Inspired by Nature: 10 Powerful New Memoirs and Biographies
These new books showcase moments where embracing nature led to personal discoveries or scientific breakthroughs.
The post Inspired by Nature: 10 Powerful New Memoirs and Biographies appeared first on The Revelator.
Everyone experiences life-altering events — the sudden loss of a loved one, professional or personal disruptions, natural disasters, or periods of burnout that stop us in our tracks.
These times can leave us feeling lost, but they’re not forever. Several new books published in 2025 feature life-affirming stories of how the natural world has helped people find new directions in life. These memoirs and biographies can help us to similarly embrace nature and wildlife to reaffirm, reawaken, and restore our creativity, resilience, and selves.
We’ve excerpted the books’ official descriptions below and provided links to the publishers’ sites. You should also be able to find these books in a variety of formats through your local bookstore or library.
All Humans Outside: Stories of Belonging in Nature
by Tommy Corey
A reflective look at the varied ways people’s lives are forever changed by nature through sustainability and conservation work, outdoor sports and recreation, community building, and more. Corey traveled across the United States and conducted more than two hundred interviews to chronicle these diverse experiences, sharing them through documentary-style photography and both first-person and third-person stories. Subjects include backcountry horse rider Gillian Larson, Triple Crowner and sponsored athlete Jack Jones, self-described “seminomadic van-dwelling grandma” Pacific Crest Trail hiker Karen DeSousa, Filipinx immigrant and park ranger Francis Eymard Mendoza, adaptive athlete Annijke Wade, New York Hunters of Color ambassador Brandon Dale, bestselling author and runner Mirna Valerio, and many more.
Turning to Birds: The Power and Beauty of Noticing
by Lili Taylor
Most people don’t really know birds — or rather, they aren’t aware of them. Lili Taylor used to be one of those people. She knew birds existed. She thought about them, maybe even more than the average person. But she didn’t know them. And then something happened. During a much-needed break from her work as an actor, Lili sought silence and instead found the bustling, symphonic world of birds that had always existed around her… Through a series of beautifully crafted essays, Taylor shares her intimate encounters with the birds that have captured her heart and imagination — from tracking flitting woodpeckers through oak trees to spotting majestic blue jays perched on a Manhattan fire escape; from the exhilaration of witnessing a migratory flock from the top of the Empire State Building to the quiet joy of observing a nest of hatchlings in her own backyard. Through simply paying attention to birds, Lili has been shown a parallel world that is wider and deeper, one of constant change and movement, full of life and the will to survive.
Hope Dies Last: Visionary People Across the World, Fighting to Find Us a Future
by Alan Weisman
The bestselling author of The World Without Us returns with a book ten years in the making: a study of what it means to be a human on the front lines of our planet’s existential crisis. To write this book, Weisman traveled the globe, witnessing climate upheaval and other devastations, and meeting the people striving to mitigate and undo our past transgressions. From the flooding Marshall Islands to revived wetlands in Iraq, from the Netherlands and Bangladesh to the Korean DMZ and to cities and coastlines in the U.S. and around the world, he has encountered the best of humanity battling heat, hunger, rising tides, and imperiled nature. He profiles the innovations of big thinkers — engineers, scientists, conservationists, economists, architects, and artists — as they conjure wildly creative, imaginative responses to an uncertain, ominous future. At this unprecedented point in history, as our collective exploits on this planet may lead to our own undoing and we could be among the species marching toward extinction, they refuse to accept defeat.
Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop
by Paula Whyman
When Paula Whyman first climbs a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of a home in the country, she has no idea how quickly her tidy backyard ecology project will become a massive endeavor. Just as quickly, she discovers how little she knows about hands-on conservation work. In Bad Naturalist, readers meander with her through orchards and meadows, forests and frog ponds, as she is beset by an influx of invasive species, rattlesnake encounters, conflicting advice from experts, and delayed plans—but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting this place. With delightful, lyrically deft storytelling, she shares her attempts to coax this beautiful piece of land back into shape. It turns out that amid the seeming chaos of nature, the mountaintop is teeming with life and hope.
Radical by Nature: The Revolutionary Life of Alfred Russel Wallace
by James T. Costa
Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–1913) was perhaps the most famed naturalist of the Victorian age. His expeditions to remote Amazonia and southeast Asia were the stuff of legend. A collector of thousands of species new to science, he shared in the discovery of natural selection and founded the discipline of evolutionary biogeography.
Radical by Nature tells the story of Wallace’s epic life and achievements, from his stellar rise from humble origins to his complicated friendship with Charles Darwin and other leading scientific lights of Britain to his devotion to social causes and movements that threatened to alienate him from scientific society.
Raising Hare: A Memoir
by Chloe Dalton
In February 2021 Dalton stumbles upon a newborn hare — a leveret — that had been chased by a dog. Fearing for its life, she brings it home, only to discover how difficult it is to rear a wild hare, most of whom perish in captivity from either shock or starvation. Through trial and error, she learns to feed and care for the leveret with every intention of returning it to the wilderness. Instead, it becomes her constant companion, wandering the fields and woods at night and returning to Dalton’s house by day. Though Dalton feared that the hare would be preyed upon by foxes, weasels, feral cats, raptors, or even people, she never tried to restrict it to the house. Each time the hare leaves, Chloe knows she may never see it again. Yet she also understands that to confine it would be its own kind of death. Raising Hare chronicles their journey together while also taking a deep dive into the lives and nature of hares, and the way they have been viewed historically in art, literature, and folklore.
The Bird Singers: How Two Boys Discovered the Magic of Birdsong
By Jean Boucault and Johnny Rasse
This captivating book brings together two birds of a feather: Jean and Johnny, boys from very different worlds growing up in a small village in France. Jean is the genteel pharmacist’s son, dressed in his Sunday best; Johnny’s father is a rough, working-class sheep herder, always with the odor of animals clinging to him. Each year, over 300 bird species visit their village, which intersects a major migratory flyway. The two boys’ stories converge when Jean enters a bird-calling contest. He places second, and at only eleven years old becomes a child celebrity on the bird-calling circuit. Then Johnny starts to compete as well. At the annual bird festival, both boys are standouts, and a long, admiring rivalry develops between them, eventually culminating in the European championships.
North to the Future: An Offline Adventure Through the Changing Wilds of Alaska
by Ben Weissenbach
At the age of 20, college student Ben Weissenbach went north to Arctic Alaska armed with little more than inspiration from his literary heroes and a growing interest in climate change. What met him there was a world utterly unlike the 21st century Los Angeles in which he grew up — a land of ice, rock, and grizzlies seen by few outside a small contingent of scientists with big personalities… As these scientists teach Ben to read Alaska’s warming landscape, he confronts the limits of digital life and the complexity of the world beyond his screens. He emerges from each adventure with a new perspective on our modern relationship to technology and a growing wonder for our fast-changing — ever-changing — natural world.
Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science, and Self-Discovery in America’s Imperiled Forests
by Marguerite Holloway
Journalist Marguerite Holloway arrives at the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop as a climbing novice, but with a passion for trees and a deep concern about their future. Run by twin sister tree doctors Bear LeVangie and Melissa LeVangie Ingersoll, the workshop helps people — from everyday tree lovers to women arborists working in a largely male industry. As Holloway tackles unfamiliar equipment and dizzying heights, she learns about the science of trees and tells the stories of charismatic species, including hemlock, aspen, Atlantic white cedar, oak, and beech. She spotlights experts who are chronicling the great dying that is underway in forests around the world as trees face simultaneous and accelerating threats from drought, heat, floods, disease, and other disruptions. Holloway also comes to understand the profound significance of trees in her relationship with her family. The story of trees and their resilience meshes with that of people working to steward the forests of the future.
A Billion Butterflies: A Life in Climate and Chaos Theory
By Dr. Jagadish Shukla
Until 40 years ago, we couldn’t forecast weather conditions beyond ten days. Renowned climate scientist Dr. Jagadish Shukla is largely to thank for modern weather forecasting. Born in rural India with no electricity, plumbing, or formal schools, he attended classes that were held in a cow shed. Shukla grew up amid turmoil: overwhelming monsoons, devastating droughts, and unpredictable crop yields. His drive brought him to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, despite little experience. He then followed an unlikely path to MIT and Princeton, and the highest echelons of climate science. His work, which has enabled us to predict weather farther into the future than previously thought possible, allows us to feed more people, save lives, and hold on to hope in a warming world.
That’s it for this month, but you can find hundreds of additional environmental book recommendations, including many more memoirs and biographies, in the “Revelator Reads” archives.
And let us know what you’re reading: drop us a line at comments@therevelator.org
Previously in The Revelator:
Earth Versed: 10 New Poetry Books About Our Relationship With Nature
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The post Inspired by Nature: 10 Powerful New Memoirs and Biographies appeared first on The Revelator.
