Author: Richard Conniff
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780285634220
Category : Invertebrates
Languages : en
Pages : 222
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Book Description
Blending natural history and human lore, Ric hard Conniff relates some of his knowledge of the world of i nvertebrates. Spineless Wonders marvels at the skills of the housefly, looks at the world of the fire ant, and meets a m an who loves beetles. '
Author: Juli Berwald
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735211280
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 354
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Book Description
"A book full of wonders" —Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk "Witty, insightful. . . .The story of jellyfish. . . is a significant part of the environmental story. Berwald's engaging account of these delicate, often ignored creatures shows how much they matter to our oceans' future." —New York Times Book Review Jellyfish have been swimming in our oceans for well over half a billion years, longer than any other animal that lives on the planet. They make a venom so toxic it can kill a human in three minutes. Their sting—microscopic spears that pierce with five million times the acceleration of gravity—is the fastest known motion in the animal kingdom. Made of roughly 95 percent water, some jellies are barely perceptible virtuosos of disguise, while others glow with a luminescence that has revolutionized biotechnology. Yet until recently, jellyfish were largely ignored by science, and they remain among the most poorly understood of ocean dwellers. More than a decade ago, Juli Berwald left a career in ocean science to raise a family in landlocked Austin, Texas, but jellyfish drew her back to the sea. Recent, massive blooms of billions of jellyfish have clogged power plants, decimated fisheries, and caused millions of dollars of damage. Driven by questions about how overfishing, coastal development, and climate change were contributing to a jellyfish population explosion, Juli embarked on a scientific odyssey. She traveled the globe to meet the biologists who devote their careers to jellies, hitched rides on Japanese fishing boats to see giant jellyfish in the wild, raised jellyfish in her dining room, and throughout it all marveled at the complexity of these alluring and ominous biological wonders. Gracefully blending personal memoir with crystal-clear distillations of science, Spineless is the story of how Juli learned to navigate and ultimately embrace her ambition, her curiosity, and her passion for the natural world. She discovers that jellyfish science is more than just a quest for answers. It’s a call to realize our collective responsibility for the planet we share.
Author: Donald R. Prothero
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231543166
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 891
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Book Description
Donald R. Prothero’s Evolution is an entertaining and rigorous history of the transitional forms and series found in the fossil record. Its engaging narrative of scientific discovery and well-grounded analysis has led to the book’s widespread adoption in courses that teach the nature and value of fossil evidence for evolution. Evolution tackles systematics and cladistics, rock dating, neo-Darwinism, and macroevolution. It includes extensive coverage of the primordial soup, invertebrate transitions, the development of the backbone, the reign of the dinosaurs, and the transformation from early hominid to modern human. The book also details the many alleged “missing links” in the fossil record, including some of the most recent discoveries that flesh out the fossil timeline and the evolutionary process. In this second edition, Prothero describes new transitional fossils from various periods, vividly depicting such bizarre creatures as the Odontochelys, or the “turtle on the half shell”; fossil snakes with legs; and the “Frogamander,” a new example of amphibian transition. Prothero’s discussion of intelligent design arguments includes more historical examples and careful examination of the “experiments” and observations that are exploited by creationists seeking to undermine sound science education. With new perspectives, Prothero reframes creationism as a case study in denialism and pseudoscience rather than a field with its own intellectual dynamism. The first edition was hailed as an exemplary exploration of the fossil evidence for evolution, and this second edition will be welcome in the libraries of scholars, teachers, and general readers who stand up for sound science in this post-truth era.
Author: Susan McCreery
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781925052299
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
LOOPHOLE, noun. 1. An escape route from a sticky situation. 2. A chink in the system that allows us to circumvent or avoid consequences. Susan McCreery's perfectly-formed microfictions provide glimpses into the travails of everyday existence - of family life, relationships, ageing and loss. Her characters are typical humans - flawed yet admirable, frustrating and frustrated. Told with wit and compassion and honed with a wordsmith's skill, McCreery's Loopholes makes us see ourselves and each other differently. Ranging in length from a page to four lines, Susan McCreery's vivid glimpses into diverse lives and situations will amuse, shock and inspire you. ELIZABETH WEBBY AM
Author: Frank H. T. Rhodes
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706772
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
"Fossils are the fragments from which, piece by laborious piece, the great mosaic of the history of life has been constructed. Here and there, we can supplement these meager scraps by the use of biochemical markers or geochemical signatures that add useful information, but, even with such additional help, our reconstructions and our models of descent are often tentative. For the fossil record is, as we have seen, as biased as it is incomplete. But fragmentary, selective, and biased though it is, the fossil record, with all its imperfections, is still a treasure. Though whole chapters are missing, many pages lost, and the earliest pages so damaged as to be, as yet, virtually unreadable, this—the greatest biography of all—is one in whose closing pages we find ourselves."—from Origins In Origins, Frank H. T. Rhodes explores the origin and evolution of living things, the changing environments in which they have developed, and the challenges we now face on an increasingly crowded and polluted planet. Rhodes argues that the future well-being of our burgeoning population depends in no small part on our understanding of life’s past, its long and slow development, and its intricate interdependencies. Rhodes’s accessible and extensively illustrated treatment of the origins narrative describes the nature of the search for prehistoric life, the significance of geologic time, the origin of life, the emergence and spread of flora and fauna, the evolution of primates, and the emergence of modern humans.
Author: Carol Major
Publisher: Es-Press
ISBN: 9781925052664
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 230
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Book Description
Shortlisted for 2020 International Beverly Prize for LiteratureA deeply moving memoir about the battles waged against terminal illness and a mother's struggle to comprehend the battlefield in its wake. While some family members wage war against her daughter's disease with natural therapies, and doctors fight on using the latest developments in medical science, she longs to take her daughter to Paris instead, the city that inspired the young woman's writing and art. 'The Asparagus Wars asks questions about notions of victory at all costs. Shot through with fearless wit and resonant description, this story will break your heart but leave you richer for the experience.'Read this book. It will break your heart, but your soul will be the richer for it. Carol Major takes us on a journey of unthinkable loss, and seamlessly weaves the personal into the fabric of the political, the larger historical picture. Her fierce honesty is shot through with a fearless wit. She never overwhelms; her reader can breathe and regroup. The writing is gold spun from the ashes of personal and collective sorrow - descriptions of nature and cities, interiors and people, that capture their truth, and their beauty. Some books change a reader. This is one of them.'Vicki Laveau-Harvie, The Erratics'A superb and courageous work of art and heart. In this deeply affecting memoir, Major challenges the violent language of medicine against a backdrop of the heart-wrenching and fragile battleground of family. Suffused with honesty, vulnerability and poetic finesse, The Asparagus Wars compels us to endure the most challenging of both physical and emotional maladies with love, rather than resorting to waging war.'Leah Kaminski, The Waiting Room
Author: Nathanael Johnson
Publisher: Rodale
ISBN: 1623363853
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258
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Book Description
It all started with Nathanael Johnson's decision to teach his daughter, Josephine, the names of every tree they passed as they walked up the hill to daycare in San Francisco, CA. it was a ridiculous project, not just because she couldn't even say the word "tree" yet, but also because he couldn't name a single one of them. When confronted with the futility of his mission, his instinctive response was to expand it, Don Quixote-style, until its audacity obscured its stupidity. And so the project expanded to include an expertise in city-dwelling birds (the raptors, the shockingly shrewd crows, the gulls, the misunderstood pigeons), rodents (raccoons, rats, squirrels), and tiny crawling things (the superpowers of snails, the vast intercontinental warfare of ants). There's an unseen world all around us. There are wonders that we walk past every day without noticing. Johnson has written a book that will widen the pinhole through which we see the world. What does the world look like through the eyes of a peregrine falcon, or a raccoon, or an ant? What does a sidewalk Gingko balboa "see?" What would you learn each morning if you understood how to speak pigeon? If we look closely enough, Johnson believes that the walk to the subway can be just as entrancing as a walk through the forest. Follow along as the author and his family search for the beauty and meaning of nature in an urban jungle.
Author: Samantha San Miguel
Publisher: Union Square & Co.
ISBN: 1454937637
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 211
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Book Description
This exciting middle-grade adventure is Hoot for the Gilded Age—with scientific discoveries, secret plots, and surprisingly enormous fauna. When his asthma lands him at a health resort in the wilds of Gilded Age South Florida, twelve-year-old Algie Emsworth is over the moon. The scientific treasure trove of unexplored swamps may launch his dream career as a naturalist. But even Algie is startled when he happens upon a brand-new species and her brood in the karst springs surrounding the resort. Algie quickly realizes he must keep his discovery a secret: a famous collector of exotic animals is also staying at the hotel, and the new species is threatened by his very presence. An apparent curse has also descended upon the hotel, bringing with it a deadly red tide. But when the pool starts filling with ink and guests start getting mysterious, sucker-shaped wounds, Algie must pluck up his courage to find the truth about the goings-on at the Grand Hotel—and save the new species from destruction.
Author: Jerry Pallotta
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing
ISBN: 0881064564
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 35
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Book Description
Light hearted alphabetical exploration of spiders and insects. 2-6 yrs.
Author: A.S. Patric
Publisher: Transit Lounge
ISBN: 1925760219
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 133
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Book Description
Eleven stories. Each like a matchstick struck to illuminate the darkness. Evocations of place ranging from a Bangla jungle to the deep, blue Danube to a winter beach in Melbourne excite and seduce. But what truly draws the reader in are the unexpected landscapes of people's lives, explored with rare sensitivity, grace and a fearless truthfulness. A lonely St Kilda chef invites a beautiful busker to use his spare room. A father sings a lullaby to comfort his young daughter who has woken from a nightmare. A taxi driver picks up an old-world gentleman who is reluctant to disclose his destination. A young immigrant boy growing up in the western suburbs of Melbourne daydreams of infinite possibility. Death, loneliness, passion and belief: Patrić takes on the big questions in life and writes about the small people of the world with stylistic verve and deep humanity. This collection of stories reveals the author, best known for his award-winning novels, as a true master of the short story form. ‘One of the most interesting and valuable writers working in Australia today.’ — The Australian
