Wilson's monumental treatise The Ants also was praised in the popular press and won a Pulitzer Prize. This overwhelming success attests to a fact long known and deeply felt by the authors: the infinite fascination of their tiny subjects. This fascination finds its full expression in Journey to the Ants, an overview of myrmecology that is also an eloquent tale of the authors' pursuit of these astonishing insects.Richly illustrated and delightfully written, Journey to the Ants combines autobiography and scientific lore to convey the excitement and pleasure the study of ants can offer. The authors interweave their personal adventures with the social lives of ants, building, from the first minute observations of childhood, a remarkable account of these abundant insects' evolutionary achievement. Accompanying Holldobler and Wilson, we peer into the colony to see how ants cooperate and make war, how they reproduce and bury their dead, how they use propaganda and surveillance, and how they exhibit a startlingly familiar ambivalence between allegiance and self-aggrandizement. This exotic tour of the entire range of formicid biodiversity - from social parasites to army ants, nomadic hunters, camouflaged huntresses, and energetic builders of temperature-controlled skyscrapers - opens out increasingly into natural history, intimating the relevance of ant life to human existence. A window on the world of ants as well as those who study them, this book will be a rich source of knowledge and pleasure for anyone who has ever stopped to wonder about the miniature yet immense civilization at our feet.

    He traces the trajectory of his life—from a childhood spent exploring the Gulf Coast of Alabama and Florida to life as a tenured professor at Harvard—detailing how his youthful fascination with nature blossomed into a lifelong calling. He recounts with drama and wit the adventures of his days as a student at the University of Alabama and his four decades at Harvard University, where he has achieved renown as both teacher and researcher.As the narrative of Wilson's life unfolds, the reader is treated to an inside look at the origin and development of ideas that guide today's biological research. Theories that are now widely accepted in the scientific world were once untested hypotheses emerging from one man's broad-gauged studies. Throughout Naturalist, we see Wilson's mind and energies constantly striving to help establish many of the central principles of the field of evolutionary biology. The story of Edward O. Wilson's life provides fascinating insights into the making of a scientist and a valuable look at some of the most thought-provoking ideas of our time.

    In the program and book, both titled The Private Life of Plants, Attenborough treks through rainforests, mountain ranges, deserts, beaches, and home gardens to show us things we might never have suspected about the vegetation that surrounds us. With their extraordinary sensibility, plants compete endlessly for survival and interact with animals and insects: they can see, count, communicate, adjust position, strike, and capture. Attenborough makes the plant world a vivid place for readers, who in this book can enjoy the tour at their own pace, taking in the lively descriptions and nearly 300 full-color photos showing plants in close detail.The author reveals to us the aspects of plants' lives that seem hidden from view, such as fighting, avoiding or exploiting predators or neighbors, and struggling to find food, increase their territories, reproduce themselves, and establish their place in the sun. Among the most amazing examples, the acacia can communicate with other acacias and repel enemies that might eat their leaves, the orchid can impersonate female wasps to attract males and ensure the spreading of its pollen, the Venus's flytrap can take other organisms captive and consume them. Covering this remarkable range of information with enthusiasm and clarity, Attenborough helps us to look anew at the vegetation on which all life depends and which has an intriguing life of its own. He has created a book sure to please the plant lover and any other reader interested in exploring the natural world.

    For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch.In this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these scientists as they watch Darwin's finches and come up with a new understanding of life itself. The Beak of the Finch is an elegantly written and compelling masterpiece of theory and explication in the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould.With a new preface.

    A century later—1951—and about a hundred and fifty miles away, another war began when the U. S. government started setting off nuclear bombs at the Nevada Test Site, in what was called a nuclear testing program but functioned as a war against the land and people of the Great Basin. Savage Dreams is an exploration of these two landscapes. Together they serve as our national Eden and Armageddon and offer up a lot of the history of the west, not only in terms of Indian and environmental wars, but in terms of the relationship between culture—the generation of beliefs and views—and its implementation as politics.

    Each included adventure has been selected to show the extent to which Muir courted and faced danger, i.e. lived "wildly, " throughout his life. From the famous avalanche ride off the rim of Yosemite Valley to his night spent riding out a windstorm at the top of a tree to death-defying falls on Alaskan glaciers, the renowned outdoorsman's exploits are related in passages that are by turns exhilarating, unnerving, dizzying and outrageous.

    By photographing each imperiled creature against a stark black or white backdrop, photographers Susan Middleton and David Liittschwager visually remove the habitat that would ensure its survival and bring the plight of the individual species -- whether a majestic Florida panther or a delicate Tennessee purple coneflower -- closer to home. A bibliography and an index, a resource giude to additional information sources, an eloquent introduction by E. O. Wilson, and an essay on the Endangered Species Act complete this formidable volume, making it not only an elegant and moving documentary, but a valuable tool in the fight for the preservation of diminishing habitats and the species that depend on them.

    Williams weaves her observations in the naturalist field and her personal experience--as a woman, a Westerner, and a Mormon--into a resonant manifesto on behalf of the landscapes she loves, making clear as well that, through our disregard of this world, we have lost an essential connection to our deepest selves.

    Each entry has a full color illustration as well as color-coded bands that provide at-a-glance facts for quick reference. Easy to use and beautiful to look at, this series is an invaluable resource for every collector.

    Describing the cycles of loss and recovery that have changed many ecosystems in the past 50 years, the author considers both habitat destruction and pollution, as well as the introduction of exotic animals and reforestation that is underway nationwide.

    This definitive, long-overdue biography shows how Carson, already a famous nature writer, became a reluctant reformer. It is a compelling portrait of the determined woman behind the publicly shy but brilliant scientist and writer.

    An anthropologist traveling with an aboriginal people finds that, because of his aggressive desire to understand them, they remain always disturbingly unknowable. A successful financial consultant, failing to discover his roots in Africa, jogs from Connecticut to the Pacific Ocean in order to forge an indigenous connection to the American landscape. A paleontologist is haunted by visions of wildlife in a vacant lot in Manhattan. In simple, crystalline prose, Lopez evokes a sense of the magic and marvelous strangeness of the world, and a deep compassion for the human predicament.

    This book - which includes some of his essays - is full of details and anecdotes about the flora, fauna, and humans that have inhabited Florida's colourful landscape.

    Oliver Rackham's book tells the many-layered story of the British landscape using landscape photography and a series of photographic essays, describing eight of the author's walks within areas of natural beauty.

    But a closer look at a small square reveals an ever-changing world. . .home to a larger variety of creatures and goings-on than you'd ever imagine, even in just a drop of its water! This beautifully illustrated you are there science book--part of the critically acclaimed One Small Square series--is brimming over with fun-to-do experiments and activities for children ages 7 and up. Includes a pond field guide, a glossary-index, and a resource list.

    He was a great teacher, a born showman, bongo drummer, buffoon & iconoclast; a scientific magician capable of transcendental leaps of the imagination. During his career he was drawn into research on the atomic bomb before working out his path-integral formulation of quantum mechanics & quantum electro-dynamics. Subsequently he developed the diagrammatic technique, as a result of which Feynman diagrams became ubiquitous in quantum field theory, elementary particle physics & statistical mechanics. From 1950 he was based at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked on the superfluidity of liquid helium, the theory of polarons, the theory of weak interactions, the quantum theory of gravitation, partons, quark jets & the limits of computation. He'd a unified view of physics & nature. He took the whole of nature as the arena of his science & imagination. Jagdish Mehra personally knew Feynman for 30 years. In 1980 Feynman suggested he might do what he had already done for Heisenberg, Pauli & Dirac, that is write a definitive account of his life, science & personality. Mehra instantly agreed & subsequently spent several weeks talking to him. After Feynman's death Mehra interviewed almost 80 people who'd known him & aspects of his work. This book draws on this unique material & on Feynman's remarkable writings. It covers his childhood, his three marriages, his extraordinary range of interests. But most important, it deals with his scientific work in far greater detail than in any other biographical work. What has emerged is an authoritative account of Feynman's life & achievements.

    Full color.

    This streamlined volume contains: an easy-to-use field guide featuring 56 species of raptors that may be observed in North America; a complete overview of observing birds of prey, covering basic identifying field marks and tips on observing and distinguishing different species.This pocket guide is packed with information; photographs detailing birds at rest and in flight, specific descriptions of each species' important field marks, regional maps depicting breeding and winter ranges, silhouttes representing general body types, labeled diagrams of the birds and a glossary of bird terms to refer back to.When observing these majestic birds of prey in their natural habitat, the National Audubon Society Pocket Guide to North American Birds of Prey is an excellent and convenient reference guide to accompany any nature-lover.

    Throughout the seasons and over thousands of miles, they forage for food and seek shelter from predators. The mother gives birth to a second calf, the young bull grows to adulthood, and the cycle of life continues.