Environment & Nature audiobooks

The Fragile Species

By: Lewis Thomas

Narrated by: George Guidall

Length: 8 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

Whether he is discussing our origins as archaebacteria or the politics of trench warfare, physician-scientist Lewis Thomas is always insightful and exuberantly engaged in his world. This collection of essays deals with everything from AIDS to ozone depletion, and reveals the author's clear thinking and his ability to cut through the fog of... Read more

How the Dog Became the Dog

By: Mark Derr

Narrated by: David Colacci

Length: 8 hours 22 minutes

Abridged: No

That the dog evolved from the wolf is an accepted fact of evolution and history, but the question of how wolf became dog has remained a mystery, obscured by myth and legend. How the Dog Became the Dog posits that dog was an evolutionary inevitability in the nature of the wolf and its human soul mate.



The natural temperament and social structure... Read more

Folks, This Ain't Normal

By: Joel Salatin

Narrated by: Joel Salatin

Length: 15 hours 14 minutes

Abridged: No

From farmer Joel Salatin's point of view, life in the 21st century just ain't normal. In FOLKS, THIS AIN'T NORMAL, he discusses how far removed we are from the simple, sustainable joy that comes from living close to the land and the people we love. Salatin has many thoughts on what normal is and shares practical and philosophical ideas for... Read more

Blizzard!

By: Jim Murphy

Narrated by: Taylor Mali

Length: 2 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

On March 12, 1888, hurricane-force winds and unrelenting snow began to bring the region of Virginia to Maine to its knees. During the next three days, the Great Blizzard raged out of control, devastating every community in its path. Through the eyes and words of survivors and victims alike, as well as the careful research for which Newbery Honor... Read more

The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection

By: Charles Darwin

Narrated by: Robin Field

Length: 23 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

The Origin of Species sold out on the first day of its publication in 1859. It is the major book of the nineteenth century and one of the most readable and accessible of the great revolutionary works of the scientific imagination. Though, in fact, little read, most people know what it says—at least they think they do.The Origin of Species was... Read more

Weather Watchers (It's a Thunderstorm!)

By: Nadia Higgins

Narrated by: Uncredited

Length: 49 minutes

Abridged: No

Weather affects everyone every day! The Weather Watchers series will explain what different kinds of weather are like, how they form, and how to follow weather patterns. Informative sidebars, fun facts, and a glossary will aid your young listeners in understanding the weather they are watching! Read more

The Sacred Acre

By: Mark Tabb

Narrated by: Stefan Rudnicki

Length: 6 hours 27 minutes

Abridged: No

When tragedy devastated a small town, an unlikely source of inspiration pieced the community back together in this dramatic true story. On a Sunday in May 2008, an F5 tornado hit the town of Parkersburg, Iowa, killing eight people and destroying 250 homes and businesses within a span of 34 seconds. The next day, Parkersburg's beloved football... Read more

My First Summer in the Sierra

By: John Muir

Narrated by: Brett Barry

Length: 6 hours

Abridged: No

It was June of 1869 when John Muir reluctantly accepted a job herding sheep from the central valley of California to the headwaters of the Merced and Tuolumne Rivers, high into the Sierra Nevadas and deep into the Yosemite region. He felt ill-equipped for the work, and yet the opportunity thrilled his adventurous spirit. With a notebook tied to... Read more

Honeybee Decline

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 6 minutes

Abridged: No

Five years ago, honeybees began dying in large numbers and hives were becoming defunct. Spencer Michels reports on the scientists who are still trying to figure out why this is happening and what can be done to help the problem. Read more

Finding Everett Ruess

By: David Roberts

Narrated by: Arthur Morey

Length: 13 hours 7 minutes

Abridged: No

The definitive biography of Everett Ruess, the artist, writer, and eloquent celebrator of the wilderness whose bold solo explorations of the American West and mysterious disappearance in the Utah desert at age twenty have earned him a large and devoted cult following.

“Easily one of [Roberts’s] best . . . thoughtful and passionate . . . a... Read more

Getting Dirty: The Joy Of Growing Food In Your Own Backyard

By: Rachel Kaplan

Narrated by: Justine Willis Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Rachel Kaplan describes the Urban Homesteading Movement as “…not only a food movement but also a movement of people who are about conservation of energy, water, and waste. It is a movement of learning to live with less impact on the earth, with a greater sense of what it means to be part of the place where we live, and to be thinking ecologically.” Read more

Wicked Plants

By: Amy Stewart

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 4 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Beware! The sordid lives of plants behaving badly.



A tree that sheds poison daggers; a glistening red seed that stops the heart; a shrub that causes paralysis; a vine that strangles; and a leaf that triggered a war. Amy Stewart, bestselling author of Flower Confidential, takes on over two hundred of Mother Nature's most appalling creations in an... Read more

Demon Fish

By: Juliet Eilperin

Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne

Length: 11 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

A group of traders huddles around a pile of dried shark fins on a gleaming white floor in Hong Kong. A Papua New Guinean elder shoves off in his hand-carved canoe, ready to summon a shark with ancient magic. A scientist finds a rare shark in Indonesia and forges a deal with villagers so it and other species can survive.

In this eye-opening... Read more

Elixir

By: Brian M. Fagan

Narrated by: James Langton

Length: 13 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

Elixir spans five thousand years, from the beginnings of civilization to the parched American Sun Belt of today. It is a story of human endeavor: our present-day interaction with this most essential resource has deep roots in the remote past, and every human culture has been shaped by its relationship to water.



For the earliest hunter-gatherers,... Read more

Wicked Bugs

By: Amy Stewart

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 5 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: No

In this darkly comical look at the sinister side of our relationship with the natural world, Stewart has tracked down over one hundred of our worst entomological foes—creatures that infest, infect, and generally wreak havoc on human affairs. From the world's most painful hornet, to the flies that transmit deadly diseases, to millipedes that stop... Read more

Serve God, Save the Planet

By: J. Matthew Sleeth, M.D.

Narrated by: Dick Hill

Length: 6 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Not long ago, J. Matthew Sleeth had a fantastic life and a great job as chief of the medical staff at a large hospital. He was living the American dream—until he saw an increasing number of his patients suffering from cancer, asthma, and other chronic diseases. He began to suspect that the Earth and its inhabitants were in deep trouble. Turning... Read more

Mississippi River Floodwater

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 6 minutes

Abridged: No

A 15-mile stretch of the swollen Mississippi River, closed Tuesday due to pressure on levees, has been reopened to barges moving one at a time. Tom Bearden reports on the short- and long-term environmental effects the floodwater could have on Lake Pontchartrain, oyster beds and more. Read more

Sacred Knowledge From The Indigenous Wisdom Of Hawaii

By: Hank Wesselman, Ph.D.

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Wesselman shares the spiritual knowledge he gathered from working with the late Hale Makua, a revered Hawaiian Kahuna wisdom keeper. Included are insights such as: the 3 directives of a spiritual warrior, the 7 life roles and how they are expressed in both positive and negative forms, the difference between a shaman and a medicine person, and... Read more

The Nature Principle

By: Richard Louv

Narrated by: Rick Adamson

Length: 10 hours 16 minutes

Abridged: No

The Nature Principle presents a compelling case that a conscious reconnection to nature can make us whole again and that the future will belong to nature-smart individuals, families, businesses, and communities. Supported by evidence from emerging empirical and theoretical research and eye-opening anecdotes, Louv shows that when we tap into the... Read more

Assembling California

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 9 hours 50 minutes

Abridged: No

At various times in a span of fifteen years, John McPhee made geological field surveys in the company of Eldridge Moores, a tectonicist at the University of California at Davis. The result of these trips is Assembling California, a cross-section in human and geologic time, from Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada through the golden foothills of the... Read more

The Wild Rover

By: Mike Parker

Narrated by: Mike Parker

Length: 10 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Mike Parker, bestselling author of Map Addict, is back with a very full, intelligent and witty exploration into a glorious and passionate British subject – footpaths and the history of land ownership. Mike discovers how these paths have become part of our cultural landscape and why, at the tender age of 44, he suddenly finds... Read more

The Bond

By: Wayne Pacelle

Narrated by: Walter Dixon & Wayne Pacelle

Length: 12 hours 38 minutes

Abridged: No

“If the animals knew about this book they would, without doubt, confer on Wayne Pacelle, their highest honor.”
—Jane Goodall“The Bond is the best overall book on animals I have ever read. Brilliant and moving.”
—John Mackey, CEO and Co-founder of Whole Foods Market“The Bond is at once heart-breaking and heart-warming. No animal escapes Wayne... Read more

The Big Thirst

By: Charles Fishman

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 13 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

The water coming out of your tap is four billion years old and might have been slurped by a Tyrannosaurus Rex. We will always have exactly as much water on Earth as we have ever had. Water cannot be destroyed, and it can always be made clean enough for drinking again. In fact, water can be made so clean that it actually becomes toxic.



As Charles... Read more

Oceana

By: Ted Danson & Michael D'Orso

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

Length: 6 hours 2 minutes

Abridged: No

Most people know Ted Danson as the affable bartender Sam Malone in the long-running television series Cheers. But fewer realize that over the course of the past two and a half decades, Danson has tirelessly devoted himself to the cause of heading off a looming global catastrophe—the massive destruction of our planet's oceanic biosystems and the... Read more