Also woven into Susan Howe s newest book are beautiful photographs of embroideries and textiles from anonymous craftspeople. All the archived materials are links, discoveries, chance encounters, the visual and acoustic shocks of rooting around amid physical archives. These are the telepathies the bibliomaniacal poet relishes. Rummaging in the archives she finds a deposit of a future yet to come, gathered and guarded...a literal and mythical sense of life hereafter you permit yourself liberties in the first place happiness.Digital scholarship may offer much for scholars, but Susan Howe loves the materiality of research in real archives and calls her Spontaneous Particulars a collaged swan song to the old ways. "

    Her second collection broadens these investigations in poems that examine the shape-shifting quality of memory, as seen in folktales that have traveled across oceans and through centuries, and in how we form recollections of our own lives. An opening sequence presents contemporary ghost stories:  men who gather at dawn in the gas station parking lots of small towns; the mountain lion that paces the edge of a receding tree line. A middle section draws connections between Appalachia and Latin America, places that share qualities of biological and cultural richness—places that are threatened by modernization. A final sequence retells the stories of earlier poems, posing questions about how we construct our landscapes and frame our views.

    National Geographic photographer Gerd Ludwig, made nine visits to Chernobyl over a period of 20 years; this is his powerful record of an environmental and human tragedy. Through the perspective of the victims living with the emotional and physical aftermath, to the Exclusion Zone created by a massive evacuation (more than 350,000 people by the year 2000), to the abandoned neighboring city of Pripyat, once a scientist's dream in terms of quality of life yet now uninhabitable, it is a record of almost unbelievable suffering and desolation. Working under enormous time and radiation pressure, Ludwig ventures deeper into the belly of the beast than any other photographer, repeatedly documenting the destroyed reactor No.4, which will disappear under a New Safe Confinement for at least 100 years. This book does not always make for easy viewing. It is however, an emotive, thought-provoking and necessary testament to one of the twentieth century's worst nuclear disasters. Using documents that until recently have been classified, from the CIA, U.S Government Foreign Press Monitoring, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, GAO and United States Congress of the disaster, it becomes an even more important voice in the continuing political, environmental and economic arguments around the safety of using nuclear energy, particularly in light of the Fukushima disaster in Japan twenty-five years later.

    For scientists, these vibrant vessels are the source of an array of interesting topics, from the factors responsible for egg coloration to the curious practice of “brood parasitism,” in which the eggs of cuckoos mimic those of other bird species in order to be cunningly concealed among the clutches of unsuspecting foster parents.The Book of Eggs introduces readers to eggs from six hundred species—some endangered or extinct—from around the world and housed mostly at Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. Organized by habitat and taxonomy, the entries include newly commissioned photographs that reproduce each egg in full color and at actual size, as well as distribution maps and drawings and descriptions of the birds and their nests where the eggs are kept warm. Birds’ eggs are some of the most colorful and variable natural products in the wild, and each entry is also accompanied by a brief description that includes evolutionary explanations for the wide variety of colors and patterns, from camouflage designed to protect against predation, to thermoregulatory adaptations, to adjustments for the circumstances of a particular habitat or season. Throughout the book are fascinating facts to pique the curiosity of binocular-toting birdwatchers and budding amateurs alike. Female mallards, for instance, invest more energy to produce larger eggs when faced with the genetic windfall of an attractive mate. Some seabirds, like the cliff-dwelling guillemot, have adapted to produce long, pointed eggs, whose uneven weight distribution prevents them from rolling off rocky ledges into the sea. A visually stunning and scientifically engaging guide to six hundred of the most intriguing eggs, from the pea-sized progeny of the smallest of hummingbirds to the eggs of the largest living bird, the ostrich, which can weigh up to five pounds, The Book of Eggs offers readers a rare, up-close look at these remarkable forms of animal life.

    The Viktor Wynd Museum in East London is arranged with the sensibility of a 17th-century Wunderkabinett. It displays and sells an eccentric and seemingly random collection of objects--everything from shrunken heads to narwhal tusks--united only by the sense of wonder they inspire in their curator. Now, Wynd takes readers on a tour of homes, private collections and museums that share his fondness for things arcane, desiccated, antique, or just plain odd. The book visits rarified locations lovingly curated by bohemians and artists: from a rambling Devon farmhouse and its historic taxidermy to an Italianate villa in East London to the House of Dreams Museum. It also includes advice on how to start a collection of your own, covering details on auction houses, private dealers, flea markets and fairs, and shows that having distinctive taste does not necessarily require a massive budget.