In the late nineteenth century, the animal story, a new genre of nature writing, was both popular and controversial. These weren’t cutesy tales of talking deer spinning allegories or anthropomorphized, besuited grizzly bears ready to... Read More

Approaching nature from a personal perspective, Bjorn Dihle’s "A Shape in the Dark" overturns the media myth of brown bears as vicious, deranged killers, constructing a poignant portrait of the creatures that recognizes their true... Read More

"Stories of a Forest Ranger" is an inspirational memoir about life in the US Forest Service. In Pete Griffin’s memoir "Stories of a Forest Ranger", “friendly” wolves, mating eagles, beaver dams, fires, and promotions occasion... Read More

Deft and entertaining, Anthony J. Stuart’s "Vanished Giants" reveals the “hugest, fiercest, and strangest” Ice Age animals––mastodons, saber-toothed cats, immense ground sloths, and other odd, extinct creatures. Relaying... Read More

Collection editor Dale Peterson calls his experiences with elephants in Asia and Africa “among the most transformative” of his life. The heartwarming, heartrending essays of "Thirty-Three Ways of Looking at an Elephant" reveal the... Read More

Julia Zarankin’s memoir is a moving, and often hilarious, account of how she—a type A, perfectionistic, and nature-avoidant novice—became a bona fide “bird nerd,” transforming her life in the process. Zarankin’s story begins... Read More

“If it were followed by spring or summer, I would love autumn unreservedly,” writes Horatio Clare. Instead, autumn, for all its glory, warns the Welsh-born writer that winter will soon engulf Britain and Wales in gales, sleet, and... Read More

Biologist Lynne Quarmby sailed on a two-week Arctic Circle expedition to document global warming, and "Watermelon Snow" juxtaposes descriptions of that voyage with reflections on her career, her climate change activism, politics, and the... Read More