Come from the Shadows is not about the Afghanistan we may think we know. It is not about the country depicted in urgent dispatches from embedded reporters; it isn't about the country evoked by anti-war protestors or the one that figures in heated political controversies over the treatment of prisoners. Instead, this is a book about the Afghanistan that lies "outside the wire," far from the Taliban's grim desert strongholds. The country we visit with award-winning ...

The Sixth Extinction is a haunting account of the age in which we live. Ecologists are calling it the Sixth Great Extinction, and the world isn't losing just its ecological legacy; also vanishing is a vast human legacy of languages and our ways of living, seeing, and knowing.Terry Glavin confirms that we are in the midst of a nearly unprecedented, catastrophic vanishing of animals, plants, and human cultures. He argues that the language of environmentalism...

In Jared Diamond’s follow-up to the Pulitzer-Prize winning Guns, Germs and Steel, the author explores how climate change, the population explosion and political discord create the conditions for the collapse of civilizationEnvironmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and S...

“A necessary book for anyone truly interested in what we take from the sea to eat, and how, and why.” —Sam Sifton, The New York Times Book ReviewAcclaimed author of American Catch and The Omega Princple and life-long fisherman, Paul Greenberg takes us on a journey, examining the four fish that dominate our menus: salmon, sea bass, cod, and tuna.Investigating the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, Greenberg...

**Shortlisted for the Banff Centre Mountain Book AwardsNamed a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker, Economist, and Science News • A Scientific American Staff Favorite"Vivid and engrossing.…[A] celebration of beardom." —Richard Adams Carey, Wall Street JournalA global exploration of the eight remaining species of bears—and the dangers they face.**Bears have always held a central place in our collective memory, ...

In this New York Times bestseller, Brian Fagan shows how climate transformed-and sometimes destroyed--human societies during the earth's last global warming phase.From the 10th to 15th centuries the earth experienced a rise in surface temperature that changed climate worldwide-a preview of today's global warming. In some areas, including much of Western Europe, longer summers brought bountiful crops and population growth that led to cultural flowering. In ...

An archaeologist examines humanity's last major source of food from the wild, and how it enabled and shaped the growth of civilization.In this history of fishing—not as sport but as sustenance—archaeologist and best-selling author Brian Fagan argues that fishing was an indispensable and often overlooked element in the growth of civilization. It sustainably provided enough food to allow cities, nations, and empires to grow, but it did so with a different emphasis. W...

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 quest...

The natural history of humankind told through our long relationship with birds.**“Moss is a captivating storyteller.” —**Wall Street JournalFor the whole of human history, we have lived alongside birds. We have hunted and domesticated them for food; venerated them in our mythologies, religions, and rituals; exploited them for their natural resources; and been inspired by them for our music, art, and poetry.  In Te...

Madagascar is a land where lizards scream and monkey-like lemurs sing songs of inexpressible beauty. KKnown as the Great Red Island, it is a place where fossa and tenrecs, vangas and aye ayes thrive in a true 'Lost World' alongside bizarre plants like the octopus tree and the three-cornered palm. And where the ancestors of the Malagasy, as the island's 18 tribes are collectively known, come alive in rollicking ceremonies known as "turning the bones."This natural and cultural histor...

"Rich detail and vivid anecdotes of adventure....A treasure trove of exotic fact and hard thinking."—The New York Times Book Review, front pageFor millennia, lions, tigers, and their man-eating kin have kept our dark, scary forests dark and scary, and their predatory majesty has been the stuff of folklore. But by the year 2150 big predators may only exist on the other side of glass barriers and chain-link fences. Their gradual disappearance is changing the very nature of o...

**A groundbreaking investigation of the Caribbean as both an idyll in the American imagination and a dark laboratory of Western experimentation, revealing secrets to racial and environmental progress that impact how we live today.“Goffe’s ear is tuned to songs of resistance, to what it looks like to make life amid (and after) colonial subjugation…noble and necessary.”—The New York Times Book Review“Dark Laboratory is stunning….With a vast archive an...