Banner Message
Please note: We are working on getting our inventory accurately represented on our site while we are in our temporary location. There might be items that appear online that are not currently accesible to us to ship to you. If you order these items, you will be refunded and the rest of your order will ship. Feel free to contact us with any questions.
Nature
In The Whale and the Supercomputer, scientists and natives wrestle with our changing climate in the land where it has hit first
--and hardest
A traditional Eskimo whale-hunting party races to shore near Barrow, Alaska-their comrades trapped on a floe drifting out to sea-as ice that should be solid this time of year gives way. Elsewhere, a team of scientists transverses the tundra, sleeping in tents, surviving on frozen chocolate, and measuring the snow every ten kilometers in a quest to understand the effects of albedo, the snow's reflective ability to cool the earth beneath it.
Climate change isn't an abstraction in the far North. It is a reality that has already dramatically altered daily life, especially that of the native peoples who still live largely off the land and sea. Because nature shows her footprints so plainly here, the region is also a lure for scientists intent on comprehending the complexities of climate change. In this gripping account, Charles Wohlforth follows the two groups as they navigate a radically shifting landscape. The scientists attempt to decipher its smallest elements and to derive from them a set of abstract laws and models. The natives draw on uncannily accurate traditional knowledge, borne of long experience living close to the land. Even as they see the same things-a Native elder watches weather coming through too fast to predict; a climatologist notes an increased frequency of cyclonic systems-the two cultures struggle to reconcile their vastly different ways of comprehending the environment.
With grace, clarity, and a sense of adventure, Wohlforth--a lifelong Alaskan--illuminates both ways of seeing a world in flux, and in the process, helps us to navigate a way forward as climate change reaches us all.
Not long ago, the future seemed predictable. Now, certainty about the course of civilization has given way to fear and doubt. Raging fires, ravaging storms, political upheavals, financial collapse, and deadly pandemics lie ahead--or are already here. The world feels less comprehensible and more dangerous, and no one, from individuals to businesses and governments, knows how to navigate the path forward.
Ruth DeFries argues that a surprising set of time-tested strategies from the natural world can help humanity weather these crises. Through trial and error over the eons, life has evolved astonishing and counterintuitive tricks in order to survive. DeFries details how a handful of fundamental strategies--investments in diversity, redundancy over efficiency, self-correcting feedbacks, and decisions based on bottom-up knowledge--enable life to persist through unpredictable, sudden shocks. Lessons for supply chains from a leaf's intricate network of veins and stock market-saving "circuit breakers" patterned on planetary cycles reveal the power of these approaches for modern life. With humility and willingness to apply nature's experience to our human-constructed world, DeFries demonstrates, we can withstand uncertain and perilous times. Exploring the lessons that life on Earth can teach us about coping with complexity, What Would Nature Do? offers timely options for civilization to reorganize for a safe and prosperous future.
A groundbreaking collection that explores human-animal relations and deaths with depth and hope
When Animals Die is an innovative collection of essays that delves into the intricate and uneasy dynamics between humans and other-than-human animals, particularly concerning animal deaths, which are predominantly caused by humans. This groundbreaking book brings together prominent scholars from various disciplines to address the challenging field of animal death studies, incorporating perspectives from social sciences, humanities, biological sciences, and perspectives from beyond academia. The collection explores profound questions about the experience of animal death for both animals and humans. It examines how humans rationalize animal deaths and utilize deceased animals, and sheds light on the interconnectedness of animal death with issues like race, colonialism, gender, capitalism, and other systems of inequality that humans have established and perpetuated. By confronting these pertinent issues, When Animals Die seeks to deepen our awareness of the relationship between animal death and humanity's involvement in it. While grappling with the reality of humans' impact on the earth, the collection offers hope for an alternative future that does not entail the mutual destruction of human and other-than-human animals.
JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR DISTINGUISHED NATURAL HISTORY BOOK
A scientist experiences primordial wonders and the wisdom of solitude in one of Earth's wildest and most endangered places
Greenland, one of the last truly wild places, contains a treasure trove of information on Earth's early history embedded in its pristine landscape. Over numerous seasons, William E. Glassley and two fellow geologists traveled there to collect samples and observe rock formations for evidence to prove a contested theory that plate tectonics, the movement of Earth's crust over its molten core, is a much more ancient process than some believed. As their research drove the scientists ever farther into regions barely explored by humans for millennia--if ever--Glassley encountered wondrous creatures and natural phenomena that gave him unexpected insight into the origins of myth, the virtues and boundaries of science, and the importance of seeking the wilderness within.
An invitation to experience a breathtaking place and the fascinating science behind its creation, A Wilder Time is nature writing at its best.
* Expanded to include a section on routefinding on glaciers, along with additional information on changing declination
* Extensive illustrated examples of orientation and wilderness navigation Proceed with confidence when heading off-road or off-trail with the second edition of Wilderness Navigation. Whether you are climbing a glacier, orienteering in the backcountry, or on an easy day hike, Mike and Bob Burns cover all the latest technology and time-tested methods to help you learn to navigate-from how to read a map to compasses and geomagnetism.
Bob Burns is a long-time member of The Mountaineers. He has taught classes in the use of map and compass since the late 1970s. Mike Burns is an avid climber. He has instructed climbing and navigation classes, and written articles for Climbing magazine. Part of the The Mountaineers Outdoor Basics series! Created for beginning-to-intermediate enthusiasts, this series includes everything anyone would need to know about staying safe and having fun in the backcountry.
From award-winning writer and biologist Bernd Heinrich, an intimate, accessible and eloquent illumination of animal survival in Winter.
From flying squirrels to grizzly bears, torpid turtles to insects with antifreeze, the animal kingdom relies on some staggering evolutionary innovations to survive winter. Unlike their human counterparts, who must alter their environment to accommodate our physical limitations, animals are adaptable to an amazing range of conditions--i.e., radical changes in a creature's physiology take place to match the demands of the environment. Winter provides an especially remarkable situation, because of how drastically it affects the most elemental component of all life: water.
Examining everything from food sources in the extremely barren winter landscape to the chemical composition that allows certain creatures to survive, Heinrich's Winter World awakens the largely undiscovered mysteries by which nature sustains herself through the harsh, cruel exigencies of winters
Bill Porter follows the Yellow River, the world's sixth longest river, from its mouth to its source high in the Tibetan Plateau, a journey of more than three thousand miles through nine Chinese provinces. The trip takes the master translator into what was once the cradle of Chinese civilization and to the hometowns and graves of key historical figures such as Confucius, Mencius, Lao-tzu, and Chuang-tzu. Porter's depth of knowledge of Chinese history and culture is unparalleled. Yellow River Odyssey, already a bestseller in China, reveals a complex, fascinating, contradictory country. Porter masterfully digs beneath China's present-day materialism and the deep wounds of the Cultural Revolution to get at the roots of Chinese culture. And he does so with an ever-present wit and a keen eye for the telling detail. The book also includes more than fifty black-and-white photographs taken by Porter during his travels.
Bill Porter is an award-winning author and translator also known by his pen name, Red Pine. He is considered one of the foremost translators of Chinese texts, especially Buddhist and Taoist poetry and sutras. His translation work includes major Buddhist texts such as The Platform Sutra, The Diamond Sutra, and The Heart Sutra as well as the best-selling poetry collections Taoteching and Collected Songs of Cold Mountain. He is also the author of Zen Baggage and Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits. Porter lives in Port Townsend, Washington.