Bound Together 2023: Nonfiction: Nature and Science
New works from Jordannah Elizabeth, Doug Peacock, and Kim Stanley Robinson are among these earthy and astrological picks.
THE DESERTS OF CALIFORNIA: A CALIFORNIA FIELD ATLAS, By OBI KAUFMANN
HEYDAY • OCTOBER 2023 • 576 PAGES • $55 HARDCOVER
Artist and outdoorsman Obi Kaufmann has created the fifth illustrated guide in his magnificent series devoted to California’s natural wonders. Kaufmann treks through stretches of the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert, the Colorado Desert, and the Great Basin and catalogs the ecosystems, animals, and flora found there with words, maps, and watercolor paintings.
WAS IT WORTH IT? A WILDERNESS WARRIOR’S LONG TRAIL HOME, By DOUG PEACOCK
PATAGONIA • JANUARY 2022 • 320 PAGES • $28 HARDCOVER
In this collection of essays, the man who inspired Edward Abbey’s famous character George Washington Hayduke shares the experiences that have made him a well-known environmentalist, activist, and iconoclast. Renowned figures like Abbey himself, Peter Matthiessen, Jim Harrison, and Yvon Chouinard appear as friends who helped shape Doug Peacock’s views and values.
THE HIGH SIERRA: A LOVE STORY, By KIM STANLEY ROBINSON
LITTLE, BROWN • MAY 2022 • 560 PAGES • $40 HARDCOVER
Kim Stanley Robinson—whose novel The Gold Coast was selected for Alta Journal’s California Book Club in 2022—turns his pen to one of California’s much-loved treasures: the Sierra Nevada. Robinson weaves together narratives both personal and scientific, of his own explorations and of how the mountains and the trails that wind through them came to be. Maps and tips for experienced and novice hikers alike add to this book about all that can be gained from spending time among these natural towers.
ASTROLOGY FOR BLACK GIRLS: A BEGINNER’S GUIDE FOR BLACK GIRLS WHO LOOK TO THE STARS, BY JORDANNAH ELIZABETH • ILLUSTRATED BY CHELLIE CARROLL
RUNNING PRESS KIDS • SEPTEMBER 2022 • 112 PAGES• $14.99 HARDCOVER
Astrology can be hard to decipher, but in this book, Jordannah Elizabeth offers middle-school-aged Black girls the know-how to identify and discuss key symbols in the zodiac. In fun, empowering language, the complexities of what is written in the stars are broken down in ways that newcomers can appreciate.
ASTRONOMICAL MINDFULNESS: YOUR COSMIC GUIDE TO RECONNECTING WITH THE SUN, MOON, STARS, AND PLANETS, BY SARAH SCOLES AND CHRISTOPHER G. DE PREE
HARPERONE • JANUARY 2022 • 224 PAGES • $24.99 HARDCOVER
This book contains illustrations and exercises you can complete anywhere (with a view of the night sky) to gain an understanding of the cosmos and our collective relationship to it throughout human history. Sarah Scoles and Christopher G. De Pree suggest that one way to improve our mental health is to look up, with curiosity, at all the matter that swirls above us.
THE VOYAGE OF SORCERER II: THE EXPEDITION THAT UNLOCKED THE SECRETS OF THE OCEAN’S MICROBIOME, By David Ewing Duncan and J. Craig Venter
BELKNAP PRESS • SEPTEMBER 2023 • 336 PAGES • $27.95 HARDCOVER
J. Craig Venter, famous for his work with the human genome, is the hero of this book cowritten with journalist David Ewing Duncan. The two recount exhilarating stories from Venter’s 15-year journey across the world’s oceans aboard a sailing ship as he studied microbes and the science of some of the smallest living things around us.
