The Wild Places

Are there any genuinely wild places left in Britain and Ireland? Or have we tarmacked, farmed and built ourselves out of wildness? In his vital, bewitching, inspiring classic, Robert Macfarlane sets out in search of the wildness that remains.

"Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James-a well-known author of dark, macabre children's books-he's led to a place many believed to be only a legend. Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn't exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it...he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James. Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis's abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there's a risk of bringing a disease-rot-into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn't as safe as they believed-and that darkness takes many forms"--

2015 National Outdoor Book Award Winner: Design & Artistic Merit A collection of unparalleled photographs—spanning forty years and seven continents—by one of the world’s foremost wildlife photographers. Capturing the splendor of wild places and intimate moments with animals, this luxurious volume chronicles legendary nature photographer Thomas D. Mangelsen’s photographic adventures in the field. Driven by a passion for sharing and preserving the Earth’s last great wild places, Mangelsen is as much a conservationist as a natural history photographer and artist. From majestic elephants and giraffes on the plains of Kilimanjaro to polar bears in the Arctic, and from mountains and prairies to primordial jungles, Mangelsen invites us to witness fleeting wildness. A quiet call to action, an inventory of our planet as it battles climate change, and a celebration of wildness and its intrinsic value, The Last Great Wild Places is a record of the Earth’s last great locales, one that will inspire present and future generations with the message that what we have can, and must, be saved.

THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE The original bestseller from the beloved author of UNDERLAND, LANDMARKS and THE LOST WORDS - Robert Macfarlane travels Britain's ancient paths and discovers the secrets of our beautiful, underappreciated landscape 'The Old Ways confirms Macfarlane's reputation as one of the most eloquent and observant of contemporary writers about nature' Scotland on Sunday Following the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond, Robert Macfarlane discovers a lost world - a landscape of the feet and the mind, of pilgrimage and ritual, of stories and ghosts; above all of the places and journeys which inspire and inhabit our imaginations. 'Sublime . . . It sets the imagination tingling, laying an irresistible trail for readers to follow' Sunday Times 'Read this and it will be impossible to take an unremarkable walk again' Metro 'He has a rare physical intelligence and affords total immersion in place, elements and the passage of time: wonderful' Antony Gormley

In Wild Thoughts from Wild Places, award-winning journalist David Quammen reminds us why he has become one of our most beloved science and nature writers. This collection of twenty-three of Quammen's most intriguing, most exciting, most memorable pieces takes us to meet kayakers on the Futaleufu River of southern Chile, where Quammen describes how it feels to travel in fast company and flail for survival in the river's maw. We are introduced to the commerce in pearls (and black-market parrots) in the Aru Islands of eastern Indonesia. Quammen even finds wildness in smog-choked Los Angeles -- embodied in an elusive population of urban coyotes, too stubborn and too clever to surrender to the sprawl of civilization. With humor and intelligence, David Quammen's Wild Thoughts from Wild Places also reminds us that humans are just one of the many species on earth with motivations, goals, quirks, and eccentricities. Expect to be entertained and moved on this journey through the wilds of science and nature.

For the Love of Wild Places explores the most remote habitats on the planet. From the intimate view of a cheetah¿s care of her six cubs in Africa to a carpet of Emperor Penguins in Antarctica to a robotic landing of 25,000 turtles on an isolated Costa Rica beach, this personal narrative captures the wonder, beauty, and fragility of vanishing wild places. During four decades, Greg and Mary Beth Dimijian ventured into the back country of Earth by land, sea, and air to photograph and savor the adventures shared in this book. From the searing heat inside a volcano in Hawaii to the grandeur of the continental divide in Glacier National Park and the mystery of a coral reef during a night dive, their stories reflect a love of learning about fascinating inhabitants of the planet and a passion for adventure. For the Love of Wild Places inspires readers with a renewed motivation for exploring and saving the remaining wonders of Planet Earth. Photographs lure readers to sights and scenes that echo a resounding message: If you treasure wild places, go now before they disappear.

A moving, inspiring, personal look at the vastly changing world of wildlife on planet earth as a result of human incursion, and the crucial work of animal and bird preservation across the globe being done by scientists, field biologists, zoologists, environmentalists, and conservationists. From a longtime, much-admired activist, impassioned wildlife proponent and conservationist, former chairperson of the National Endowment for the Arts, four time Academy Award nominee, and Tony Award and two-time Emmy Award-winning actress. In Wild Things, Wild Places, Jane Alexander movingly, with a clear eye and a knowing, keen grasp of the issues and on what is being done in conservation and the worlds of science to help the planet's most endangered species to stay alive and thrive, writes of her steady and fervent immersion into the worlds of wildlife conservation, of her coming to know the scientists throughout the world--to her, the prophets in the wilderness--who are steeped in this work, of her travels with them--and on her own--to the most remote and forbidding areas of the world as they try to save many species, including ourselves.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE 2015 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WAINWRIGHT PRIZE 2016 Landmarks is Robert Macfarlane's joyous meditation on words, landscape and the relationship between the two. Words are grained into our landscapes, and landscapes are grained into our words. Landmarks is about the power of language to shape our sense of place. It is a field guide to the literature of nature, and a glossary containing thousands of remarkable words used in England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales to describe land, nature and weather. Travelling from Cumbria to the Cairngorms, and exploring the landscapes of Roger Deakin, J. A. Baker, Nan Shepherd and others, Robert Macfarlane shows that language, well used, is a keen way of knowing landscape, and a vital means of coming to love it. Praise for Robert Macfarlane: 'He has a poet's eye and a prose style that will make many a novelist burn with envy' John Banville, Observer "I'll read anything Macfarlane writes" David Mitchell, Independent 'Every movement needs stars. In [Macfarlane] we surely have one, burning brighter with each book.' Telegraph '[Macfarlane] is a godfather of a cultural moment' Sunday Times