100 Books Like Indica

In Nature’s Realm is my third book on the theme of exploration of Vancouver Island, my home for the past thirty years, and my first focussed on the history of natural history. In it, I call upon decades of experience in mapping hitherto scarcely known parts of the world, combined with a keen fascination with the fauna and flora of the many places where I have lived and worked. I have marvelled at the work of the exploring naturalists and am fascinated with their personal histories. I find it enthralling how they each added to the sum of human knowledge of the wonders of the natural world, now so sadly threatened.

I have been an animal lover and caretaker all my life. I have memories of taking care of toucans, skunks, alligators, fish tanks, chameleons, various birds, and monkeys from the time I was a child! I received my licenses from the NYSDEC and US Fish and Wildlife Service and Ravensbeard Wildlife Center was founded in 2000. I hold permits to rehabilitate injured/orphaned wildlife and house unreleasable birds to educate communities in protecting wildlife. My entire life has been devoted to caring for animals and educating others about them, and I hope you can find joy in the books I recommended!

I teach medieval and early modern European history at Dublin City University, with a particular interest in 16th-18th century Italian history. My own research focuses on the religious, legal, and popular culture of northern Italy, particularly Venice and the Veneto region. I became fascinated with Renaissance Italian history as an undergraduate at the College of William and Mary, and then went on to do a masters and a PhD at Northwestern University. I have taught at Northwestern, the College of William and Mary, the University of Warwick/Warwick in Venice, and the State University of New York at Cortland.

I was first a biologist, working with endangered species. Then I switched and spent fifteen years making nature documentaries with people like Greta Thunberg and David Attenborough. Then a humpback whale breached onto me when I was kayaking, this led to a life-changing adventure culminating in my becoming involved in efforts to use AI to translate the communications of whales! I wrote about this for my first book. My great passion was always reading and in becoming a writer I get to go deeper and more playfully into my favorite parts of filmmaking – following heroic and fascinating people on their adventures, reading hundreds of complicated scientific papers, and finding ways to connect these.

In Nature’s Realm is my third book on the theme of exploration of Vancouver Island, my home for the past thirty years, and my first focussed on the history of natural history. In it, I call upon decades of experience in mapping hitherto scarcely known parts of the world, combined with a keen fascination with the fauna and flora of the many places where I have lived and worked. I have marvelled at the work of the exploring naturalists and am fascinated with their personal histories. I find it enthralling how they each added to the sum of human knowledge of the wonders of the natural world, now so sadly threatened.

As an educator and author with more than 35 years of experience in outdoor education, I’ve come to realize that children need nature more than ever.  I wonder if children are more lonely today because they feel disconnected from the very life systems that nourish us all. There are rising levels of anxiety, depression, and mental health concerns. At the same time, more studies are showing the tremendous health benefits of time spent outside. I hope that all of us take the time to connect to our “neighbourwood,” and that we come to recognize that our community is more than the buildings, houses, and streets and also consists of plants, animals, insects, birds, water, and air. Let us create spaces where both people and nature can thrive so we can create a greener, healthier tomorrow.

I grew up in the foothills of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New York and spent many weekends hiking, camping, and fishing with my parents. Identifying and understanding the plants and animals around me was always interesting, and this love of nature has stayed with me as an adult. I now live near Lake Michigan and am an avid hiker, birdwatcher, and an Indiana Master Naturalist. I take endless inspiration from the natural world in my illustration work and believe that co-existing with, respecting, and preserving the natural world is central not just to the integrity of our planet, but to our very humanity.

Nature has been a source of play, exploration, community, and solace for me since I was very young – as an adult, I find myself fascinated and alarmed by our species’ relations with the living world. Nature writing gives me a way of bringing my attention to this relationship and exploring it in a very close way. I often think of that well-worn phrase: We cannot protect what we do not love; we cannot love what we do not know. Literature, it seems to me, offers one route to better knowing and loving the world.

I'm a fifth-generation Arizonan, a former staff writer for the Arizona Republic, and a lifelong student of the Grand Canyon State. One of my very favorite things to do is travel the backroads of this amazing state and talk with the astonishing people who live there. Along the way, I wrote eight nonfiction books, including Island on Fire, which won the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Award. My day job is at Chapman University, where I am an English professor. 

I’ve felt like a fish out of water for most of my life. My mom’s English and my dad’s from Pennsylvania, so growing up it was always difficult to figure out who I was, where was “home.” So I always felt uneasy and self-conscious about not fitting in, wherever I happened to be. I always felt vaguely homesick for somewhere else. Reading was one way I could escape, travel was another, more literal way. Which is how I ended up in South Africa, where I eventually got my master's in journalism/international politics. (And my adventures there, of course, led to my book.)