Happy National Wildlife Day!

wild deer

Furry friends, ecological heroes, and wild beasts—we celebrate them all. In honor of wildlife and all there is to learn from our favorite creatures, we have curated a list of some of Chelsea Green’s best wildlife books. Get your hands on some of these and prepare yourself for a literary safari!


eager Eager is a powerful story about one of the world’s most influential species, how North America was colonized, how our landscapes have changed over the centuries, and how beavers can help us fight drought, flooding, wildfire, extinction, and the ravages of climate change.

 

“Goldfarb has built a masterpiece of a treatise on the natural world, how that world stands now and how it could be in the future if we protect beaver populations. He gives us abundant reasons to respect environment-restoring beavers and their behaviors, for their own good and for ours.” —Washington Post Review


Being Salmon, Being Human examines Western culture’s tragic alienation from nature by focusing on the relationship between people and salmon—weaving together key narratives about the Norwegian salmon industry as well as wild salmon in indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest.

 

“Mueller, a naturalist, philosopher, and storyteller from Oslo, links his fate to wild salmon in a remarkable work that doubles as poetic treatise and a broad environmental critique… This is a powerful book about what it means to be human in the ‘more-than-human’ world.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

being salmon being human

tamed and untamed Tamed and Untamed―a collection of essays penned by two of the world’s most celebrated animal writers, Sy Montgomery and Elizabeth Marshall Thomas―explores the minds, lives, and mysteries of animals as diverse as snails, house cats, hawks, sharks, dogs, lions, and even octopuses.

 

“Armchair and active naturalists will enjoy and learn from the authors’ enlightened perceptions on the intricate relationship between humans and animals in this thought-provoking collection.” —Library Journal


Dreaming of Lions traces Thomas’s life from her earliest days, including when, as a young woman in the 1950s, she and her family packed up and left for the Kalahari Desert to study the Ju/Wa Bushmen. The experience taught her not only how to observe, but also how to navigate in male-dominated fields like anthropology and animal science and do what she cared about most: spending time with animals and people in wild places, and relishing the people and animals around her at home.

 

Both wise and witty, Thomas’ book celebrates nature as the best tonic for the ‘poison’ that inevitably infiltrates even the most comfortable of human lives. A candid and humane memoir of a fascinating life.” —Kirkus Reviews

dreaming of lions

in the company of bears In the Company of Bears delivers Kilham’s fascinating glimpse at the inner world of bears, and also makes a passionate case for science, and education in general, to open its doors to different ways of learning and researching–doors that could lead to far broader realms of discovery.

 

The author presents a solid case for bears as primal actors of social exchange—cooperation, altruism, morality—and their study, a ‘gateway’ to understanding ‘how surplus fitness and an increase in population density have affected human behavior.’ A powerfully original study of bears.” —Library Journal


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