The Old Farmer's Almanac 2016


Old Farmer's Almanac - 2015
    Thomas, and readers’ expectations. This edition is packed with wit, wisdom, tips, advice, facts, fun, and recipes, including: • traditionally 80 percent–accurate weather forecasts • how to make sausages at home • “creatures from hell” • grow your own beer (ingredients) • time- and money-saving tips • unmasked mysteries of plant seed dispersal • bale, key, and concrete block gardens • quirky origins of American horse breeds • history, lore, and more about birthstones Plus, Moon phases and other celestial sightings, tides, gardening tables, best days to do things, and more.   Added value this year: • 96 full-color pages • full-color winter and summer weather maps • updated Reference section Often imitated, but never equaled. Accept no substitutes!

Einstein The Art of Mindful Cycling: Achieving Balance in the Modern World


Ben Irvine - 2012
    The author steers us through his own perspective on cycling - weaving together the philosophical, practical and personal into an elegant balance. Add in a sprinkling of meditative insights, and we can all learn how to experience Einstein's enlightened outlook on life through the simple joy of riding a bicycle.

Life in the Garden


Penelope Lively - 2017
    This book is partly a memoir of her own life in gardens: the large garden at home in Cairo where she spent most of her childhood, her grandmother's garden in a sloping Somerset field, then two successive Oxfordshire gardens of her own, and the smaller urban garden in the North London home she lives in today. It is also a wise, engaging and far-ranging exploration of gardens in literature, from Paradise Lost to Alice in Wonderland, and of writers and their gardens, from Virginia Woolf to Philip Larkin.

The Food Explorer: The True Adventures of the Globe-Trotting Botanist Who Transformed What America Eats


Daniel Stone - 2018
    But as a new century approached, appetites broadened, and David Fairchild, a young botanist with an insatiable lust to explore and experience the world, set out in search of foods that would enrich the American farmer and enchant the American eater.Kale from Croatia, mangoes from India, and hops from Bavaria. Peaches from China, avocados from Chile, and pomegranates from Malta. Fairchild's finds weren't just limited to food: From Egypt he sent back a variety of cotton that revolutionized an industry, and via Japan he introduced the cherry blossom tree, forever brightening America's capital. Along the way, he was arrested, caught diseases, and bargained with island tribes. But his culinary ambition came during a formative era, and through him, America transformed into the most diverse food system ever created.

The Death of Trotsky (Kindle Single)


Cecelia Holland - 2015
    In The Death of Trotsky, Cecelia Holland brings this fated and fatal day to life, from its quotidian beginnings to its dramatic close. Between Trotsky’s waking and his final rest, she probes the outer-workings and inner thoughts of those who were with him till the end, illuminating a man who exited life as he lived it: defiantly. Cecelia Holland, author of more than 30 books and articles, lives in northern California with her family.Cover Design by Adil Dara.

The Age-Well Project: Easy Ways to a Longer, Healthier, Happier Life


Annabel Streets - 2019
    But what should we change and how do we do it? Annabel Streets and Susan Saunders spent their 30s climbing the career ladder, having children and caring for elderly parents - all at the same time. By their 40s, they were exhausted, stressed, sleeping too little and rushing too much. They began to ask whether the prolonged ill health and dementia suffered by their parents was their inevitable future too - could they do anything to avoid requiring their own children to care for them in old age? Thus began THE AGE-WELL PROJECT. With incredible tenacity, Annabel and Susan read 50,000 scientific research papers on all aspects of ageing to find what advice cutting-edge research can offer us on how to ensure the longer lives we're living are healthy and happy. Putting their findings into practice, they found that the lifestyle changes they made were having incredible benefits on their health and wellbeing now - as well as for the future. Told with empathy and humour, in THE AGE-WELL PROJECT Annabel and Susan share the 50 key lessons they learned, the meals they cooked and the experts' tips they uncovered to make the second half of your life the best half of your life - happy, healthy and disease-free. Author BiographyAnnabel was a founder member of an award-winning marketing company, advising the chief executives of companies such as Sony, Reuters and the Financial Times. After four children, and at breaking point, she sold her company. Following a stint studying photography and producing a community cook book, she changed tack and wrote an award-winning novel The Joyce Girl which sold in 14 countries and was selected for the 2017 Berlin Film Festival. Since then she has written regularly for a range of titles including the Daily Telegraph, Psychologies, The Author, the Guardian, The Irish Times, Elle, Australian

Bird Sense: What It's Like to Be a Bird


Tim Birkhead - 2012
    What is going on inside the head of a nightingale as it sings, and how does its brain improvise? How do desert birds detect rain hundreds of kilometers away? How do birds navigate by using an innate magnetic compass?Tracing the history of how our knowledge about birds has grown, particularly through advances in technology over the past fifty years, Bird Sense tells captivating stories about how birds interact with one another and their environment. More advanced testing methods have debunked previously held beliefs, such as female starlings selecting mates based on how symmetrical the male's plumage markings are. (Whereas females can discern the difference between symmetrical and asymmetrical markings, they are not very good at detecting small differences among symmetrically marked males!)Never before has there been a popular book about how intricately bird behavior is shaped by birds' senses. A lifetime spent studying birds has provided Tim Birkhead with a wealth of fieldwork experiences, insights, and a unique understanding of birds, all firmly grounded in science. No one who reads Bird Sense can fail to be dazzled by it.

Penguin Bloom: The Odd Little Bird Who Saved a Family


Cameron Bloom - 2016
    People the world over have fallen in love with the stunning and deeply personal images of this rescued bird and her human family. But there is far more to Penguin's story than meets the eye. It begins with a shocking accident, in which Cameron's wife, Sam, suffers a near fatal fall that leaves her paralysed and deeply depressed.Into their lives comes Penguin, an injured magpie chick abandoned after she fell from her nest. Penguin's rescue and the incredible joy and strength she gives Sam and all those who helped her survive demonstrates that, however bleak things seem, compassion, friendship and support can come from unexpected quarters, ensuring there are always better days ahead. This plucky little magpie reminds us all that, no matter how lost, fragile or damaged we feel, accepting the love of others and loving them in return will help to make us whole.

The Unexpected Houseplant: 220 Extraordinary Choices for Every Spot in Your Home


Tovah Martin - 2012
    Martin's approach is revolutionary—picture brilliant spring bulbs by the bed, lush perennials brought in from the garden, quirky succulents in the kitchen, even flowering vines and small trees growing beside an easy chair. Martin brings an evangelist's zeal to the task of convincing homeowners that indoor plants aren't just a luxury—they're a necessity. In addition to design flair, houseplants clean indoor air, which can be up to ten times more polluted. Along with loads of visual inspiration, readers will learn how to make unusual selections, where to best position plants in the home, and valuable tips on watering, feeding, grooming, pruning, and troubleshooting, season by season.

How to Quieten Your Mind: Tips, Quotes and Activities to Help You Find Calm


Anna Barnes - 2018
    A busy mind is one of the hazards of modern-day life, and it can be a huge drain on your energy and well-being. But be assured: whether you find it difficult to keep unwanted thoughts at bay or you've just got a hundred and one things to think about, there are ways to relax and unwind that can be learned, practised and perfected. Filled with helpful tips, soothing statements and calming activities, How to Quieten Your Mind will put you back in the driving seat and help you to feel relaxed, more in control and at peace with yourself.

Elementary Solid State Physics: Principles and Applications


M. Ali Omar - 1975
    I also hope that it will serve as a useful reference too for the many workers engaged in one type of solid state research activity or another, who may be without formal training in the subject.

All Things Being Equal: Why Math Is the Key to a Better World


John Mighton - 2020
    For two decades, John Mighton has developed strategies for fostering intellectual potential in all children through learning math. Math, Mighton says, provides us with mental tools of incredible power. When we learn math we learn to see patterns, to think logically and systematically, to draw analogies, to perceive risk, to understand cause and effect--among many other critical skills. Yet we tolerate and in fact expect a vast performance gap in math among students, and live in a world where many adults aren't equipped with these crucial tools. This learning gap is unnecessary, dangerous and tragic, he cautions, and it has led us to a problem of intellectual poverty which is apparent everywhere--in fake news, political turmoil, floundering economies, even in erroneous medical diagnoses. In All Things Being Equal, Mighton argues that math study is an ideal starting point to break down social inequality and empower individuals to build a smarter, kinder, more equitable world. Bringing together the latest cognitive research and incremental learning strategies, Mighton goes deep into the classroom and beyond to offer a hopeful--and urgent--vision for a numerate society.

Oranges


John McPhee - 1967
    It contains sketches of orange growers, orange botanists, orange pickers, orange packers, early settlers on Florida's Indian River, the first orange barons, modern concentrate makers, and a fascinating profile of Ben Hill Griffin of Frostproof, Florida who may be the last of the individual orange barons. McPhee's astonishing book has an almost narrative progression, is immensely readable, and is frequently amusing. Louis XIV hung tapestries of oranges in the halls of Versailles, because oranges and orange trees were the symbols of his nature and his reign. This book, in a sense, is a tapestry of oranges, too—with elements in it that range from the great orangeries of European monarchs to a custom of people in the modern Caribbean who split oranges and clean floors with them, one half in each hand.

Reverse Heart Disease Now: Stop Deadly Cardiovascular Plaque Before It's Too Late


Stephen T. Sinatra - 2006
    Two leading cardiologists draw on their collective fifty years of clinical cardiology research to show you how to combine the benefits of modern medicine, over-the-counter vitamins and supplements, and simple lifestyle changes to have a healthy heart.

Human Caused Global Warming


Tim Ball - 2016
    It explains how it was a premeditated, orchestrated deception, using science to impose a political agenda. It fooled a majority including most scientists. They assumed that other scientists would not produce science for a political agenda. German Physicist and meteorologist Klaus-Eckart Puls finally decided to look for himself. Here is what he discovered. Ten years ago I simply parroted what the IPCC told us. One day I started checking the facts and data—first I started with a sense of doubt but then I became outraged when I discovered that much of what the IPCC and the media were telling us was sheer nonsense and was not even supported by any scientific facts and measurements. To this day I still feel shame that as a scientist I made presentations of their science without first checking it.…scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob. This book uses the same approach used in investigative journalism. It examines the Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How.