Cristina Goettsch Mittermeier

On any night in early June, if you stand on the right beaches of America's East Coast, you can travel back in time all the way to the Jurassic. For as you watch, thousands of horseshoe crabs will emerge from the foam and scuttle up the beach to their spawning grounds, as they've done, nearly unchanged, for more than 440 million years. Horseshoe crabs are far from the only contemporary manifestation of Earth's distant past, and in "Relics", world-renowned zoologist and photographer Piotr Naskrecki leads readers on an unbelievable journey through those lingering traces of a lost world. With camera in hand, he travels the globe to create a words-and-pictures portrait of our planet like no other, a time-lapse tour that renders Earth's colossal age comprehensible, visible in creatures and habitats that have persisted, nearly untouched, for hundreds of millions of years. Naskrecki begins by defining the concept of a relic - a creature or habitat that, while acted upon by evolution, remains remarkably similar to its earliest manifestations in the fossil record. Then he pulls back the Cambrian curtain to reveal relic after eye-popping relic: katydids, ancient reptiles, horsetail ferns, majestic magnolias, and more, all depicted through stunning photographs and first-person accounts of Naskrecki's time studying them and watching their interactions in their natural habitats. Then he turns to the habitats themselves, traveling to such remote locations as the Atewa Plateau of Africa, the highlands of Papua New Guinea, and the lush fern forests of New Zealand - a group of relatively untrammeled ecosystems that are the current end point of staggeringly long, uninterrupted histories that have made them our best entryway to understanding what the pre-human world looked, felt, sounded, and even smelled like. The stories and images of Earth's past assembled in "Relics" are beautiful, breathtaking, and unmooring, plunging the reader into the hitherto incomprehensible reaches of deep time. We emerge changed, astonished by the unbroken skein of life on Earth and attentive to the hidden heritage of our planet's past that surrounds us.

Continuing in the distinguished tradition of "Hotspots", Conservation International offers here a new, lushly illustrated volume that examines transboundary conservation areas - environmentally endangered regions that sprawl across international borders and contain multiple protected areas. Recent studies estimate that there are now 188 transboundary conservation areas in 112 countries, making up about 17 percent of the designated protected areas around the world. This book specifically examines 28 of these areas, found across all continents and in several oceans. Eminent scientists and conservationists contribute detailed histories of the areas, from the birth of the initial conservation efforts to the latest research that reveals new regions and assesses the success of the programs to protect existing ones. Accompanying the analyses are Conservation International's trademark vibrant full-color photographs that powerfully document these rapidly disappearing treasures.

For decades, Conservation International has devoted itself not only to saving endangered regions on the planet but also to chronicling, in lavish volumes, the biodiversity of these areas. These volumes, according to Choice, are "a superbly produced...source of hard-to-find information on biodiversity, biogeography, and conservation." "Hotspots Revisited" continues this rich tradition, drawing on the organization's continuing work to identify, research, and document biologically diverse yet dangerously threatened regions. The first "Hotspots" volume identified twenty-five endangered regions; "Hotspots Revisited" reveals nine additional areas, from Melanesia to northern Mexico, that now meet the same criteria. "Hotspots Revisited" presents the most up-to-date analyses of the ecology of these endangered areas - including new information on freshwater fish and other animal populations. But the heart of the volume is the hundreds of vibrant color photographs of the animals and plants under threat. Magnificent in conception and flawless in execution, "Hotspots Revisited" will be equally at home on a scientist's shelf or an ecotourist's coffee table.