Hofstadter make this 320-page, breathtaking collection the definitive book of optical illusions. Rings of seahorses that seem to rotate on the page. Butterflies that transform right before your eyes into two warriors with their horses. A mosaic portrait of oceanographer Jacques Cousteau made from seashells. These dazzling and often playful artistic creations manipulate perspective so cleverly that they simply outwit our brains: we can’t just take a quick glance and turn away. They compel us to look once, twice, and over and over again, as we try to figure out exactly how the delightful trickery manages to fool our perceptions so completely. Of course, first and foremost, every piece is beautiful on the surface, but each one offers us so much more. Some, including Sandro del Prete’s charming “Window Gazing,” construct illusionary worlds where normal conceptions of up, down, forward, and back simply have no meaning anymore. Others, such as Jos De Mey’s sly “Ceci n’est pas un Magritte,” create visual puns on earlier work. From Escher’s famous and elaborate “Waterfall” to Shigeo Fukuda’s “Mary Poppins,” where a heap of bottles, glasses, shakers, and openers somehow turn into the image of a Belle Epoque woman when the spotlight hits them, these works of genius will provide endless enjoyment and food for thought.

    Time-saving study tools help readers arrive at a complete understanding of human anatomy. KEY TOPICS: An Introduction to Anatomy, The Cell, Tissues and Early Embryology, The Integumentary System, The Skeletal System: Osseous Tissue and Skeletal Structure, The Skeletal System: Axial Division, The Skeletal System: Appendicular Division, The Skeletal System: Articulations, The Muscular System: Skeletal Muscle Tissue and Muscle Organization, The Muscular System: Axial Musculature, The Muscular System: Appendicular Musculature, Surface Anatomy and Cross-Sectional Anatomy, The Nervous System: Neural Tissue, The Nervous System: The Spinal Cord and Spinal Nerves, The Nervous System: The Brain and Cranial Nerves, The Nervous System: Pathways And Higher-Order Functions, The Nervous System:  Autonomic Division, The Nervous System: General and Special Senses, The Endocrine System, The Cardiovascular System: Blood, The Cardiovascular System: The Heart, The Cardiovascular System: Vessels and Circulation, The Lymphoid System, The Respiratory System, The Digestive System, The Urinary System, The Reproductive System, The Reproductive System: Embryology and HumanDevelopment. MARKET: For all readers interested in human anatomy.

    Here is a delightfully entertaining and enlightening look at the unique sex lives of humans.

    Prosek travels the globe to tell the story of the eel--from New York to New Zealand; from Europe to Japan and the small island of Pohnpei in Micronesia, where freshwater eels are worshipped by members of the eel clan.

    Members of the phylum Mollusca are among the most ancient animals on the planet. Their shells provide homes for other animals, and across the ages, people have used shells not only as trinkets but also as a form of money, and as powerful symbols of sex and death, prestige and war.The science and natural history of shells are woven into a compelling narrative, revealing their cultural importance and the ways they have been used by humans over the millennia. (Seashells have even been tapped as a source of mind-bending drugs.) Marine biologist Helen Scales shows how seashells have been sculpted by the fundamental rules of mathematics and evolution; how they gave us color, gems, food, and new medicines.After surviving multiple mass extinctions millions of years ago, molluscs and their shells still face an onslaught of anthropogenic challenges, including climate change and corrosive oceans. But rather than dwelling on all that is lost, Scales emphasizes that seashells offer an accessible way to reconnect people with nature, helping to bridge the gap between ourselves and the living world. Spirals in Time: The Secret Life and Curious Afterlife of Seashells shows why nature matters, and reveals the hidden wonders that you can hold in the palm of your hand.

    . . Charles Darwin was, above all else, an independent thinker who continues even now to influence the way we look at the natural world. His endless curiosity and passion for detail resulted in a wealth of notebooks, diaries, correspondence, and published writings that Peter Sís transforms into a visual treasure trove. A multilayered journey through Darwin’s world, The Tree of Life begins with his childhood and traces the arc of his life through university and career, following him around the globe on the voyage of the Beagle, and home to a quiet but momentous life devoted to science and family. Sís uses his own singular vision to create a gloriously detailed panorama of a genius’s trajectory through investigating and understanding the mysteries of nature. In pictures executed in fine pen and ink and lush watercolors – cameo portraits, illustrated pages of diary, cutaway views of the Beagle, as well as charts, maps, and a gatefold spread – Peter Sís has shaped a wondrous introduction to Charles Darwin.

    Based on the popular Instagram account of the same name, Goats of Anarchy takes you on a tour of animal rescue guru and full-time goat mama Leanne Lauricella's goat rescue farm. This is a place where special-needs goats can heal, grow, and butt heads to their hearts’ content. Join Pocket, Ella, Chibs, Lyla, Prospect and Polly--the goat who took the Internet by storm with her adorable duck costume--as they rumble, snuggle, pig out, dress up, and even teach you a few goat yoga moves to loosen your haunches. You will love the beautiful, full color photographs throughout this bio filled book. Whether they’re learning to walk or just romping around the farm, these horned and hooved heartbreakers will have you grinning ear to ear as they chew the scenery—literally!

    In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design," there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned—the "evidence," the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studies, have not focused on the evidence itself. Yet the proof is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from many different fields of science. Scientists are observing species splitting into two and are finding more and more fossils capturing change in the past—dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers, fish that have grown limbs. Why Evolution Is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, and anatomy that demonstrate the "indelible stamp" of the processes first proposed by Darwin. In crisp, lucid prose accessible to a wide audience, Why Evolution Is True dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms that this amazing process of change has been firmly established as a scientific truth.

    Drawing upon new research into cat genetics, brain chemistry, evolution, social behavior, and interaction with humans and fellow felines, acclaimed author and scientist Stephen Budiansky explores the mysteries of these amazing creatures. Wide-ranging, lively, and engaging, The Character of Cats also covers the full spectrum of feline fact and lore, from history, superstition, and religious imagery to hunting patterns, sexual behavior, and preferred colors. This smart, wonderfully readable book finally gives cats their due.

    Yet, while common, oak woodlands are anything but ordinary. In a book rich in illustration and suffused with wonder, author Kate Marianchild combines extensive research and years of personal experience to explore some of the marvelous plants and animals that the oak woodlands nurture. Acorn woodpeckers unite in marriages of up to ten mates and raise their young cooperatively. Ground squirrels roll in rattlesnake skins to hide their scent from hungry snakes. Manzanita's rust-colored, paper-thin bark peels away in time for the summer solstice, exposing sinuous contours that are cool to the touch even on the hottest day. Conveying up-to-the-minute scientific findings with a storyteller's skill, Marianchild introduces us to a host of remarkable creatures in a world close by, a world that rustles, hums, and sings with the sounds of wild things.

    Most remarkably, The Origin of Species said very little about, of all things, the origins of species. Darwin and his modern successors have shown very convincingly how inherited variations are naturally selected, but they leave unanswered how variant organisms come to be in the first place.In Symbiotic Planet, renowned scientist Lynn Margulis shows that symbiosis, which simply means members of different species living in physical contact with each other, is crucial to the origins of evolutionary novelty. Ranging from bacteria, the smallest kinds of life, to the largest—the living Earth itself—Margulis explains the symbiotic origins of many of evolution’s most important innovations. The very cells we’re made of started as symbiotic unions of different kinds of bacteria. Sex—and its inevitable corollary, death—arose when failed attempts at cannibalism resulted in seasonally repeated mergers of some of our tiniest ancestors. Dry land became forested only after symbioses of algae and fungi evolved into plants. Since all living things are bathed by the same waters and atmosphere, all the inhabitants of Earth belong to a symbiotic union. Gaia, the finely tuned largest ecosystem of the Earth’s surface, is just symbiosis as seen from space. Along the way, Margulis describes her initiation into the world of science and the early steps in the present revolution in evolutionary biology; the importance of species classification for how we think about the living world; and the way “academic apartheid” can block scientific advancement. Written with enthusiasm and authority, this is a book that could change the way you view our living Earth.

    However, most books focus on the introduction of techniques themselves, and contain very little or no discussion on application in actual combat situations. This seizing art has thus been confined to stage performances instead of real combat use.Although Dr. Yang has published other Chin Na books, both fundamental and advanced texts, he believes this work is necessary in order to make this art more complete and alive. Therefore, in addition to introducing many new techniques, this book is also laid out according to actual combat scenarios - for example, application of Chin Na when your opponent punches, grabs, kicks or attacks with a knife.

    It is hard enough to find thesequalities in trained photographers with the benefit of schooling and mentors and a community of fellow artists and aficionados supporting and rewarding their efforts. It is incredibly rare to find it in someone with no formal training and no network of peers.Yet Vivian Maier is all of these things, a professional nanny, who from the 1950s until the 1990s took over 100,000 photographs worldwide—from France to New York City to Chicago and dozens of other countries—and yet showed the results to no one. The photos are amazing both for the breadth of the work and for the high quality of the humorous, moving, beautiful, and raw images of all facets of city life in America’s post-war golden age.It wasn’t until local historian John Maloof purchased a box of Maier’s negatives from a Chicago auction house and began collecting and championing her marvelous work just a few years ago that any of it saw the light of day. Presented here for the first time in print, Vivian Maier: Street Photographer collects the best of her incredible, unseen body of work.

    (How do we observe the behavior of ants just a few millimeters in size—or monitor activity in a brain as small as the tip of a needle?)Ants’ global dominance (there are 10 quadrillion ants worldwide) and supreme staying power (they have existed since the dinosaurs) give a sense of scale to our own empire- building and destroying. Empire of Ants may leave its human readers asking: Who really runs the world?

    It ran for five years, won 15 Emmys and set the pace for the sophisticated sitcom. Written with the full cooperation of Dick Van Dyke, Carl Reiner and Mary Tyler Moore, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book is the first and only authorized backstage history of TV's most enduring comedy, an ultimate viewer guide to the dhow, both on and off camera. The book reads like a great dramatic script itself, beginning with the task of getting the show on its feet, moving on to the struggles to keep it alive.The first and only complete, fully authorized "biography" of one of TV's most beloved sitcoms, including the first complete viewer's guide to all 158 episodes, including a rare look at Carl Reiner's Head of the Family, the pilot film that started it all, as well as special behind-the-scenes trivia and a full chapter concordance. 50 black and white photos.