National Network for Equitable Library Service

An engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals "pests" and others not--from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons--and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as well as our place in the natural worldA squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A pigeon on the street. Humans have spent so much of our history drawing a hard line between human spaces and wild places. When animals pop up where we don't expect or want them, we respond with fear, rage, or simple annoyance. It's no longer an animal.

From the infamous Jersey Devil to the obscure Snallygaster, J. W. Ocker not only uncovers the bizarre stories of these creatures but investigates the ways in which communities have embraced their local cryptids.

In Eager , environmental journalist Ben Goldfarb reveals that our modern idea of what a healthy landscape looks like and how it functions is wrong, distorted by the fur trade that once trapped out millions of beavers from North America's lakes and rivers. The consequences of losing beavers were profound: streams eroded, wetlands dried up, and species from salmon to swans lost vital habitat.

The New York Times bestselling true story of an Australian ultramarathon runner and a little dog who formed an unbreakable bond in the middle of the Gobi desert. Finding Gobi is the miraculous tale of Dion Leonard, a seasoned ultramarathon runner who crosses paths with a stray dog while competing in a 155-mile race through the Gobi Desert in China. The lovable pup, who would later earn the name Gobi, went step for step with Dion over the Tian Shan Mountains and across massive sand dunes, keeping pace with him for 77 miles.

Celebrity dog trainer, YouTube sensation, and Animal Planet star Zak George presents a next-generation guide that uses his infectiously energetic style to teach dog-lovers everything they need to know about raising and training their unique pup. Zak George is a new type of dog trainer. His fresh approach puts a strong emphasis on the relationship with the individual dog-informed by breed-specific traits-allowing people to treat the root cause of behavior issues rather than the symptoms and teach their dogs faster without the use of punishments or stress.

A memoir of love and loss, of being in the right place at the right time, and of the mysterious ways a beloved pet can bring people together, from CBS Sunday Morning News correspondent and multi-Emmy-Award-winning Martha Teichner. There are true fairy tales. Stories that exist because impossible-to-explain coincidences change everything. Except in real life, not all of them have conventional, happily-ever-after endings.

From a noted Cambridge zoologist, a wildly fun and scientifically sound exploration of what alien life must be like, using universal laws that govern life on Earth and in space. Scientists are confident that life exists elsewhere in the universe. Yet rather than taking a realistic approach to what aliens might be like, we imagine that life on other planets is the stuff of science fiction. The time has come to abandon our fantasies of space invaders and movie monsters and place our expectations on solid scientific footing.

Mary Roach meets Sam Kean and Bill Bryson in this uproarious tour of the basest instincts and biggest mysteries of the animal worldHumans have gone to the Moon and discovered the Higgs boson, but when it comes to understanding animals, we still have a long way to go. Whether we are seeing a viral video of romping baby pandas or a picture of penguins "holding hands," it's hard for us not to project our own values-innocence, fidelity, temperance, hard work-onto animals.

-- All Over but the Shoutin' Speck is not a good boy. He is a terrible boy, a defiant, self-destructive, often malodorous boy, a grave robber and screen door moocher who spends his days playing chicken with the Fed Ex man, picking fights with thousand-pound livestock, and rolling in donkey manure, and his nights howling at the moon. He has been that way since the moment he appeared on the ridgeline behind Rick Bragg's house, a starved and half-dead creature, seventy-six pounds of wet hair and poor decisions. Speck arrived in Rick's life at a moment of looming uncertainty.

The incredible true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion. In 1954, Annie Wilkins, a sixty-three-year-old farmer from Maine, embarked on an impossible journey. She had no relatives left, she'd lost her family farm to back taxes, and her doctor had just given her two years to live--but only if she "lived restfully." He offered her a spot in the county's charity home.