Book picks similar to
Fauna Scotica: People and Animals in Scotland by Mary Low
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about-science
audience-adult
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Wild Fermentation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cultural Manipulation
Sandor Ellix Katz - 2011
Wanna learn how to make your own sourdough? Miso? Injera (Ethiopian sourdough) bread?!!! It's in this handy dandy and super resourceful guide for fermenting in the comfort of your own home. Yummy home made sour cream! Buttermilk! Cheese and tempeh!!! Double and triple wow your friends and family with the helpful directions on how to ferment your own kimchi and other tasty, briny treats.
How to Eat a Peach: Menus, Stories and Places
Diana Henry - 2018
Planning a menu is still her favourite part of cooking.Menus can create very different moods; they can take you places, from an afternoon at the seaside in Brittany to a sultry evening eating mezze in Istanbul. They also have to work as a meal that flows and as a group of dishes that the cook can manage without becoming totally stressed. The 24 menus and 100 recipes in this book reflect places Diana loves, and dishes that are real favorites.The menus are introduced with personal essays in Diana's now well-known voice- about places or journeys or particular times and explain the choice of dishes. Each menu is a story in itself, but the recipes can also stand alone.The title of the book refers to how Italians end a meal in the summer, when it's too hot to cook. The host or hostess just puts a bowl of peaches on the table and offers glasses of chilled moscato (or even Marsala). Guests then slice their peach into the glass, before eating the slices and drinking the wine.That says something very important about eating - simplicity and generosity and sometimes not cooking are what it's about.
In Praise of Paths: Walking through Time and Nature
Torbjørn Ekelund - 2020
Torbjørn Ekelund started to walk--everywhere--after an epilepsy diagnosis affected his ability to drive. The more he ventured out, the more he came to love the act of walking, and an interest in paths emerged. In this poignant, meandering book, Ekelund interweaves the literature and history of paths with his own stories from the trail. As he walks with shoes on and barefoot, through forest creeks and across urban streets, he contemplates the early tracks made by ancient snails and traces the wanderings of Romantic poets, amongst other musings. If we still "understand ourselves in relation to the landscape," Ekelund asks, then what do we lose in an era of car travel and navigation apps? And what will we gain from taking to paths once again?
The Pocket: A Hidden History of Women’s Lives, 1660–1900
Barbara Burman - 2019
This first book-length study of the tie-on pocket combines materiality and gender to provide new insight into the social history of women’s everyday lives—from duchesses and country gentry to prostitutes and washerwomen—and explore their consumption practices, work, sociability, mobility, privacy, and identity. The authors draw on an unprecedented study of surviving pockets in museums and private collections to identify their materials, techniques, and decoration; their use is investigated through sources as diverse as criminal trials, letters, diaries, inventories, novels, and advertisements. Richly illustrated with paintings, satirical prints, and photographs of artifacts in detail, this innovative book reveals the unexpected story of these deeply evocative and personal objects.
The Myth of Meritocracy: Why Working-Class Kids Still Get Working-Class Jobs
James Bloodworth - 2016
Meanwhile, it is increasingly difficult for bright but poor children to transcend their circumstances. This state of affairs should not only worry the poor. It hurts the middle classes too, who are increasingly locked out of the top professions by those from wealthy backgrounds.Hitherto, both Labour and Conservative politicians have sought to deal with this problem by promoting the idea of 'equality of opportunity'. In politics, social mobility is the only game in town and old socialist arguments, which emphasised economic equality, are about as unfashionable today as mullets and shell suits. Yet genuine equality of opportunity is impossible against a backdrop of levels of inequality last seen during the 1930s. In a grossly unequal society, the privileges of the parents unfailingly become the privileges of the children.A vague commitment from our politicians to build a ‘meritocracy’ is not enough. And besides, a perfectly stratified meritocracy, in which everyone knew their station based on ‘merit’, would be a deeply unpleasant place to live. Attempts to improve social mobility must start by reducing the gap between rich and poor.
A Walk in the Wood: A Journey to Mindfulness
Walt Disney Company - 2018
Part inspiration, part information narrative for our story is based on walking meditation, also known as mindful walking; an active practice thatrequires you to be consciously aware and moving in the environment rather than sitting with your eyes closed.Just as The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo's mega-selling book (over 4 million copies soldworldwide) provides readers with a life/spiritual philosophy embedded in the how-to of minimalism (with practical tips for de-cluttering of one's home), A Walk in the Wood provides a narrative grounded in the simple act of slowing down, observing what is around us, and being present.Appealing to adults who are actively searching ways to join the JOMO movement (Joy of Missing Out and beingcontent just "being"), A Walk in the Wood also makes for a perfect gift for stressed-out family membersand friends.
From A to Bee: My First Year as a Beginner Beekeeper
James Dearsley - 2012
. . oh my . . . what have I done? I am 30 years old, I have been married for three years and am a new father to a fantastic little boy. Surely there are things that I should be doing at this age which do not involve little yellow and black insects that can hurt you if you are remotely clumsy (which at 6ft 5, I have an amazing ability to be).
James Dearsley's wife thought he had lost his mind when he announced his intention to become a beekeeper. But like many interested in the self-sufficient lifestyle, he loved gardening and growing vegetables in his garden and the old romantic in him had idealistic notions of teaching his little boy where honey came from, so he set himself what seemed a reasonable goal: to get, in a year's time, just one jar of honey.
Vet on Call: My First Year as an Out-of-Hours Vet
Marc Abraham - 2011
If getting used to the long night shifts wasn't bad enough, emergency cases are rarely straightforward. Whether it was dog who swallowed golf balls, or a gerbil in urgent need of a caesarean, every case had the potential for heartbreak. But animals and their owners could also be hilarious, such as the breeder who unwittingly gave his German Shepherd four testicles. . .Over the course of twelve tough months, the clinic began to flourish. Would Marc finally make something of himself after all?Marc Abraham writes guilelessly about his early mistakes, and the terror and joy involved in saving an animal's life. His memoir is a heart-warming, compelling and thoroughly entertaining look at the life of a vet on call.
Caravaggio, 1571-1610
Gilles Lambert - 2000
Though his name may be familiar to all of us, his work has been habitually detested and forced into obscurity. Not only was his theatrical realism unfashionable in his time, but his sacrilegious subject matter and use of lower class models were violently scorned. Michelangelo Mirisi de Caravaggio lived a life riddled with crime and scandal, producing a body of work that wouldn't be appreciated until centuries after his mysterious death. Though his body was never found, he is assumed to have been murdered by ruffians on a beach south of Rome-a fate strangely similar to that of controversial Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini who was, like Caravaggio, a homosexual.Caravaggio's reputation was decidedly poor during his lifetime; sometimes rich, sometimes penniless, when he wasn't in prison he was running away from the police or his enemies. Perhaps no other painter has suffered such injustice: his works were often attributed to more respected painters while he was given the credit for just about anything vulgar painted in the chiaroscuro style. Caravaggio's great work had the misfortune of enduring centuries of disrepute. It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that he was rediscovered and, quite posthumously, deemed a great master.
On Lighthouses
Jazmina Barrera
Brilliantly resisting the postcard kitsch typically associated with her subject, On Lighthouses is a sweeping work that connects figures such as Robert Louis Stevenson, Virginia Woolf, Walter Benjamin, and Anne Carson; Barrera’s interconnected essays offer a mesmerizing portrait—historical, literary, and decidedly personal—of her obsession, those structures whose message is “first and foremost, that human beings are here.” On Lighthouses, described as “alluring and arresting as the landscapes and stories it conveys” by the Los Angeles Review of Books, takes readers on a journey from raging sea to cold stone—from a hopeless isolation to a meaningful one—concluding at last in a place of peace.
Death: A Philosophy Course
Shelly Kagan - 1997
But what am I to make of that fact? This course will examine a number of issues that arise once we begin to reflect on our mortality. The possibility that death may not actually be the end is considered. Are we, in some sense, immortal? Would immortality be desirable? Also a clearer notion of what it is to die is examined. What does it mean to say that a person has died? What kind of fact is that? And, finally, different attitudes to death are evaluated. Is death an evil? How? Why? Is suicide morally permissible? Is it rational? How should the knowledge that I am going to die affect the way I live my life? This Yale College course, taught on campus twice per week for 50 minutes, was recorded for Open Yale Courses in Spring 2007.
Rilke on Love and Other Difficulties: Translations and Considerations
Rainer Maria Rilke - 1975
John J. L. Mood has assembled a collection of Rilke's strongest work, presenting commentary along with the selections. Mood links into an essay passages from letters that show Rilke's profound understanding of men and women and his ardent spirituality, rooted in the senses.Combining passion and sensitivity, the poems on love presented here are often not only sensual but sexual as well. Others pursue perennial themes in his work—death and life, growth and transformation. The book concludes with Rilke's reflections on wisdom and openness to experience, on grasping what is most difficult and turning what is most alien into that which we can most trust.
Bushcraft: Outdoor Skills and Wilderness Survival
Mors Kochanski - 1988
With clear instructions, extensive use of diagrams and a color photo supplement, this comprehensive reference includes all the practical skills and knowledge essential for you to survive and enjoy the wilderness: * Lighting and maintaining a fire * Chopping wood and felling a tree * Creating a shelter and keeping warm * Safe use of the axe and bush knife * Plants and animals important for survival * Food, water and outdoor cooking * Wilderness first aid. * This bestseller should be required reading for hikers, campers, hunters, foresters, backwoods adventurers, scouts, youth groups--anyone with a passion for the outdoors.
Constellation Myths: With Aratus's Phaenomena
Eratosthenes
The constellations we recognize today were first mapped by the ancient Greeks, who arranged the stars into patterns for that purpose. In the third century BC Eratosthenes compiled a handbook of astral mythology in which the constellations were associated with figures from legend, and myths were provided to explain how each person, creature, or object came to be placed in the sky. Thus we can see Heracles killing the Dragon, and Perseus slaying the sea-monster to save Andromeda; Orion chasesthe seven maidens transformed by Zeus into the Pleiades, and Aries, the golden ram, is identified flying up to the heavens. This translation brings together the later summaries from Eratosthenes lost handbook with a guide to astronomy compiled by Hyginus, librarian to Augustus. Together with Aratuss astronomical poem the Phaenomena, these texts provide a complete collection of Greek astral myths; imaginative and picturesque, they also offer an intriguing insight into ancient science and culture.ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford Worlds Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxfords commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
Bird Brains: The Intelligence of Crows, Ravens, Magpies, and Jays
Candace Savage - 1995
But according to naturalist Candace Savage, “bird brain,” as a pejorative expression, should be rendered obsolete by new research on the family of corvids: crows and their close relations.The ancients who regarded these remarkable birds as oracles, bringers of wisdom, or agents of vengeance were on the right track, for corvids appear to have powers of abstraction, memory, and creativity that put them on a par with many mammals, even higher primates. Bird Brains presents these bright, brassy, and surprisingly colorful birds in a remarkable collection of full-color, close-up photographs by some two dozen of the world’s best wildlife photographers.Savage’s lively, authoritative text describes the life and behavior of sixteen representative corvid species that inhabit North America and Europe. Drawing on recent research, she describes birds that recognize each other as individuals, call one another by “name,” remember and relocate thousands of hidden food caches, engage in true teamwork and purposeful play, and generally exhibit an extraordinary degree of sophistication.