Earth sciences Books

With the whimsy and heart of The Soul of an Octopus and the surprising details of the very best science writing, The Curious World of Seahorses brilliantly captures the ocean's most charismatic and mysterious inhabitant.'When God created the...

From a celebrated environmental journalist, the riveting exploration of sea level rise along the West Coast through human stories and ecological dramas."Viscerally urgent, thoroughly reported, and compellingly written-a must-read for our uncertain times...

It is rare for life to change Earth, yet three organisms have profoundly transformed our planet over the long course of its history. Elemental reveals how microbes, plants, and people used the fundamental building blocks of life to alter the climate, and...

Unearthing the Underworld reveals the hidden world of rocks the secret-keepers of past environments, of changing climates and the pulse of life over billions of years. Even the most seemingly ordinary stone can tell us much about the history of this...

First published in 1963 and updated in 1979, this classic was an essential handbook for anyone who studies, surfs, protects, or is fascinated by the ocean. The original author, Willard Bascom, was a master of the subject and included a wealth of...

From the author of lnsectopedia, a powerful exploration of loss, grief, endurance, and the absences that permeate the present.Unconformities are gaps in the geological record, physical evidence of breaks in time. For Hugh Raffles, these holes in history...

While concerns about climate change have focused negative attention on the coal industry in recent years, as descendants of the industrial revolution we have all benefitted from the mining of the black seam. Coal has influenced significantly the course...

The inspiring story of a Highland estate, which was rescued from the catastrophic effects of decades of human interference, and is now one of the most successful examples of rewilding in the UK.In 1995 the National Trust for Scotland acquired Mar Lodge...

The written history and archaeological records of Central Scotland takes us back to Pictish times some 5,000 years ago. The geology of the area stretches back a further 400 million years.The oldest rocks are found near Lesmahagow and in the Pentland...

After giving up a hectic life as a journalist in Europe and Hollywood in the late 1960s to return to his boyhood love of nature, Mike Tomkies moved to Eilean Shona, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland.There he rebuilt an abandoned croft house...

Polly Pullar has had a passion for red squirrels since childhood. As a wildlife rehabilitator, she knows the squirrel on a profoundly personal level and has hand-reared numerous litters of orphan kits, eventually returning them to the wild.In this book...

When Mike Tomkies moved to a remote cottage on the shores of Loch Shiel in the West Highlands of Scotland, he found a place which was to provide him with the most profound wilderness experience of his life. Accessible only by boat, the cottage he renamed...

The archipelagos of Orkney and Shetland are the products of some of the most dramatic events which have occurred in the Earth's history.The Shetlands are the eroded roots of a vast mountain range that once soared to Himalayan heights and extended from...

Paul Murton has long had a love of the Viking north - the island groups of Orkney and Shetland and the old counties of Caithness and Sutherland - which, for centuries, were part of the Nordic world as depicted in the great classic the Orkneyinga Saga...

Vast Expanses is a cultural, environmental and geopolitical history that examines the relationship between humans and oceans, reaching back across geological and evolutionary time and exploring different cultures around the globe.Our ancient connections...

The rainbow is a compelling spectacle in nature - a rare bridge between subjective experience and objective reality, and no less remarkable as a cultural phenomenon. A symbol of the Left since the German Peasants' War of the 1520s, it has been adopted by...

An intimate account of the beauty and mystery of the ocean, including why, with each breath, we are inextricably linked to its 'blue wonder'Astonishing events occur beneath the sea: a mysterious glow beckons at night, the smallest...

Here is the essential guide to the earth sciences, an authoritative reference book and timeline that examines how we figured out how the worldworks - literally. That process has revealed how the planet formed from a disc of dust left behind by the young...

Your Guide to Watching Clouds and Understanding the WeatherFrom the soothing sound of rain to the shrill whistle of a blizzard, from the house-shaking rumble of thunder to the violent fury of a hurricane, weather is a fascinating part of our lives. We...

Dinosaurs have filled us with wonder since the first monstrous bones were pulled from the earth thousands of years ago. For centuries, we imagined dinosaurs as giant, clumsy brutes-but science has since revealed them to be so much more. They were living,...

"This book is tailor-made for the keen amateur geologist wishing to learn more about geology and apply it to a particular landscape with which he or she is familiar or can readily relate to." -Jeremy McCall, BC Naturalist---Updated and expanded, this...

A groundbreaking look at Gaia theory's intersections with neocybernetic systems theory Often seen as an outlier in science, Gaia has run a long and varied course since its formulation in the 1970s by atmospheric chemist James Lovelock and microbiologist...

The cool temperate waters around Britain and Ireland contain a huge variety of marine life and the sea anemones and corals, the Anthozoa, are some of the brightest and most attractive of all the groups of animals that live in them. Anemones and corals...

What's natural, what's caused by humans, and why climate change is a disaster for all.A Brief History of the Earth's Climate is an accessible myth-busting guide to the natural evolution of the Earth's climate over 4.6...

A wondrous story of scientific endeavor-probing the great ice sheets of Antarctica.From the moment explorers set foot on the ice of Antarctica in the early nineteenth century, they desired to learn what lay beneath. David J. Drewry provides an insider's...

The ocean teems with life that thrives under difficult situations in unusual environments. The Extreme Life of the Sea takes readers to the absolute limits of the ocean world - the fastest and deepest, the hottest and oldest creatures of the oceans. It...

An epic excursion into one of the last great frontiers on Earth.The deep ocean comprises more than 90 percent of our planet's biosphere and is home to some of the world's most dazzling creatures, which thrive amid extreme pressures, scarce food supplies,...

The revolution in science that is transforming our understanding of extinct life.We used to think of fossils as being composed of nothing but rock and minerals, all molecular traces of life having vanished long ago. We were wrong. Remnants of Ancient...

An illustrated look at the art and science of paleontology from its origins to todayHumans have been stumbling upon the petrified remains of ancient animals since prehistoric times, leading to tales of giant dogs, deadly dragons, tree gods, sea serpents,...

A garden of geologic delights for all EarthlingsGeopedia is a trove of geologic wonders and the evocative terms that humans have devised to describe them. Featuring dozens of entries - from Acasta gneiss to Zircon - this illustrated compendium is...

The Sahara is the largest hot desert in the world, equal in size to China or the United States. Yet, this arid expanse was once a verdant, pleasant land, fed by rivers and lakes. The Sahara sustained abundant plant and animal life, such as Nile perch,...

The first field guide that allows amateur rock enthusiasts to identify basic rocks and rock formations in a systematic wayMany of us are fascinated by rocks-but identifying them can seem daunting. It's often tricky even for geologists, who rely on...

Corals are among the most varied lifeforms on Earth, ranging from mushroom corals and leather corals to button polyps, sea fans, anemones, and pulse corals. Bridging the gap between plant and animal, these marine invertebrates serve as homes to reef fish...

An authoritative illustrated guide to the mighty reptiles that dominated the seas of the Mesozoic for 185 million years.New discoveries are revealing that many ancient oceangoing reptiles were energetic animals capable of inhabiting an array of watery...

NPR's Best Books of 2020 American Scientist's 2020 Science Book Gift Guide Inside the epic quest to find life on the water-rich moons at the outer reaches of the solar system.Where is the best place to find life beyond Earth? We often...

The scientific study of complex systems has transformed a wide range of disciplines in recent years, enabling researchers in both the natural and social sciences to model and predict phenomena as diverse as earthquakes, global warming, demographic...

Until a few decades ago, the ocean depths were almost as mysterious and inaccessible as outer space. Oceans cover two-thirds of the earth's surface with an average depth of more than two miles--yet humans had never ventured more than a few hundred feet...

An insider account of how researchers unraveled the mystery of the thawing ArcticIn the 1990s, researchers in the Arctic noticed that floating summer sea ice had begun receding. This was accompanied by shifts in ocean circulation and unexpected changes...

By developing the scale that bears his name, Charles Richter not only invented the concept of magnitude as a measure of earthquake size, he turned himself into nothing less than a household word. He remains the only seismologist whose name anyone outside...

A gripping history of the polar continent, from the great discoveries of the nineteenth century to modern scientific breakthroughs.]Antarctica, the ice kingdom hosting the South Pole, looms large in the human imagination. The secrets of this vast frozen...

Life in Ancient Ice presents an unparalleled overview of current research into microbial life in ancient glacial ice and permafrost. Particulates of fungi, bacteria, pollen grains, protists, and viruses are carried by wind around the globe. When they...

The human impact on Earth's climate is often treated as a hundred-year issue lasting as far into the future as 2100, the year in which most climate projections cease. In The Long Thaw, David Archer, one of the world's leading climatologists, reveals the...

The best-selling Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs remains the must-have book for anyone who loves dinosaurs, from amateur enthusiasts to professional paleontologists. Now extensively revised and expanded, this dazzlingly illustrated large-format...

Some 250 million years ago, the earth suffered the greatest biological crisis in its history. Around 95 percent of all living species died out--a global catastrophe far greater than the dinosaurs' demise 185 million years later. How this happened remains...

A comprehensive introduction to ocean ecology and a new way of thinking about ocean lifeMarine ecology is more interdisciplinary, broader in scope, and more intimately linked to human activities than ever before. Ocean Ecology provides advanced...

The oceans exert a vital moderating influence on the Earth's climate system. They provide inertia to the global climate, essentially acting as the pacemaker of climate variability and change, and they provide heat to high latitudes, keeping them...

From humble beginnings, Rome became perhaps the greatest intercontinental power in the world. Why did this historic city become so much more influential than its neighbor, nearby Latium, which was peopled by more or less the same stock? Over the years,...

A cosmic perspective on carbon its importance in the universe and our lives.When we think of carbon, we might first think of a simple element near the top of the periodic table: symbol C, atomic number 6. Alternatively, we might think of something more...