Book picks similar to
A Scots Dictionary of Nature by Amanda Thomson
nature
scotland
non-fiction
nature-writing
Confessions of an Eco-Warrior
Dave Foreman - 1991
Rude and brilliant. Read it and you will see the future.--William Kittredge.
More Readings From One Man's Wilderness: The Journals of Richard L. Proenneke, 1974-1980
Richard Proenneke - 2005
Proenneke--a modern-day Henry David Thoreau--built a cabin in Twin Lakes, Alaska, during the spring of 1968, sparking thirty years of personal growth in which he spent the majority of his time strengthening his relationship with the wilderness around him. Following in the footsteps of One Man's Wilderness, a classic book compiling some of the mountain man's journals, More Readings from One Man's Wilderness chronicles Proenneke's experiences with animals, the elements, park visitors, and observations he made while hiking in Lake Clark National Park and Preserve. A master woodcraftsman, a mechanical genius, a tireless hiker with a keen eye, and a journalist, Proenneke's life at Twin Lakes has inspired thousands of readers for decades.Editor John Branson--a longtime friend of Proenneke's and a park historian--ensures that Proenneke's journals from 1974-1980 are kept entirely intact. His colloquial writing is not changed or altered, but Branson's footnotes make his world more approachable by providing a background for names and places that may have otherwise been unknown. Any reader with a love for conservation and true-life wilderness narratives will undoubtedly admire and relish Proenneke's tales of living in the wild.Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Sports Publishing imprint, is proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in sports--books about baseball, pro football, college football, pro and college basketball, hockey, or soccer, we have a book about your sport or your team.In addition to books on popular team sports, we also publish books for a wide variety of athletes and sports enthusiasts, including books on running, cycling, horseback riding, swimming, tennis, martial arts, golf, camping, hiking, aviation, boating, and so much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to publishing books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked by other publishers and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.
Charles Darwin: The Concise Story of an Extraordinary Man
Tim M. Berra
Berra, whose "Darwin: The Man" lectures are in high demand worldwide, tells the fascinating story of the person and the idea that changed everything. Berra discusses Darwin’s revolutionary scientific work, its impact on modern-day biological science, and the influence of Darwin’s evolutionary theory on Western thought. But Berra digs deeper to reveal Darwin the man by combining anecdotes with carefully selected illustrations and photographs.This small gem of a book includes 20 color plates and 60 black-and-white illustrations, along with an annotated list of Darwin’s publications and a chronology of his life.
Thirty Days Has September: Cool Ways to Remember Stuff
Christopher Stevens - 2008
It makes a lovely gift from parent to child and a perfect learning companion to help all school children. It is a treasure trove of easy methods to take important information from the back of the mind to the tip of children's tongues.
The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary
Ambrose Bierce - 1911
There, a bore is "a person who talks when you wish him to listen," and happiness is "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." This is the most comprehensive, authoritative edition ever of Ambrose Bierce’s satiric masterpiece. It renders obsolete all other versions that have appeared in the book’s ninety-year history.A virtual onslaught of acerbic, confrontational wordplay, The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary offers some 1,600 wickedly clever definitions to the vocabulary of everyday life. Little is sacred and few are safe, for Bierce targets just about any pursuit, from matrimony to immortality, that allows our willful failings and excesses to shine forth.This new edition is based on David E. Schultz and S. T. Joshi’s exhaustive investigation into the book’s writing and publishing history. All of Bierce’s known satiric definitions are here, including previously uncollected, unpublished, and alternative entries. Definitions dropped from previous editions have been restored while nearly two hundred wrongly attributed to Bierce have been excised. For dedicated Bierce readers, an introduction and notes are also included.Ambrose Bierce’s Devil’s Dictionary is a classic that stands alongside the best work of satirists such as Twain, Mencken, and Thurber. This unabridged edition will be celebrated by humor fans and word lovers everywhere.
The Frayed Atlantic Edge: A Historian's Journey from Shetland to the Channel
David Gange - 2019
After two decades exploring the Western coast and mountains of the British Isles, the historian and nature writer David Gange set out to travel the seaboard in the course of a year. This coastline spans just eight-hundred miles as the crow flies, but the complex folds of its firths and headlands stretch more than ten-thousand. Even those who circumnavigate Britain by kayak tend to follow the shortest route; the purpose of this journey was to discover these coastlines by seeking out the longest.Travelling by kayak, on foot and at the end of a rope, Gange encounters wildcats, basking sharks and vast colonies of seabirds, as well as rich and diverse coastal communities. Spending nights in sight of the sea, outdoors and without a tent, the journey crosses hundreds of peaks and millions of waves. With an eye attuned both to nature and the traces of the past, Gange evokes living worlds and lost worlds on the tattered edges of Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England.Written with literary finesse in an immersive style, and informed by history, this new talent in nature writing takes us on a whirlwind trip over the course of twelve months, each chapter serving as a love letter to a different region of the British coastline.
Australia's Strangest Mysteries #2
John Pinkney - 2012
Someone [the murderer?] had covered him with a small strip of carpet.Nearby, in a ditch,lay Mrs Chandler - her face and torso bafflingly blanketed in beer cartons.The discovery made international headlines. It swiftly emerged that Dr Bogle, a brilliant specialist in solid state physics, had recently accepted a research post in Washington – and had been preparing to fly there, with his wife and children. Mrs Chandler, who’d worked as a nurse before her marriage, had been at the same New Year’s party with Gilbert Bogle the evening before. They had left separately.Scientists found that the pair had died of acute heart failure – but they could suggest no cause. There were no signs of violence: no smothering or strangulation; no hypodermic marks; no evidence, in the body tissues, of poisons, or radioactive substances of any kind.From the morning the bodies were found, the Bogle-Chandler conundrum would perplex the law’s keenest forensic minds...
Hangdog Days: Conflict, Change, and the Race for 5.14
Jeff Smoot - 2019
This contentious, often entertaining period gave rise to sport climbing, climbing gyms, and competitive climbing--indelibly transforming the sport.Jeff Smoot was one of those brash young climbers, and here he traces the development of traditional climbing “rules,” enforced first through peer pressure, then later through intimidation and sabotage. In the late ’70s, several climbers began introducing new tactics including “hangdogging,” hanging on gear to practice moves, that the old guard considered cheating. As more climbers broke ranks with traditional style, the new gymnastic approach pushed the limits of climbing from 5.12 to 5.13. When French climber Jean-Baptiste Tribout ascended To Bolt or Not to Be, 5.14a, at Smith Rock in 1986, he cracked a barrier many people had considered impenetrable.In his lively, fast-paced history enriched with insightful firsthand experience, Smoot focuses on the climbing achievements of three of the era’s superstars: John Bachar, Todd Skinner, and Alan Watts, while not neglecting the likes of Ray Jardine, Lynn Hill, Mark Hudon, Tony Yaniro, and Peter Croft. He deftly brings to life the characters and events of this raucous, revolutionary time in rock climbing, exploring, as he says, “what happened and why it mattered, not only to me but to the people involved and those who have followed.”
Never surrender : lost voices of a generation at war
Robert Kershaw - 2009
Beginning with first-hand accounts of the reaction to Chamberlain's declaration of war in 1939, Kershaw portrays the many aspects of war through the words of those who were there, from the sailors of the little ships of Dunkirk to German soldiers preparing for Operation 'Sea Lion'. He takes us from the nightly horrors of the Blitz to battles in the limitless desert of North Africa, and from jungle war in Burma to Lancaster bombers over Germany and the beaches of Normandy. Featuring new interviews with veterans and civilians from Britain, the Commonwealth and Germany as well as diaries, letters, and first-hand accounts, this is a testimony to the remarkable men and women who lived through the Second World War -- whose refusal to surrender changed them, and Britain, forever.
Still Waters: The Secret World of Lakes
Curt Stager - 2018
Lakes are changing rapidly, not because we are separate from nature but because we are so much a part of it. While many of our effects on the natural world today are new, from climate change to nuclear fallout, our connections to it are ancient, as core samples from lake beds reveal. In Still Waters, Curt Stager introduces us to the secret worlds hidden beneath the surfaces of our most remarkable lakes, leading us on a journey from the pristine waters of the Adirondack Mountains to the wilds of Siberia, from Thoreau’s cherished pond to the Sea of Galilee.Through decades of firsthand investigations, Stager examines the significance of our impacts on some of the world’s most iconic inland waters. Along the way he discovers the stories these lakes contain about us, including our loftiest philosophical ambitions and our deepest myths. For him, lakes are not only mirrors reflecting our place in the natural world but also windows into our history, culture, and the primal connections we share with all life.Beautifully observed and eloquently written, Stager’s narrative is filled with strange and enchanting details about these submerged worlds—diving insects chirping underwater like crickets, African crater lakes that explode, and the growing threats to some of our most precious bodies of water. Modern science has demonstrated that humanity is an integral part of nature on this planet, so intertwined with it that we have also become an increasingly powerful force of nature in our own right. Still Waters reminds us how beautiful, complex, and vulnerable our lakes are, and how, more than ever, it is essential to protect them.
The Smartest Book in the World: A Lexicon of Literacy, A Rancorous Reportage, A Concise Curriculum of Cool
Greg Proops - 2015
The Smartest Book in the World is based on Proops’s sensational, iTunes Top 10 podcast that has been downloaded more than nine million times, in which his “bold, never-boring voice takes center stage” (The New York Times). The book is a rollicking reference guide to the most essential areas of knowledge in Proops’s universe, from the noteworthy names of the ancient world and baseball, to the movies you must see and the albums you must hear. Complete with history’s juiciest tales and curious back-stories, Proops expounds on the merits of poetry and proper punctuation, delivering this wealth of information with his signature style and Proopsian panache. An off-beat and exuberant guide to everything, The Smartest Book in the World gives you everything you need to know to always be the smartest person in the room. Well, unless the Proopmaster is there, too.
Death in Zion National Park: Stories of Accidents and Foolhardiness in Utah's Grand Circle
Randi Minetor - 2017
Prior to that, the steep, narrow route to Angels Landing led to at least five fatalities. Numerous people have found that high, exposed places in Zion-such as rim trails-are bad places to be in lightning storms. Death in Zion National Park collects some of the most gripping accounts in park history of the unfortunate events caused by natural forces or human folly.
The Book of Barely Imagined Beings: A 21st Century Bestiary
Caspar Henderson - 2012
Ranging from the depths of the ocean to the most arid corners of the land, Caspar Henderson captures the beauty and bizzareness of the many living forms we thought we knew and some we could never have contemplated, inviting us to better imagine the precarious world we inhabit.A witty, vivid blend of cutting edge natural history and meditative reflections, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings is infectious and celebratory about the sheer ingenuity and variety of life.
Gone: Catastrophe in Paradise
O.J. Modjeska - 2017
Within hours, hundreds are dead. What happened? The true story of one of history's most tragic and shocking disasters...in which aviation, terrorism, a sudden change in the weather and plain old bad luck made for a ruinous mix. This gripping novella length work unravels the mind-boggling facts of this catastrophe as a compelling, action-packed and haunting tale of the human condition that will have you turning the pages to the very end.
The Bedside Book of Beasts: A Wildlife Miscellany
Graeme Gibson - 2009
In "The Bedside Book of Beasts," Graeme Gibson gathers breathtaking works of art and literature that capture the power, grace, and inventiveness of both predators and their natural prey."The Bedside Book of Beasts" presents myths, fables, poetry, and excerpts from nature and travel writing, journals, sacred texts, and works of fiction. Within these pages we encounter big cats, bears, wolves, and the small but voracious praying mantis, as well as works that bring to life the experience of more vulnerable prey. Portraits of such legendary evil beasts as the Minotaur, Grendel, and the biblical Leviathan add to the depth and breadth of the collection. An impressive array of art, both traditional and contemporary, as well as scientific, religious, and mythological drawings, paintings, and woodcuts make this volume an utterly unique gift for the holidays or any occasion.A fascinating exploration of the chain of life, of survival and mortality, "The Bedside Book of Beasts" evokes a profound sense of the eternal connection between humans and the creatures they endeavor to tame.