Showing titles in Environmentalists & Naturalists

Celia Imrie and Toby Jones star in this BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Gerald Durrell's much-loved comic gem. My Family and Other Animals is the classic tale of naturalist Gerald Durrell's magical 1930s childhood on pre-war Corfu. His descriptions of his eccentric family and his encounters with...

Thoreau's classic account of the solitary life, describing his attempts to simplify his life and sort out his priorities by living alone in a cabin beside Walden Pond for nearly two years, is one of the most influential books ever written. The bible of the environmental movement, Walden vividly portrays Thoreau's reverence for nature, and his understanding of the idea that nature is made up of crucially interrelated parts.

No running water, no car, no electricity or any of the things it powers: the internet, phone, washing machine, radio, or light bulb. Just a wooden cabin, on a smallholding, by the edge of a stand of spruce. The Way Home is a modern-day Walden - an honest and lyrical account of a remarkable life lived in nature without modern technology. Mark Boyle, author of The Moneyless Man, explores the hard-won joys of building a home with his bare hands, learning to make fire, collecting water from the stream, foraging, and fishing.

In 1845 Henry David Thoreau, one of the principal New England Transcendentalists, left the town for the country. Beside the lake of Walden, he built himself a log cabin and returned to nature, to observe and reflect, while surviving on $8 a year. From this experience emerged one of the great classics of American literature, a deeply personal reaction against the commercialism and materialism that he saw as the main impulses of mid-19th century America.

Bloomsbury presents The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey read by Kate Handford 'Fabulous, a triumph, and it will remain a favourite forever.' CHRIS PACKHAM 'A miniature masterpiece.' THE INDEPENDENT 'Charming and absorbing.' THE TIMES In celebration of its fifteen year...

Brought to you by Penguin. A classic Gerald Durrell title reissued by Penguin to celebrate the centenary of his birth The Manor of the title is Les Augrès Manor in Trinity, Jersey. Inside, we find a remarkable collection of pen portraits of some of the creatures of Gerald Durrell's Zoo. We also...

A transcendent, lyrical meditation on life in the American West “Wyoming has found its Whitman.” —Annie Dillard Poet and filmmaker Gretel Ehrlich went to Wyoming in 1975 to make the first in a series of documentaries when her partner died. Ehrlich stayed on and found she couldn’t leave...

‘A feast for mind and soul, a treasure trove of insights into the enigmatic and enchanting world of the birds we share our lives with but barely notice. I have learnt so much. Every page is a thrill. Bird School has opened my eyes' Isabella Tree, author of Wilding Step into the hide for a...

Following on from the events in A Zoo in My Luggage, The Whispering Land sees Gerald Durrell and his wife Jacquie travel to Argentina to collect animals for their newly established zoo. With rare insight and unique charm, Durrell pulls the listener into the tropical landscape of Patagonia, where he witnesses magical moments with penguins, seals and ocelots, and encounters a hilarious cast of characters, including a swearing parrot and a belching guanaco.

In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jennifer Ackerman explores the newly discovered brilliance of birds and how it came about. Consider, as Ackerman does, the Clark's nutcracker, a bird that can hide as many as 30,000 seeds over dozens of square miles and remember where it put them several months later; the mockingbirds and thrashers, species that can store 200 to 2,000 different songs in a brain a thousand times smaller than ours; and the well-known pigeon, which knows where it's going, even thousands of miles from familiar territory.

Audiobook narrated by author. “Madia’s adventurous tales transcend their rugged terrain, telling, at the crux of it all, very human stories”—The Source New York Times bestselling author of Nowhere for Very Long and Never Leave the Dogs Behind Brianna Madia considers putting down...

Predictability isn’t a word you will find in any Bushveld dictionary, and the life of wildlife guardian Mario Cesare has been anything but. After years as warden of Olifants River Game Reserve, his feet are firmly planted in this magnificent slice of Big Five country to the west of the Kruger Park, where he has experienced a rich life packed full of incidents far from routine. In Heart of a Game Ranger, Cesare recounts some of these hair-raising, heartbreaking and heartwarming moments.

Gerald Durrell's last book, The Aye-Aye and I, records his final animal-collecting expedition, a trip to Madagascar in 1990, and his efforts to save the elusive and mythical lemuroid known as the Aye-Aye. Prompted by the country's radical deforestation and slash-and-burn agriculture, Durrell, his wife, and their team of zoologists embark on a mission to capture and conserve the species - distinguished by its "giant, chisel-like teeth", "round, hypnotic eyes", and large "spoon-like ears".

A poet at heart, Amy Minato rejects her life of consumption in Chicago to go back to nature - specifically, to a commune in Oregon, where she rediscovers herself. She also cops occasionally to the pretentiousness of her mission, and laughs along with the listener at her attempts to be both environmentally friendly and sane, considering the fact that she’s moved in with a bunch of strangers in a remote locale.

Brought to you by Penguin. A final posthumous work from the beloved conservationist and naturalist Gerald Durrell, to celebrate the centenary of his birth, with a new foreword written by HRH Princess Anne. Myself and Other Animals is a new book mosaicked from unpublished autobiographies...

Naturforscher, Entdecker, Revolutionär: Bestsellerautorin Andrea Wulf über das außergewöhnliche Leben und die faszinierenden Reisen Georg Forsters Georg Forster drang in die entferntesten Regionen der bekannten Welt vor und stellte mit seinen radikalen Ideen zu Menschlichkeit, Gleichheit und...

Naturforscher, Entdecker, Revolutionär: Bestsellerautorin Andrea Wulf über das außergewöhnliche Leben und die faszinierenden Reisen Georg Forsters Georg Forster drang in die entferntesten Regionen der bekannten Welt vor und stellte mit seinen radikalen Ideen zu Menschlichkeit, Gleichheit und...

Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees lives, Sue Hubbell lovingly describes the ins and outs of beekeeping on her small Missouri farm, where the end of one honey season is the start of the next. With three hundred hives, Hubbell stays busy year-round tending to the bees and...

Walden is an account of the time Thoreau lived alone in a cabin in Concord, Massachusetts. He built the cabin, grew and sold vegetables, and contemplated consciousness and identity. The theme is simple - it focuses on living in natural surroundings, and in essence, the work may be seen as a declaration of independence, a social experiment, quest of spiritual discovery, and a self-reliance guide. The text contains scientific observations of nature along with metaphorical and poetic applications of natural phenomena.

Beasts in My Belfry is the wonderfully funny memoir about Gerald Durrell's time at Whipsnade Zoo and his experiences as a young zookeeper. Following the Second World War, Durrell joined Whipsnade Zoo as a junior keeper - an opportunity that fulfilled a lifelong dream. Thanks to Rupert Degas's brilliant voicing, which captures all of Durrell's charm and wit, the listener can enjoy being taken behind the scenes of one of the world's very first zoos. This is a delightful portrait of the animals who lived there and those who looked after them.