Nature & Ecology Books - Page 6

Anastasia (The Ringing Cedars, Book 1)

Vladimir Megre

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Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Self-Help -> Personal Transformation

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 27 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Merely a middle-aged man's fantasy 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 7 people found this review helpful.

I have to report that this book is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. It reads like a middle-aged man's fantasy of a young, beautiful, innocent-yet-wise woman who will have sex with him, show him the wonders of her world, and frolic in the forest like a wood nymph (she is forever twirling around, leaping, diving into the water, and treating the animals like how you would see a Disney princess treating them - like subservient placid pets (even wild wolves and bears!)). The character Anastasia seems to be based on the character Ayla from the Earth's Children series by Jean Auel. Those books are a much better read, don't waste your money on this one.

Editorial Review:

"Anastasia", the first book of the Ringing Cedars Series, tells the story of entrepreneur Vladimir Megre's trade trip to the Siberian taiga in 1995, where he witnessed incredible spiritual phenomena connected with sacred 'ringing cedar' trees. He spent three days with a woman named Anastasia who shared with him her unique outlook on subjects as diverse as gardening, child-rearing, healing, Nature, sexuality, religion and more. This wilderness experience transformed Vladimir so deeply that he abandoned his commercial plans and, penniless, went to Moscow to fulfil Anastasia's request and write a book about the spiritual insights she so generously shared with him. True to her promise this life-changing book, once written, has become an international best-seller and has touched hearts of millions of people world-wide.

Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America (Peterson Field Guides(R))

Roger Tory Peterson

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Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Product Description
In celebration of the centennial of Roger Tory Peterson's birth comes a historic collaboration among renowned birding experts and artists to preserve and enhance the Peterson legacy. This new book combines the Peterson Field Guide to Eastern Birds and Peterson Field Guide to Western Birds into one volume, filled with accessible, concise information and including almost three hours of video podcasts to make bird watching even easier.

• 40 new paintings
• Digital updates to Peterson's original paintings, reflecting the latest knowledge of bird identification
• All new maps for the most up-to-date range information available
• Text rewritten to cover the U.S. and Canada in one guide
• Larger trim size accommodates range maps on every spread
• Contributors include: Michael DiGiorgio, Jeff Gordon, Paul Lehman, Michael O'Brien, Larry Rosche, and Bill Thompson III
• Includes URL to register for access to video podcasts

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Excerpts from Peterson Field Guide to Birds of North America
Click on each image below to see a larger view

Colorful songbirds with heavy, seed-crushing bills, cardinals and grosbeaks are popular at feeders.

In North America, the Orchard and Baltimore Orioles are fairly widespread in the East; Bullock's is widespread in the West; and the Spot-breasted Oriole is limited to South Florida.

Peterson sometimes painted over figures on a plate and sometimes even cut them out. Canyon Wren was missing from the original art. Michael O'Brien painted a new Canyon Wren for inclusion in the new field guide.

The Orange Bishop is native to Africa but has been introduced in California. Peterson had not painted this bird for his field guides, so Michael O’Brien painted this one.

Thumbnail maps help you determine at a glance if a bird is likely to be in your region.

Large maps in back give detailed range information.

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The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Richard Dawkins

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 343 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

The Blind Watchmaker 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 3 people found this review helpful.

Not an easy book to read, but well worth the effort. Understanding the evidence and arguments for evolution requires effort and thought, whereas believing in invisible and untestable gods is easy, which is why most people choose the latter. Dawkins explains clearly why evolution is the best, indeed the only rational explanation for life as it exists on Earth (other than the FSM, of course. Arrrr!)

Editorial Review:

"The best general account of evolution I have read in recent years."—E. O. Wilson. With a new introduction.

Twenty years after its original publication, The Blind Watchmaker, framed with a new introduction by the author, is as prescient and timely a book as ever. The watchmaker belongs to the eighteenth-century theologian William Paley, who argued that just as a watch is too complicated and functional to have sprung into existence by accident, so too must all living things, with their far greater complexity, be purposefully designed. Charles Darwin's brilliant discovery challenged the creationist arguments; but only Richard Dawkins could have written this elegant riposte. Natural selection—the unconscious, automatic, blind, yet essentially nonrandom process Darwin discovered—is the blind watchmaker in nature.

Silent Spring

Rachel and Albert Gore Jr. Carson

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 138 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Excellent! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The book was delivered in good condition and in a timely fashion. I am very pleased with your services.

Ahead of its time. 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book is more than I expected it to be. It is way ahead of its time and makes an important contribution to the environmental movement.

Of Silent Springs and Loudly Prophecies 3 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

With this comedy masterpiece, Rachel Carson launched a thorough and successful assault on pesticides commonly used in agriculture. After nearly 45 years, DDT is no longer used. Every organism on the planet has what was once considered a lethal quantity of it in its cells and the human ones are still alive to whine about the worms in their raspberries.

Should you read this book? Yes. It's a thought-provoking indictment, and, like The Jungle 60 years before it, helped shape the world in which we now live. I only wish that all you young, unshaven tree-huggers would understand that panic-peddling is a business just like everything else. Some want to sell you books, others "organic" fruit and others still want to ride panic where politics failed them like a certain secretary of vice presidency or whatever it was Gore did in the 90s.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Edwin Abbott Abbott

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Total reviews: 160 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A 2D and 4D Classic Text 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Originally written with a Victorian theme, it is now a must-read classic for anyone who enjoys reading about the fourth dimension. The story is about a two-dimensional being (called A Square) living in a two-dimensional world (hence the title, Flatland). As a three-dimensional being imagining this two-dimensional world, you come to realize that you can understand higher-dimensional space through lower-dimensional analogies. In fact, A Square meets a three-dimensional being (A Sphere), and takes a journey beyond the second dimension. Although some readers may enjoy the book for its historical and Victorian period merits, math lovers can enjoy the book for its geometric insight.

If you are curious about the fourth dimension, you should also read:

- Spaceland: A Novel of the Fourth Dimension, Rudy Rucker's novel of the fourth dimension
- Flatterland: Like Flatland, Only More So, a continuation of the geometric idea from Flatland
- The 4th Dimension: Toward a Geometry of Higher Reality, Rudy Rucker's classic introduction to the fourth dimension
- The Visual Guide to Extra Dimensions: Volume 1: Visualizing the Fourth Dimension, Higher-Dimensional Polytopes, and Curved Hypersurfaces, a modern geometric introduction to the fourth dimension

The Foxfire Book: Hog Dressing, Log Cabin Building, Mountain Crafts and Foods, Planting by the Signs, Snake Lore, Hunting Tales, Faith Healing, Moonshining

Inc. Foxfire Fund

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Sure Fire Reference 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Eliot Wigginton made his students immortal when he sent them into the southern mountains to interview and record the skills and crafts of the region.
This is the first one of a fantastic series that serves as a standard reference for mountain culture. If you are a writer that has any intention of either historical--frontier descriptions or including characters from the region this entire series should be on your shelf or in the local library. Reading them will give flavor to your work.
As a reader you can check to see if the hog killing scene from COLD MOUNTAIN is authentic. This is just one example, there are thousands of others.
Writing as a Small BusinessUnder the Liberty OakSins of the Fathers: A Brewster County NovelThe Bluegrass Dream: A Wilderness Adventure of Early SettlersGuns Across the Rio: A Texas Ranger in Old Mexico

Editorial Review:

In the late 1960s, Eliot Wigginton and his students created the magazine Foxfire in an effort to record and preserve the traditional folk culture of the Southern Appalachians. This is the original book compilation of Foxfire material which introduces Aunt Arie and her contemporaries and includes log cabin building, hog dressing, snake lore, mountain crafts and food, and "other affairs of plain living."

Hubble: Imaging Space and Time

David Devorkin, Robert Smith

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Subjects -> Professional & Technical -> Professional Science -> Astronomy -> Astronomy

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In the spirit of National Geographic’s top-selling Orbit, this large-format, full-color volume stands alone in revealing more than 200 of the most spectacular images from the Hubble Space Telescope during its lifetime, to the very eve of the 2008 final shuttle mission to the telescope. Written by two of the world’s foremost authorities on space history, Hubble: Imaging Space and Time illuminates the solar system’s workings, the expansion of the universe, the birth and death of stars, the formation of planetary nebulae, the dynamics of galaxies, and the mysterious force known as "dark energy."

The potential impact of this book cannot be overstressed: The 2008 servicing mission to install new high-powered scientific instruments is especially high profile because the cancellation of the previous mission, in 2004, caused widespread controversy. The authors reveal the inside story of Hubble’s beginnings, its controversial early days, the drama of its first servicing missions, and the creation of the dynamic images that reach into the deepest regions of visible space, close to the time when the universe began.

A wealth of astonishing images leads us to the very edge of known space, setting the stage for the new James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013. Find the stunning panoramic of Carina Nebula, detailing star birth as never before; a jet from a black hole in one galaxy striking a neighboring galaxy; a jewel-like collection of galaxies from the early years of the universe; and a giant galaxy cannibalizing a smaller galaxy.

Timed for the 2008 shuttle launch and coinciding with the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s first telescope, Hubble: Imaging Space and Time accompanies a high-profile exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum and will be featured on the popular NASM website.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 (The Best American Series)

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"The articles . . . draw the reader more tightly into the web of the world. They forge links in unexpected ways. They connect us to nature and to each other, and those connections nourish the intellect and uplift the spirit."—Jerome Groopman, M.D., editor

This year's Best American Science and Nature Writing offers another rich assortment of "fascinating science and impressive journalism" (New Scientist) culled from an array of periodicals, such as The New Yorker, Scientific American, and National Geographic. The twenty-four provocative and often visionary stories chosen by guest editor Jerome Groopman form an outstanding sampling of the very best in a field of writing that stays ahead of the curve, bringing important topics to the forefront of American discussion.

In "The Universe's Invisible Hand," Christopher Conselice takes us into the recent spectacular discovery of the crucial role of dark energy, which is making our universe expand faster and faster. Florence Williams tells the story of a more down-to-earth form of energy in "A Mighty Wind," which describes how a small Danish island community is making great leaps in energy conservation by using innovative wind farms. John Cohen explores the marvelous world of ligers, zorses, wholphins, and other hybridized creatures in "Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal." And Robin Marantz Henig delves into the possibly hazardous ramifications of the rapidly expanding science of nanotechnology.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 packs a wallop of intriguing, informative, and wondrous stories, each one bringing with it, as Jerome Groopman writes, "a sense of excitement [to be] shared with others."

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 (The Best American Series)

Amazon Price: $10.78 List Price: $14.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $7.93

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Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Literature & Fiction -> World Literature -> United States -> Collections & Readers
Subjects -> Outdoors & Nature -> Nature Writing
Subjects -> Science -> Essays & Commentary

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"The articles . . . draw the reader more tightly into the web of the world. They forge links in unexpected ways. They connect us to nature and to each other, and those connections nourish the intellect and uplift the spirit."—Jerome Groopman, M.D., editor

This year's Best American Science and Nature Writing offers another rich assortment of "fascinating science and impressive journalism" (New Scientist) culled from an array of periodicals, such as The New Yorker, Scientific American, and National Geographic. The twenty-four provocative and often visionary stories chosen by guest editor Jerome Groopman form an outstanding sampling of the very best in a field of writing that stays ahead of the curve, bringing important topics to the forefront of American discussion.

In "The Universe's Invisible Hand," Christopher Conselice takes us into the recent spectacular discovery of the crucial role of dark energy, which is making our universe expand faster and faster. Florence Williams tells the story of a more down-to-earth form of energy in "A Mighty Wind," which describes how a small Danish island community is making great leaps in energy conservation by using innovative wind farms. John Cohen explores the marvelous world of ligers, zorses, wholphins, and other hybridized creatures in "Zonkeys Are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal." And Robin Marantz Henig delves into the possibly hazardous ramifications of the rapidly expanding science of nanotechnology.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2008 packs a wallop of intriguing, informative, and wondrous stories, each one bringing with it, as Jerome Groopman writes, "a sense of excitement [to be] shared with others."