate, they did what any sensible family would do: sold their house and relocated to the sun-soaked island of Corfu.
 
As they settled into their new home, hilarious mishaps ensued...

"Sparked by a controversial debate in February 2014, Bill Nye has set off on an energetic campaign to spread awareness of evolution and the powerful way it shapes our lives. In Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation, he explains why race doesn't really exist; evaluates the true promise and peril of genetically modified food; reveals how new species are born, an a dog kennel and in a London subway; takes a stroll through 4.5 billion years...

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

A collection of thirty-five essays--representing the best of the column "This View of Life" from "Natural History" magazine--focuses on the themes of evolution and of the innumerable oddities of nature.

"For readers of Late Migrations and Vesper Flights From the acclaimed author of How to Catch a Mole, this meditative memoir explores the wisdom of plants, the joys of manual labor, and the natural cycle of growth and decay that runs through both the garden's life and our own. Marc Hamer has nurtured the same 12-acre garden in the Welsh countryside for over two decades. The garden is vast and intricate. It's rarely visited, and only Hamer knows of...

For more than twenty-five years, paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould wrote a column called "The View of Life" for Natural History magazine. More than thirty entries from that column comprise this collection, which covers topics from dinosaurs to baseball and nearly everything in between related to natural history and evolution. Among the essays included here are "A Humongous Fungus among Us," "The Late Birth of a Flat Earth," "Poe's Greatest Hit," "The...