Pyle's classic account of discovery along the migration trail of monarch butterflies is part natural history, part road trip adventure Although no one had ever followed North American monarch butterflies on their annual southward journey to Mexico and California, in the 1990s there were well-accepted assumptions about the nature and form of the migration. But to Robert Michael Pyle, a naturalist with long experience in monarch conservation, the received wisdom about the butterflies' long journey just didn't make sense. In the autumn of 1996 he set out to uncover the facts, to pursue the tide of "cinnamon sailors" on their long, mysterious flight. Chasing Monarchs chronicles Pyle's 9,000-mile journey to discover firsthand the secrets of the monarchs' annual migration. Part road trip, part outdoor adventure, and part natural history study, Pyle's book overturns old theories and provides insights both large and small regarding monarch butterflies, their biology, and their spectacular migratory travels. Since the book's first publication, its controversial conclusions have been fully confirmed, and monarchs are better understood than ever before. The Afterword for this volume includes not only updated information on the myriad threats to monarch butterflies, but also various efforts under way to ensure the future of the world's most amazing butterfly migration.

This gracefully written story shows all that is lost when we destroy ancient stands of trees--as revealed through a 60-year study of the flora and fauna in an Oregon Coast Range forest that is selectively logged and finally clear-cut.

For Robert Michael Pyle, "walking the high ridge" is a way of life both figuratively and literally. In his latest book he describes in compelling detail his efforts to live and work in that special natural space Nabokov described as "a high ridge where the mountainside of scientific knowledge joins the opposite slope of artistic imagination".

We live in the age of Big Data, awash in a sea of ever-expanding information-a constant deluge of facts, statistics, models, and projections. The human mind is quickly desensitized by information presented in the form of numbers, and yet many important social and environmental phenomena, ranging from genocide to global climate change, require quantitative description. The essays and interviews in Numbers and Nerves explore the quandary of our cognitive responses to quantitative information, while also offering compelling strategies for overcoming insensitivity to the meaning of such information. With contributions by journalists, literary critics, psychologists, naturalists, activists, and others, this book represents a unique convergence of psychological research, discourse analysis, and visual and narrative communication. At a time of unprecedented access to information, our society is frequently stymied in its efforts to react to the world's massive problems. Many of these problems are systemic, deeply rooted in seemingly intransigent cultural patterns and lifestyles. In order to sense the significance of these issues and begin to confront them, we must first understand the psychological tendencies that enable and restrict our processing of numerical information. In the past two decades, cognitive science has increasingly come to understand that we, as a species, think best when we allow numbers and nerves, abstract information and experiential discourse, to work together. This book provides a roadmap to guide that collaboration. It will be invaluable to scholars, educators, professional communicators, and anyone who struggles to grasp the meaning behind the numbers.

Robert Michael Pyle's voice is an essential element in the culture of our literary and scientific community. His deep knowledge of the ecology of the earth and the life patterns of a wide variety of living forms, his careful attention to detail, his passion and energy and commitment to humanity that appear in his past work are present in abundance throughout the poetry in Evolution of the Genus Iris. We are fortunate readers indeed to have this new book and its poems abroad in the world.

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us..." --Charles Darwin, "The Origin of Species"
Robert Michael Pyle's popular "Tangled Bank" column appeared in fifty-two consecutive issues of "Orion" and "Orion Afield" magazines over eleven years. Each essay collected in "The Tangled Bank" explores Charles Darwin's contention that the elements of such a bank, and by extension all the living world, are endlessly interesting and ever evolving.

Pyle's thoughtful and concise narratives range in subject from hops and those who love them to independent bookstores to the monarchs of Mexico. In each piece, Pyle refutes "the idea that the world is a boring place," sharing his meticulous observations of the endless and fascinating details of the living earth.