Journeying through human and natural history, The Whale is the result of his voyage of discovery into the heart of this obsession and the book that inspired it: Herman Melville's Moby-Dick. Taking us deep into their domain, Hoare shows us these mysterious creatures as they have never been seen before. Following in Ishmael's footsteps, he explores the troubled history of man and whale; visits the historic whaling locales of New Bedford, Nantucket, and the Azores; and traces the whale's cultural history from Jonah to Free Willy. Winner of the prestigious BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, The Whale is an unforgettable and often moving attempt to explain why these strange and beautiful animals still exert such a powerful hold on our imagination.

    This book is intended for use in a one- or two-semester course in environmental science, human ecology, or environmental studies at the college or advanced placement high school level.The goal of this book is to provide an up-to-date, introductory global view of essential themes in environmental science along with emphasis on details and case studies that will help students process and retain the general principles. Because most students who will use this book are freshman or sophomore non-science majors, the authors make the text readable and accessible without technical jargon or a presumption of prior science background. At the same time, enough data and depth are presented to make this book suitable for many upper-division classes and a valuable resource for students who will keep it in their personal libraries after their formal studies are completed.

    He sees the angler's environment all around him--in New York's Grand Central Station, in the cement-lined pond of a city park, in a shimmering bonefish flat in the Florida Keys, in the trout streams of the Rocky Mountains. He marvels at the fishing in the turbid Ohio River by downtown Cincinnati, where a good bait for catfish is half a White Castle french fry. The incidentals of the angling experience, the who and the where of it, interest him as much as what he catches and how. The essays contain sharply focused observations of the American outdoors, a place filled with human alterations and detritus that somehow remain defiantly unruined. Frazier's simple love of the sport lifts him to a straight-ahead angling description that's among the best contemporary writing on the subject. The Fish's Eye brings together twenty years of heartfelt, funny, and vivid essays on a timeless pursuit where so many mysteries, both human and natural, coincide.

    Over the next eleven millennia, the oceans climbed in fits and starts. These rapid changes had little effect on those humans who experienced them, partly because there were so few people on earth, and also because they were able to adjust readily to new coastlines.Global sea levels stabilized about six thousand years ago except for local adjustments that caused often quite significant changes to places like the Nile Delta. So the curve of inexorably rising seas flattened out as urban civilizations developed in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and South Asia. The earth's population boomed, quintupling from the time of Christ to the Industrial Revolution. The threat from the oceans increased with our crowding along shores to live, fish, and trade.Since 1860, the world has warmed significantly and the ocean's climb has speeded. The sea level changes are cumulative and gradual; no one knows when they will end. The Attacking Ocean, from celebrated author Brian Fagan, tells a tale of the rising complexity of the relationship between humans and the sea at their doorsteps, a complexity created not by the oceans, which have changed but little. What has changed is us, and the number of us on earth.

    In luminous, razor-sharp prose, Nordhaus explores the vital role that honeybees play in American agribusiness, the maintenance of our food chain, and the very future of the nation. With an intimate focus and incisive reporting, in a book perfect for fans of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire,and John McPhee’s Oranges, Nordhaus’s stunning exposé illuminates one the most critical issues facing the world today,offering insight, information, and, ultimately, hope.

    Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature’s path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life.Each of this book’s short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these, Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology and ecology, explaining the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals and describing the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands—sometimes millions—of years. Each visit to the forest presents a nature story in miniature as Haskell elegantly teases out the intricate relationships that order the creatures and plants that call it home.Written with remarkable grace and empathy, The Forest Unseen is a grand tour of nature in all its profundity. Haskell is a perfect guide into the world that exists beneath our feet and beyond our backyards.

    Generating cataclysmic volcanic eruptions and large earthquakes, the hotspot helped lift the Yellowstone Plateau to more than 7,000 feet and pushed the northern Rockies to new heights, forming unusually large glaciers to carve the landscape. It also created the jewel of the U.S. national park system: Yellowstone. Meanwhile, forces stretching apart the western U.S. created the mountainous glory of Grand Teton National Park. These two parks, with their majestic mountains, dazzling geysers, and picturesque hot springs, are windows into the Earth's interior, revealing the violent power of the dynamic processes within. Smith and Siegel offer expert guidance through this awe-inspiring terrain, bringing to life the grandeur of these geologic phenomena as they reveal the forces that have shaped--and continue to shape--the greater Yellowstone-Teton region. Over seventy illustrations--including fifty-two in full color--illuminate the breathtaking beauty of the landscape, while two final chapters provide driving tours of the parks to help visitors enjoy and understand the regions wonders. Fascinating and informative, this book affords us a striking new perspective on Earth's creative forces.

    And so, in this rich and original work that explores the Gulf through our human connection with the sea, environmental historian Jack E. Davis finally places this exceptional region into the American mythos in a sweeping history that extends from the Pleistocene age to the twenty-first century.Significant beyond tragic oil spills and hurricanes, the Gulf has historically been one of the world's most bounteous marine environments, supporting human life for millennia. Davis starts from the premise that nature lies at the center of human existence, and takes readers on a compelling and, at times, wrenching journey from the Florida Keys to the Texas Rio Grande, along marshy shorelines and majestic estuarine bays, profoundly beautiful and life-giving, though fated to exploitation by esurient oil men and real-estate developers.Rich in vivid, previously untold stories, The Gulf tells the larger narrative of the American Sea—from the sportfish that brought the earliest tourists to Gulf shores to Hollywood’s engagement with the first offshore oil wells—as it inspired and empowered, sometimes to its own detriment, the ethnically diverse groups of a growing nation. Davis' pageant of historical characters is vast, including: the presidents who directed western expansion toward its shores, the New England fishers who introduced their own distinct skills to the region, and the industries and big agriculture that sent their contamination downstream into the estuarine wonderland. Nor does Davis neglect the colorfully idiosyncratic individuals: the Tabasco king who devoted his life to wildlife conservation, the Texas shrimper who gave hers to clean water and public health, as well as the New York architect who hooked the “big one” that set the sportfishing world on fire.Ultimately, Davis reminds us that amidst the ruin, beauty awaits its return, as the Gulf is, and has always been, an ongoing story. Sensitive to the imminent effects of climate change, and to the difficult task of rectifying grievous assaults of recent centuries, The Gulf suggests how a penetrating examination of a single region's history can inform the country's path ahead.

    These fascinating, enigmatic creatures are a key lynchpin in the working of our planet. Without them the landscape, as well as every aisle in our supermarkets would look radically different. And we're not just talking about honey bees. There are more than 20,000 species of bee worldwide and only a handful make honey. Some live in colonies and others are solitary. We can all help protect them - and they desperately need protecting - but you can't save what you don't love. And you can't love what you don't know. The Good Bee is a celebration of this most vital and mysterious of nature's wizards. Here you'll discover the complexities of bee behaviour - as well as the bits that still baffle us - the part they play in the natural world, their relationship with us throughout history, how they are coming under threat and what we can all do about it.Beautifully produced, with hand-made illustrations throughout, it is a story for our times and a book to treasure.

    She goes where the vast majority of American have their most consistent experiences of Nature -- in their front yards, in the malls, and in front of their television screens. Price is interested in finding out what Nature with a capital "N" means to Americans, and those are the places that reflect our hopes and desires surrounding Nature while also illuminating our philosophical and economic relationships with Nature. We have become attached to the notion of Nature as a realm Out There, apart from our hectic modern lives. Our social systems are in rapid flux, with only tenuous moorings. Nature seems to offer a timeless anchor. It is the ultimate reality to which we can appeal. As Price makes clear throughout the book, Nature is not actually Out There, but all around us and in everything we create -- no matter how "artificial," all objects must derive in some fashion from natural resources. To get to the source of current attitudes, Price begins at an earlier era in American history, right at the transition point when the mythos of Nature was first being formulated. She takes as her case study the extinction of the passenger pigeon, but instead of searching for the causes of this extinction, she tries to understand how the people of that time experienced their relationship to the pigeons. Pioneers saw the huge flocks, numbering in the hundreds, but as the birds' numbers dwindled, their main consumers -- diners at Delmonico's, one of the first elegant New York restaurants, which featured wild game regularly; and trap shooters who imported the wild birds for tournaments -- never saw passenger pigeons in their native habitat. This disconnect increased as people began using wild nature imported from areas farther and farther away. A fashion for whole birds and bird parts on women's hats caused a crisis that resulted in the first Audubon societies, as people became aware that their actions were causing perhaps irreparable damage to wild nature. A developed view of wild nature as a separate and elevated realm (for example, appeals to the motherhood of egrets being violated when the birds were shot on their nests) set the tone for subsequent attitudes.The elevation of Nature continued apace in contrast to the artificial creations of humanity. The pink flamingo plastic lawn ornament with its "unnatural" eye-popping colors stands in here for a whole class of objects that became singled out. But there is "nature" in a pink flamingo -- namely the materials that went into it. It became a symbol of unreal, inauthentic mass culture, as opposed to the real, authentic Nature Out There. The desire to surround oneself with the authenticity of Nature while living in an industrialized, consumer society led to stores like the Nature Company, where people could commune with Nature in a mall and take a little home with them. Nature as timeless authority was coopted to hawk an incredible variety of products -- most notably cars -- and to serve as an icon on television shows. Overall, Flight Maps has the effect of bringing to the fore more or less subconscious assumptions about Nature to which we have all been exposed. Since Price's intention is to illuminate attitudes, she does not offer a program for reintegrating nature, both the wild and transformed, into our awareness, but I could not help but be reminded of The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices: Practical Advice from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which details exactly how much nature is going into the things that we buy, whether or not we think of them as Nature. --Laura Wood, Science & Nature Editor

    This well presented book guides the reader through the ins and outs of clicker training with graphic step by step illustrations that are ideal for beginners and intermediate clicker trainers. These books will show you the clicker way to train your dog to: Sit to greet people instead of jumping up Walk on the lead without pulling Come when called - everytime Stay home alone quietly Find the right place to "go" Play hide and seek and other fun games and tricks

    It reads like a novel, but it is one of the most important scientific works ever published. The community is Gombe, on the shores of Lake Tangganyika, where the principal residents are chimpanzees and one extraordinary woman who is their student, protector, and historian. In her classic In the Shadow of Man, Jane Goodall wrote of her first ten years at Gombe. In Through a Window she brings the story up to the present, painting a much more complete and vivid portrait of our closest relative. We see the community split in two and a brutal war break out. We watch young Figan's relentless rise to power and old Mike's crushing defeat. We learn how one mother rears her children to succeed and another dooms them to failure. We witness horrifying murders, touching moments of affection, joyous births, and wrenching deaths. In short, we see every emotion known to humans stripped to its essence. In the mirror of chimpanzee life, we see ourselves reflected. Perhaps the best book ever written about animal behavior, Through a Window is also essential reading for anyone seeking a better grasp of human behavior.

    This book is, like its author, a unique achievement. Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees' lives through the seasons, Hubbell writes "about bees to be sure, but also about other things: the important difference between loneliness and solitude . . . the accommodating of oneself to nature" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

    This field guide is divided into two large sections -- one devoted to minerals and one to rocks, each prefaced by a comprehensive introduction that discusses formation, chemistry, and more. All 377 entries, beautifully illustrated with color photographs and helpful visual symbols, provide descriptions and practical information about appearance, classification, rarity, crystal formation, mode of occurrence, gravity of mineral, rock chemistry, modal classification fields, formational environments, grain sizes of rocks, and much more. Whether you are a serious collector or an information-seeking amateur, this incomparably beautiful, authoritative guide will prove an invaluable reference.

    Turn to any page, and you'll find essential point-of-care guidance on all the major conditions seen in clinical medicine. Completely updated to reflect all the major advances and new clinical developments, the new edition of the Manual is the most indispensable yet. It continues to focus on diagnosis and therapy with an emphasis on patient care and offers authoritative, high-yield coverage of: Etiology and epidemiology Clinically relevant pathophysiology Signs & Symptoms o Differential Diagnosis Physical and Laboratory Findings Therapeutics o Practice GuidelinesNEW FEATURESFull-color presentation for the first time!Full-color images of clinical conditions encountered in dermatology, cardiology, and eye diseases New chapters on end-of-life care, congenital heart disease in the adult patient, non-invasive cardiac examination, and metabolic syndromeLook for these other great Harrison's titles:Harrison's Principles of Internal Medicine, 17eHarrison's Online available through Accessmedicine.com