Provides a history of zoos, examines the faults of zoos, and argues for their dissolution.

Combining stunning photos with a deeply moving essay, this book presents a passionate and unflinching exploration of zoos and what they teach us about animals, ourselves, and our relationship to the wild. This compelling work paints an unforgettable portrait not only of "life on the inside", but of our views of the natural world and our place in it.

Over the last 40 years, the world has lost more than fifty percent of its wildlife population. The amount of carbon dioxide has exceeded the critical 400 ppm limit and emissions continue to rise. The oceans now contain only 10 percent of the original mass of fish. Capitalism creates an elite of a few super-rich, while ever larger masses of people are impoverished. We must take the situation seriously, unite old movements, create new movements and devise new strategies to counter the destruction of our world and rising social inequality with decisive resistance. Time is short. Environmental and social justice movements must move from the defensive to the offensive if we want to leave our children and grandchildren an earth on which life is still possible.

Hailed conservationist Carl Safina examines animal personhood as told through the inspired narrative portraits of elephants, wolves, and dolphins

Nineteenth-century scientist David Starr Jordan built one of the most important fish specimen collections ever seen, until the 1906 San Francisco earthquake shattered his life's work.

Roz the robot discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island with no memory of where she is from or why she is there, and her only hope of survival is to try to learn about her new environment from the island's hostile inhabitants.

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In April 1992 a young man from a well-to-do family hitchhiked to Alaska and walked alone into the wilderness north of Mt. McKinley. Four months later, his decomposed body was found by a moose hunter. This is the unforgettable story of how Christopher Johnson McCandless came to die. "It may be nonfiction, but Into the Wild is a mystery of the highest order." —Entertainment Weekly McCandess had given $25,000 in savings to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, burned all the cash in his wallet, and invented a new life for himself. Not long after, he was dead. Into the Wild is the mesmerizing, heartbreaking tale of an enigmatic young man who goes missing in the wild and whose story captured the world’s attention. Immediately after graduating from college in 1991, McCandless had roamed through the West and Southwest on a vision quest like those made by his heroes Jack London and John Muir. In the Mojave Desert he abandoned his car, stripped it of its license plates, and burned all of his cash. He would give himself a new name, Alexander Supertramp, and, unencumbered by money and belongings, he would be free to wallow in the raw, unfiltered experiences that nature presented. Craving a blank spot on the map, McCandless simply threw the maps away. Leaving behind his desperate parents and sister, he vanished into the wild. Jon Krakauer constructs a clarifying prism through which he reassembles the disquieting facts of McCandless's short life. Admitting an interest that borders on obsession, he searches for the clues to the drives and desires that propelled McCandless. When McCandless's innocent mistakes turn out to be irreversible and fatal, he becomes the stuff of tabloid headlines and is dismissed for his naiveté, pretensions, and hubris. He is said to have had a death wish but wanting to die is a very different thing from being compelled to look over the edge. Krakauer brings McCandless's uncompromising pilgrimage out of the shadows, and the peril, adversity, and renunciation sought by this enigmatic young man are illuminated with a rare understanding—and not an ounce of sentimentality. Into the Wild is a tour de force. The power and luminosity of Jon Krakauer's stoytelling blaze through every page.