"Impressive...her tour is enhanced by a healthy dose of humor and amusing accounts of her fieldwork."

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

​In Nature’s Wild Ideas, Kristy Hamilton goes behind the scenes of some of our most unexpected innovations. She traverses frozen waterfalls, treks through cloudy forests, discovers nests in the Mojave desert, scours intertidal zones and takes us to the deepest oceans and near volcanoes to introduce us to the animals and plants that have inspired everything from cargo routing systems to non-toxic glues, and the men and women who followed that first spark of “I wonder” all the way to its conclusion, sometimes against all odds. While the joy of scientific discovery is front and center, Nature’s Wild Ideas is also a love letter to nature — complete with a deep message of conservation: If we are to continue learning from the creatures around us, we must protect their untamed homelands.