This book explores the factors affecting the survival of small populations. As the human impact on Earth expands, populations of many wild species are being squeezed into smaller and smaller habitats. As a consequence, they face an increasing threat of extinction. National and international conservation groups rush to add these populations, species and sub-species to their existing endangered and threatened lists. In nations with strong conservation laws, listing often triggers elaborate plans to rescue declining populations and restore their habitats. The authors review these theoretical ideas, the existing data, and explore the question: how well do small and isolated populations actually perform? Their case study group is the song sparrows of Mandarte Island, British Columbia. This population is small enough and isolated enough so that all individuals can be uniquely marked and their survival and reproduction monitored over many generations. This is one of the strongest long-term ecological studies of a contained vertebrate population, now in its 31st year.

The Agamemnon is the first play of the Oresteia trilogy, which won Aeschylus a first prize in 458 BCE. It presents the return of Agamemnon to his home in Argos after the fall of Troy, as his victorious homecoming soon gives way to the horrors of an ancient curse and the consequences of vengeance. With its accounts of war, sacrifice, confessions, prophecy, and prayer, this tragic drama begins both a brutal and compassionate journey toward redefining justice. Through the use of syllabic verse, this new version maintains an organic link with the original Greek text, while recreating the music of poetry in contemporary speech for reading and performance.

"Serengeti II: Dynamics, Management, and Conservation of an Ecosystem" brings together twenty years of research by leading scientists to provide the most most thorough understanding to date of the spectacular Serengeti-Mara ecosystem in East Africa, home to one of the largest and most diverse populations of animals in the world.
Building on the groundwork laid by the classic "Serengeti: Dynamics of an Ecosystem," published in 1979 by the University of Chicago Press, this new book integrates studies of the ecosystem at every level--from the plants at the bottom of the visible food chain, to the many species of herbivores and predators, to the system as a whole. Drawing on new data from many long-term studies and from more recent research initiatives, and applying new theory and computer technology, the contributors examine the large-scale processes that have produced the Serengeti's extraordinary biological diversity, as well as the interactions among species and between plants and animals and their environment. They also introduce computer modeling as a tool for exploring these interactions, employing this new technology to test and anticipate the effects of social, political, and economic changes on the entire ecosystem and on particular species, and so to shape future conservation and management strategies.