Environment & Nature audiobooks

Autumnal Tints

By: Henry David Thoreau

Narrated by: Brett Barry

Length: 1 hour 11 minutes

Abridged: No

From the purple grasses of August, to the yellow elms of October, to the scarlet oak leaves of November, Henry David Thoreau casts his eye on the brilliant colors of autumn and guides us on a journey through the season’s bounty. In this classic essay, first published in 1862, Thoreau delights in fall’s foliage and reveals both a practical and... Read more

Dark Summit

By: Nick Heil

Narrated by: David Drummond

Length: 8 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

In early May 2006, a young British climber named David Sharp lay dying near the top of Mount Everest while forty other climbers walked past him on their way to the summit. A week later, Lincoln Hall, a seasoned Australian climber, was left for dead near the same spot. Hall's death was reported around the world, but the next day he was found... Read more

Saving the World, One Mushroom At a Time

By: Paul Stamets

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 58 minutes

Abridged: No

Paul Stamets tells stories of the healing power of mushrooms, and how they may play a key role in reversing the destructive impact our modern technology and industry have had on our planet. His passion for his work is clear, and he’s likely to inoculate you with a fascination for these organisms, which have so very much to teach us. Read more

Cradle to Cradle

By: Michael Braungart & William McDonough

Narrated by: Stephen Hoye

Length: 5 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: No

"Reduce, reuse, recycle," urge environmentalists; in other words, do more with less in order to minimize damage. As William McDonough and Michael Braungart argue in their provocative, visionary book, however, this approach perpetuates a one-way, "cradle to grave" manufacturing model that dates to the Industrial Revolution and casts off as much... Read more

The Pig Who Sang to the Moon

By: Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

Narrated by: Tim Jerome

Length: 7 hours 9 minutes

Abridged: No

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson's groundbreaking When Elephants Weep explored emotions in the animal kingdom, particularly from animals in the wild. Now, he reveals startling evidence that barnyard creatures have complex feelings too … among them, love, loyalty, friendship, sadness, grief, and sorrow. Weaving history, literature, science, and his own... Read more

Impacts of Global Climate Change

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 8 minutes

Abridged: No

In Shishmaref, Alaska -- a 600-person village 20 miles south of the Arctic Circle -- residents are feeling the effects of climate change: earlier sea ice melts and increasing storm surges. Tom Bearden reports on how the residents are coping. Read more

Furnace of Creation, Cradle of Destruction - Abridged

By: Roy Chester

Narrated by: Bill Weideman

Length: 7 hours 19 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Over the past few years, devastating tsunamis off the coast of the Indian Ocean have killed hundreds of thousands of people. Even more alarmingly, scientists predict that these tsunamis, as well as a series of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, may eventually threaten Hawaii, California, and Oregon. The cause of this trinity of natural... Read more

Young Men & Fire - Abridged

By: Norman Maclean

Narrated by: John Maclean

Length: 6 hours 1 minute

Abridged: Yes

On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the U.S. Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in Montana wilderness. Less than an hour later, all but three were dead or fatally burned in a "blowup," an explosive 2,000 degree firestorm 300 feet deep and 200 feet tall. Winner of a... Read more

The Really Inconvenient Truths

By: Iain Murray

Narrated by: Robertson Dean

Length: 10 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

Did you know that pollutants and estrogen from contraceptives are causing male fish in America to develop female sex organs? Or that ethanol, the liberals' favorite fuel, is destroying the world's rainforests? We hear about AIDS in Africa, but the number one killer of children in Africa is malaria, and guess who banned the pesticide that used to... Read more

The Necessary Revolution

By: Peter M. Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz & ...

Narrated by: Ted Barker

Length: 13 hours 43 minutes

Abridged: No

Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings – ones that create more energy than they use – are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more... Read more

The Necessary Revolution - Abridged

By: Peter M. Senge, Bryan Smith, Nina Kruschwitz & ...

Narrated by: Patrick Frederic

Length: 6 hours 6 minutes

Abridged: Yes

Imagine a world in which the excess energy from one business would be used to heat another. Where buildings need less and less energy around the world, and where “regenerative” commercial buildings – ones that create more energy than they use – are being designed. A world in which environmentally sound products and processes would be more... Read more

The Snake Charmer

By: Jamie James

Narrated by: William Hughes

Length: 5 hours 5 minutes

Abridged: No

One of the most brilliant biologists of our time and a charismatic daredevil, Dr. Joe Slowinski had been obsessed with venomous snakes since his youth. In 2001, Slowinski led a team of young scientists deep into the wilds of Burma on a final tragic expedition. Immediately after being bitten by the many-banded krait, the deadliest serpent in... Read more

Walden

By: Henry David Thoreau

Narrated by: Mel Foster

Length: 11 hours 42 minutes

Abridged: No

Walden is the classic account of two years spent by Henry David Thoreau living at Walden Pond near Concord, Massachusetts. The story is detailed in its accounts of Thoreau's day-to-day activities, observations, and undertakings to survive out in the wilderness for two years. Thoreau's journal is an exquisite account of a man seeking a more... Read more

An Inconvenient Truth - Abridged

By: Al Gore

Narrated by: Beau Bridges, Cynthia Nixon & Blair Underwood

Length: TBA

Abridged: Yes

Grammy Award Nominee for Best Spoken Word Album!

The climate crisis may at times appear to be happening slowly, but in fact it is happening very quickly -- and has become a true planetary emergency. The Chinese expression for crisis consists of two characters. The first is a symbol for danger; the second is a symbol for opportunity. In order to... Read more

The Practice of Settlement, Finding a Sense of Place

By: John Lane

Narrated by: Michael Toms

Length: 57 minutes

Abridged: No

Lane drew a circle on a map that represented a one-mile radius from his home, and explored every facet of the place including the topography, history, ancient and current citizenry, and industry. This exploration sharpened his sense of place and serves as a model for how we might look at our own homes, terrain, and communities. Read more

Common Wealth

By: Jeffrey D. Sachs

Narrated by: Malcolm Hillgartner

Length: 12 hours 30 minutes

Abridged: No

“Lucid, quietly urgent, and relentlessly logical . . . this is Bigthink with a capital B.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Common Wealth explains the most basic economic reckoning that the world faces.” —Al Gore, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize and former vice president of the United States

In Common Wealth, Jeffrey D. Sachs-one of the... Read more

To See Every Bird on Earth

By: Dan Koeppel

Narrated by: John McDonough

Length: 10 hours 8 minutes

Abridged: No

Richard Koeppel's obsession began at age twelve, in Queens, New York, when he first spotted a Brown Thrasher, and jotted the sighting in a notebook. Several decades, one failed marriage, and two sons later, he set out to see every bird on earth, becoming a member of a subculture of competitive bird watchers worldwide all pursuing the same goal.... Read more

The Second John McPhee Reader, Part Two

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 9 hours 12 minutes

Abridged: No

For a person who has not encountered John McPhee's lively writing, The Second John McPhee Reader is the perfect introduction. McPhee, author of Coming Into the Country, punctuates his delightful prose with a sharp sense of humor, and a fascination with things most of us never bother to notice. Whether he's profiling a northern Maine game warden... Read more

The Second John McPhee Reader, Part One

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 7 hours 35 minutes

Abridged: No

For a person who has not encountered John McPhee's lively writing, The Second John McPhee Reader is the perfect introduction. McPhee, author of Coming Into the Country, and Assembling California punctuates his delightful prose with a sharp sense of humor and a fascination with things most of us never bother to notice. Whether he's working for a... Read more

Rising from the Plains

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: Nelson Runger

Length: 7 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

Annals of the Former World is the result of a 20-year journey. During that time, John McPhee, author of 25 books and noted writer for the New Yorker, crisscrossed the United States, roughly following the 40th parallel. The geological insights and wonderful descriptions McPhee packed into his accounts of these trips earned his remarkable book a... Read more

The Weather Makers

By: Tim Flannery

Narrated by: Drew De Carvalho

Length: 11 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

From Dr. Tim Flannery, one of the world's foremost experts on conservation and ecology, comes a book of immeasurable importance. Hailed by Kirkus Reviews as a "powerful and persuasive" work that is "sure to provoke strong reaction," The Weather Makers is among the finest examinations of climate change ever written. Originally skeptical of global... Read more

Model of Dinosaur Exhibit

By: PBS NewsHour

Narrated by: PBS NewsHour

Length: 6 minutes

Abridged: No

The Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh renovated its dinosaur exhibit to provide a more realistic picture of how dinosaurs lived and interacted with one another more than 100 million years ago. Read more

The Founding Fish

By: John McPhee

Narrated by: John McPhee

Length: 14 hours 11 minutes

Abridged: No

The Founding Fish is the shad, and John McPhee's veneration for it is both scientific and culinary. McPhee was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Annals of the Former World. Noted for his accessible and perceptive studies of the physical world, he weaves together strands of personal, natural, and national history in this absorbing study that traces... Read more

Evolution

By: Edward J. Larson

Narrated by: John McDonough

Length: 9 hours 41 minutes

Abridged: No

Edward J. Larson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and eminent science historian. This marvelously readable, yet sumptuously erudite work traces the development of the scientific theory of evolution. From Darwin's essential trip to the GalApagos, to the most contemporary studies in sociobiology, this work takes listeners both into the field and... Read more