Saving Birds to Save the Planet

Scott Weidensaul

The Return of the Oystercatcher explores the recovery efforts that are not only preventing declines in bird population, but helping birds to thrive

Appreciating and Protecting the Tidal Marshes of the Southeastern Atlantic Coast

Charles Seabrook

The World of the Salt Marsh is a wide-ranging exploration of the southeastern coast―its natural history, its people and their way of life, and the historic and ongoing threats to its ecological survival.

& Other Writings on the Environment

Rachel Carson

A huge bestseller when published in September 1962, Silent Spring led not only to many of the laws and government agencies that protect our air, land, and water, but prompted a revolution in environmental consciousness.

Constructing a Conservation Culture in the South Carolina Lowcountry

Angela C. Halfacre

This book documents the origins, goals, programs, leaders, tactics, and effectiveness of a conservation culture. A Delicate Balance deftly illustrates that a resilient culture of conservation that wields growing influence in the lowcountry has become an important regional model for conservation efforts across the nation.

Peter Matthiessen

In this nature-writing classic, readers learn about the world's most fascinating group of birds, conveying the biological and behavioral intricacies of shorebirds without dulling their romance and wonder.

Dana Beach

Deveaux is a reflection on the life of a South Carolina sea bird rookery, known as Deveaux Bank, at the mouth of the North Edisto River. The author and photographer, Dana Beach, has visited Deveaux regularly for twenty-five years. In his book, Beach chronicles the annual cycle of reproduction and renewal on this ephemeral sand bar, and the work of the scientists and conservationists who labor to understand and protect it.

Virginia and Dana Beach

In their book, A Wholly Admirable Thing, Virginia and Dana Beach chronicle ten stories that showcase the rise of the Coastal Conservation League to become one of the country’s most tenacious and innovative conservation groups. The book highlights transformational initiatives undertaken by the Conservation League over three decades in partnership with community activists up and down the South Carolina coast.

John and Mildred Teal

One of nature's greatest gifts is the string of salt marshes that edges the East Coast from Newfoundland to Florida -- a ribbon of green growth, part solid land, part scurrying water. Life and Death of the Salt Marsh shows how these marshes are developed, what kinds of life inhabit them, how enormously they have contributed to man, and how ruthlessly man is destroying them.

Deborah Cramer

Each year tiny sandpipers—red knots—undertake a near miraculous 19,000 mile journey from one end of the earth to the other and back. In this firsthand account, Deborah Cramer accompanies them on their extraordinary odyssey along the length of two continents, tracking birds from remote Tierra del Fuego to the icy Arctic. On the full moon of spring’s highest tides, she seeks out horseshoe crabs, ancient, primordial animals whose eggs are essential to migrating shorebirds, and whose blue blood, unbeknownst to most people, safeguards human health. The Narrow Edge offers unique insight into how the lives of humans, red knots and horseshoe crabs are intertwined, and is an inspiring portrait of loss and resilience, of the tenacity of birds, and the courage of the many people who bird by bird and beach by beach, keep red knots flying.

Amy Tan

Tracking the natural beauty that surrounds us, The Backyard Bird Chronicles maps the passage of time through daily entries, thoughtful questions, and beautiful original sketches. With boundless charm and wit, author Amy Tan charts her foray into birding and the natural wonders of the world.

Drew Lanham

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 remarkable meditation on nature and belonging, at once a deeply moving memoir and riveting exploration of the contradictions of black identity in the rural South—and in America today.

The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds

Scott Weidensaul

In the past two decades… what we’ve learned of key migrations―how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an annual basis―is nothing short of extraordinary.