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Karen Bass, General Editor
Nature's Great Events: The Most Amazing Natural Events on the Planet
In conjunction with the forthcoming Discovery Channel series Nature's Most Amazing Events, comes [this] chronicle of six of nature's most awesome annual feats.… Lush photographs … and commentary from the photographers themselves put readers in the middle of the seasonal phenomena that shape and sustain the earth.… The detailed—almost reverent—images of imperiled habitats coupled with BassÆs call to urgency make this a beautiful, timely book."—Publishers Weekly, starred review
See videos from the BBC series, a gallery of photographs from the book, and sample pages (PDF format, 1.9Mb).

Jonathan Silvertown
An Orchard Invisible: A Natural History of Seeds
"Just as a seed contains the ability to create a whole plant, the evolution of seeds can serve as a microcosm for plant evolution.… Like Michael Pollan in The Botany of Desire, Silvertown cites historical attitudes and quotations about particular plants. But he focuses primarily on the science of plant evolution.… Silvertown writes both elegantly and clearly, and the book is as pleasurable to read as it is informative."—Library Journal
Read an excerpt.

Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce
Wild Justice: The Moral Lives of Animals
"Humans think of themselves as the only moral animals. But what about the elephant who sets a group of captive antelope free, the rat who refuses to shock another to earn a reward, and the magpie who grieves for her young? Cognitive animal behaviorist Bekoff and philosopher Pierce argue that nonhuman animals also are moral beingsùwith not just building blocks or precursors of morality but the real deal."—Discover

Joel Berger
The Better to Eat You With: Fear in the Animal World
"Can naive prey avoid extinction when their predators are reintroduced?… The excitement and drudgery of fieldwork, combined with the author's discoveries on how fear of predators changes the behavior of their prey, make for a book that teaches and thrills equally."—Booklist

Barry Barnes and John Dupré
Genomes and What to Make of Them
"What is novel about Genomes and What to Make of Them is the impressive scope of the project, which covers key issues around the politics of genomics in an accessible way, taking care to outline in clear language some very complex scientific arguments in a way that allows the authors to deconstruct various arguments about the risks and opportunities of genomics. I know of no other book that captures the social implications of genomics in quite such a comprehensive and accessible yet insightful manner."—Peter Robbins, Open University
Listen to an audio interview.

Alexandre Meinesz
How Life Began: Evolution’s Three Geneses
"How Life Began elucidates three origins, or geneses, of life—bacteria, cells, and multicellular organisms—and shows how evolution has sculpted life to its current biodiversity through four main events—mutation, recombination, natural selection, and geologic cataclysm."

William H. Calvin
Global Fever: How to Treat Climate Change
"This is perhaps the most accessible book that I have ever read about how humanity is changing Earth’s climate, and what can be done about it."—David Archer, author of Global Warming: Understanding the Forecast

Eric Lambin
The Middle Path: Avoiding Environmental Catastrophe
"Lambin … explores the intricate relationship between human beings and their environment on a global scale and at the community level and discusses the roles of technology, institutions, environmental markets, and cultural change in solving potentially fatal environmental problems."—Library Journal
Read an excerpt.

David Lee
Nature’s Palette: The Science of Plant Color
"Lee does a masterful job in explaining the science underlying the colors produced by plants, and in doing so shows how they both illuminate and enrich our lives. No trip to the grocery store, the florist, or even out your front door will be the same after reading this book."—N. Michele Holbrook, Harvard University

Pierre Laszlo
Citrus: A History
"Laszlo is what Dr. Doolittle called a good noticer, a connoisseur of life’s quirks and particularities, of all that is glorious in the everyday.… Altogether charming, eccentric, erudite, and definitely worth the price."—Times Higher Education
Read six citrus recipes.

Keith Heyer Meldahl
Hard Road West: History and Geology along the Gold Rush Trail
"[Meldahl] draws on his professional knowledge to explain the geology of the West, showing how centuries of geological activity had a direct effect on the routes taken by the travelers.… Meldhal provides a novel account of the largest overland migration since the Crusades."—Science News
Read an excerpt.

Oceans: A Scientific American Reader
Oceans collects articles from the past decade of Scientific American, including recent pieces written in the wake of the 2004 tsunami. It features articles that investigate the origins of the world’s oceans, the diversity of life in the water, the state of global fisheries, the dangers of natural disasters, and the imprints of humans on this fragile frontier.

Pascal Richet
A Natural History of Time
"Not only does A Natural History of Time shed light on key advances in the history of science, from the ancient Greeks to the X-ray, it reminds us of the real heroism and nobility of the scientific enterprise."—Adam Kirsch, New York Sun

Dorothy L. Cheney and Robert M. Seyfarth
Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind
"Baboon Metaphysics is a distillation of a big chunk of academic lives: the wife-and-husband team of Dorothy Cheney and Robert Seyfarth plus a flock of their students and friends. It is exactly what such a book should be—full of imaginative experiments, meticulous scholarship, limpid literary style, and above all, truly important questions."—Alison Jolly, Science
Read an excerpt.

James B. Nardi
Life in the Soil: A Guide for Naturalists and Gardeners
"The bright yellow jelly that appeared under the tree in our front garden was a slime mould’s plasmodium, I now know, thanks to Life in the Soil. Biologist Nardi not only catalogues organisms—from algae to wombats—that live in soil, but also explains their roles in the web of life."—Jonathan Beard, New Scientist

Claire Nouvian
The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss
"A stunning collection of more than 160 color photos. … Species from as far down as four and a half miles are depicted in exquisite detail; most are mere centimeters long, though the giant squid, a timid creature despite its size, grows to almost 60 feet. Fifteen short, jargon-free essays assembled by editor and French journalist Nouvian … flesh out the fantastical images with scientific fact."—Publishers Weekly
See a website for the book.

Evolution: A Scientific American Reader
Considering separately the evolution of the universe, cells, dinosaurs, and humans, these thirty articles drawn from the pages of Scientific American were written by some of the world's most respected evolutionary scientists and include ground-breaking work on the expanding cosmos, the birth of eukaryotes, the role of chance and contingency, the schematic of human evolution, and much more.

Michael Williams
Deforesting the Earth: From Prehistory to Global Crisis, An Abridgment
"Anyone who doubts the power of history to inform the present should read this closely argued and sweeping survey. This is rich, timely, and sobering historical fare written in a measured, non-sensationalist style by a master of his craft. One only hopes (almost certainly vainly) that today's policymakers take its lessons to heart."—Brian Fagan, Los Angeles Times

Biology and natural history

from the University of Chicago Press

The books in this subject catalog are not all the books published by the University of Chicago Press in this field, but only our most recent and important books. We recommend you start with this catalog. For a more extensive listing you may go to the subject index of our complete catalog, or you may search our title database using a subject term. To see just our very latest books (titles released in the last six months) go to our new releases pages.

Categories: General interest • Guides and handbooks • Evolutionary biology • Ecology • Tropical biology and conservation biology • Paleontology and geology • Behavioral biology • Plant science and botany • Biomechanics, development, morphology, and physiology • See also

General interest books

Guides and reference

Evolutionary biology

Ecology

Tropical biology and conservation biology

Paleontology and geology

Behavioral biology

Plant science and botany

Biomechanics, development, morphology, and physiology

See also:

• Our catalog of history and philosophy of science titles
• The Interspecific Interactions series
• The Science and Its Conceptual Foundations series
• he Wildlife Behavior and Ecology series
• From our Journals Division:

• Information about The American Journal of Human Genetics
• Information about The American Naturalist
• Information about the International Journal of Plant Sciences
• Information about Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
• Information about The Quarterly Review of Biology

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