The story of how the associate editor of Birding magazine set himself a lofty goal: to become the first person to see half the world's birds in one year.In 2015, for 365 days, with a backpack, binoculars, and a series of one-way tickets, Noah Strycker traveled across forty-one countries and all seven continents, eventually spotting 6,042 species—by far the biggest birding year on record. This is no travelogue or glorified checklist. Noah ventures deep into...

**"[Strycker] thinks like a biologist but writes like a poet." -- Wall Street JournalAn entertaining and profound look at the lives of birds, illuminating their surprising world—and deep connection with humanity.**Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game the...

One of the Guardian's Best Paperbacks of November'Astonishing ... If by chance you can't meet these 6,042 species yourself, this book is a close second' Jennifer Ackerman, author of The Genius of Birds'Even readers who wouldn't know a marvellous spatuletail from a southern ground hornbill will be awed' Publishers WeeklyNoah Strycker set himself a goal: to become the first person to see hal...

From the life-long relationships of the albatross to the remarkable memory of the nutcracker and other avian mysteries, Noah Strycker illuminates the startlingly intimate coexistence of birds and humans."In almost any realm of bird behaviour - reproduction, populations, movements, daily rhythms, communication, navigation, intelligence, and so on - there are deep and meaningful parallels with our own."Noah Strycker has spent the last decade studying bird behaviour in ...

Targeted to beginners and beyond, National Geographic's fun, inspiring guide to the art, craft, and science of bird-watching combines practical know-how and expert knowledge. Browsable and bursting with helpful illustrations and photographs, Birding Basics offers new ideas for when, where, and how to get to know the birds in your world. Not a field guide but a primer in best practices, authored by birding expert Noah Strycker, this breezy book features easy-to-follow advice on what to look...

Targeted to beginners and beyond, National Geographic's fun, inspiring guide to the art, craft, and science of bird-watching combines practical know-how and expert knowledge. Browsable and bursting with helpful illustrations and photographs, Birding Basics offers new ideas for when, where, and how to get to know the birds in your world. Not a field guide but a primer in best practices, authored by birding expert Noah Strycker, this breezy book features easy-to-follow advice on what to look...

In the first portrait of James Beard in twenty-five years, John Birdsall accomplishes what no prior telling of Beard's life and work has done: He looks beyond the public image of the "Dean of American Cookery" to give voice to the gourmet's complex, queer life and, in the process, illuminates the history of American food in the twentieth century. At a time when stuffy French restaurants and soulless Continental cuisine prevailed, Beard invented something strange and new: the notion of an A...

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw“Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns GoodwinThrough all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal ...

The book that transforms our understanding of what we are and where we came from.Specialist scientific fields are developing at incredibly swift speeds, but what can they really tell us about how the universe began and how we humans evolved to play such a dominant role on Earth?John Hands’ extraordinarily ambitious quest is to bring together this scientific knowledge and evaluate without bias or preconception all the theories and evidence about the origin a...

**From the New York Times-bestselling author of How Not to Be Wrong—himself a world-class geometer—a far-ranging exploration of the power of geometry, which turns out to help us think better about practically everythingHow should a democracy choose its representatives? How can you stop a pandemic from sweeping the world? How do computers learn to play Go, and why is learning Go so much easier for them than learning to read a sentence? Can ancient Greek pr...

**“Lovely, celebratory. For all the belittling of ‘bird brains,’ [Ackerman] shows them to be uniquely impressive machines . . .” —New York Times Book Review“A lyrical testimony to the wonders of avian intelligence.” —Scientific AmericanAn award-winning science writer tours the globe to reveal what makes birds capable of such extraordinary feats of mental prowess**Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. According to revolutionary new research...

A landmark, radically uplifting account of our species’ progress, from one of the world's preeminent thinkers.“Unparalleled in its scope and ambition…All readers will learn something, and many will find the book fascinating.’—The Washington Post“Breathtaking. A new Sapiens!” —L'Express**“Completely brilliant and utterly original ... a book for our epoch.”—**Jon Snow, former presenter, Chan...