From Swift's work as a songwriter to her first record contract, readers will learn about her talent and dedication. Topics covered include Swift's first two albums, Taylor Swift and Fearless, as well as her awards, achievements, and hobbies. Readers will also learn about Nashville and its history as Music City. Colorful graphics, oversized photographs, and short, engaging sentences draw reluctant readers into the fascinating life of Taylor Swift! Included are table of contents, Did You Know facts, glossary with phonetic spellings, and index. Buddy Books is an imprint of ABDO Publishing Company.

    Thousands of seafarers had been there before him, but in these islands Darwin found something more enduring than fresh water and tortoise meat. He found nourishment for an idea—an idea so powerful that its implications revised the place of humans in the universe and enriched every facet of science. Darwin tested and refined his idea for decades before he was persuaded to go public in 1859 by publishing The Origin of Species.Today this remote archipelago is the destination of vast numbers of visitors who hope to see what Darwin saw and to experience the aura of this extraordinary place. The Galápagos ecosystem, a tapestry of living things, is probably the best preserved of any in the world. Like all ecosystems, it is made of many components that are interwoven and interdependent; Darwin’s idea explains how such tapestries are organized as well as how they are created.Now, in spectacular pictures and insightful prose, The Galápagos: Exploring Darwin’s Tapestry opens the Galápagos experience to general readers. With an extensive background in ornithology and evolutionary ecology, a lifetime of experience as a naturalist and a photographer, and a deep respect for his subjects, John Hess has produced a celebration of these “Enchanted Islands.”After describing the islands’ origins and the complex of physical forces that make the Galápagos so remarkable, Hess turns his attention to the most prominent habitats on the islands and to the plants and animals found there. He then focuses on the animals most encountered by visitors, animals that Hess presents as Galápagos royalty: the flightless cormorant, the marine iguana, the Galápagos tortoise, and others. A photo essay for each of these species provides the reader with an intimate look at their physical and behavioral adaptations, and the accompanying text offers insight into their lives, showing that each of them is a unique and priceless evolutionary achievement.The photographs are amazingly intimate, offering close-up views that bring readers into virtual contact with the animals and illustrating their behavior and apparent quirks: an albatross that takes its egg for a stroll, a seabird that can’t swim or land in the water, and a gull that has learned to fish for squid in the dark.For Hess, the Galápagos are more than a tourist attraction, more than a shrine to science—they are a place of breathless awe. His book invites readers to share his affection for the islands and his appreciation of the exquisite beauty of Darwin’s tapestry.

    It is a must-have for stargazers who want to explore these fascinating objects. The first modern star atlas devoted to double and multiple stars, it plots over 2,000 selected pairs of stars, each labeled with discoverer, catalog, and/or observatory designations. A superb introduction to this important class of celestial objects, it is spiral bound and printed in red-light friendly colors, making it ideal for use in the field. Written by experienced observer James Mullaney, and beautifully illustrated by renowned celestial cartographer Wil Tirion, it provides an easy-to-use 'celestial roadmap' to locate and identify double and multiple stars. Other deep-sky objects such as star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies are also included, and are color-coded for easy recognition and identification, making this an all-purpose observing reference.

    Now a wider audience can experience its potent blend of contemporary urban realism and surreal fantasy.At a mundane Manhattan party in the first summer of the twenty-first century, sculptor Jacob Lerner catches sight of an old painting and is transfixed. Who is the woman it portrays so intently? And what accounts for the malevolent gaze of the figure lurking behind her? Striving to produce art that meets his high standards, without surrender to the demands of the marketplace, Lerner is also driven to learn about the haunting portrait and its creator, Philip Schuyler. His discovery of Schuyler’s journal reveals the sinister forces that coerced the artist as he fulfilled his commission in 1840s New York, and sharpens Lerner’s own conflict with those forces that still control the modern city. Propelled in his quest by a glass marionette with unusual powers, Lerner finds himself slipping back and forth in time between the present-day city and Schuyler’s Manhattan, before the island’s pastures and streams were buried under concrete. His obsession comes to dominate his own art: he produces a pair of works, one that recovers the promise of the preindustrial island; the other a visualization of the modern metropolis, corrupted by greed and entrenched interests, and its possible destruction.With his vision of a city in ruins, open to regeneration through nature and art, Lerner arrives at a cataclysmic conclusion.

    From the foremost experts at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, here is a complete visual narrative of our journey from Earth to the stars. . . .Although the momentous October 4, 1957, launch of Sputnik 1 was not the beginning of humanity's adventure toward space—our curiosity about the skies has been one of the few constants in history—it was the first true venture into orbit. And when future generations think of the twentieth century, they will undoubtedly judge our movement into space, with both machines and people, as a crowning achievement. As we progress in the new millennium, space exploration is vital to managing our global future, as well as to understanding our past and the creation of Earth.The Atlas of Space Exploration depicts the ever-fascinating history of the space age and humanity's progress in exploring new frontiers. Incredible images from NASA and other sources, visual conceptions of Moon bases, and newly commissioned maps reveal a visual history spanning the earliest eras of the universe, the dawn of the space age, the launch of Sputnik, missions to the Moon, robot landings on the terrestrial planets, and the exploration of the outer solar system. These developments in technology are illuminated by a rich historical context, highlighting how space exploration has changed and expanded our vision of the universe.