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When seeking to understand animals, context is key. Humans have a habit of viewing the animal kingdom through the prism of our own narrow existence. Zoologist and documentary filmmaker Lucy Cooke is fascinated by the myths people create about animals to fill in the gaps in our understanding, and how much they reveal about the mechanics of discovery and the people doing the discovering. In this book she has gathered together the biggest misconceptions and mistakes made about the animal kingdom, a...

“Carlsen sees a world of wonder hiding in plain sight and may just change how you look at the world around you.” - TODAY Show A simple walk around the block set journalist Spike Carlsen, bestselling author of A Splintered History of Wood, off to investigate everything he could about everything we take for granted in our normal life—from manhole covers and recycling bins to bike lanes and stoplights. In this celebration of the seemingly mundane, Carlsen opens our eyes to the engineering marvels...

In his monumental 1687 work "Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica", known familiarly as the "Principia", Isaac Newton laid out in mathematical terms the principles of time, force, and motion that have guided the development of modern physical science. Even after more than three centuries and the revolutions of Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, Newtonian physics continues to account for many of the phenomena of the observed world, and Newtonian celestial dynamics is used to de...

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, North American and European governments generously funded the discoveries of such famous paleontologists and geologists as Henry de la Beche, William Buckland, Richard Owen, Thomas Hawkins, Edward Drinker Cope, O. C. Marsh, and Charles W. Gilmore. In Patrons of Paleontology, Jane Davidson explores the motivation behind this rush to fund exploration, arguing that eagerness to discover strategic resources like coal deposits was further fueled by patrons who ha...

Tracing human interactions with the world’s most famous tropical timber species, The Social Life of Teak maps worlds revolving around teak forests, trees and wood. What gives Tectona grandis such a powerful aura, stoking desires and capturing imaginations? How has teak shaped people’s lives, driving fortunes and impacting futures? What has happened to the teak forests and what is their destiny? In this illustrated anthology of oral histories, people connected personally or professionally to teak...

In Putting on the Dog, Melissa Kwasny explores the age-old relationship between humans and the animals that have provided us with our clothing: leather, wool, silk, feathers, pearls, and fur. From silkworms grown on plantations in Japan and mink farms off Denmark's western coast to pearl beds in the Sea of Cortes, Kwasny offers firsthand accounts of traditions and manufacturing methods-aboriginal to modern-and descriptions of the marvel and miracle of the clothing itself. What emerges is a fresh...

From the Arctic waters of Alaska to the southern tip of California, this fully illustrated guide captures the stunning diversity of fishes along the western coastlines of the United States and Canada. The combined work of renowned marine science illustrator Val Kells and distinguished ichthyologists Luiz A. Rocha and Larry G. Allen, A Field Guide to Coastal Fishes: From Alaska to California is this region's most current and thorough fish identification guide. Whether you are an angler, scuba di...

"Far-ranging and deeply researched, Urban Forests reveals the beauty and significance of the trees around us." -Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Sixth Extinction "Jonnes extols the many contributions that trees make to city life and celebrates the men and women who stood up for America's city trees over the past two centuries. . . . An authoritative account." -Gerard Helferich, The Wall Street Journal "We all know that trees can make streets look prettier. But in her ne...

Ten Thousand Birds provides a thoroughly engaging and authoritative history of modern ornithology, tracing how the study of birds has been shaped by a succession of visionary and often-controversial personalities, and by the unique social and scientific contexts in which these extraordinary individuals worked. This beautifully illustrated book opens in the middle of the nineteenth century when ornithology was a museum-based discipline focused almost exclusively on the anatomy, taxonomy, and clas...

More than 999 of every 1,000 species that have ever lived on the planet have become extinct. As part of evolution, extinction of the old allows emergence of the new. It is integral to the Earth's continually changing range and richness of life-forms. Extinction: not the end of the world? is a highly readable introduction to the causes of extinction, the different types of extinction and how relevant it is to the world today. The book discusses today's key issues, from biodiversity and conservati...

Known for developing the concept of Mullerian mimicry, whereby poisonous species with a common predator display similar warning signals, the naturalist Johann Friedrich Theodor (Fritz) Muller (1821-97) spent most of his working life in Brazil. Having emigrated from Germany, owing partly to his radical atheism, he became a strong early supporter of Darwinism. Drawing on his studies of crustaceans, he originally published this work in German as Fur Darwin (1864), and sent the great naturalist a co...