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Author: Caspar Henderson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022604470X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t. With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change.
Author: Caspar Henderson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022604470X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 448
Get Book Here
Book Description
From medieval bestiaries to Borges’s Book of Imaginary Beings, we’ve long been enchanted by extraordinary animals, be they terrifying three-headed dogs or asps impervious to a snake charmer’s song. But bestiaries are more than just zany zoology—they are artful attempts to convey broader beliefs about human beings and the natural order. Today, we no longer fear sea monsters or banshees. But from the infamous honey badger to the giant squid, animals continue to captivate us with the things they can do and the things they cannot, what we know about them and what we don’t. With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change.
Author: Caspar Henderson
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022604484X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 448
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Book Description
“Caspar Henderson takes us on an eye-opening tour of real animals that no sane human could ever have invented.” —Frans de Waal, New York Times–bestselling author With The Book of Barely Imagined Beings, Caspar Henderson offers readers a fascinating, beautifully produced modern-day menagerie. But whereas medieval bestiaries were often based on folklore and myth, the creatures that abound in Henderson’s book—from the axolotl to the zebrafish—are, with one exception, very much with us, albeit sometimes in depleted numbers. The Book of Barely Imagined Beings transports readers to a world of real creatures that seem as if they should be made up—that are somehow more astonishing than anything we might have imagined. The yeti crab, for example, uses its furry claws to farm the bacteria on which it feeds. The waterbear, meanwhile, is among nature’s “extreme survivors,” able to withstand a week unprotected in outer space. These and other strange and surprising species invite readers to reflect on what we value—or fail to value—and what we might change. A powerful combination of wit, cutting-edge natural history, and philosophical meditation, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is an infectious and inspiring celebration of the sheer ingenuity and variety of life in a time of crisis and change. “The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is one that Pliny would have envied, Darwin applauded, and Borges relished . . . In these days of doom and gloom, I can think of nothing more rejoicing than Caspar Henderson’s magical book.” —Alberto Manguel, author of A History of Reading “Magnificent, bravura, beautiful and astoundingly interesting.” —The Sunday Times “Spell-binding, brilliantly executed, extraordinary.” —The Guardian
Author: Caspar Henderson
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 1847085911
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
From Axolotl to Zebrafish, discover a host of barely imagined beings: real creatures that are often more astonishing than anything dreamt in the pages of a medieval bestiary. Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the earth, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizarreness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, inviting us to better imagine the precarious world we inhabit. A witty, vivid blend of pioneering natural history and spiritual primer, infectiously celebratory about life's sheer ingenuity and variety, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is a mind-expanding, wonder-inducing read.
Author: BK Loren
Publisher: Catapult
ISBN: 1619020734
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 221
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Book Description
"Radical, before it meant a person who advocates strong political reform, meant getting to the root of things, the origin. It comes from the Latin radix, radicis,, meaning radish, a root vegetable."—BK Loren These meditative essays range in subjects from a transcendental encounter with a pack of coyotes ironically juxtaposed with her neighbor's claim that nature "has gone out of vogue," to Loren's mother's slow yet all–encompassing deterioration from Parkinson's, and the unexpected way the Loma Prieta earthquake eroded her depression by offering the author a sense of her small place in a wild and worthwhile world. Loren has an empathetic and gentle approach to the world. In detailing the intricacies of human relationships and consciousness—fear of death and time, cooperation born of clashing viewpoints, tradition's beauty even when destructive, a love of language, a sense of loss amid the fast–paced materialistic world—she peels back the film of popular thinking in order to expose herself to the secrets so few of us ever see.
Author: Caspar Henderson
Publisher: Granta Books
ISBN: 178378136X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 348
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Book Description
A New Map of Wonders charts a course through the realm of the fascinating and awe-inspiring. With the curiosity and enthusiasm of a great explorer, the award-winning Caspar Henderson celebrates and explains the wonder of light and the origins of the universe, the myriad marvels of the human body and the natural world -- and reveals the wonders to come: the technologies that will transform human experience and change what we will find wonderful. Drawing on philosophy and natural history, art and religion, neuroscience and nanotechnology, A New Map of Wonders is a celebration of life -- a rich and inspiring guide, encouraging us to see the world anew.
Author: Rob Scott
Publisher: Gollancz
ISBN: 0575087072
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 530
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Book Description
Nerak is defeated. Steven Taylor has cast the malevolent dictator's soul into the Fold's inky void - but the evil that controlled Nerak and brutalised the people of Eldarn has escaped, and taken Mark Jenkins with it. Steven must put his own feelings to one side, for Eldarn's fate still hangs in the balance, and he remains the land's only real hope. As he and his companions make their way across country, rallying what remains of their allies, Mark, no longer the affable teacher from Colorado, disappears into the foothills of the Blackstone Mountains, determined to excavate the Larion spell table and use its awesome power to destroy Eldarn. During an epic sea journey to the enemy strongholds of northern Malakasia, Steven discovers he is stronger than he thought, but a confrontation with Mark is inevitable ... Is Steven willing to kill his best friend and face eternal exile in Eldarn to save two worlds from annihilation? Return to Eldarn for this towering finale, where our heroes face a terrifying army of mutated beasts, and the mysteries of the Larion Senators are waiting to be unlocked, for good or for evil ...
Author: Rob Scott
Publisher: Gollancz
ISBN: 0575105089
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 462
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Book Description
The Larion spell table has been dormant for nearly a thousand Twinmoons. It waits in a forgotten chamber in Sandcliff Palace, the abandoned Larion Senate stronghold on Eldarn's North Sea. The spell table holds the power to see the people of the five lands safely through the oppression and brutality that have haunted them for generations, but without Lessek's key it is a worthless slab of granite - and Lessek's key itself is just a nondescript stone Steven Taylor and Mark Jenkins overlooked on the night they fell through the far portal into Eldarn. Retrieving the key and freeing Eldarn's people rests with Steven Taylor, the would-be sorcerer from Colorado, who is racing across America with Nerak, the fallen Larion dictator, hot on his heels. Steven must reach Idaho Springs and find Lessek's key before it falls into Nerak's hands and is lost for ever - and with it, the lives of untold millions, in both of Steven's worlds.
Author: Jules Evans
Publisher: Canongate Books
ISBN: 1782118772
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Since the Enlightenment, western culture has written off ecstatic experience as a form of mental illness. But why should rationality be considered the highest part of human nature when we are capable of so many more states of experience? Piecing together interviews, analysis of ancient and modern philosophy, and his own eclectic encounters with the sublime, philosopher Jules Evans mounts an investigation into what we can gain from mastering the art of losing control. From Aristotle and Plato to the Bishop of London and Sister Bliss, radical jihadis to Silicon Valley transhumanists, The Art of Losing Control is a funny, life-enhancing journey that will change the way you think about how you feel.
Author: David Toomey
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393089940
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
“Weird indeed, and not a little wonderful.”—Nature In the 1980s and 1990s, in places where no one thought it possible, scientists found organisms they called extremophiles: lovers of extremes. There were bacteria in volcanic hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor, single-celled algae in Antarctic ice floes, and fungi in the cooling pools of nuclear reactors. But might there be life stranger than the most extreme extremophile? Might there be, somewhere, another kind of life entirely? In fact, scientists have hypothesized life that uses ammonia instead of water, life based not in carbon but in silicon, life driven by nuclear chemistry, and life whose very atoms are unlike those in life we know. In recent years some scientists have begun to look for the tamer versions of such life on rock surfaces in the American Southwest, in a “shadow biosphere” that might impinge on the known biosphere, and even deep within human tissue. They have also hypothesized more radical versions that might survive in Martian permafrost, in the cold ethylene lakes on Saturn’s moon Titan, and in the hydrogen-rich atmospheres of giant planets in other solar systems. And they have imagined it in places off those worlds: the exotic ices in comets, the vast spaces between the stars, and—strangest of all—parallel universes. Distilling complex science in clear and lively prose, David Toomey illuminates the research of the biological avant-garde and describes the workings of weird organisms in riveting detail. His chapters feature an unforgettable cast of brilliant scientists and cover everything from problems with our definitions of life to the possibility of intelligent weird life. With wit and understanding that will delight scientists and lay readers alike, Toomey reveals how our current knowledge of life forms may account for only a tiny fraction of what’s really out there.
Author: Jonathan Kwitny
Publisher: Penguin Group
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 452
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Book Description
One of America's premier journalists investigates why U.S. foreign policy defeats our own best interests.
