VCE Staff Picks 2018: Books for Nature Nerds

Still unsure what to get your nerdy loved ones this holiday season? Looking for a good book yourself and don’t know where to turn?? Never fear, Vermont Center for Ecostudies staff is here! Whether you are gifting for your favorite nature nerd, or simply choosing your next read, VCE’s 2018 staff book list has got you covered. Choose from natural history books, fiction and young adult novels, and field guides to use, whether studying up or out in the field. We hope you enjoy this list as much as we did and that you have a very happy holiday nerding out with a new book.

NATURAL HISTORY

• America’s Snake: The Rise and Fall of the Timber Rattlesnake by Ted Levin
• Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer
• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists and the Ecology of New England by William Cronon
• Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle by Thor Hanson
• Inescapable Ecologies: A History of Environment, Disease, and Knowledge by Linda Nash
• Mind of the Raven: Investigations and Adventures with Wolf-Birds by Bernd Heinrich
• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
• The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin’s Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World – and US by Richard O. Prum
• The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddharta Mukherjee
• The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate-Discoveries from A Secret World by Peter Wohlleben
• The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
• The Moth Snowstorm: Nature and Joy by Michael McCarthy
• The Once and Future World: Nature As It Was, As It Is, As It Could Be by J.B. MacKinnon
• The Outermost House: A Year of Life On The Great Beach of Cape Cod by Henry Beston
• The Tangled Tree: A Radical New History of Life by David Quammen
• Wild Ones: A Sometimes Dismaying, Weirdly Reassuring Story About Looking at People Looking at Animals in America by Jon Mooallem
  

  

FICTION AND YOUNG ADULT

• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
• Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
• My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
• Salamander Sky by Katy Farber, illustrated by Meg Sodano
• The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
• The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White

FIELD GUIDES

• Beetles of Eastern North America by Arthur Evans
• Birds of North America: A Guide To Field Identification by Chandler S. Robbins, Bertel Bruun, and Herbert S. Zim
• Bumble Bees of North America: An Identification Guide by Paul H. Williams, Robbin W. Thorp, Leif L. Richardson & Sheila R. Colla
• Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David Wagner
• Eastern Alpine Guide: Natural History and Conservation of Mountain Tundra East of the Rockies by Michael T. Jones and Lisabeth Willey
• Fern Finderby Barbara and Anne Hallowell
• Field Guide to the New England Alpine Summits 3rd Edition by Nancy Slack and Allison Bell
• Lichens of the North Woods by Joe Walewski
• Swift Guide to Butterflies of North America 2nd Edition by Jeffrey Glassberg
• The Insects of New England and New York by Tom Murray
• The Sibley Guide to Birds by David Allen Sibley
• The Warbler Guide by Tom Stephenson and Scott Whittle
• Tracks & Sign of Insects and Other Invertebrates by Charley Eiseman and Noah Charney
• Wetland Woodland Wildland by E. Thompson et al.