In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.

"It is 1950. London is still reeling from World War II, and Margery Benson--a sensible schoolmarm and lonely spinster--is just trying to get through life. But one day, she reaches her breaking point, abandoning her job and her tidy, circumscribed life, to set out on an expedition to the other side of the world in search of an insect that may or may not exist: the golden beetle of New Caledonia, Margery's childhood obsession ever since her father gave...

Describes the life and career of Steve Irwin, famously known as the Crocodile Hunter, from his childhood and early love of animals to his rise in popularity as a film and television star and naturalist. --

"Sammie, a budding naturalist, knows of a secret and wonderful place: Winghaven, an abandoned lot in the middle of the suburbs where wildlife flourishes. She spends hours making notes and drawings in her meticulous field journal. When Bram, a new boy, turns up with his camera, Sammie worries he'll give away her hidden haven--after all, the other boys at school bully her. But Bram is a scientist like Sammie, and together they observe tiny pond creatures,...

Considered one of the patron saints of twentieth-century environmental activity, John Muir's appeal to modern readers is that he not only explored the American West but also fought for its preservation. My First Summer in the Sierra is Muir's account of his adventures and observations while working as a shepherd in the Yosemite Valley, which later became Yosemite National Park as a direct result of Muir's writings and activism. Muir's heartfelt and...

"Walden. yesterday I cam here to live." That entry from the journal of Henry David Thoreau, and the intellectual journey it began, would by themselves be enough to place Thoreau in the American pantheon. His attempt to "live deliberately" in a small woods at the edge of his hometown of Concord has been a touchstone for individualists and seekers since the publication of Walden in 1854. But there was much more to Thoreau than his brief experiment in...

"From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman -- a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds. Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused...

Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

The classic nature memoir of Cape Cod in the early twentieth century, "written with simplicity, sympathy, and beauty" (New York Herald Tribune). When Henry Beston returned home from World War I, he sought refuge and healing at a house on the outer beach of Cape Cod. He was so taken by the natural beauty of his surroundings that his two-week stay extended into a yearlong solitary adventure. He spent his time trying to capture in words the wonders...

A radical reappraisal of Darwin argues that the evolution pioneer was less of an original scientific intellect than a ruthless self-promoter who did not give credit to the actual sages whose ideas he advanced in his history-shaping book.