Imagine a Minneapolis so small that, on calm days, the roar of St. Anthony Falls could be heard in town, a time when passenger pigeons roosted in neighborhood oak trees. Now picture a dapper professor conducting his ornithology class (the university's first) by streetcar to Lake Harriet for a morning of bird-watching. The students were mostly young women--in sunhats, sailor tops, and long skirts, with binoculars strung around their necks. The professor was Thomas Sadler Roberts (1858-1946), a doctor for three decades, a bird lover virtually from birth, the father of Minnesota ornithology, and the man who, perhaps more than any other, promoted the study of the state's natural history. "A Love Affair with Birds" is the first full biography of this key figure in Minnesota's past. Roberts came to Minnesota as a boy and began keeping detailed accounts of Minneapolis's birds. These journals, which became the basis for his landmark work "The Birds of Minnesota," also inform this book, affording a view of the state's rich avian life in its early days--and of a young man whose passion for birds and practice of medicine among Minneapolis's elite eventually dovetailed in his launching of the beloved Bell Museum of Natural History. Bird enthusiast, doctor, author, curator, educator, conservationist: every chapter in Roberts's life is also a chapter in the state's history, and in his story acclaimed author Sue Leaf--an avid bird enthusiast and nature lover herself--captures a true Minnesota character and his time.

There have been football books which have told their tale through the partisan heart of a besotted fan, and those that have dissected their subject through the scientific mind of an objective writer. But rarely does one fuse the blind passion of a lifelong supporter with the cold eye of an award-winning journalist in the way 44 Years With The Same Bird does. That bird is the Liver Bird, and on the surface this book is a pitch-side view of the entire modern era of Britain's most successful football club. It is Brian Reade's take on the extraordinary stories behind the 48 trophies he has seen Liverpool lift since watching them en route to their first ever FA Cup win in 1965, right through to the Champions League defeat in Athens in 2007. It takes in all of the big nights that propelled the club to five European Cups, three UEFA Cups, twelve titles, countless domestic cup triumphs, bitter failures, the tragic disasters in Sheffield and Brussels, as well as the barren years of the late 60s and the 90s. But the book goes far deeper than that. It's about how football allowed a father who was separated from his son to forge a precious bond. How a football club can make a city that is dying on its knees keep believing in itself. How you should never, as a professional, get too close to your heroes. How being part of a disaster at a football match (Hillsborough) can leave you a mental wreck, unwilling to carry on, but how witnessing a miracle on a football pitch (Istanbul) makes you realise that no matter how low you sink, you should never give in.

“A groundbreaking work about race and the American landscape, and a deep meditation on nature…wise and beautiful.”—Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk A Foreword Reviews Best Book of the Year and Nautilus Silver Award Winner In me, there is the red of miry clay, the brown of spring floods, the gold of ripening tobacco. All of these hues are me; I am, in the deepest sense, colored. Dating back to slavery, Edgefield County, South Carolina—a place “easy to pass by on the way somewhere else”—has been home to generations of Lanhams. In The Home Place, readers meet these extraordinary people, including Drew himself, who over the course of the 1970s falls in love with the natural world around him. As his passion takes flight, however, he begins to ask what it means to be “the rare bird, the oddity.” By turns angry, funny, elegiac, and heartbreaking, The Home Place is a meditation on nature and belonging by an ornithologist and professor of ecology, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today. “When you’re done with The Home Place, it won’t be done with you. Its wonders will linger like everything luminous.”—Star Tribune “A lyrical story about the power of the wild…synthesizes his own family history, geography, nature, and race into a compelling argument for conservation and resilience.”—National Geographic

The father of Minnesota ornithology, whose life story opens a window on a lost world of nature and conservation in the state’s early days Imagine a Minneapolis so small that, on calm days, the roar of St. Anthony Falls could be heard in town, a time when passenger pigeons roosted in neighborhood oak trees. Now picture a dapper professor conducting his ornithology class (the university’s first) by streetcar to Lake Harriet for a morning of bird-watching. The students were mostly young women—in sunhats, sailor tops, and long skirts, with binoculars strung around their necks. The professor was Thomas Sadler Roberts (1858–1946), a doctor for three decades, a bird lover virtually from birth, the father of Minnesota ornithology, and the man who, perhaps more than any other, promoted the study of the state’s natural history. A Love Affair with Birds is the first full biography of this key figure in Minnesota’s past. Roberts came to Minnesota as a boy and began keeping detailed accounts of Minneapolis’s birds. These journals, which became the basis for his landmark work The Birds of Minnesota, also inform this book, affording a view of the state’s rich avian life in its early days—and of a young man whose passion for birds and practice of medicine in a young Minneapolis eventually dovetailed in his launching of the beloved Bell Museum of Natural History. Bird enthusiast, doctor, author, curator, educator, conservationist: every chapter in Roberts’s life is also a chapter in the state’s history, and in his story acclaimed author Sue Leaf—an avid bird enthusiast and nature lover herself—captures a true Minnesota character and his time.

After stumbling upon a book of photographs depicting extinct animals, B.J. Hollars became fascinated by the creatures that are no longer with us; specifically, extinct North American birds. How, he wondered, could we preserve so beautifully on film what we’ve failed to preserve in life? And so begins his yearlong journey to find out, one that leads him from bogs to art museums, from archives to Christmas Counts, until he at last comes as close to extinct birds as he ever will during a behind-the-scenes visit at the Chicago Field Museum. Heartbroken by the birds we’ve lost, Hollars takes refuge in those that remain. Armed with binoculars, a field guide, and knowledgeable friends, he begins his transition from budding birder to environmentally conscious citizen, a first step on a longer journey toward understanding the true tragedy of a bird’s song silenced forever. Told with charm and wit, Flock Together is a remarkable memoir that shows how “knowing” the natural world—even just a small part—illuminates what it means to be a global citizen and how only by embracing our ecological responsibilities do we ever become fully human. A moving elegy to birds we’ve lost, Hollars’s exploration of what we can learn from extinct species will resonate in the minds of readers long beyond the final page. Purchase the audio edition. Watch a book trailer for Hollars’s newest book, Midwestern Strange.

Everyone loves a romantic rogue whose exciting exploits feature a cheeky disregard for the law, narrow escapes and lots of love interest. Even at the height of highway robbery activity in the eighteenth century, it was thought that the death penalty was too harsh for these wayward scoundrels. There was the ever-courteous Claude Duval, the epitome of gentlemanliness; the infamous Katherine Ferrers, who was the inspiration for the film The Wicked Lady; Dick Turpin, the most famous highwayman of them all; and lesser-known characters such as Tom Rowland, who dressed as a woman to avoid capture. All these and more form an entertaining volume that follows the mounted thief in their endless match against the law and a death by public hanging.

American entrepreneurs, corporate tycoons, and financiers are plotting what they do best—creating new industries that change the world and making billions in the process—a plot that will ultimately save the planet. The Plot to Save the Planet is an illuminating and inspiring look at the “conspiracy” to make green technology the Silicon Valley of the twenty-first century—the creator of massive numbers of jobs and huge amounts of wealth. Suddenly, the ugly mudslinging between environmentalists and big business has abated, and these two previously opposed forces are now strange bedfellows in a race to head off climate change. How is this new frontier being shaped? Brian Dumaine is your guide in this intriguing look into the very near future filled with colorful and informative stories about the entrepreneurs, investors, and corporate mavericks who are managing to pull off the feat of combining economic growth and environmental protection to battle global warming. You’ll read about: • The savvy investors: Why Warren Buffett is investing heavily in wind power; and why John Doerr, the venture capitalist and early backer of Google, is saying that “green tech is bigger than the Internet and could be the biggest economic opportunity of the twenty-first century.” • The cars of the future: The competitively priced plug-in hybrids that will get 60 miles to the gallon, and the battle being waged by fifteen start-ups competing to capture the electric car market. • The fuels without fossils: New sources of energy from plants such as prairie grass and algae that could capture a big chunk of the $300 billion U.S. wholesale gasoline market. • The corporate mavericks: Companies such as Duke Energy and GE who are creating the low-carbon business models of the future, as well as cleaner ways to provide our power needs. • The energy-miser homes and buildings: The new Bank of America Tower in New York City and the green low- and middle-income homes being constructed by visionaries who were told it couldn’t be done and still be affordable. • The “thin film” solar energy: How it is making the cost of heating a home comparable to traditional methods without emitting greenhouse gas. Plenty of obstacles still exist—among them resistance from the rich and powerful owners of the world’s oil supply, developing nations such as China with their reliance on coal, and an American public reluctant to give up their McMansions, SUVs, and extreme air-conditioning. But the battle cry has been sounded. The green overhaul of the utility, energy, construction, shipping, and automobile industries is well on its way and—contrary to prevailing fears—the ultimate solutions will sustain the environment without demanding huge sacrifices to our contemporary comforts and lifestyles.