Resultados de búsqueda: Science/Nature Writing from The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery

Edward Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a fascinating, sometimes raucous, always personal account of a place that has already disappeared, but is worth remembering and living through again and again.

Everything—from biological life to inanimate systems—generates shape and structure and evolves in a sequence of ever-improving designs in order to facilitate flow. River basins, cardiovascular systems, and bolts of lightning are very efficient flow systems to move a current—of water, blood, or electricity. Likewise, the more complex architecture of animals evolve to cover greater distance per unit of useful energy, or increase their flow across the land. Such designs also appear in human organizations, like the hierarchical "flowcharts" or reporting structures in corporations and political bodies.
All are governed by the same principle, known as the Constructal Law, and configure and reconfigure themselves over time to flow more efficiently. Written in an easy style that achieves clarity without sacrificing complexity, Design in Nature is a paradigm-shifting book that will fundamentally transform our understanding of the world around us.

This classic by the distinguished Harvard entomologist tells how life on earth evolved and became diverse, and now, how diversity and life are endangered by us, truly.

This book contains a concise yet comprehensive field guide to the ducks, geese and swans of North America. Complete with a plethora of detailed illustrations and diagrams, this handbook is perfect for the wildfowl enthusiast, and is well deserving of a place in any collection of sporting literature. This text was intended to readily provide answers and settle the arguments that take place around the camp stove after a day's shoot, and as such is not as scientific or difficult to digest as similar literature - making it perfect for beginners. The chapters of this book include: 'Family Tree of Ducks, Geese and Swans'; 'The Family, Anatidae'; 'Duck Topography'; 'Scientific Nomenclature'; 'Moults and Plumages'; 'Identification of a Specimen in Hand'; 'Sex and Age Determination'; 'Mating and Nesting Habits'; 'Feeding Habits'; 'Hybridism'; 'Botulism'; et cetera.

Twenty years ago, with The End of Nature, Bill McKibben offered one of the earliest warnings about global warming. Those warnings went mostly unheeded; now, he insists, we need to acknowledge that we've waited too long, and that massive change is not only unavoidable but already under way. Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen. We've created, in very short order, a new planet, still recognizable but fundamentally different. We may as well call it Eaarth.That new planet is filled with new binds and traps. A changing world costs large sums to defend — think of the money that went to repair New Orleans, or the trillions it will take to transform our energy systems. But the endless economic growth that could underwrite such largesse depends on the stable planet we've managed to damage and degrade. We can't rely on old habits any longer.
Our hope depends, McKibben argues, on scaling back — on building the kind of… Leer más

Since the age of dinosaurs, Madagascar has thrived in isolation off the east coast of Africa. In this real-life "lost world," hundreds of animal and plant species, most famously the lemurs, have evolved here and only here, while other creatures extinct elsewhere for tens of millions of years now vie with modern man for survival. It's a land of striking geography, from soaring mountains to vast canyon lands, from tropical rain forests to spiny desert. And its people are a conundrum unto themselves, their origins obscure, their language complex and distinct, and their beliefs fascinating. In The Eighth Continent, Peter Tyson will guide you into this, the planet's most exotic frontier, so you can see for yourself why it's been called "the naturalist's promised land."

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and now a documentary from Ken Burns on PBS, The Emperor of All Maladies is a magnificent, profoundly humane "biography" of cancer—from its first documented appearances thousands of years ago through the epic battles in the twentieth century to cure, control, and conquer it to a radical new understanding of its essence.Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist's precision, a historian's perspective, and a biographer's passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years.
The story of cancer is a story of human ingenuity, resilience, and perseverance, but also of hubris, paternalism, and misperception. Mukherjee recounts centuries of discoveries, setbacks, victories, and deaths, told through the eyes of his predecessors and peers, training their wits against an infinitely resourceful… Leer más

The narratives in this book are of journeys made in three wildernesses - on a coastal island, in a Western mountain range, and on the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon. The four men portrayed here have different relationships to their environment, and they encounter each other on mountain trails, in forests and rapids, sometimes with reserve, sometimes with friendliness, sometimes fighting hard across a philosophical divide.

Terry Tempest Williams is one of our most impassioned defenders of public lands. A naturalist, fervent activist, and stirring writer, she has spoken to us and for us in books like The Hour of Land: A Personal Topography of America's National Parks and Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place. In these new essays, Williams explores the concept of erosion: of the land, of the self, of belief, of fear. She wrangles with the paradox of desert lands and the truth of erosion: What is weathered, worn, and whittled away through wind, water, and time is as powerful as what remains. Our undoing is also our becoming.She looks at the current state of American politics: the dire social and environmental implications of recent choices to gut Bears Ears National Monument, sacred lands to Native People of the American Southwest, and undermine the Endangered Species Act. She testifies that climate change is not an abstraction, citing the drought outside her door and at times, within herself. Images of… Leer más

It was April 3, 1974. Crime was soaring. Unemployment and inflation were out of control. A costly war had just come to its demoralizing end, and an unpopular President was on his way out of office. Then, over a sixteen-hour period, nature stepped forward with its own display of mayhem: an unprecendented outbreak of 148 tornadoes, covering thirteen states in the heart of the country, from Michigan to Mississippi. Hundreds of people were killed, thousands of homes demolished, and a billion dollars in losses sustained. Sixty-four of the tornadoes would be classified as severely violent; six belonged to the most rare, most deadly category: F5, or "incredible tornadoes."Like the best nonfiction, F5 is a brilliantly crafted page-turner that reads with the immediacy of a novel, telling a harrowing story of natural disaster against the backdrop of the turbulent 1970s. Acclaimed journalist Mark Levine follows the heart-wrenching fate of a rich cast of intertwined characters ordinary Americans whose lives are… Leer más

A passionate student of Japanese poetry, theater, and art for much of her life, Gretel Ehrlich felt compelled to return to the earthquake-and-tsunami-devastated Tohoku coast to bear witness, listen to survivors, and experience their terror and exhilaration in villages and towns where all shelter and hope seemed lost. In an eloquent narrative that blends strong reportage, poetic observation, and deeply felt reflection, she takes us into the upside-down world of northeastern Japan, where nothing is certain and where the boundaries between living and dying have been erased by water.
The stories of rice farmers, monks, and wanderers; of fishermen who drove their boats up the steep wall of the wave; and of an eighty-four-year-old geisha who survived the tsunami to hand down a song that only she still remembered are both harrowing and inspirational. Facing death, facing life, and coming to terms with impermanence are equally compelling in a landscape of surreal desolation, as the ghostly specter of… Leer más

The 4,000-year-old sport of falconry, once the pastime of royalty and aristocracy, is still thriving with clubs throughout the UK and the US. Phillip Glasier's book is a classic text on the subject and considered the definitive guide for falconers. It covers all aspects of falconry from its history and development to training, housing, tools, equipment and skills. There are chapters on: Handling the new arrival - Condition - Manning and early training - Flying free and getting fit - Flying falcons out of the hood - Flying shortwings - Game Hawking - Moulting - Lost Hawks - Hack and Hacking back - Dogs for Hawking - Making hoods, belts, bags and gloves

A non-technical key to genera with keys to species of sedges and rushes.

When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone National Park.
Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. How do you even talk to a fox? She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends.
From the fox, Catherine learned the single most important thing about… Leer más

When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be a real job that would help her fit into society. In the meantime, she taught remotely and led field classes in nearby Yellowstone National Park.
Then one day she realized that a mangy-looking fox was showing up on her property every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She had never had a regular visitor before. How do you even talk to a fox? She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends.
From the fox, Catherine learned the single most important thing about… Leer más

"The Heart of the Monster," is a protest of the plan by oil corporations and politicians to turn the Northwest's and Northern Rockies' rivers, roads and wilderness into a tentacle of the largest and most destructive petroleum project in history: the Alberta Tar Sands. Bass's novella, "A Short History of Montana, is a portrait of the backward evolution of a fictitious political figure as Big Oil and Big Energy's concepts of power begin to stew in his head and eat away his heart.

With the finely honed skills of an essayist, the heightened sensibility of a naturalist, and the carefully reasoned mind of a philosopher, Kathleen Dean Moore examines our connections to what we hold most dear. In a quest for the metaphorical holdfast-the structures at the end of seaweed strands that attach to rocks with a grip that even ocean gales cannot rend-Moore seeks to understand that which affixes her firmly to family and place.

Describes the characteristics of huckleberries, looks at the history of berrying, and shares recipes for pies, cobblers, dumplings, preserves, pancakes, muffins, and wine

When Joe Hutto began his experiment in imprinting two dozen wild turkey-in the tradition of the great animal behaviorist, Konrad Lorenz-he had no idea that it would change his life. Told with skill and humor, and vibrating with the natural wonders of the Florida flatwoods, Illumination in the Flatwoods will amaze and enrich all who share this season with the wild turkey.

What to eat, what not to eat, and how to think about health: a manifesto for our times.
"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." These simple words go to the heart of Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food, the well-considered answers he provides to the questions posed in the bestselling The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Humans used to know how to eat well, Pollan argues. But the balanced dietary lessons that were once passed down through generations have been confused, complicated, and distorted by food industry marketers, nutritional scientists, and journalists all of whom have much to gain from our dietary confusion. As a result, we face today a complex culinary landscape dense with bad advice and foods that are not real. These edible food-like substances are often packaged with labels bearing health claims that are typically false or misleading. Indeed, real food is fast disappearing from the marketplace, to be replaced by nutrients, and plain old eating by an obsession with nutrition that is, paradoxically,… Leer más