Non-Fiction

• Natural Acts: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature; 1985, Avon Books reprint 1996. ISBN 0-380-71738-7
• The Flight of the Iguana: A Sidelong View of Science and Nature; Scribner, 1988. ISBN 0-684-83626-2
• The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions; Scribner, 1996 (reprinted 1997). ISBN 0-684-82712-3
• Wild Thoughts From Wild Places; Scribner, 1999. ISBN 0-684-85208-X
• The Boilerplate Rhino: Nature in the Eye of the Beholder; Scribner, 2001. ISBN 0-7432-0032-2
• Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000 (ed.); 2000.
• Monster of God: The Man-Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind; W.W. Norton and Company, 2003. ISBN 0-393-32609-8 (ISBN 0-393-05140-4)
• The Reluctant Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution (Great Discoveries), Jul 31, 2006, W. W. Norton. ISBN 0-393-05981-2

• "The Keys to Kingdom Come" Rolling Stone, Jun. 1987
• "Planet of Weeds" Harper's, Oct. 1998
• "The Post-Communist Wolf" Outside, 2000
• "Was Darwin Wrong?" National Geographic, Nov. 2004
• "Clone Your Troubles Away" Harper's, Feb. 2005
• "Contagious Cancer: The Evolution of a Killer" Harper's, Apr. 2008
• "Alfred Russell Wallace: The Man Who Wasn't Darwin" National Geographic, Dec. 2008
• "Darwin's First Clues" National Geographic, Feb. 2009

Fiction

• To Walk the Line, 1970.
• Walking Out, 1980.
• The Zolta Configuration, 1983.
• The Soul of Viktor Tronko, 1987.
• Blood Line: Stories of Fathers and Sons, 1988.

• Rhodes Scholarship
• Lannan Foundation Fellowship
• National Magazine Award (three times)
• New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Award for Excellence in Journalism.
• Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
• Guggenheim Fellowship
• BP Natural World Book Prize (Great Britain)
• John Burroughs Medal for nature writing
• PEN/Spielvogel-Diamonstein Award for the Art of the Essay
• Honorary doctorate from Montana State University