Environment & Nature audiobooks

The Invaders

By: Pat Shipman

Narrated by: Donna Postel

Length: 7 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

Approximately 200,000 years ago, as modern humans began to radiate out from their evolutionary birthplace in Africa, Neanderthals were already thriving in Europe—descendants of a much earlier migration of the African genus Homo. But when modern humans eventually made their way to Europe 45,000 years ago, Neanderthals suddenly vanished. Ever... Read more

How to Shit in the Woods

By: Kathleen Meyer

Narrated by: Khristine Hvam

Length: 4 hours 25 minutes

Abridged: No

World changes come fast and furious, and in the backcountry it is no different. The practice of "packing-it-out"—adopted to protect high-use areas and fragile ecosystems—is here to stay. We are now often urged or even required to haul our poop home. To assist with all this responsible human waste disposal, Kathleen Meyer discusses the latest in... Read more

Desert Solitaire

By: Edward Abbey

Narrated by: Michael Kramer

Length: 11 hours 31 minutes

Abridged: No

When Desert Solitaire was first published in 1968, it became the focus of a nationwide cult. Rude and sensitive. Thought-provoking and mystical. Angry and loving. Both Abbey and this book are all of these and more. Here, the legendary author of The Monkey Wrench Gang, Abbey's Road, and many other critically acclaimed books vividly captures the... 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

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

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

The Great Penguin Rescue

By: Dyan deNapoli

Narrated by: Coleen Marlo

Length: 8 hours 55 minutes

Abridged: No

On June 23, 2000, the iron-ore carrier MV Treasure, en route from Brazil to China, foundered off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, spilling 1,300 tons of oil into the ocean and contaminating the habitat of 75,000 penguins. Realizing that 41 percent of the world's population of African penguins could perish, local conservation officials... Read more

Storms of My Grandchildren

By: James Hansen

Narrated by: John Allen Nelson

Length: 12 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

In Storms of My Grandchildren, James Hansen—the nation's leading scientist on climate issues—speaks out for the first time with the full truth about global warming: the planet is hurtling even more rapidly than previously acknowledged to a climatic point of no return. Although Hansen was Al Gore's science adviser for the 2006 documentary An... Read more

Now or Never

By: Tim Flannery

Narrated by: Michael Page

Length: 3 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

In Now or Never, internationally acclaimed author Tim Flannery has written a book that is at once a forceful call to action to combat global warming and a deeply and often surprisingly pragmatic road map toward sustainability.



Utilizing the most up-to-the-minute data available, Flannery examines the environmental challenges we face and their... Read more

The Daily Coyote

By: Shreve Stockton

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell

Length: 7 hours 52 minutes

Abridged: No

When city girl Shreve Stockton set out to ride her Vespa from San Francisco to New York, she never imagined she would end up making a log cabin in Wyoming her home, falling in love with a trapper, and working as a ranch hand. She also could not have predicted adopting Charlie, an orphaned coyote pup. In a world where coyotes are hunted as... 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

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

The Whale Warriors

By: Peter Heller

Narrated by: James Boles

Length: 10 hours 54 minutes

Abridged: No

In the tradition of The Perfect Storm, The Whale Warriors takes us on a hair-raising journey aboard a whale-saving pirate ship with a vigilante crew whose mission is to stop illegal Japanese whaling in the stormy remote seas off Antarctica.



For two months, journalist Peter Heller rode aboard the vegan pirate ship Farley Mowat as it stalked its... Read more

The Loved Dog

By: Andrea Cagan & Tamar Geller

Narrated by: Renée Raudman

Length: 5 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

More than fifteen years ago, Tamar Geller began her
career as a dog trainer by observing a scientific study
of wolves in the wild. She realized that the
socialization and parenting techniques they used to
raise their cubs were rooted in bonding,
communication, and play—not in aggression,
dominance, or punishment. If people used these
techniques when... Read more

The Tree

By: Colin Tudge

Narrated by: Enn Reitel

Length: 19 hours 51 minutes

Abridged: No

A blend of history, science, philosophy, and environmentalism, The Tree is an engaging and elegant look at the life of the tree and what modern research tells us about their future.

There are redwoods in California that were ancient by the time Columbus first landed, and pines still alive that germinated around the time humans invented... Read more

Engineering Eden

By: Jordan Fisher Smith

Narrated by: Traber Burns

Length: 12 hours 1 minute

Abridged: No

The fascinating story of the century-long attempt to control nature in the American wilderness as told through the prism of a tragic death at YellowstoneWhen twenty-five-year-old Harry Walker was killed by a bear in Yellowstone Park in 1972, the civil trial prompted by his death became a proxy for bigger questions about American wilderness... Read more

Let My People Go Surfing

By: Yvon Chouinard

Narrated by: Christopher Grove & Yvon Chouinard

Length: 7 hours 58 minutes

Abridged: No

In his long-awaited memoir, Yvon Chouinard-legendary climber, businessman, environmentalist, and founder of Patagonia, Inc.-shares the persistence and courage that have gone into being head of one of the most respected and environmentally responsible companies on earth. From his youth as the son of a French Canadian blacksmith to the thrilling,... 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

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

The Last of the Tribe

By: Monte Reel

Narrated by: Mark Bramhall

Length: 8 hours 59 minutes

Abridged: No

Throughout the centuries, the Amazon has yielded many of its secrets, but it still holds a few great mysteries. In 1996 experts got their first glimpse of one: a lone Indian, a tribe of one, hidden in the forests of southwestern Brazil. Previously uncontacted tribes are extremely rare, but a one-man tribe was unprecedented. And like all of the... Read more

The Inner Life of Cats

By: Thomas McNamee

Narrated by: Bob Reed

Length: 8 hours 24 minutes

Abridged: No

Our feline companions are much-loved but often mysterious. In The Inner Life of Cats, Thomas McNamee blends scientific reportage with engaging, illustrative anecdotes about his own beloved cat, Augusta, to explore and illuminate the secrets and enigmas of her kind.

As it begins, The Inner Life of Cats follows the development of the young Augusta... Read more

Never Out of Season

By: Rob Dunn

Narrated by: Dan Woren

Length: 11 hours 28 minutes

Abridged: No

The bananas we eat today aren't your parents' bananas: We eat a recognizable, consistent breakfast fruit that was standardized in the 1960s from dozens into one basic banana. But because of that, the banana we love is dangerously susceptible to a pathogen that might wipe them out.

That's the story of our food today: Modern science has brought... Read more

Fossil Men

By: Kermit Pattison

Narrated by: Roger Wayne

Length: 15 hours 20 minutes

Abridged: No

""A rip-roaring tale, Fossil Men is one of those rare books that can be a prism through which to view the world, exposing the fabric of the Earth and illuminating the Tree of Life."" —New York Times bestselling author Peter Nichols
A behind-the-scenes account of the shocking discovery of the skeleton of “Ardi,” a human ancestor far older than... Read more

Wild Sex

By: Carin Bondar

Narrated by: Erin Bennett

Length: 10 hours 37 minutes

Abridged: No

A brilliantly engaging guide to the reproductive habits of creatures great and small, based on the author’s popular web series Wild Sex, which has received over fourteen million views Birds do it, bees do it―every member of the animal kingdom does it, from fruit flies to blue whales. But if you think humans have a tough time dating, try having... Read more