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"A Hymn of Praise to the Palaces of Delight that should grace every
street corner. Absolutely exquisite." Ian McMillan. John Bevis is a
writer and book-lover on an eccentric quest: to obtain a membership
card from every library authority in England. In a ten-year mission
criss-crossing the country - from Solihull to Slough, from
Cleveland to Cornwall - he enrols at libraries of all shapes and
sizes: monuments to Art Deco or Brutalism; a converted corset
factory; one even shaped like a pork pie. With the architectural
eye of Pevsner and the eavesdropping ear of Bill Bryson, he engages
us at every step with anecdotes and apercus about the role of the
public library in our national life, while ruing its decline in the
age of austerity. As interested in the people he finds as he is in
the buildings and their history, he is a humane, witty and erudite
guide. The result is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever
used a library.
The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly
growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by
advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve
the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own:
digitization of epic proportions to preserve these invaluable works
in the largest archive of its kind. Now for the first time these
high-quality digital copies of original 18th century manuscripts
are available in print, making them highly accessible to libraries,
undergraduate students, and independent scholars.Medical theory and
practice of the 1700s developed rapidly, as is evidenced by the
extensive collection, which includes descriptions of diseases,
their conditions, and treatments. Books on science and technology,
agriculture, military technology, natural philosophy, even
cookbooks, are all contained here.++++The below data was compiled
from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of
this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping
to insure edition identification: ++++British LibraryT033824London:
printed for J. Clarke, J. Shuckburgh, and J. Walter, 1760. 4],61,
3]p; 8
The distinctive and amazing songs and calls of birds: a meditation
and a lexicon. "A miraculous little book: a compressed encyclopedia
of our fascination with avifauna." -The Nation "A charming, funny,
and eccentric book." -Times Literary Supplement "An elegant tribute
to the beauty of its subject." -Los Angeles Times Birds sing and
call, sometimes in complex and beautiful arrangements of notes,
sometimes in one-line repetitions that resemble a ringtone more
than a symphony. Listening, we are stirred, transported, and even
envious of birds' ability to produce what Shelley called "profuse
strains of unpremeditated art." And for hundreds of years, we have
tried to write down what we hear when birds sing. Poets have put
birdsong in verse (Thomas Nashe: "Cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-we,
to-witta-woo") and ornithologists have transcribed bird sounds more
methodically. Drawing on this history of bird writing, in Aaaaw to
Zzzzzd John Bevis offers a lexicon of the words of birds. For
tourists in Birdland, there could be no more charming phrasebook.
Consulting it, we find seven distinct variations of "hoo"
attributed to seven different species of owls, from a simple hoo to
the more ambitious hoo hoo hoo-hoo, ho hoo hoo-hoo; the understated
cheet of the tree swallow; the resonant kreeaaaaaaaaaaar of the
Swainson's hawk; the modest peep peep peep of the meadow pipit. We
learn that some people hear the Baltimore oriole saying "here,
here, come right here, dear" and the yellowhammer saying "a little
bit of bread and no cheese." Bevis, a poet, frames his lexicons-one
for North America and one for Britain and northern Europe-with an
evocative appreciation of birds, birdsong, and human attempts to
capture the words of birds in music and poetry. He also offers an
engaging account of other methods of documenting birdsong-field
recording, graphic notation, and mechanical devices including duck
calls and the serinette, an instrument used to teach song tunes to
songbirds. The singing of birds is nature at its most sublime, and
words are our medium for expressing this sublimity. Aaaaw to Zzzzzd
belongs in the bird lover's backpack and on the word lover's
bedside table, an unexpected and sui generis pleasure.
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