From the New York Times bestselling author of H is for Hawk and winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for nonfiction, comes a transcendent collection of essays about the human relationship to the natural world. Animals don't exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves. In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk's poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds' nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. By one of this century's most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

Big-Bang? Do you believe it? I don't. Being a career engineering-physicist, I always look for proof. For 50 years I have tried to prove the BB to myself. I have reviewed Slipher's red shift observation, reinterpreted it, and corrected Hubble's declaration, (the universe is not expanding and exploding to its death, instead, it is growing with vim and vigor). Red shift defines velocity, not acceleration or deceleration. So, I developed the New Universe Theory which is believable because it complies with known facts and the Laws of Physics.

An illustrated guide to interesting geological areas of England.

First published in 1983, this book explores a number of avenues of critical thinking about Joseph Conrad, showing him as an author deeply concerned with humankind's ethical motivation and its relationship with the ideas of evolution current in his day. Allan Hunter establishes Conrad's detailed knowledge of the leading evolutionary arguments of the period and the main questions posed: were ethics God-given or were morals merely an evolved attribute? His novels are shown as debates with, and extensions of, the theories of Huxley, Darwin, Carlyle, Spencer, Lombroso and others on the nature of humanity and altruism.

The Foxhound - A Complete Anthology of the Dog gathers together all the best early writing on the breed from our library of scarce, out-of-print antiquarian books and documents and reprints it in a quality, modern edition. This anthology includes chapters taken from a comprehensive range of books, many of them now rare and much sought-after works, all of them written by renowned breed experts of their day. These books are treasure troves of information about the breed - The physical points, temperaments, and special abilities are given; celebrated dogs are discussed and pictured; and the history of the breed and pedigrees of famous champions are also provided. The contents were well illustrated with numerous photographs of leading and famous dogs of that era and these are all reproduced to the highest quality. Books used include: My Dog And I by H. W. Huntington (1897), Dogs Of The World by Arthur Craven (1931), Hutchinson's Dog Encyclopaedia by Walter Hutchinson (1935) and many others.

Our ancestors did not always see beauty in the starkness of deserts, mountains, and polar wastes; that was the work of ages. In The Road to Egdon Heath (1999), Richard Bevis undertook to explain how and why this change - noted by Thomas Hardy in 1878 - came about. In Images of Liberty he picks up this story in the late nineteenth century and carries it into the present time.

"That the mid-1870s saw Thomas Hardy imagine Egdon Heath out of a few Dorset moors and present it as the modern standard of natural beauty; Charles Doughty go wandering with nomads in the Arabian desert; John Muir begin to write about his climbs in the Sierra Nevada; John Wesley Powell affirm the arid reality of the American West; and Herman Melville publish a long poem about the wilderness of Judaea while explorers were probing the polar oceans, is not likely to have been mere coincidence."

He finds that influences as diverse as Buddhism, industrial development, climate change, and tourism have shaped attitudes toward "the Great," and even its physical reality. Bevis concludes that the impulses that drove the pioneers to Hardy's "chastened sublimity" have not passed away. "Our horizons are still spacious, still liberating, and not unknowable."

To celebrate Richard Mabey's 80th birthday, a reissue of the seminal Nature Cure, originally published in 2005 to great acclaim. At the height of his career, having recently published Flora Britannica, the author and naturalist fell in to a deep and all consuming depression. Unable to rise from his bed, his face turned to the wall, Richard Mabey found that the touchstones of his life - his love for nature and the land - could no longer offer him solace. But over time, with help from friends and a move to East Anglia, he slowly recovered, finding a new partner, and a new relationship with landscape. Nature Cure, full of nuance and energy, was a pioneering book in the genre that has since become known as New Nature Writing, and received many plaudits on publication. For this new hardback edition Richard has written a new foreword and Little Toller has commissioned a new jacket by the celebrated artist Michael Kirkman.

In You Are Here, celebrated astronaut Chris Hadfield gives us the really big picture: this is our home, as seen from space. The millions of us who followed Hadfield's news-making Twitter feed from the International Space Station thought we knew what we were looking at when we first saw his photos. But we may have caught the beauty and missed the full meaning. Now, through photographs - many of which have never been shared - Hadfield unveils a fresh and insightful look at our planet. He sees astonishing detail and importance in these images, not just because he's spent months in space but because his in-depth knowledge of geology, geography and meteorology allows him to reveal the photos' mysteries. Featuring Hadfield's favourite images, You Are Here is divided by continent and represents one (idealized) orbit of the ISS. Surprising, thought-provoking and visually delightful, it opens a singular window on our planet, using remarkable photographs to illuminate the history and consequences of human settlement, the magnificence of never-before-noticed landscapes, and the power of the natural forces shaping our world and the future of our species.

Covering three broader issues - biodiversity conservation, religious doctrine and environment - the book Biodiversity Conservation Ethics in Major Religions is the result of a unique approach. It attempts to initiate scientific discourse through the fabric of religions. Spread across 15 chapters, the book covers the essence of 10 religions on biodiversity, encompassing a wide range of issues related to conservation. The book promises to be a useful resource for biodiversity students, researchers and protected area managers and also for religious scholars who are invited to look at the broader themes of religions beyond theology.

Although technically puppies are young dogs, Puppy Pal Pointers: From the True Tails of Ripple and Jessie relates to dogs of all ages. The book consists of subjects that are pertinent to every devoted owner, including caring for, treating, understanding, treasuring, bonding with, and grieving for your dog, plus pet care tips for kids. Topics pertaining to dog care and responsible ownership are covered, such as parasite control, hygiene, overpopulation concerns, relationships with cats, the human-animal bond, pet loss, and the grief process. Puppy Pal Pointers is different from other pet care books because it is told through the eyes of two dogs. Their pictures, along with photos of their canine and feline peers, are used to accentuate points.

The Little Book of Planet Earth presents a concise description of the geological evolution of Earth from its formation. Meissner describes in detailed but accessible prose not just the planet's features, but the tools that modern geologists use to explore and track the ever-changing subterranean and surface features of the planet. With a particular gift for expressing how the forces in and around our planet constantly alter the world we live in, the author introduces lay readers to the key topics in modern earth and planetary science: the creation of Earth and its moon (as well as stars and other planets), the role of seismology in analyzing Earth's structure, the formation of mountain ranges and basins, the role of plate tectonics, the significance of Earth's magnetic field, and the complex relationship of our planet's geology to the life forms found there.

'This is a first-class book. If you are interested in wildlife and the outdoors, you will find it an essential addition to your natural-history library. The author's knowledge and enthusiasm come right through, and the illustrator's work greatly enhances the book's usefulness. Organization of the book makes identification easier than with other track books I know and should enable beginners to use the text with ease.'--Jim Rantz, Executive Director, The National Outdoor Leadership School.

The Flat Coated Retriever - A Complete Anthology of the Dog gathers together all the best early writing on the breed from our library of scarce, out-of-print antiquarian books and documents and reprints it in a quality, modern edition. This anthology includes chapters taken from a comprehensive range of books, many of them now rare and much sought-after works, all of them written by renowned breed experts of their day. These books are treasure troves of information about the breed - The physical points, temperaments, and special abilities are given; celebrated dogs are discussed and pictured; and the history of the breed and pedigrees of famous champions are also provided. The contents were well illustrated with numerous photographs of leading and famous dogs of that era and these are all reproduced to the highest quality. Books used include: My Dog And I by H. W. Huntington (1897), Dogs Of The World by Arthur Craven (1931), Hutchinson's Dog Encyclopaedia by Walter Hutchinson (1935) and many others.

This book provides an introduction to the significant role of physics in evolution, based on the ideas of matter and energy resource flow, organism self-copying, and ecological change. The text employs these ideas to create quantitative models for important evolutionary processes. Many fields of science and engineering have come up against the problem of complex design-when details become so numerous that computer power alone cannot make progress. Nature solved the complex-design problem using evolution, yet how it did so has been a mystery. Both laboratory experiments and computer-simulation attempts eventually stopped evolving. Something more than Darwin's ideas of heredity, variation, and selection was needed. The solution is that there is a fourth element to evolution: ecological change. When a new variation is selected, this can change the ecology, and the new ecology can create new opportunities for even more new variations to be selected. Through this endless cycle, complexity can grow automatically. This book uses the physics of resource flow to describe this process in detail, developing quantitative models for many evolutionary processes, including selection, multicellularity, coevolution, sexual reproduction, and the Serengeti Rules. The text demonstrates that these models are in conceptual agreement with numerous examples of biological phenomena, and reveals, through physics, how complex design can arise naturally. This will serve as a key text on the part physics plays in evolution, and will be of great interest to students at the university level and above studying biophysics, physics, systems biology, and related fields.