A Polar Affair

A Polar Affair PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643131710
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 487

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Book Description
A captivating blend of true adventure and natural history by one of today’s leading penguin experts and Antarctic explorers. George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history. A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick’s long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species. A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories—but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick’s and Davis’s explorations, observations, and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.

A Polar Affair

A Polar Affair PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1643131710
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 487

Get Book Here

Book Description
A captivating blend of true adventure and natural history by one of today’s leading penguin experts and Antarctic explorers. George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history. A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick’s long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species. A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories—but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick’s and Davis’s explorations, observations, and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.

A Polar Affair

A Polar Affair PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher: Pegasus Books
ISBN: 9781643136028
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 392

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Book Description
A captivating blend of true adventure and natural history by one of today’s leading penguin experts and Antarctic explorers. George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history. A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick’s long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species. A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories—but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick’s and Davis’s explorations, observations, and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.

A Polar Affair

A Polar Affair PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher: Pegasus Books
ISBN: 9781643131252
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
A captivating blend of true adventure and natural history by one of today’s leading penguin experts and Antarctic explorers. George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history. A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick’s long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species. A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories—but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick’s and Davis’s explorations, observations, and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.

The Plight of the Penguin

The Plight of the Penguin PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Penguins have a curious magnetism that compels us to love them. Is this because they seem like us? They walk like us. They dress in tuxedoes like us. And perhaps, because of this, we think they should act like us. We've created a human image of penguins; cute clones that marry for life and live happily ever after as devoted parents, rearing their families in a world of snow and ice. Zoologist Lloyd Spencer Davis dispels this fairytale view of penguins, replacing it with startling revelations about their lifestyles, seduction techniques and survival secrets. These are not colourless little polar people; these are raunchy birds that want to be fish. The author's clear-eyed, direct style has a zest and wit that conveys the complexity of the natural world; the world where these birds lead such astonishing lives. His enthusiasm, his sense of wonder and beauty are delightfully infectious, his dynamic advocacy of the conservationist's cause wholly persuasive.

An Antarctic Affair

An Antarctic Affair PDF Author: Emma McEwin
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781921037306
Category : Antarctica
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
AN ANTARCTIC AFFAIR, a story of love and survival, is written by Emma McEwin, the greatgranddaughter of Sir Douglas and Lady (Paquita) Mawson. When scientist and explorer, Douglas Mawson leaves for the Antarctic in December 1911, as leader of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, he expects to return and marry his fiancee, Paquita Delprat fifteen months later. However, in the southern summer of 1912, while on a three-man sledging journey, his two travelling companions both die in horrific circumstances, leaving Douglas to travel the last one hundred miles to safety alone, on the brink of starvation. He survives but his late return to base in February 1913 leads to him missing the ship back to Australia and he is forced to endure a second winter in the Antarctic, in the windiest region on earth, with six other men, one of whom loses his mind. By the time he returns to Australia in February 1914, he has not seen Paquita for more than two years and barely communicated with her, the minimal contact and the long separation having pushed her love and patience almost to the limit. Inspired by their story and their characters since childhood, Emma explores the reasons why her great-grandfather survived and the very important role Paquita, who became his wife and biographer, played in his survival and success. Drawing on the love letters that Paquita and Douglas wrote to each other during their engagement, 1910-14, which were discovered by chance in the 1990s and published in 2000, stories and anecdotes passed on to her from her grandmother, as well as the huge body material held publicly and privately by the Mawson family, Emma presents the practical-minded scientist and academic, Douglas Mawson, in a warmer light, as a man who was in his own way, a romantic and capable of deep love. Her book is unique in that she weaves in stories of other explorers and expeditions and, by putting Douglas Mawson in polar and historical context, and by according Paquita the recognition she deserves as his greatest supporter, we gain a new appreciation of his extraordinary achievements.

Professor Penguin

Professor Penguin PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited
ISBN: 1775537269
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 299

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Book Description
Meet ‘Bill Bryson in Antarctica’ in this engaging book by one of the world's authority on penguins. Part memoir, partly the research of a field biologist, Professor Penguin could be called ‘How Penguins Shaped My Life’. Based on journals kept during Davis’s years of working with penguins in the wild, the story takes readers to remote locations: Antarctica, the Galapagos, the deserts of Chile and Peru, the Falkland Islands, the wild coasts of Argentina and South Africa, and New Zealand. Davis, a world authority on penguins, reveals that these box-office favourites are not the cute ‘mate for life’ animals we’ve been led to believe. He also reveals that penguins are a lot like humans — sometimes disturbingly so — when it comes to their basic needs: sex, food, shelter, marriage, family and travel. Over the years that Davis studies penguins, he realises that they are far more complex and nuanced than he imagines at his first encounter. 'They really don’t deserve to be seen as so black and white.’ He expertly marries scientific knowledge with his own anecdotes — told with humour, hard-earned knowledge and insight. He also includes stories about those who have helped advance our knowledge of penguins —other 'Professor Penguins'. Implicit throughout is Davis’s philosophy – the more we learn about the natural world, and specifically penguins, the more we learn about ourselves. And he asks: Is the isolation of Antarctica sufficient to protect penguins from us?

Antarctica's Lost Aviator

Antarctica's Lost Aviator PDF Author: Jeff Maynard
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 164313096X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
By the 1930s, no one had yet crossed Antarctica, and its vast interior remained a mystery frozen in time. Hoping to write his name in the history books, wealthy American Lincoln Ellsworth announced he would fly across the unexplored continent. The main obstacles to Ellsworth’s ambition were numerous: he didn’t like the cold, he avoided physical work, and he couldn’t navigate. Consequently, he hired the experienced Australian explorer, Sir Hubert Wilkins, to organize the expedition on his behalf. While Ellsworth battled depression and struggled to conceal his homosexuality, Wilkins purchased a ship, hired a crew, and ordered a revolutionary new airplane constructed. The Ellsworth Trans-Antarctic Expeditions became epics of misadventure, as competitors plotted to beat Ellsworth, crews mutinied, and the ship was repeatedly trapped in the ice. A few hours after taking off in 1935, radio contact with Ellsworth was lost and the world gave him up for dead. Antarctica’s Lost Aviator brings alive one of the strangest episodes in polar history, using previously unpublished diaries, correspondence, photographs, and film to reveal the amazing true story of the first crossing of Antarctica and how, against all odds, it was achieved by the unlikeliest of heroes.

The Lemoine Affair

The Lemoine Affair PDF Author: Marcel Proust
Publisher: Melville House
ISBN: 1612192335
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 114

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Book Description
Their friend Marcel Proust had killed himself after the fall in diamond shares, a collapse that annihilated a part of his fortune. This is the first-ever translation into English of this startling tour-de-force by one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The Lemoine Affair was inspired by the real-life French scandal involving Henri Lemoine, who claimed he could manufacture diamonds from coal and convinced numerous people—including officers of the De Beers diamond mine company and Proust himself—to invest in the scheme. In a series of pastiches—imitations written in the style of other writers—Proust tells the story of the embarrassment rippling across high society Paris in the wake of the scandal, poking fun at himself (in one story, a character declares that Marcel Proust is so embarrassed he’s suicidal) while lampooning some of France’s greatest writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, and Saint-Simon. Full of sophisticated wit and dazzling wordplay, and rife with allusions to his friend and fictional characters, many Proust scholars see the dead-on mimicry of The Lemoine Affair—written soon after Proust’s rejection of society life—as the work by which he honed his own unique, masterly voice. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.

Penguins

Penguins PDF Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1408128209
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This book looks at the penguins - an enduringly popular and fascinating group of birds. Penguins are associated in the public consciousness with the icecap of the south pole, and we are all familiar with images of male Emperor Penguins clustered together through the long night of the Antarctic winter as they incubate the single egg on their feet. However, several species occur in warmer regions further north, in southern Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand and even the Galapagos. All are flightless but are beautifully adapted swimmers and divers, and many are able to travel at high speeds on dry land by means of spectacular leaps and belly-slides. Most species breed in close-knit colonies and exhibit a complex system of social behaviour. This book looks at all aspects of penguin evolution, biology, ecology and sociobiology, as well as conservation issues affecting the group. It is illustrated with line drawings and black and white photographs, and has a full-colour photographic section.

Foreign Affairs

Foreign Affairs PDF Author: Alison Lurie
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480422495
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel follows two American academics in London—a young man and a middle-aged woman—as they each fall into unexpected romances. In her early fifties, Vinnie Miner is the sort of woman no one ever notices, despite her career as an Ivy League professor. She doubts she could get a man’s attention if she waved a brightly colored object in front of him. And though she loves her work, her specialty—children’s folk rhymes—earns little respect from her fellow scholars. Then, alone on a flight to London for a research trip, she sits next to a man she would never have viewed as a potential romantic partner. In a Western-cut suit and a rawhide tie, he is a sanitary engineer from Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a group tour. He’s the very opposite of her type, but before Vinnie knows it, she’s spending more and more time with him. Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague, a young, handsome English professor whose marriage and self-esteem are both on the rocks. But Fred Turner is also about to find consolation—in the arms of the most beautiful actress in England. Stylish and highborn, she introduces Fred to a glamorous, yet eccentric, London scene that he never expected to encounter. The course of these two relationships makes up the story of Foreign Affairs—a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an entertaining, poignant tale from the author of The War Between the Tates and The Last Resort, “one of this country’s most able and witty novelists” (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s personal collection.