Are clouds alive? Where is Africa’s most dangerous river? Are there really elephants in the Knysna Forest? Why do female hyenas sometimes grow a penis? Why did Zulu warriors never ride into battle mounted on zebras?

These are some of the quirky questions which award-winning journalist and naturalist Don Pinnock seeks to answer as he wanders around Africa.

Love Letters To Africa is a blend of geography, history, natural science and travel writing, of personal meditation and general philosophy. For exploring Africa at ground level, you couldn’t find a better guide.

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.

Madeira is Portugal's emerald island - wild, rough and verdant green, situated roughly 850 kms southwest of Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean. Together with the much smaller and drier island of Porto Santo and the saw-toothed crescent of the Desertas islands, it forms a small archipelago that is a splendid destination for nature lovers and hikers. The misty laurel forests and sunny peaks are packed with a rare, unique flora and fauna, while whales, dolphins, sea turtles and a large numbers of seabirds patrol the surrounding ocean. Hikers, birdwatchers, botanists, whale watchers and other nature lovers - this is your naturalist guide to Madeira.The Crossbill Guide to Madeira describes 15 routes and numerous other sites to help you discover Madeira and Porto Santo. In addition, it describes excursions out onto the ocean, the Desertas islands and the remote Selvagens archipelago to explore Madeira's sea life. The book is complemented with extensive chapters on landscape, geology, history, descriptions of the flora and fauna and tips to observe wildlife.

The Moon feels like it is ours - it belongs to all of humanity. Every human culture, in both hemispheres, shares the Moon. Our Moon shows that our relationship with the Moon is far more powerful, and far more ancient, than Apollo's postcards and bags of sand. Apollo and modern efforts to return humans to the Moon's surface are just one chapter in the larger love story of humans and our eternal companion. In this cultural and scientific history of the Moon from prehistory to the present day Rebecca Boyle takes us from exciting archaeological finds, to cultural and spiritual interpretations, from the monumental Apollo landing in 1969, to the latest scientific discoveries about the make-up of the moon, its origins and those of our own planet. It takes in archaeology, anthropology, sociology, cultural relevance, history of science, time and the planet, technological advances and that persistent desire to know where we come from and how we got here.

A fresh and engaging introduction to the science behind pollution disasters for science and non-science majors Coming generations will have to reckon with a growing number of environmental challenges, whether caused by climate change, population growth or industrial production. Polluted Earth: The Science of Earth's Environment combines the best features of a textbook and a popular science book. It retains the organization needed for a course while adopting a highly illustrative style that is mirrored in a multitude of case studies: short, self-contained and well-illustrated stories of well-known pollution disasters that are highly engaging for both science and non-science majors, from the historic Black Sunday dust storm in the midwestern United States to the more recent Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico. From the very start, it also introduces the concept of environmental justice that ties pollution to economic and social life, bringing its subject into the world of the reader in an unprecedented way. Polluted Earth readers will also find: Well-known case studies including the Great London smog, the Pacific Gas and Electric case (made famous by Erin Brockovitch), the Exxon Valdez, and more Detailed illustrations showing the spatial and temporal relations of various pollution sources Modern technological solutions already in use by environmental industries A comprehensive list of pollutants, their health & environmental impact and their regulated exposure limits With its fresh and engaging style, Polluted Earth is an ideal introduction to the concepts, tasks and challenges of environmental science for undergraduate students of all disciplines.

A comprehensive photographic guide to the gull species of the Western Palearctic Gulls occupy a particularly important place in the world of birds. But because they are notoriously difficult to identify, they have been relatively neglected in the ornithological literature. Gulls of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East offers the most up-to-date guide for gull identification in Europe and beyond. With a direct and visual approach, and an abundance of beautiful color photographs, this book provides thorough accounts of all species and subspecies of gulls found in the Western Palearctic. The guide compares similar taxa and addresses the complexities of identifying hybrids. Gulls of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East will be the standard work for identifying these birds for some time to come. Richly illustrated with nearly 1,400 color photographs Thorough accounts of all species and subspecies of gulls found in the Western Palearctic Up-to-date information for easy and accurate identification of 45 species

The Wire-Haired Fox Terrier - 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: The Show Dog by H. W. Huntington (1901), The Dog Book by James Watson (1906), Hutchinson's Dog Encyclopaedia by Walter Hutchinson (1935) and many others.

Combining memoir and studies in the Environmental Humanities, Black Swan Song weaves together an autobiographically-based account of the unique life and work of Rod Giblett. For over 25 years he was a leading local wetland conservationist, environmental activist, and pioneer transdisciplinary researcher and writer of fiction and non-fiction. He has researched, written, and published more than 25 books in the environmental humanities, especially wetland cultural studies, and psychoanalytic ecology. Black Swan Song traces Rod's early and later life and work from being born in Borneo as the child of Christian missionaries, through his childhood in Bible College, being a High School dropout and studying at three universities to becoming an academic, activist and author, and now a writer. Following in the footsteps of New Lives of the Saints: Twelve Environmental Apostles, Black Swan Song also comprises conversations in conservation counter-theology between the twelve minor biblical prophets and twelve environmental apostles, such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, John Muir, and Rachel Carson. It also introduces the lives and works of twelve more environmental apostles, such as John Clare, Rebecca Solnit, John Charles Ryan, and others who have made a valuable contribution to green thinking and living. Black Swan Song mixes modes and genres, such as memoir, essay, story, criticism, etc., making up the writer's black swan song. It provides ways of living and being with the earth in dark and troubled times by providing resources of a journey of hope for learning to live bio- and psycho-symbiotic livelihoods in bioregional home habitats of the living earth and in the Symbiocene, the hoped-for age superseding the Anthropocene.

Bland Simpson, the celebrated bard of North Carolina's sound country, has blended history, observation of nature, and personal narrative in many books to chronicle the people and places of eastern Carolina. Yet he has spent much of his life in the state's Piedmont, with regular travels into its western mountains. Here, for the first time, Simpson brings his distinctive voice and way of seeing to bear on the entirety of his home state, combining storytelling and travelogue to create a portrait of the Old North State with care and humor. Three of the state's finest photographers come along to guide the journey: Simpson's wife and creative partner Ann Cary Simpson, professional photographer Scott Taylor, and writer and naturalist Tom Earnhardt. Their photos, combined with Simpson's rich narrative, will inspire readers to consider not only what North Carolina has been and what it is but also what we hope it will be. This book belongs on the shelf of longtime residents, newcomers, and visitors alike.

Originally published in 1995, The Antievolution Pamphlets of Harry Rimmer is the sixth volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America. The volume brings together original sources from the prominent evangelist and pastor Harry Rimmer. The consortium of pamphlets in this volume detail Rimmer’s antievolutionist sentiments, a notion which characterized his early writings. The pamphlets detail Rimmer’s rhetoric on evolution and science from the early part of the 20th century as he travelled across America to disseminate his writings. The works in this volume address Rimmer’s polemic on the danger posed by modern science and the consequential disassociation with religion. While Rimmer did not discount science itself, he argued for, what he termed, ‘true science’, claiming that modern science was based only in scientific opinion and not fact. As a self-proclaimed scientist, these writings take a unique view of the relationship between religion and science from this period through Rimmer’s dual nature as both scientist and pastor. This volume will be of great interest to historians of natural history, science and religion.

Originally published in 1995, The Selected Works of George McCready Price is the seventh volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume brings together the original writings and pamphlets of George McCready Price, a leading creationist of the early antievolution crusade of the 1920s. McCready Price labelled himself the ‘principal scientific authority of the Fundamentalists’ and as a self-taught scientist he enjoyed more scientific repute amongst fundamentalists of the time. This interesting and unique collection of original source material includes five of his writings between 1906 and 1924, challenging the new Darwinian theory of evolution and natural selection through his writings on the natural sciences. His literature covers the topics of evolution and biology and critiques biological arguments for evolution. He also wrote widely on geology offering his own alternative argument of ‘flood geography’ in opposition to the Darwinian theory concerning palaeontology and geology. This volume will be of interest to historians of natural history and the creationism movement, as well as scholars of religion and American history.

Originally published in 1995, Early Creationist Journals is the ninth volume in the Creationism in Twentieth-Century America series, reissued in 2021. The book is a concise primary source collection containing a selection of journal articles from the early twentieth century outlining discoveries in biology, geology, physiology and archaeology and their relation to Christianity. The aim of the journals was to provide a platform for creationists of the 1920s to voice their theories on new science and how more recent discoveries fit within creationist beliefs, including flood theory. These interesting and unique journals will be of interest to academics working in the field of religion and natural history and provide a unique snapshot into the debates between evolutionists and Christianity during a period of great scientific change.

Originally published in 1995, Creation and Evolution in the Early American Scientific Affiliation is the tenth volume in the series, Creationism in Twentieth Century America, reissued in 2021. The volume comprises of original primary sources from the American Science Affiliation, a group formed following an invitation from the president of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, in answer to the perceived need for an academic society for American Evangelical Scientists to explicate the relationship between science and faith. The society confronted the debate between creation and evolution head on, leaving a paper trail documenting their thoughts and struggles. This diverse and expansive collection includes 53 selections that appeared during the organisation’s first two decades and focuses on the encounter between science and American evangelicalism in the twentieth century, in particular the debates surrounding the ever-increasing preference for evolutionary theory. The collection will be of especial interest to natural historians, and theologians as well as academics of philosophy, and history.

Eugene Connett, III, the venerable founder of The Derrydale Press, described Edmund Smith as "the most polished writer we have ever published. The discovery of this manuscript in 1936 was, he said, "one of the happiest events of the past year." Smith was a master New England storyteller who expressed his love and knowledge of wild places through the medium of short stories. The title comes from an experience of the author and a boyhood friend who together enjoyed the thrill of catching their first bass with worms in a tomato can. Warm, evocative stories from locales all over the Atlantic seaboard. Originally published by The Derrydale Press in 1937, this classic of outdoor literature will appeal to the armchair sportsman as well as the accomplished hunter and fisher. Illustrated by Ralph L. Boyer.

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.

Written by one of the leading figures in biosocial criminology and evolutionary psychology, this work explores the tight relationship between criminality and indiscriminate sexuality within the framework of life history theory. The underlying thesis is that traits associated with a strong libido, indiscriminately expressed, are intertwined with traits associated with criminal behavior; that is, excessive interest in sexual adventures pursued in an irresponsible way is undergirded by the same individual short-run hedonistic traits that define criminality. While traditional criminology tends to view sexual and criminal behavior as separate domains, many biosocial criminologists, evolutionary psychologists, neuroscientists, and behavioral and molecular geneticists are not at all surprised that a link exists between criminality and sexuality. Research shows that the statistical relationship between indiscriminate sexuality and criminal behavior is stronger than for most other variables associated with crime, although most studies dealing with this relationship are from outside the dominant environmentalism paradigm of criminology. Using life history theory as the theoretical umbrella for exploring the relationship between indiscriminate sexuality and criminal behavior, the book explores how and why criminal behavior is related to hypersexuality. Life history theory, which has a long and fruitful history of use among evolutionary biologists who use it to investigate the relationship between mating strategies and the environment among various species of animals (including humans) is particularly suited to understanding how an exclusive focus on mating effort is related to criminal behavior. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in criminology, psychology, and sociology, and anyone interested in examining the interconnection between biological, psychological, and socio-environmental factors in relation to criminal behavior.