Book picks similar to
The National Museum of Natural History by Philip Kopper
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nonfiction
Mayordomo: Chronicle of an Acequia in Northern New Mexico
Stanley Crawford - 1988
This award-winning account of the author's experience as a mayordomo, or ditch boss, is the first record of the life of an acequia by a community participant.
Beatrix Potter's Gardening Life: The Plants and Places That Inspired the Classic Children's Tales
Marta McDowell - 2013
Her characters—Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle Duck, and all the rest—exist in a charmed world filled with flowers and gardens. In Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life, bestselling author Marta McDowell explores the origins of Beatrix Potter’s love of gardening and plants and shows how this passion came to be reflected in her work. The book begins with a gardener’s biography, highlighting the key moments and places throughout her life that helped define her. Next, follow Beatrix Potter through a year in her garden, with a season-by-season overview of what is blooming that truly brings her gardens alive. The book culminates in a traveler’s guide, with information on how and where to visit Potter’s gardens today.
Movies Based on True Stories: What Really Happened? Movies versus History
Alan Royle - 2015
A look at over 400 of the best historical movies (and some of the worst) purporting to be ‘factual’ or ‘based on actual events’; and how Hollywood has distorted, altered, manipulated, exaggerated, even falsified history under the all-encompassing premise…based on a true story…
Led by Donkeys: How Four Friends with a Ladder Took on Brexit
Led By Donkeys - 2020
Seeking to highlight the hypocrisy of their politicians on Brexit four friends armed with nothing more than ladders, roller brushes and a treasure trove of damning statements from their leaders slapped up the politicians' biggest lies on billboards around the country. This guerrilla operation wasn't easy, but it wasn't long before the British public enabled them to take things into their own hands - and the rest is history. Leave the EU or remain? An apparently simple question divided the nation in historic fashion. Many believed the words of these politicians. By putting up their quotes as billboards, self-styled 'Led By Donkeys' had clear intentions - to compare the promises that have been made across the years with the damning reality.
The Perfection Point: Sport Science Predicts the Fastest Man, the Highest Jump, and the Limits of Athletic Performance
John Brenkus - 2010
The Perfection Point is ideal for sports fans interested in the scientific basis of athletic excellence and a fascinating read for science fans interested in the physics of sports.
Titanic: The Last Great Images
Robert D. Ballard - 2008
Dead ships, however, do.Over seventy years after the great ocean liner sank, marine geologist Robert Ballard discovered the wreck of the Titanic 12,500 feet beneath the surface of the icy North Atlantic. Now Ballard presents the world with an opportunity to live the story of the famous ship through his amazing last great images, before Titanic's remains are gone forever. This is a story told in rusted, twisted metal and debris, but it is also a human story told in a porcelain doll's face, an empty shoe, and an abandoned derby hat.Titanic: The Last Great Images maps the wreck of the ship from a variety of perspectives to give a completely new picture of the triumph and tragedy that was Titanic. This illustrated volume—and a National Geographic special—weave the strands of the ocean liner's story together in renderings done by the ship's original designers, charts of the debris field, and period illustrations. Robert Ballard provides the clearest, most accurate view of the ship we have ever seen. In crisply detailed underwater photography, disintegrating ruins and shattered pieces reveal pride of workmanship, a rigidly defined class system, and indelible images of terror and courage. This book shows what makes the Titanic worthy of the world's undying fascination.
The Hidden Life of Wolves
Jim Dutcher - 2013
Delve into Jim and Jamie Dutcher's amazing wolf photography documenting a pack of wolves at the edge of Idaho's Sawtooth Wilderness, illuminating their complex social hierarchy. Here is the alpha pair, leaders of the pack, often the only couple that mate. Here are the pups, born with eyes shut in the spring, tousled by their mother through the first six weeks of life. Here is the omega wolf, lowest ranking wolf in the pack, whose subservience, often playful, alleviates pack tension. Here are moments of cooperation and moments of snarling dominance, moments of communication and affection. Here, too, are heartwarming moments of connection between the Dutchers and the wolves, caught in pictures that remind us how close the links are between wolves in the wild and the beloved family dog. Short chapters introduce the wolves as individuals, describe the Dutchers' years of coming to know them, and address the complex conservation issues surrounding the near-extinction and now replenishment of the species in the wild. Sidebars explore myths about wolves, including Native American spirit stories, European fairy tales, and modern ranching hearsay.
Nature's Chaos
Eliot Porter - 1990
Eliot Porter's photographs of the natural world, spanning thirty-five years and five continents -- from an Antarctic ice floe to an American desert to an Icelandic lava field -- reveal in mesmerizing ways what scientists are beginning to see for themselves: the patterns, relations, and interactions present in nature's disorder and wildness. This is the perfect marriage of image and text -- brilliant full-color photographs by the preeminent nature photographer of his generation together with an illuminating essay by the widely praised author of Chaos.
Glacial Lake Missoula: And Its Humongous Flood
David D. Alt - 2001
Harlen Bretz walked the dry scabland channels of eastern Washington in the 1920s, it dawned on him that he was viewing a landscape sculpted by water. Lots of water. A flood of catastrophic proportions. Glacial Lake Missoula and Its Humongous Floods tells the gripping tale of a huge Ice Age lake that drained suddenly--not just once but repeatedly--and reshaped the landscape of the Northwest. The narrative follows the path of the floodwaters as they raged from western Montana across the Idaho Panhandle, then scoured through eastern Washington and down the Columbia Gorge to the Pacific Ocean. This is also the story of geologists grappling with scientific controversy--"of how personalities, pride, and prejudice sometimes superseded scientific evidence."
The President's Photographer: Fifty Years Inside the Oval Office
John Bredar - 2010
Expressive close-ups of presidents reveal moments of joy, reflection, and turmoil over public issues and private challenges. Unexpected angles cast new light on historic events. Through both iconic and little-known images, this book offers a fresh perspective on life and work behind the famous facade of the White House.The President's Photographer is the official companion book to the National Geographic Channel special that aired in November 2010.
Face Paint: The Story of Makeup
Lisa Eldridge - 2015
In Face Paint, Lisa Eldridge reveals the entire history of the art form, from Egyptian and Classical times up through the Victorian age and golden era of Hollywood, and also surveys the cutting-edge makeup science of today and tomorrow. Face Paint explores the practical and idiosyncratic reasons behind makeup’s use, the actual materials employed over generations, and the glamorous icons that people emulate and how they achieved their effects. An engaging history of style, it is also a social history of women and the ways in which we can understand their lives through the prism and impact of makeup.
Tigers in the Snow
Peter Matthiessen - 2000
The largest of them, the Siberian tiger, is today almost entirely confined to the little-populated Russian Far East, a region that may offer the species' best hope for survival. But the implosion of the Soviet Union intensified poaching and habitat depredation, prompting a group of Russian researchers and U.S. wildlife biologists led by Maurice Hornocker to join forces to stave off extinction.Peter Matthiessen brings to the Siberian tiger the deep knowledge of and feeling for the natural world that have made classics of his previous books. Accompanying researchers into the field, he allows the reader to participate vicariously in the battle for the tiger's future. Along the way, he tells how the species evolved and evokes its crucial, often totemic role in human cultures and mythologies. He has made of the tiger's dilemma a drama-underscored by Hornocker's one-of-a-kind photographs-that conveys powerfully what a loss to our collective imagination the disappearance of these great cats would be.
The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana
J. Neil Schulman - 1999
Heinlein was sixty-six, at the height of his literary career; J. Neil Schulman was twenty and hadn't yet started his first novel. Because he was looking for a way to meet his idol, Schulman wangled an assignment from the New York Daily News--at the time the largest circulation newspaper in the U.S.--to interview Heinlein for its Sunday Book Supplement. The resulting taped interview lasted three-and-a-half hours. This turned out to be the longest interview Heinlein ever granted, and the only one in which he talked freely and extensively about his personal philosophy and ideology. "The Robert Heinlein Interview" contains Heinlein you won't find anywhere else--even in Heinlein's own "Expanded Universe." If you wnat to know what Heinlein had to say about UFO's, life after death, epistemology, or libertarianism, this interview is the only source available. Also included in this collection are articles, reviews, and letters that J. Neil Schulman wrote about Heinlein, including the original article written for The Daily News, about which the Heinleins wrote Schulman that it was, "The best article--in style, content, and accuracy--of the many, many written about him over the years." This book is must-reading for any serious student of Heinlein, or any reader seeking to know him better.
Golf's Holy War: The Battle for the Soul of a Game in an Age of Science
Brett Cyrgalis - 2020
The world of golf is at a crossroads. As technological innovations displace traditional philosophies, the golfing community has splintered into two deeply combative factions: the old-school teachers and players who believe in feel, artistry, and imagination, and the technical minded who want to remake the game around data. In Golf’s Holy War, Brett Cyrgalis takes readers inside the heated battle playing out from weekend hackers to PGA Tour pros. At the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, California, golfers clad in full-body sensors target weaknesses in their biomechanics, while others take part in mental exercises designed to test their brain’s psychological resilience. Meanwhile, coaches like Michael Hebron purge golfers of all technical information, tapping into the power of intuitive physical learning by playing rudimentary games. From historic St. Andrews to manicured Augusta, experimental communes in California to corporatized conferences in Orlando, William James to Ben Hogan to theoretical physics, the factions of the spiritual and technical push to redefine the boundaries of the game. And yet what does it say that Tiger Woods has orchestrated one of the greatest comebacks in sports history without the aid of a formal coach? But Golf’s Holy War is more than just a book about golf—it’s a story about modern life and how we are torn between resisting and embracing the changes brought about by the advancements of science and technology. It’s also an exploration of historical legacies, the enriching bonds of education, and the many interpretations of reality.
Skulls: An Exploration of Alan Dudley's Curious Collection
Simon Winchester - 2012
Presenting details about the parts of the skull (including the cranium, the mandible, the shape and positioning of the eye sockets, and species-specific features like horns, teeth, beaks and bills), information about the science and pseudoscience of skulls, and a look at skulls in religion, art and popular culture, his stories and information are riveting and enlightening.At the center of "Skulls" is a stunning, never-before-seen-in-any-capacity, visual array of the skulls of more than 300 animals that walk, swim, and fly. The skulls are from the collection of Alan Dudley, a British collector and owner of what is probably the largest and most complete private collection of skulls in the world. Every skull is beautifully photographed to show several angles and to give the reader the most intimate view possible. Each includes a short explanatory paragraph and a data box with information on the animal's taxonomy, behavior, and diet."Skulls "was published in December 2011 as an e-book for the iPad by the innovative e-book publishers Touch Press, creators of the best-selling e-books for iPad "The Elements" and "Solar System." Both books were also published in print by Black Dog & Leventhal.