Environment & Nature bestsellers

Braiding Sweetgrass

Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Length: 16 hours 44 minutes

As a botanist and professor of plant ecology, Robin Wall Kimmerer has spent a career learning how to ask questions of nature using the tools of science. As a Potawatomi woman, she learned from elders, family, and history that the Potawatomi, as well as a majority of other cultures indigenous to this land, consider plants and animals to be our... Read more

The Soul of an Octopus

A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness

By: Sy Montgomery
Length: 9 hours 10 minutes

In this astonishing book from the author of the best selling memoir The Good Good Pig, Sy Montgomery explores the emotional and physical world of the octopus—a surprisingly complex, intelligent, and spirited creature—and the remarkable connections it makes with humans. Read more

Field Notes from an Unintentional Birder

A Memoir

By: Julia Zarankin
Narrated by: Nan McNamara
Length: 6 hours 51 minutes

When Julia Zarankin saw her first red-winged blackbird at the age of thirty-five, she didn’t expect that it would change her life. Recently divorced and auditioning hobbies during a stressful career transition, she stumbled into birdwatching, initially out of curiosity for the strange breed of humans who wear multi-pocketed vests, carry spotting... Read more

Why Fish Don't Exist

A Story of Loss, Love, and the Hidden Order of Life

By: Lulu Miller
Narrated by: Lulu Miller
Length: 4 hours 55 minutes

“Half memoir, half biography, Lulu Miller's examination of David Starr Jordan and the lies we tell ourselves to keep going is phenomenal. Nuanced and unputdownable. (And especially great on audio!) Read more

The Trials of Life

A Natural History of Animal Behaviour

By: David Attenborough
Narrated by: David Attenborough
Length: 10 hours

The third and final updated edition of David Attenborough’s classic Life trilogy. Life on Earth covered evolution, Living Planet , ecology, and now The Trials of Life tackles ethology, the study of how animals behave. ‘This is, quite simply, the best thing I’ve ever done.’ Sir David Attenborough on... Read more

The Backyard Bird Chronicles

By: Amy Tan
Narrated by: Amy Tan & Evan Sibley
Length: 6 hours 28 minutes

A gorgeous, witty account of birding, nature, and the beauty around us that hides in plain sight, written and illustrated by the best-selling author of The Joy Luck Club • With a foreword by David Allen Sibley

“Unexpected and spectacular” —Ann Patchett, best-selling author of These Precious Days

"The drawings and essays in this book do a lot more... Read more

Entangled Life

How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds & Shape Our Futures

By: Merlin Sheldrake
Narrated by: Merlin Sheldrake
Length: 9 hours 32 minutes

“An ecological, fungi-based restructuring of your world view given to us as only a brilliant biologist could offer. Sheldrake says, 'Without this fungal web my tree would not exist. Without [...] fungal webs no plant would exist anywhere. All life on land, including my own, depends on these networks.' Read more

The Worst Hard Time

The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl

By: Timothy Egan
Narrated by: Jacob York
Length: 12 hours 57 minutes

In a tour de force of historical reportage, Timothy Egan’s National Book Award–winning story rescues an iconic chapter of American history from the shadows.
 
The dust storms that terrorized the High Plains in the darkest years of the Depression were like nothing ever seen before or since. Following a dozen families and their communities through... Read more

A Book of Bees

And How to Keep Them

By: Sue Hubbell
Narrated by: Lauren DePorre
Length: 5 hours 49 minutes

Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees’ lives, Sue Hubbell lovingly describes the ins and outs of beekeeping on her small Missouri farm, where the end of one honey season is the start of the next. With three hundred hives, Hubbell stays busy year-round tending to the bees and harvesting their honey, a process that is as personally... Read more

The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs

A New History of a Lost World

By: Steve Brusatte
Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
Length: 10 hours 6 minutes

A sweeping and revelatory new history of the age of dinosaurs, from one of our finest young scientists. "THE ULTIMATE DINOSAUR BIOGRAPHY."  — Scientific AmericanThe dinosaurs. Sixty-six million years ago, the Earth’s most fearsome creatures vanished. Today they remain one of our planet’s great mysteries. Now The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs... Read more

The Ministry for the Future

A Novel

By: Kim Stanley Robinson
Narrated by: Jennifer Fitzgerald, Fajer Al-Kaisi, Ramon de Ocampo, Gary Bennett, Raphael Corkhill, Barrie Kreinik, Natasha Soudek, Nikki Massoud, Joniece Abbott Pratt, Inés del Castillo & Vikas Adam
Length: 20 hours 42 minutes

From legendary science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson comes a remarkable vision of climate change over the coming decades. 

The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, postapocalyptic world, but... Read more

How to Fly (In Ten Thousand Easy Lessons)

Poetry

By: Barbara Kingsolver
Narrated by: Barbara Kingsolver
Length: 2 hours 12 minutes

“Kingsolver writes poetry that is both accessible and profound. This is the kind of collection you’ll loan out to a friend or relative and never get back. You should probably go ahead and buy two or three all at once! Read more

An Immense World

How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us

By: Ed Yong
Narrated by: Ed Yong
Length: 14 hours 17 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong
 
“One of this year’s finest works of narrative... Read more

A Brief History of Earth

Four Billion Years in Eight Chapters

By: Andrew H. Knoll
Narrated by: Tom Parks
Length: 4 hours 57 minutes

How well do you know the ground beneath your feet? A primer for every Earth resident, by Harvard’s acclaimed geologist.“A sublime chronicle of our planet."" –Booklist, STARRED reviewOdds are, where you’re standing was once cooking under a roiling sea of lava, crushed by a towering sheet of ice, rocked by a nearby meteor strike, or perhaps choked... Read more

Year of No Garbage

By: Eve O. Schaub
Narrated by: Hillary Huber
Length: 9 hours 29 minutes

In this book, Eve O. Schaub, humorist and stunt memoirist extraordinaire, tackles her most difficult challenge to date: garbage. Convincing her husband and two daughters to go along with her, Schaub attempts the seemingly impossible: living in the modern world without creating any trash at all—for an entire year and, as it turns out, during a... Read more

Not the End of the World

How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

By: Hannah Ritchie
Narrated by: Hannah Ritchie
Length: 9 hours 26 minutes

This "truly essential" audiobook will transform how you see our biggest environmental problems (Margaret Atwood)—and explains how we can solve them. It’s become common to tell kids that they’re going to die from climate change. We are constantly bombarded by doomsday headlines that tell us the soil won’t be able to support crops, fish will... Read more

Crossings

How Road Ecology Is Shaping the Future of Our Planet

By: Ben Goldfarb
Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner
Length: 11 hours 52 minutes

Some 40 million miles of roadways encircle the earth, yet we tend to regard them only as infrastructure for human convenience. While roads are so ubiquitous they're practically invisible to us, wild animals experience them as entirely alien forces of death and disruption. In Crossings, environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb travels throughout the... Read more

Better Living Through Birding

Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World

By: Christian Cooper
Narrated by: Christian Cooper
Length: 10 hours 25 minutes

Central Park birder Christian Cooper takes us beyond the viral video that shocked a nation and into a world of avian adventures, global excursions, and the unexpected lessons you can learn from a life spent looking up.

"Wondrous . . . captivating.”—Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of An Immense World

Christian Cooper is a self-described... Read more

Secondhand

Travels in the New Global Garage Sale

By: Adam Minter
Narrated by: Daniel Henning
Length: 10 hours 2 minutes

When you drop a box of unwanted items off at the local thrift store, where do they go? Probably across the country—or even halfway across the world—to people and places eager to reuse what you don’t want. In Secondhand, Adam Minter delves into the vast, multibillion-dollar industry that resells used stuff around the world. He follows the trail... Read more

The Feather Thief

Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century

By: Kirk Wallace Johnson
Narrated by: MacLeod Andrews
Length: 8 hours 4 minutes

“The Feather Thief is true crime at its best — a tale starting with the Amazonian explorations of Darwin-era naturalists, rooted in the eccentric sensibilities of Victorian collectors, fueled by the obscure cult of fly-fishing tying, and culminating with a shocking 2009 British Museum heist by a shy American flautist. All of these elements are... Read more

Slow Down

The Degrowth Manifesto

By: Kohei Saito
Narrated by: Troy Glasgow & Kohei Saito
Length: 10 hours 5 minutes

"Why, in our affluent society, do so many people live in poverty, without access to health care, working multiple jobs, and are nevertheless unable to make ends meet, with no future prospects, while the planet is burning? In his international bestseller, Kohei Saito argues that while unfettered capitalism is often blamed for inequality and... Read more

Gathering Moss

A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses

By: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Narrated by: Robin Wall Kimmerer
Length: 7 hours 46 minutes

Living at the limits of our ordinary perception, mosses are a common but largely unnoticed element of the natural world. Gathering Moss is a beautifully written mix of science and personal reflection that invites listeners to explore and learn from the elegantly simple lives of mosses.

Robin Wall Kimmerer's book is not an identification guide,... Read more

Finding the Mother Tree

Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest

By: Suzanne Simard
Narrated by: Suzanne Simard
Length: 12 hours 13 minutes

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery

“Finding the Mother Tree reminds us that the world is a web of stories, connecting us to one another. [The... Read more

Leaves of Grass

1855 Edition

By: Walt Whitman
Narrated by: Edoardo Ballerini
Length: 4 hours 19 minutes

In 1855, Walt Whitman published, at his own expense, the first edition of Leaves of Grass, a visionary volume of twelve poems. Showing the influence of a uniquely American form of mysticism known as Transcendentalism, the writing is distinguished by an explosively innovative free-verse style and previously unmentionable subject matter. Exalting... Read more

Vesper Flights

By: Helen Macdonald
Narrated by: Helen Macdonald
Length: 10 hours 21 minutes

“I wish I could give Vesper Flights twelve stars out of five. In this beautiful, loving, poignant portrait of a nature lover’s world — gosh, what an understatement — Helen MacDonald continues to prove herself a nature-writing powerhouse. Her literary skills make her a modern legend, and Vesper Flights is sure to touch as many hearts, if not more,... Read more

World of Wonders

In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments

By: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Narrated by: Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Length: 3 hours 30 minutes

Barnes & Noble 2020 Book of the Year
A Kirkus Prize Finalist for Nonfiction
A Southern Book Prize Finalist
An NPR Best Book of 2020
An Esquire Best Book of 2020
A BookPage Best Book of 2020
A New York Public Library Best Book of 2020
A Wall Street Journal Holiday Gift Pick for 2020
An Indie Next Pick, September 2019
A Publishers Weekly "Big Indie... Read more

Celebrating Birds

An Interactive Field and Listening Guide Inspired by the Wingspan Game

By: Natalia Rojas & Ana Maria Martinez
Narrated by: Inés del Castillo, Timothy Andrés Pabon & Laura Jennings
Length: 6 hours 44 minutes

A gorgeously illustrated and interactive full-color guide to more than 181 birds of North America, featuring recorded vocalizations of each, based on the bestselling board game, Wingspan.

Praised for its gorgeous illustrations, accurate portrayal of bird habitats, and its gameplay, the bird-focused board game Wingspan has become an international... Read more

Where the Deer and the Antelope Play

The Pastoral Observations of One Ignorant American Who Loves to Walk Outside

By: Nick Offerman
Narrated by: Nick Offerman
Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

A humorous and rousing set of literal and figurative sojourns as well as a mission statement about comprehending, protecting, and truly experiencing the outdoors, fueled by three journeys undertaken by actor, humorist, and New York Times bestselling author Nick Offerman

Nick Offerman has always felt a particular affection for the Land of the... Read more

Really Very Crunchy

A Beginner's Guide to Removing Toxins from Your Life without Adding Them to Your Personality

By: Emily Morrow
Narrated by: Emily Morrow
Length: 4 hours 49 minutes

Read by the author and her husband, Jason Morrow.Find your Inner Crunchy without becoming that person with this helpful guide from social media star Really Very Crunchy. Are you tired of being bombarded by toxins at every turn? Do you want a more natural, "crunchy" approach to the world (with or without the beige aesthetic)? Well, grab your... Read more

The Mushroom at the End of the World

On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

By: Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing
Narrated by: Susan Ericksen
Length: 11 hours 6 minutes

Matsutake is the most valuable mushroom in the world—and a weed that grows in human-disturbed forests across the northern hemisphere. Through its ability to nurture trees, matsutake helps forests to grow in daunting places. It is also an edible delicacy in Japan, where it sometimes commands astronomical prices. In all its contradictions,... Read more

All Creatures Great and Small

The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World's Most Beloved Animal Doctor

All Creatures Great and Small

By: James Herriot
Narrated by: Nicholas Ralph
Length: 15 hours 22 minutes

“The classic memoir of a young veterinarian who arrives in the remote Yorkshire Dales region in a changing era, post-WWI. Beautiful descriptions of farming life, workplace hi-jinx, small village society, and of course lovable, memorable animals. Read by the actor who plays James Herriot in the new adaptation on Masterpiece. I might be imagining... Read more

Under a White Sky

The Nature of the Future

By: Elizabeth Kolbert
Narrated by: Rebecca Lowman
Length: 6 hours 21 minutes

“Under a White Sky is a scary book. It's about climate change, invasive species, and how Louisiana is disappearing into the ocean. It's about how humans, as a species, have screwed up the planet, and how we tend to screw it up more when we try to fix our mistakes. It's also about how we're developing a bunch of new fixes to go after our old... Read more

The Stranger in the Woods

The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit

By: Michael Finkel
Narrated by: Mark Bramhall
Length: 6 hours 18 minutes

“This is one heck of a very strange true story. When Christopher Knight was just 20 years old, he drove his car north towards Maine. When the car gave out, he began walking, carrying a tent and a few belongings, hiding in the woods, then finding a place that he liked in between some boulders. He made a camp, where he lived for almost three... Read more

What an Owl Knows

The New Science of the World's Most Enigmatic Birds

By: Jennifer Ackerman
Narrated by: Jennifer Ackerman
Length: 9 hours 13 minutes

An instant New York Times bestseller!

A New York Times Notable Book of 2023

Named a Best Book of 2023 by Publishers Weekly

From the author of The Genius of Birds and The Bird Way, a brilliant scientific investigation into owls—the most elusive of birds—and why they exert such a hold on human imagination

With their forward gaze and quiet flight, owls... Read more

Fathoms

The World in the Whale

By: Rebecca Giggs
Narrated by: Shiromi Arserio
Length: 12 hours 5 minutes

“This isn't a scientists memoir about their life studying whales; it's really just a rambling of facts that held me and my friends in fascination as we listened to it on libro.fm during a road trip. WHALES ARE SO INTERESTING! Rebecca lives in Australia and became obsessed with whales when a young humpback washed up too high on her local beach and... Read more

Alfie and Me

What Owls Know, What Humans Believe

By: Carl Safina
Narrated by: Carl Safina
Length: 12 hours 19 minutes

When ecologist Carl Safina and his wife, Patricia, took in a near-death baby owl, they expected that, like other wild orphans they'd rescued, she'd be a temporary presence. But Alfie's feathers were not growing correctly, requiring prolonged care. As Alfie grew and gained strength, she became a part of the family, joining a menagerie of dogs and... Read more

Lessons for Survival

Mothering Against “the Apocalypse”

By: Emily Raboteau
Narrated by: Emily Raboteau
Length: 9 hours 37 minutes

This program is read by the author.

Award-winning author and critic Emily Raboteau uses the lens of motherhood to craft a powerfully moving meditation on race, climate, environmental justice—and what it takes to find shelter.

Lessons for Survival is a probing series of pilgrimages from the perspective of a mother struggling to raise her children... Read more

This Is Your Mind on Plants

By: Michael Pollan
Narrated by: Michael Pollan
Length: 7 hours 36 minutes

“This book helps illustrate ways in which the proper uses of plants that are designed to help us, are not recognized properly in our society. Read more

All Things Wise and Wonderful

The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World's Most Beloved Animal Doctor

All Creatures Great and Small

By: James Herriot
Narrated by: Nicholas Ralph
Length: 16 hours 2 minutes

**This program is read by Nicholas Ralph, star of the PBS Masterpiece series**

"Add in the narration of Nicholas Ralph, and you have a first-rate audio experience. Ralph plays Herriot in the PBS series, but he does not simply bank on his star power. He narrates the stories with empathy and emotion. His skill with voices really sets this work... Read more

Beaverland

How One Weird Rodent Made America

By: Leila Philip
Narrated by: Christine Lakin
Length: 12 hours 38 minutes

An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.  From award-winning writer Leila Philip, Beaverland is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how... Read more

The Shotgun Conservationist

Why Environmentalists Should Love Hunting

By: Brant MacDuff
Narrated by: Brant MacDuff
Length: 10 hours 50 minutes

“As a plant-based eater, I only picked up this book because we were hosting an event with Brant. After moderating and interviewing him, I was compelled by his arguments and passion. Now that I've listened to the book, I find it deeply researched, enormous in scope, very funny, and intensely thought-provoking. Brant narrates the audiobook, and... Read more

The Sounds of Life

How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants

By: Karen Bakker
Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
Length: 10 hours 24 minutes

This audiobook narrated by Suzanne Toren takes you on an amazing journey into the hidden realm of nature’s sounds

The natural world teems with remarkable conversations, many beyond human hearing range. Scientists are using groundbreaking digital technologies to uncover these astonishing sounds, revealing vibrant communication among our fellow... Read more

Fresh Banana Leaves

Healing Indigenous Landscapes through Indigenous Science

By: Jessica Hernandez, Ph.D.
Narrated by: Stacy Gonzalez
Length: 9 hours 35 minutes

A 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist in Science & Technology

An Indigenous environmental scientist breaks down why western conservationism isn't working--and offers Indigenous models informed by case studies, personal stories, and family histories that center the voices of Latin American women and land protectors.

Despite the... Read more

The Uninhabitable Earth

Life After Warming

By: David Wallace-Wells
Narrated by: David Wallace-Wells
Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”—Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

With a new afterword

It is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are... Read more

The Ride of Her Life

The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

By: Elizabeth Letts
Narrated by: Elizabeth Letts & Tavia Gilbert
Length: 10 hours 27 minutes

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion

“The gift Elizabeth Letts has is that she makes you feel you are the one taking this trip.... Read more

Brave the Wild River

The Untold Story of Two Women Who Mapped the Botany of the Grand Canyon

By: Melissa L. Sevigny
Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
Length: 10 hours 52 minutes

In the summer of 1938, botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter set off to run the Colorado River, accompanied by an ambitious and entrepreneurial expedition leader, a zoologist, and two amateur boatmen. With its churning waters and treacherous boulders, the Colorado was famed as the most dangerous river in the world. Journalists and veteran... Read more

The Great Displacement

Climate Change and the Next American Migration

By: Jake Bittle
Narrated by: Matt Godfrey
Length: 10 hours 26 minutes

Shortlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence

The “closely observed, compassionate, and far-sighted” (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Under a White Sky) story of climate migration in the United States—the personal stories of those experiencing displacement, the portraits of communities torn apart by disaster, and the... Read more

The Land in Our Bones

Plantcestral Herbalism and Healing Cultures from Syria to the Sinai--Earth-based pathways to ancestral stewardship and belonging in diaspora

By: Layla K. Feghali
Narrated by: Layla K. Feghali
Length: 13 hours 22 minutes

A profound and searching exploration of the herbs, foodways, and land-based medicines of Lebanon and Canaan—a deep invitation to remember and reconnect to our roots amid displacement and in diaspora.

Herbalist and author Layla K. Feghali shares a nuanced and layered cultural history of the healing plants of Southwest Asia and North Africa (the... Read more

Our Fragile Moment

How Lessons from Earth's Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis

By: Michael E. Mann
Narrated by: Tim Campbell
Length: 9 hours 38 minutes

In this sweeping work of science and history, the renowned climate scientist and author of The New Climate War shows us the conditions on Earth that allowed humans not only to exist but thrive, and how they are imperiled if we veer off course.
 
For the vast majority of its 4.54 billion years, Earth has proven it can manage just fine without... Read more

All Things Bright and Beautiful

The Warm and Joyful Memoirs of the World's Most Beloved Animal Doctor

All Creatures Great and Small

By: James Herriot
Narrated by: Nicholas Ralph
Length: 13 hours 22 minutes

**This program is read by Nicholas Ralph, star of the PBS Masterpiece series**

"Nicholas Ralph’s readings of Herriot’s stories are as comforting an experience as the show, and even more immersive." —The Houston Chronicle

A tie-in to the PBS Masterpiece series and Christmas special, available on streaming and home video.

The second volume in the... Read more