From the award-winning author of The Tangled Tree and The Song of the Dodo comes a collection of essays in which various weird and wonderful aspects of nature are examined. From tales of vegetarian piranha fish and voiceless dogs to the scientific search for the genes that threaten to destroy the cheetah, Quammen captures the natural world with precision. Throughout, he illuminates the surprising intricacies of the natural world, and our human attitudes towards those intricacies. A distinguished essayist, Quammen's reporting is masterful and thought provoking and his curiosity and fascination with the world of living things is infectious.

Maintaining its appealing style and presentation, the Yearbook of Astronomy 2023 contains comprehensive jargon-free monthly sky notes and an authoritative set of sky charts to enable backyard astronomers and sky gazers everywhere to plan their viewing of the year's eclipses, comets, meteor showers and minor planets as well as detailing the phases of the Moon and visibility and locations of the planets throughout the year. To supplement all this is a variety of entertaining and informative articles, a feature for which the Yearbook of Astronomy is known. Presenting the reader with information on a wide range of topics, the articles for the 2023 edition include, among others, The Incomparable Sir Patrick Moore; Shining a Light on Jupiter's Atmosphere; A Brief History of the End of the Universe; The Closing of Historic Observatories; The Ability to Believe: Bizarre Worlds of Astronomical Antireality; Optical SETI at Harvard; The Future of Spaceflight; and Male Family Mentors for Women in Astronomy: Caroline and William Herschel. This iconic publication made its first appearance way back in 1962, shortly after the dawning of the Space Age. Now into its seventh decade of production, the Yearbook continues to be essential reading for anyone lured and fascinated by the magic of astronomy and who has a desire to extend their knowledge of the Universe and the wonders it plays host to. The Yearbook of Astronomy is indeed an inspiration to amateur and professional astronomers alike, and warrants a place on the bookshelf of all stargazers and watchers of the Universe.

This early work is an absorbing read for any chinchilla owner or historian of the breed, but also contains a wealth of information and anecdote that is still useful and practical today. Orientated towards the commercial chinchilla keeper. Extensively illustrated with text and full page photographs. Contents Include: Introduction; Preface; Chinchillas in History and Literature; the Wonders of a Chinchilla Hair; The Chinchilla Language; Housing Equipment; The Feeding of Chinchillas; Breeding and Reproduction; Routine Care of Chinchilla Babies; Chinchilla Diseases and Ailments; Pelting; Individuality of Species; and Where Are We Going?. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Dewdney takes us on a guided journey through Hungry Hollow's many dimensions of time and space - a multifaceted prism through which its present and prehistory, and its worlds large and small, are all refracted. We meet many plants, animals, fungi, and other life forms, guided sometimes by the raccoon called Lotor, sometimes by the biologist Dianne, who is just coming to terms with the real world of biological diversity. We encounter a Hackberry tree whose branches reproduce the taxonomic tree of life; learn how it would look and feel to shrink by stages to the size of an amoeba; watch a toad win the survival lottery; and see the world of Hungry Hollow from the viewpoint of plants, earthworms, rotifers, and even stones. We also learn about the geological forces that molded North America, the kingdoms of life, surface tension, genetics, the strange sex lives of diatoms and bacteria, and how everything is eventually recycled into the molecular building blocks of nature.

With bountiful salmon and fertile plains, the Duwamish River has drawn people to its shores over the centuries for trading, transport, and sustenance. Chief Se'alth and his allies fished and lived in villages here and white settlers established their first settlements nearby. Industrialists later straightened the river's natural turns and built factories on its banks, floating in raw materials and shipping out airplane parts, cement, and steel. Unfortunately, the very utility of the river has been its undoing, as decades of dumping led to the river being declared a Superfund cleanup site. Using previously unpublished accounts by Indigenous people and settlers, BJ Cummings's compelling narrative restores the Duwamish River to its central place in Seattle and Pacific Northwest history. Writing from the perspective of environmental justice-and herself a key figure in river restoration efforts-Cummings vividly portrays the people and conflicts that shaped the region's culture and natural environment. She conducted research with members of the Duwamish Tribe, with whom she has long worked as an advocate. Cummings shares the river's story as a call for action in aligning decisions about the river and its future with values of collaboration, respect, and justice.

Throughout the centuries philosophers and poets alike have defended an essential difference-rather than a porous transition-between the human and animal. Attempts to assign essential properties to humans (e.g., language, reason, or morality) often reflected ulterior aims to defend a privileged position for humans.. This book shifts the traditional anthropocentric focus of philosophy and literature by combining the questions "What is human?" and "What is animal?" What makes this collection unique is that it fills a lacuna in critical animal studies and the growing field of ecocriticism. It is the first collection that establishes a productive encounter between philosophical perspectives on the human-animal boundary and those that draw on fictional literature. The objective is to establish a dialogue between those disciplines with the goal of expanding the imaginative scope of human-animal relationships. The contributions thus do not only trace and deconstruct the boundaries dividing humans and nonhuman animals, they also present the reader with alternative perspectives on the porous continuum and surprising reversal of what appears as human and what as nonhuman.

World-renowned behavioral scientists Jane Goodall and Marc Bekoff argue passionately and persuasively that if we put these ten trusts to work in our lives, the earth and all its inhabitants will be able to live together harmoniously. Simple yet profound, The Ten Trusts will not only change our perspective regarding how we live on this planet, it will establish our responsibilities as stewards of the natural world, ultimately showing us how to live with respect for all life.

The perfect books for the true book lover, Penguin's Great Ideas series features twelve more groundbreaking works by some of history's most prodigious thinkers. Each volume is beautifully packaged with a unique type-driven design that highlights the bookmaker's art. Offering great literature in great packages at great prices, this series is ideal for those readers who want to explore and savor the Great Ideas that have shaped our world.Thoreau's account of his solitary and self-sufficient home in the New England woods remains an inspiration to the environmental movement-a call to his fellow men to abandon their striving, materialistic existences of 'quiet desperation' for a simple life within their means, finding spiritual truth through awareness of the sheer beauty of their surroundings.

Originally published in 1879, this fascinating work is thoroughly recommended for inclusion on the bookshelf of all Bee enthusiasts. With chapters on The history of bee keeping, Natural swarming, Artifical swarming and the diseases and enemies of bee's as well as many more this works contains much information that is still useful and practical today.Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Light as Experience and Imagination from Medieval to Modern Times synthesizes and interpretates the experience of light as revealed in a wide range of art and literature from medieval to modern times. The true subject of the book is making sense of the individual's relationship with light, rather than the investigation of light's essential nature. It tells the story of light "seducing" individuals from the Middle Ages to our modern times. Consequently, it is not concerned with the "progress" of scientific inquiries into the physical properties and behavior of light (optical science), but rather with subjective reactions as reflected in art, architecture, and literature. Instead of its evolution, this book celebrates the complexity of our relation to light's character. No individual experience of light being "truer" than any other.

In Seeing Like a Commons, Joshua P. Lockyer demonstrates how a growing group of people have, over the last 80 years, deliberately built the Celo Community, a communal settlement on 1,200 acres of commonly owned land in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina. Joshua P. Lockyer highlights the potential for intentional communities like Celo to raise awareness of global interconnectivity and structural inequalities, enabling people and communities to become better stewards and citizens of both local landscapes and global commons.

Beaches are the most dynamic places on Earth, offering an infinite variety of patterns and geological land formations. This book celebrates and solves the mysteries of the fascinating and frequently abstract beauty of gravitational effects at the water's edge. Lovers of natural history will appreciate the images of curiously sculpted potholes, towering sea stacks, sand and vegetal varieties, and blue sky reflected in striated rivulets, accompanied by diagrams and explanations of the natural forces at work. This book aims to enhance appreciation for oceans and their shape-shifting shorelines. They are, after all, wondrous.