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Nature
The surprising, fascinating, and remarkable ways that animals use creativity to thrive in their habitats
Most of us view animals through a very narrow lens, seeing only bits and pieces of beings that seem mostly peripheral to our lives. However, whether animals are building a shelter, seducing a mate, or inventing a new game, animals' creative choices affect their social, cultural, and environmental worlds. The Creative Lives of Animals offers readers intimate glimpses of creativity in the lives of animals, from elephants to alligators to ants. Drawing on a growing body of scientific research, Carol Gigliotti unpacks examples of creativity demonstrated by animals through the lens of the creative process, an important component of creative behavior, and offers new thinking on animal intelligence, emotion, and self-awareness. With examples of the elaborate dams built by beavers or the lavishly decorated bowers of bowerbirds, Gigliotti provides a new perspective on animals as agents in their own lives, as valuable contributors to their world and ours, and as guides in understanding how creativity may contribute to conserving the natural world. Presenting a powerful argument for the importance of recognizing animals as individuals and as creators of a healthy, biodiverse world, this book offers insights into both the established and emerging questions about the creativity of animals.Forests have histories that need to be told. This examination of wood and woodlands in East and Southeast Asia brings together case studies from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Sumatra to explore continuities in the history of forest management across these regions as well as the distinctive qualities of human-forest relations within each context. With a general introduction to forest histories in East and Southeast Asia and a multidisciplinary set of authors, The Cultivated Forest constructs alternative lineages of forest knowledge that aim to transcend the frameworks imposed by colonial or national histories. Across these regions, forests were sites of exploitation, contestation, and ritual just as they were in Europe and America. This volume puts studies of Asian forests into conversation with global forest histories.
"Ackerman has done it again ... one of the most buoyant and enjoyable garden reads ... uplifting, intelligent." -- Boston Globe
In the mode of her bestseller A Natural History of the Senses, Diane Ackerman celebrates the sensory pleasures of her garden through the seasons.
Whether she is deadheading flowers or glorying in the profusion of roses, offering sugar water to a hummingbird or studying the slug, she welcomes the unexpected drama and extravagance as well as the sanctuary her garden offers.
Written in sensuous, lyrical prose, Cultivating Delight is a hymn to nature and to the pleasure we take in it.
"Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature's vampires into a healthy respect for evolution's power to fill every conceivable niche."--Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature's strangest creatures--the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are--and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Examining the substance that sustains nature's vampires, Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into relatively modern times. Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder--currently devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly weird--vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish) is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.
At the crossroads of philosophy and science, the sometimes-dry topics of evolution and ecology come alive in this new collection of essays--many never before anthologized. Learn how technology may be a sort of second nature, how the systemic human fungus Candida albicans can lead to cravings for carrot cake and beer, how the presence of life may be why there's water on Earth, and many other fascinating facts.
The essay "Metametazoa" presents perspectives on biology in a philosophical context, demonstrating how the intellectual librarian, pornographer, and political agitator Georges Bataille was influenced by Russian mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky and how this led to his notion of the absence of meaning in the face of the sun--which later influenced Jacques Derrida, thereby establishing a causal chain of influence from the hard sciences to topics as abstract as deconstruction and post-modernism.
In "Spirochetes Awake" the bizarre connection between syphilis and genius in the life of Friedrich Nietzsche is traced. The astonishing similarities of the Acquired-Immune-Deficiency-Syndrome symptoms with those of chronic spirochete infection, it is argued, contrast sharply with the lack of evidence that "HIV is the cause of AIDS." Throughout these readings we are dazzled by the intimacy and necessity of relationships between us and our other planetmates. In our ignorance as "civilized" people we dismiss, disdain, and deny our kinship with the only productive life forms that sustain this living planet.
--PACIFIC STANDARD "Abbey's self-claimed country, Irvine says, is at risk for exactly the reasons he said it would be: greed, gasoline, and a gaping well of apathy. Preserving wilderness is even more important now than it was half a century ago, but the stakes aren't as simple as he set them out to be. Desert Cabal has riled up some Abbey fans, but that's exactly what makes it an important read."
--OUTSIDE "A lyrical and raw conversation between Irvine and Abbey that is part tribute, part memoir, and part polemic. It'll get you thinking about the state of the desert, the fate of the wilderness movement and the actions we all need to take to save the places we love (including leaving them alone)."
--ADVENTURE JOURNAL "With humor, wisdom and a sense of urgency, Irvine uses Desert Solitaire as a jumping off point to assess the current state of the world, to expose the very human error of the literary heroes on dusty pedestals, and to reinsert many of us back into the narrative... No matter your feelings about Edward Abbey, Irvine's Desert Cabal adds necessary depth to the dialogue. Many of us have been waiting years for that."
--ALBUQUERQUE ALIBI "While Irvine shares the love Abbey, who died in 1989, had for Utah's public lands, she contends some views and sentiments from his time need to be challenged. She points out privileges Abbey enjoyed as a white male; she questions his use of 'Abbey's country.' From Abbey's first morning in the desert to his tale of a snake that guarded his campsite, Irvine questions and compares their experiences, including their failed marriages."
--THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE "The Abbey whom Irvine is talking to is neither the author himself nor a corpse; he's a literary ghost, one that has been living inside herself ever since she fell for his writing."
--CATALYST "Fierce and clear--Irvine's book effectively confronts the ritual of veneration and brings the reader closer to appreciating Abbey's work in a more constructive, relevant and productive frame than what has been allowed in the last five decades."
--THE UTAH REVIEW "This iconoclastic inner discussion with her predecessor, Abbey, is fascinating--wherein Irvine challenges Abbey to consider his myopic, privileged perspective without failing in her deference for his attempt to raise consciousness of an entire generation prior."
--SLUG MAGAZINE "At once intimate and expansive...a reminder that individuals, even titans like Abbey, can only do so much to save the 'best places.' It really does take a village (or cabal)."
--TELLURIDE INSIDE AND OUT "A lyrical, raw and vulnerable conversation."
--TELLURIDE DAILY PLANET "The news Irvine breaks graveside is that the world, and specifically 'Abbey's country, ' has changed... and there's no telling where [Abbey's] sentiments would place him in a landscape that now includes Standing Rock and Black Lives Matter, a generation of female activists and the #MeToo movement."
--SANTA FE REPORTER "Irvine gradually builds to a ringing conclusion, stating simply and clearly that wilderness lovers 'need intimacy with people every bit as much as with place' and that 'going it alone is a failure of contribution and compassion.'"
--PUBLISHERS WEEKLY "While an admirer of Abbey, Irvine illuminates his dated attitudes as she writes a love letter to the Utah desert. This brief series of essays will be enjoyed by those who treasure the desert, environmental activists, and fans of Desert Solitaire."
--LIBRARY JOURNAL "A grief-stricken, heart-hopeful, soul song to the American Desert, a wail, a keening, a rant, a scolding, a tumult, a prayer, an aria, and a call to action. Amy Irvine implores us to trade in our solitude for solidarity, to recognize ourselves in each other and in the places we love, so that we might come together to save them. In this time of all out war being waged on America's Public Lands, I'm glad she's on my side."
--PAM HOUSTON, author of Contents May Have Shifted "Amy Irvine is Ed Abbey's underworld, her roots reaching into the dark, hidden water. In a powerful, dreamlike series of essays, she lays Desert Solitaire bare, looking back at the man who wrote the book and the desert left behind. This stream of consciousness, this conversation, this broadside is an alternate version of Abbey's country. It is another voice in the wilderness."
--CRAIG CHILDS, author of Atlas of a Lost World and Apocalyptic Planet
"Ed Abbey's rise to sainthood has been a bit awkward: here is an earth hero who guzzles gas in search of his personal Eden, a champion of the underdog who snubs Mexican and Native people, an anarchist rabble-rouser who utters not a peep about his perch atop the patriarchy. Finally someone--and it could be no better iconoclast than Amy Irvine--wrassles him off the pedestal back down to the red dirt where he belongs. Half riot, half tribute, this is a roadmap through a crisis that neither Abbey nor any of us imagined."
--MARK SUNDEEN, author of The Man Who Quit Money and The Unsettlers "If you've ever talked back to the canonical tomes of the environmental movement, this is a book for you. Here are the women, the people, the children, and the intimate dangers those old books so frequently erased. Here is a new and necessary ethic that might help us more openly love the land and the many living beings who share it. I found myself nodding--Yes! Yes! Thank you!--on nearly every page of Desert Cabal."
--CAMILLE T. DUNGY, author of Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History and editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry
* Strategies for comfort, safety, and survival in extreme conditions
* Selecting gear and equipment for this special environment Like any desert aficionado, Bruce Grubbs is obsessed with water: how much to bring, how to carry it, how to conserve it, and how to find it in the backcountry. But desert exploration involves much more. Grubbs provides the knowledge and skills you need to move through this landscape with confidence. In addition to hiking and mountain biking advice, Grubbs tells how to prepare your vehicle for remote desert roads and how to avoid getting stuck in sand or busting a tire. He discusses navigating in the desert, "dry camping" skills, and techniques for minimum impact on this starkly beautiful but fragile environment. There are tips for dealing with desert heat -- and cold -- and other challenges (sharp spiny plants and venomous snakes are easy to avoid with a little preparation and know-how). But just in case, Grubbs troubleshoots the worst-case scenarios. Throughout, he gives an understanding of desert climate and seasons, and the unique plants and creatures at home in it.
An illuminating and entertaining collection of dinosaur facts, from A to Z
Dinopedia is an illustrated, pocket-friendly encyclopedia of all things dinosaurian. Featuring dozens of entries on topics ranging from hadrosaur nesting colonies to modern fossil hunters and paleontologists such as Halszka Osmólska and Paul Sereno, this amazing A-Z compendium is brimming with facts about these thrilling, complex, and sophisticated animals. Almost everything we know about dinosaurs has changed in recent decades. A scientific revolution, kick-started in the late 1960s by astounding new discoveries and a succession of new ideas, has shown that these magnificent creatures were marvels of evolution that surpassed modern reptiles and mammals in size, athletic abilities, and more. Darren Naish sheds invaluable light on our current, fast-changing understanding of dinosaur diversity and evolutionary history, and discusses the cultural impacts of dinosaurs through books, magazines, and movies. Naish also shows how our emerging view of these animals is very much a human story about ambition and competing egos, revealing that controversy and disagreement are commonplace in the vigorous field of dinosaur studies. With a wealth of original illustrations by the author, Dinopedia is an informative and entertaining collection of lore for the dinosaur lover in all of us.From two of the world's leading authorities on dogs, an imaginative journey into a future of dogs without people
What would happen to dogs if humans simply disappeared? Would dogs be able to survive on their own without us? A Dog's World imagines a posthuman future for dogs, revealing how dogs would survive--and possibly even thrive--and explaining how this new and revolutionary perspective can guide how we interact with dogs now. Drawing on biology, ecology, and the latest findings on the lives and behavior of dogs and their wild relatives, Jessica Pierce and Marc Bekoff--two of today's most innovative thinkers about dogs--explore who dogs might become without direct human intervention into breeding, arranged playdates at the dog park, regular feedings, and veterinary care. Pierce and Bekoff show how dogs are quick learners who are highly adaptable and opportunistic, and they offer compelling evidence that dogs already do survive on their own--and could do so in a world without us. Challenging the notion that dogs would be helpless without their human counterparts, A Dog's World enables us to understand these independent and remarkably intelligent animals on their own terms.A compelling worldview with advocates from around the globe, agrarianism challenges the shortcomings of our industrial and technological economy. Not simply focused on farming, the agrarian outlook encourages us to develop practices and policies that promote the health of land, community, and culture. Agrarianism reminds us that no matter how urban we become, our survival will always be inextricably linked to the precious resources of soil, water, and air.
Combining fresh insights from the disciplines of education, law, history, urban and regional planning, economics, philosophy, religion, ecology, politics, and agriculture, these original essays develop a sophisticated critique of our culture's current relationship to the land, while offering practical alternatives. Leading agrarians, including Wendell Berry, Vandana Shiva, Wes Jackson, Gene Logsdon, Brian Donahue, Eric Freyfogle, and David Orr, explain how our goals should be redirected toward genuinely sustainable communities. These writers call us to an honest accounting and correction of our often destructive ways. They suggest how our society can take practical steps toward integrating soils, watersheds, forests, wildlife, urban areas, and human populations into one great system--a responsible flourishing of our world and culture.
Until a few decades ago, the ocean depths were almost as mysterious and inaccessible as outer space. Oceans cover two-thirds of the earth's surface with an average depth of more than two miles--yet humans had never ventured more than a few hundred feet below the waves. One of the great scientific and archaeological feats of our time has been finally to cast light on the "eternal darkness" of the deep sea. This is the story of that achievement, told by the man who has done more than any other to make it possible: Robert Ballard.
Ballard discovered the wreck of the Titanic. He led the teams that discovered hydrothermal vents and "black smokers"--cracks in the ocean floor where springs of superheated water support some of the strangest life-forms on the planet. He was a diver on the team that explored the mid-Atlantic ridge for the first time, confirming the theory of plate tectonics. Today, using a nuclear submarine from the U.S. Navy, he's exploring the ancient trade routes of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea for the remains of historic vessels and their cargo. In this book, he combines science, history, spectacular illustrations, and first-hand stories from his own expeditions in a uniquely personal account of how twentieth-century explorers have pushed back the frontiers of technology to take us into the midst of a world we could once only guess at. Ballard begins in 1930 with William Beebe and Otis Barton, pioneers of the ocean depths who made the world's first deep-sea dives in a cramped steel sphere. He introduces us to Auguste and Jacques Piccard, whose "Bathyscaph"descended in 1960 to the lowest point on the ocean floor. He reviews the celebrated advances made by Jacques Cousteau. He describes his own major discoveries--from sea-floor spreading to black smokers--as well as his technical breakthroughs, including the development of remote-operated underwater vehicles and the revolutionary search techniques that led to the discovery and exploration of the Titanic, the Nazi battleship Bismarck, ancient trading vessels, and other great ships. Readers will come away with a richer understanding of history, earth science, biology, and marine technology--and a new appreciation for the remarkable men and women who have explored some of the most remote and fascinating places on the planet.Five stunningly large forests remain on Earth: the Taiga, extending from the Pacific Ocean across all of Russia and far-northern Europe; the North American boreal, ranging from Alaska's Bering seacoast to Canada's Atlantic shore; the Amazon, covering almost the entirety of South America's bulge; the Congo, occupying parts of six nations in Africa's wet equatorial middle; and the island forest of New Guinea, twice the size of California.
These megaforests are vital to preserving global biodiversity, thousands of cultures, and a stable climate, as economist John W. Reid and celebrated biologist Thomas E. Lovejoy argue convincingly in Ever Green. Megaforests serve an essential role in decarbonizing the atmosphere--the boreal alone holds 1.8 trillion metric tons of carbon in its deep soils and peat layers, 190 years' worth of global emissions at 2019 levels--and saving them is the most immediate and affordable large-scale solution to our planet's most formidable ongoing crisis.
Reid and Lovejoy offer practical solutions to address the biggest challenges these forests face, from vastly expanding protected areas, to supporting Indigenous forest stewards, to planning smarter road networks. In gorgeous prose that evokes the majesty of these ancient forests along with the people and animals who inhabit them, Reid and Lovejoy take us on an exhilarating global journey.
Walt recounts the first time he went shooting with his father-in-law, Alex, in rural Glasgow, Kentucky, during a Thanksgiving visit with his wife. "I lived in Washington DC, where most people I knew believed hunters were sick, violent men." His attitude toward his African-American hunting mates ("I was white, and I figured it was going to be my worry to fit in") is "condescending as hell," but it all turns around when he shoots his first rabbit, and surprises himself with the purity of his exhuberence when he calls out, "I got him!" He discusses the repulsion over having to clean his rabbit, but when his guests act similarly repulsed when he serves them rabbit dinner, he says "I think I'm going to kill some more." CHAPTER TWO
He describes hunting with Alex, Bobby, Lewis and Carl in a gully half the length of football field. "Over the years I've become convinced that Alex, Bobby, Lewis, and Carl have discovered the secrets of living life well," although "the idea that these men had anything to teach me didn't come to me for many Thanksgiving vacations." He is attracted by how well they get to know a place through hunting it: "How many of us can say that about any place in our lives?" The men are like relics of a bygone era, but they eventually convinced him that he should bring his son along too. He introduces Carl and Bobby, who have retired from factory jobs--they own sixty acres together in the country. Lewis bought his own 18-wheel rig a few years ago and still hauls freight. Alex is retired and has many hobbies. The men talk in a colorful drawl about their dogs, teasing each other mercilessly. CHAPTER THREE
He talks about hunting at the Old Collins Place. Every time he comes back there, he sees something for the first time. He talks about how ambitious he was as a kid, determined to make a name for himself in journalism. He meets his wife-to-be, Keran, and works thankless 70-hour weeks until he finally writes a profile of George Bush that gets him major attention, a huge raise, and freedom to cover other figures such as Jesse Jackson, Jerry Falwell, etc. CHAPTER FOUR: BOBBY'S BARN
His son Matt catches a rabbit and gets a sip off the post-hunting bottle of Wild Turkey. He discusses his tough decision of taking the boy hunting for the first time when he was seven: "Really I rolled the dice. I knew that most affluent city perople would shield their sons from such rough men and gritty settings. But after my first few years of hunting I deced that the forests, fields, wind, rain moon, stars, leaves, weeds, guns, killing, cursing, drinking--and naturally the men themselves--would be good for Matt." He describes skinning and gutting a rabit--he does it without squeamishness because "it has to be done," the same way you have to clean up a kid's vomit. LAWSON BOTTOM
He discusses the time it dawned on him that he had come to savor things--the Miro painting he owns, for instance-- and asks himself "I love my work but what if the day comes when I don't? What happens to all of this? What happens to me? Will I be trapped in my affluence for the rest of my life?" (The climax of his career comes when President Bush is seriously considering appointing him as his official biographer, and even invites him to a celebrity-studded dinner, but eventually Bush decides the security risk is too great. Harrington considers it a blessing in disguise, thinking about all of the quality time he would have lost with his son, etc.) THE EVERLASTING STREAM
He recalls a morning of picture-perfect contentment at a place called the Everlasting Stream--"such memorable moments are like waking versions of lucid dreams. We are within them and outside them at once as they are happening." He reflects "To this day I don't believe I have ever seen men so at ease, so thoroughly enjoying one another's company." He realizes he hasn't had true friends like these since he was kid. BEHIND BC WITT'S FARM
He talks about the way that moment at the Everlasting Stream has caused him to think of hunting not just as a diversion, but to think of it off and on throughout the year. Carl takes him to the four-room shack where he grew up and Harrington is shocked by how small and run-down it is. Carl says "We hunted to eat." THE SQUARE
He describes being in the zone--"hunters since Socrates onward have described an ethereal hunter's state of mental and emotional clarity. What nature writer James Swan calls the Zen of hunting--- 'a state of awe and reverence, which I sthe emotional foundation for transcendence." LEWIS'S GARAGE
He talks about the joys of hanging out in Lewis's garage after hunting. "I have come to love hearing the men laugh. After all the years, if I were blind I'd still know the men by their laughs." .. "Listening to the men is like watching a pinball bounce around its board. The action is impossible to predict but it isn't random. The point is to relax and lety my time with the men wash over me in the way that a Christmas midnight Mass with candles and organ and incense would wash over me as a boy."
smelliest plant
best water-walker
longest migration
hairiest animal
best surfer
tiniest mammal
longest tongue
fastest swimmer
sharpest sense of smell
strangest society
hottest animal
flashiest males
slimiest animal
fastest digger
loudest bird call
slipperiest plant
stickiest skin
deadliest love-life
largest animal ever
oldest leaves
fattest carnivore
deepest-living animal
sleepiest animal
In one of the most intrepid political travelogues in recent memory, Emma Larkin tells of the year she spent traveling through Burma using the life and work of George Orwell as her compass. Going from Mandalay and Rangoon to poor delta backwaters and up to the old hill-station towns in the mountains of Burma's far north, Larkin visits the places where Orwell worked and lived, and the places his books live still. She brings to vivid life a country and a people cut off from the rest of the world, and from one another, by the ruling military junta and its vast network of spies and informers. Using Orwell enables her to show, effortlessly, the weight of the colonial experience on Burma today, the ghosts of which are invisible and everywhere. More important, she finds that the path she charts leads her to the people who have found ways to somehow resist the soul-crushing effects of life in this most cruel police state. And George Orwell's moral clarity, hatred of injustice, and keen powers of observation serve as the author's compass in another sense too: they are qualities she shares and they suffuse her book - the keenest and finest reckoning with life in this police state that has yet been written.
* Blend of imaginative fiction and nonfiction offers an alternative to today's personality-centered climbing writing
* Guy Waterman's last work In this standout collection of the writings Guy Waterman and Laura Waterman readers will discover a rich blend of outdoor adventures great and small. Some fiction, some nonfiction, all these stories explore the basic impulse to climb, its roots, and the underlying drives of remarkable individual climbers. One story, a fictionalized letter exchange between two ambitious female climbers of the Victorian Era-Fanny Bullock Workman and Annie Peck-captures the competitive spirit between them. The true story A Night in Odell Gully demonstrates that serious climbers know, better than almost anyone else in our sheltered modern life, what death and dying means. This collection is certain to be a touchstone for all who are drawn to the mountains.Only the weak fear criticism.