Their mission? Tracking down the elusive Tasmanian tiger. Tragically, this mysterious, striped predator was hunted into extinction in the early part of the twentieth century. Or was it? Journeying first to the Australian mainland and then south to the wild island of Tasmania, these young naturalists brave a series of bizarre misadventures and uproarious wildlife encounters in their obsessive search for the long-lost beast. Filled with Rockman’s stunning drawings of flora and fauna originally crafted from river mud, wombat scat, and even the artist’s own blood, Carnivorous Nights is a hip and hilarious account of an unhinged safari, as well as a fascinating portrayal of a wildly unique part of the world.Carniverous Nights is:One of the New York Public Library's "25 Books to Remember from 2005"A New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age, 2006 selection

    Weed is an orphan who is taken in by a sadistic apothecary, known only as the master, and proves to be a promising apprentice with a natural ability for the craft. Eventually, Weed's master takes him to a secret walled garden containing some of the most dangerous poisonous plants in the world. In later solitary visits to the garden, however, Weed realizes that the vegetation can communicate with him, and as he learns more about each individual plant, he also discovers precisely how the utilization of each plant's poison can gruesomely put an end to someone's life. The tremendous danger surrounding Weed's education in poisons is tragically underscored when his girlfriend, Marigold, after listening to Weed's far-from-expert instructions, experiments with belladonna and dies. Overwhelmed with grief, Weed blames his master for the death and, finally taking the advice of all the plants in the secret garden, prepares to enact vengeance Including incredibly detailed illustrations (� la National Audubon Society field guides) of a variety of poisonous plants -- belladonna, ricin, mandrake, hemlock, ergot, et al. -- iThe Poison Diaries/i is equal parts nightmarish fable, instructive botanical guide, and not-so-subtle cautionary tale. Fans of illustrated works like Brom's iThe Plucker/i will absolutely cherish this twisted and toxic tale. iPaul Goat Allen/i

    After sampling myths explaining First Light, the story moves on to early philosophers' queries, then through the centuries, from Buddhist temples to Biblical scripture, when light was the soul of the divine.Battling darkness and despair, Gothic architects crafted radiant cathedrals while Dante dreamed a "heaven of pure light." Later, following Leonardo's advice, Renaissance artists learned to capture light on canvas. During the Scientific Revolution, Galileo gathered light in his telescope, Descartes measured the rainbow, and Newton used prisms to solidify the science of optics. But even after Newton, light was an enigma. Particle or wave? Did it flow through an invisible "ether"? Through the age of Edison and into the age of lasers, Light reveals how light sparked new wonders--relativity, quantum electrodynamics, fiber optics, and more.Although lasers now perform everyday miracles, light retains its eternal allure. "For the rest of my life," Einstein said, "I will reflect on what light is." Light explores and celebrates such curiosity.

    Thanks to cartoons and folk accounts we have a distorted view of these other humans - for that is what they were. We think of them as crude and clumsy and not very bright, easily driven to extinction by the lithe, smart modern humans that came out of Africa some 100,000 years ago.But was it really as simple as that? Clive Finlayson reminds us that the Neanderthals were another kind of human, and their culture was not so very different from that of our own ancestors. In this book, he presents a wider view of the events that led to the migration of the moderns into Europe, what might have happened during the contact of the two populations, and what finally drove the Neanderthals to extinction. It is a view that considers climate, ecology, and migrations of populations, as well as culture and interaction.His conclusion is that the destiny of the Neanderthals and the Moderns was sealed by ecological factors and contingencies. It was a matter of luck that we survived and spread while the Neanderthals dwindled and perished. Had the climate not changed in our favour some 50 million years ago, things would have been very different.There is much current research interest in Neanderthals, much of it driven by attempts to map some of their DNA. But it's not just a question of studying the DNA. The rise and fall of populations is profoundly moulded by the larger scale forces of climate and ecology. And it is only by taking this wider view that we can fully understand the course of events that led to our survival and their demise. The fact that Neanderthals survived until virtually yesterday makes our relationship with them and their tragedy even more poignant. They almost made it, after all.

    Now, 30 years later, he has completely rewritten and updated his earlier book to provide fresh evidence to support his original argument. Shroud boldly challenges the current post-radiocarbon dating view - that it is a fake. By arguing his case brilliantly and provocatively, Ian Wilson once more throws the matter into the public arena for further debate and controversy.

    From the geological and physical processes that affect the ocean floor to the key habitat zones, flora, and fauna, this is the definitive reference to the world's oceans for the entire family. Includes an introduction by Fabien Cousteau. Includes the latest developments in ocean exploration and photography. Catalogs the rich diversity of ocean features and marine life. Highlights important people, unique habitats, human impact studies, and extreme facts. Published in association with the American Museum of Natural History.

    Real stories about the patients, nurses, consulting physicians, and daily life of a busy Emergency Department. Get a glimpse inside the inner workings of an Emergency Department and the staff that works there, caring for patients and their families. From a toddler who can cuss a blue streak, a dead mouse brought into the Emergency Department, to critical resuscitations, these are stories that you will never forget.

    Parker removes that pain by offering an opportunity to Get-to-Know the 'Master of Electricity,' to learn of his youth and upbringing, his early career, and of course his pivotal role in advancing the World into the Electrical Age! Turn these pages and enjoy the opportunity to learn history, but better yet to come to know Tesla better through Parker’s amazing ability to describe his life, his eccentricities and above all, his accomplishments; making this an enjoyable and interesting Quick-Read Biography. This Book also Comes with a FREE Gift!

    Their planet is wild and at times dangerous, but everything is free, everyone is their friend, and each day is more exciting than the last.  One day a rocket ship piloted by a strange-looking adult named Gleesome Goodday crashes on the beach. His business card claims he is a “Dream.ComeTrueMaker and joybringer,” and he promises to make life a hundred times more fun with sun-activated flying powder and magic-coated skin so that no one ever has to bathe again. Goodday even nails the sun in the sky and creates a giant wolf to chase away the clouds so it can be playtime all the time. In exchange for these wonderful things, Goodday asks only for a little bit of the children’s youth—but what is youth compared to a lot more fun? The children are so enamored with their new games that they forget all the simple activities they used to love. During Goodday’s great flying competition, Hulda and Brimir fly too high to the sun and soar to the other side of planet, where they discover it is dark all the time and the children are sickly and pale. Hulda and Brimir know that without their help, the pale children will die, but first they need to get back to their island and convince their friends that Gleesome Goodday is not all that he seems. A fantastical adventure, beautifully told, unfolds in a deceptively simple tale. The Story of the Blue Planet will delight and challenge readers of all ages.From the Trade Paperback edition.

    Bird-eating snakes from Australia hitchhike to Hawaii in the landing gear of airliners; disruptive European zebra mussels, riding in ships' ballast water, are infiltrating aquatic ecosystems across the United States; parasitic flies from the U.S. prey on Darwin's finches in the Galapagos. Predatory American jellyfish in Russia; toxic Japanese plankton in Australia; Burmese pythons in the Everglades-biologists refer fearfully to "the homogenization of the world" as alien species jump from place to place and increasingly crowd native and endangered species out of existence. Never mind bulldozers and pesticides: the fastest-growing threat to biological diversity may be nature itself. "Out of Eden" is a journey through this strange and shifting landscape. The author tours the front lines of ecological invasion--in Hawaii, Tasmania, Guam, San Francisco; in lush rainforests, through underground lava tubes, on the deck of an Alaska-bound oil tanker--in the company of world-class scientists. Wry and reflective, animated and richly reported, "Out of Eden" is a search both for scientific answers and for ecological authenticity.

    His friends increasingly behave like adults, while Thwaites still lives at home, "stuck in a big, dark hole." Luckily, a research grant offers the perfect out: a chance to take a holiday from the complications of being human—by transforming himself into a goat. What ensues is a hilarious and surreal journey through engineering, design, and psychology, as Thwaites interviews neuroscientists, animal behaviorists, prosthetists, goat sanctuary workers, and goatherds.From this, he builds a goat exoskeleton—artificial legs, helmet, chest protector, raincoat from his mum, and a prosthetic goat stomach to digest grass (with help from a pressure cooker and campfire)—before setting off across the Alps on four legs with a herd of his fellow creatures. Will he make it? Do Thwaites and his readers discover what it truly means to be human?GoatMan tells all in Thwaites's inimitable style, which NPR extols as "a laugh-out- loud-funny but thoughtful guide through his own adventures."

    Archaeologists, Roberts writes, have been puzzling over the Anasazi for more than a century, trying to determine the environmental and cultural stresses that caused their society to collapse 700 years ago. He guides us through controversies in the historical record, among them the haunting question of whether the Anasazi committed acts of cannibalism. Roberts’s book is full of up-to-date thinking on the culture of the ancient people who lived in the harsh desert country of the Southwest.

    This volume begins with a discussion of the cells that make up living beings, as well as the basics of protein synthesis, metabolism, energy production, and photosynthesis. It goes on to cover ecosystems and material cycles; the mechanisms of respiration; lipids, cholesterol, and blood types; and the roles and structures of enzymes and proteins. Readers explore genes and DNA; the differences between biochemistry and molecular biology; and the mystery surrounding the origin of the cell—all with the aid of original Manga cartoons. This EduManga title is co-published with Ohmsha, Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan, and is one in a series of translations from Ohmsha's bestselling Japanese originals.

    He creates these majestic sepia and blue-tone photoscontrasting moments of quintessential stillness with bursts of dramatic actionby engaging with these creatures on an exceptionally intimate level, without the customary use of a telephoto lens. Evocative of classical art, from dignified portraits to sweeping natural tableaux, Brandt's images artfully and simply capture animals in their natural states of being. With a foreword by Alice Sebold and an introduction by Jane Goodall, On This Earth is a gorgeous portfolio of some of the last wild animalsand a heartfelt elegy to a vanishing world.

    But what was it really like to be a Neandertal? How were their lives similar to or different from ours?In How to Think Like a Neandertal, archaeologist Thomas Wynn and psychologist Frederick L. Coolidge team up to provide a brilliant account of the mental life of Neandertals, drawing on the most recent fossil and archaeological remains. Indeed, some Neandertal remains are not fossilized, allowingscientists to recover samples of their genes--one specimen had the gene for red hair and, more provocatively, all had a gene called FOXP2, which is thought to be related to speech. Given the differences between their faces and ours, their voices probably sounded a bit different, and the range ofconsonants and vowels they could generate might have been different. But they could talk, and they had a large (perhaps huge) vocabulary--words for places, routes, techniques, individuals, and emotions. Extensive archaeological remains of stone tools and living sites (and, yes, they did often livein caves) indicate that Neandertals relied on complex technical procedures and spent most of their lives in small family groups. The authors sift the evidence that Neandertals had a symbolic culture--looking at their treatment of corpses, the use of fire, and possible body coloring--and concludethat they probably did not have a sense of the supernatural. The book explores the brutal nature of their lives, especially in northwestern Europe, where men and women with spears hunted together for mammoths and wooly rhinoceroses. They were pain tolerant, very likely taciturn, and not easy toexcite.Wynn and Coolidge offer here an eye-opening portrait of Neandertals, painting a remarkable picture of these long-vanished people and providing insight, as they go along, into our own minds and culture.