Bernd Heinrich – författare

When award-winning writer and biologist Bernd Heinrich became the unwitting -- but doting -- foster parent of an adorable gosling named Peep, he was drawn into her world. And so, with a scientist''s training and a nature lover''s boundless enthusiasm, he set out to understand the travails and triumphs of the Canada geese living in the beaver bog adjacent to his home. In The Geese of Beaver Bog, Heinrich takes his readers through mud, icy waters, and overgrown sedge hummocks to unravel the mysteries behind heated battles, suspicious nest raids, jealous outbursts, and more. With deft insight and infectious good humor, he sheds light on how geese live and why they behave as they do. Far from staid or predictable, the lives of geese are packed with adventure and full of surprises. Illustrated throughout with Heinrich''s trademark sketches and featuring beautiful four-color photographs, The Geese of Beaver Bog is part love story, part science experiment, and wholly delightful.

From flying squirrels to grizzly bears, and from torpid turtles to insects with antifreeze, the animal kingdom relies on some staggering evolutionary innovations to survive winter. Unlike their human counterparts, who must alter the environment to accommodate physical limitations, animals are adaptable to an amazing range of conditions.

Examining everything from food sources in the extremely barren winter land-scape to the chemical composition that allows certain creatures to survive, Heinrich''s Winter World awakens the largely undiscovered mysteries by which nature sustains herself through winter''s harsh, cruel exigencies.

Ina book destined to become a classic, biologist and acclaimed nature writer Bernd Heinrich takes readers on an eye-opening journey through the hidden life of a forest.

Heinrich involves us in his quest to get inside the mind of the raven. But as animals can only be spied on by getting quite close, Heinrich adopts ravens, thereby becoming a "raven father," as well as observing them in their natural habitat. He studies their daily routines, and in the process, paints a vivid picture of the ravens'' world. At the heart of this book are Heinrich''s love and respect for these complex and engaging creatures, and through his keen observation and analysis, we become their intimates too.

Heinrich''s passion for ravens has led him around the world in his research. Mind of the Raven follows an exotic journey—from New England to Germany, and from Montana to Baffin Island in the high Arctic—offering dazzling accounts of how science works in the field, filtered through the eyes of a passionate observer of nature. Each new discovery and insight into raven behavior is thrilling to read, at once lyrical and scientific.

“Bernd Heinrich is one of our greatest living naturalists in the tradition of Gerald Durrell….A national treasure.”

—Los Angeles Times

Summer World is an intimate, accessible, and eloquent illumination of animal survival in the Summer months from Bernd Heinrich, bestselling author of Winter World and “our latter-day Thoreau” (Publishers Weekly). Pulitzer Prize-winner Edmond O. Wilson (On Human Nature) calls Heinrich’s fascinating exploration and appreciation of the natural order a, “lovely book, meticulously etched and based on impassioned but exacting scientific research,” while the New York Times Book Review raves, “Animals come to life in gripping detail...and so does Heinrich…. The man is irrepressible.”

Although Gerd Heinrich, a devoted naturalist, specialized in wasps, Bernd Heinrich tried to distance himself from his "old-fashioned" father, becoming a hybrid: a modern, experimental biologist with a naturalist''s sensibilities.

In this extraordinary memoir, the award-winning author shares the ways in which his relationship with his father, combined with his unique childhood, molded him into the scientist, and man, he is today. From Gerd''s days as a soldier in Europe and the family''s daring escape from the Red Army in 1945 to the rustic Maine farm they came to call home, Heinrich relates it all in his trademark style, making science accessible and awe-inspiring.

“Each new page [is] more spellbinding than the one before—this is surely one of the most interesting books I’ve ever read.”—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of The Hidden Life of Dogs

When Bernd Heinrich decided to write a memoir of his ultramarathon running experience he realized that the preparation for the race was as important, if not more so, than the race itself. Considering the physiology and motivation of running from a scientific point of view, he wondered what he could learn from other animals.

In Why We Run, Heinrich considers the flight endurance of birds, the antelope’s running prowess and limitations, and the ultra-endurance of camels to understand how human physiology can or cannot replicate these adaptations. With his characteristic blend of scientific inquiry and philosophical musings, Heinrich offers an original and provocative work combining the rigors of science with the passion of running.

An award-winning, much-loved biologist turns his gaze on himself, using his long-distance running to illuminate the changes to a human body over a lifetimePart memoir, part scientific investigation, Racing the Clock is the book biologist and natural historian Bernd Heinrich has been waiting his entire life to write. A dedicated and accomplished marathon (and ultra-marathon) runner who won his first marathon at age thirty-nine, Heinrich looks deeply at running, aging, and the body, exploring the unresolved relationship between metabolism, diet, exercise, and age. 

Why do some bodies age differently than others? How much control do we have over that process and what effect, if any, does being active have? Bringing to bear research from his entire career and in the spirit of his classic Why We Run, Heinrich probes the questions of how we use energy and continue to adapt to our mutable surroundings and circumstances. Beyond that, he examines how our bodies change while we age but also how we can work with, if not overcome, many of these changes—and what all this tells us about evolution and the mechanisms of life, health, and happiness.

Racing the Clock offers fascinating and surprising conclusions, all while bringing the reader along on Heinrich’s compelling journey to what he says will be his final race—a fifty-kilometer race at age eighty. 

The surprising, rich life of tree swallows in nesting season—with Heinrich’s beautiful illustrations and photographs—by the acclaimed naturalist. Heinrich is sparked one early spring day by a question: Why does a pair of swallows in a nest-box close to his Maine cabin show an unvarying preference for white feathers—not easily available nearby—as nest lining? He notices, too, the extreme aggressiveness of “his” swallows toward some other swallows of their own kind. And he wonders, given swallows’ reputation for feistiness, at the extraordinary tameness and close contact he experiences with his nesting birds. From the author of the beloved books Ravens in Winter and A Naturalist at Large, this richly engaging view of the lives of wild birds, as always with Heinrich, yields “marvelous, mind-altering” insight and discoveries. —Los Angeles Times Narrator Rick Adamson is proud to have presented several titles from author Bernd Heinrich. He is an Audie Award winner for his voicing of IN A HEARTBEAT, from the authors of the true story that became the film THE BLIND SIDE.  Around NYC and his home studio in New Jersey, he has worked in commercials, corporate and medical media, as well as educational content worldwide, for more than thirty years.

From one of the finest naturalists and writers of our time, a fascinating investigation of Nature’s inspiring death-to-life cycle.How does the animal world deal with death? And what ecological and spiritual lessons can we learn from examining this? Bernd Heinrich has long been fascinated by these questions, and when a good friend with a terminal illness asked if he might have his “green burial” at Heinrich’s hunting camp in Maine, it inspired the acclaimed biologist and author to investigate. Life Everlasting is the fruit of those investigations, illuminating what happens to animals great and small after death.From beetles to bald eagles, ravens to wolves, Heinrich reveals the fascinating and mostly hidden post-death world that occurs around us constantly, while examining the ancient and important role we too play as scavengers, connecting death to life.“Bernd Heinrich is one of the finest naturalists of our time. Life Everlasting shines with the authenticity and originality that are unique to a life devoted to natural history in the field.”—Edward O. Wilson, author of The Future of Life and The Social Conquest of Earth""Despite focusing on death and decay, Life Everlasting is far from morbid; instead, it is life-affirming . . . convincing the reader that physical demise is not an end to life, but an opportunity for renewal.""—Nature“A worldwide tour of the role of death in nature that is consistently fascinating and fun to read.”—Seattle Times

This engaging chronicle of how the author and the great horned owl "Bubo" came to know one another over three summers spent in the Maine woods--and of how Bubo eventually grew into an independent hunter--is now available in an edition that has been abridged and revised so as to be more accessible to the general reader.