Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1643131710 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 524
Book Description
A captivating blend of true adventure and natural history by one of today’s leading penguin experts and Antarctic explorers. George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history. A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick’s long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species. A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories—but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick’s and Davis’s explorations, observations, and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis Publisher: Pegasus Books ISBN: 9781643136028 Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 392
Book Description
A captivating blend of true adventure and natural history by one of today’s leading penguin experts and Antarctic explorers. George Murray Levick was the physician on Robert Falcon Scott’s tragic Antarctic expedition of 1910. Marooned for an Antarctic winter, Levick passed the time by becoming the first man to study penguins up close. His findings were so shocking to Victorian morals that they were quickly suppressed and seemingly lost to history. A century later, Lloyd Spencer Davis rediscovers Levick and his findings during the course of his own scientific adventures in Antarctica. Levick’s long-suppressed manuscript reveals not only an incredible survival story, but one that will change our understanding of an entire species. A Polar Affair reveals the last untold tale from the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. It is perhaps the greatest of all of those stories—but why was it hidden to begin with? The ever-fascinating and charming penguin holds the key. Moving deftly between both Levick’s and Davis’s explorations, observations, and comparisons in biology over the course of a century, A Polar Affair reveals cutting-edge findings about ornithology, in which the sex lives of penguins are the jumping-off point for major new insights into the underpinnings of evolutionary biology itself.
Author: Milkyway Media Publisher: Milkyway Media ISBN: Category : Nature Languages : en Pages : 47
Book Description
Get the Summary of Lloyd Spencer Davis's A Polar Affair in 20 minutes. Please note: This is a summary & not the original book. "A Polar Affair" by Lloyd Spencer Davis explores the complex and often misunderstood sexual behaviors of Adelie penguins, challenging long-held beliefs about monogamy and natural selection. The book delves into the Victorian-era perceptions of sexuality, highlighting George Murray Levick's shock at observing same-sex interactions and other behaviors among penguins during his 1911 Antarctic expedition. Levick's findings, initially censored and coded in Greek, were rediscovered by Douglas Russell in 1996, revealing groundbreaking insights into penguin biology...
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited ISBN: 1775537269 Category : Science Languages : en Pages : 322
Book Description
Meet ‘Bill Bryson in Antarctica’ in this engaging book by one of the world's authority on penguins. Part memoir, partly the research of a field biologist, Professor Penguin could be called ‘How Penguins Shaped My Life’. Based on journals kept during Davis’s years of working with penguins in the wild, the story takes readers to remote locations: Antarctica, the Galapagos, the deserts of Chile and Peru, the Falkland Islands, the wild coasts of Argentina and South Africa, and New Zealand. Davis, a world authority on penguins, reveals that these box-office favourites are not the cute ‘mate for life’ animals we’ve been led to believe. He also reveals that penguins are a lot like humans — sometimes disturbingly so — when it comes to their basic needs: sex, food, shelter, marriage, family and travel. Over the years that Davis studies penguins, he realises that they are far more complex and nuanced than he imagines at his first encounter. 'They really don’t deserve to be seen as so black and white.’ He expertly marries scientific knowledge with his own anecdotes — told with humour, hard-earned knowledge and insight. He also includes stories about those who have helped advance our knowledge of penguins —other 'Professor Penguins'. Implicit throughout is Davis’s philosophy – the more we learn about the natural world, and specifically penguins, the more we learn about ourselves. And he asks: Is the isolation of Antarctica sufficient to protect penguins from us?
Author: Alison Lurie Publisher: Open Road Media ISBN: 1480422495 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 393
Book Description
This Pulitzer Prize–winning novel follows two American academics in London—a young man and a middle-aged woman—as they each fall into unexpected romances. In her early fifties, Vinnie Miner is the sort of woman no one ever notices, despite her career as an Ivy League professor. She doubts she could get a man’s attention if she waved a brightly colored object in front of him. And though she loves her work, her specialty—children’s folk rhymes—earns little respect from her fellow scholars. Then, alone on a flight to London for a research trip, she sits next to a man she would never have viewed as a potential romantic partner. In a Western-cut suit and a rawhide tie, he is a sanitary engineer from Tulsa, Oklahoma, on a group tour. He’s the very opposite of her type, but before Vinnie knows it, she’s spending more and more time with him. Also in London is Vinnie’s colleague, a young, handsome English professor whose marriage and self-esteem are both on the rocks. But Fred Turner is also about to find consolation—in the arms of the most beautiful actress in England. Stylish and highborn, she introduces Fred to a glamorous, yet eccentric, London scene that he never expected to encounter. The course of these two relationships makes up the story of Foreign Affairs—a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award as well as a Pulitzer Prize winner, and an entertaining, poignant tale from the author of The War Between the Tates and The Last Resort, “one of this country’s most able and witty novelists” (The New York Times). This ebook features an illustrated biography of Alison Lurie including rare images from the author’s personal collection.
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand Limited ISBN: 1775530795 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 300
Book Description
An award-winning zoologist travels in Charles Darwin's footsteps, and in search of the meaning of life. In one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, zoologist Lloyd Spencer Davis comes face to face with an enraged leopard seal. Towering ice cliffs, a ferocious creature of the deep, and the extreme Antarctic environment all turn Davis's world view on its head. 'What the hell am I doing here?' This question sets Davis on a quest for insight and meaning in a world that still pitches theories of evolution against belief in a Creator; the science of natural selection against a faith that asserts our world was crafted by Intelligent Design. With a self-deprecating grin packed along with his cabin baggage - even when his passport isn't - Davis decides to follow the travels of the eminent nineteenth-century naturalist, Charles Darwin: the man who did more to change our understanding of this planet than any other biologist. Looking for Darwin gives us a personal and intimate insight into Darwin and what drove the man. It is also an attempt to resolve that initially panicked — and then far-reaching — question, that first hit Davis on the big ice. With a wealth of research and vivid imagery — along with a disarming honesty —Lloyd Spencer Davis takes the reader on an unforgettable world tour.
Author: Marcel Proust Publisher: Melville House ISBN: 1612192335 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 114
Book Description
Their friend Marcel Proust had killed himself after the fall in diamond shares, a collapse that annihilated a part of his fortune. This is the first-ever translation into English of this startling tour-de-force by one of the twentieth century’s greatest writers. The Lemoine Affair was inspired by the real-life French scandal involving Henri Lemoine, who claimed he could manufacture diamonds from coal and convinced numerous people—including officers of the De Beers diamond mine company and Proust himself—to invest in the scheme. In a series of pastiches—imitations written in the style of other writers—Proust tells the story of the embarrassment rippling across high society Paris in the wake of the scandal, poking fun at himself (in one story, a character declares that Marcel Proust is so embarrassed he’s suicidal) while lampooning some of France’s greatest writers, including Flaubert, Balzac, and Saint-Simon. Full of sophisticated wit and dazzling wordplay, and rife with allusions to his friend and fictional characters, many Proust scholars see the dead-on mimicry of The Lemoine Affair—written soon after Proust’s rejection of society life—as the work by which he honed his own unique, masterly voice. The Art of The Novella Series Too short to be a novel, too long to be a short story, the novella is generally unrecognized by academics and publishers. Nonetheless, it is a form beloved and practiced by literature's greatest writers. In the Art Of The Novella series, Melville House celebrates this renegade art form and its practitioners with titles that are, in many instances, presented in book form for the first time.
Author: Lilith Saintcrow Publisher: Hachette UK ISBN: 0748130845 Category : Fiction Languages : en Pages : 336
Book Description
The game is afoot! London's geniuses are being picked off by a vicious killer, and Emma Bannon, a sorceress in the service of the Empire, must protect the next target, Archibald Clare. Unfortunately he's more interested in solving the mystery of the murders than staying alive . . . In a world where illogical magic has turned the Industrial Revolution on its head, Bannon and Clare will face dark sorcery, cannon fire, high treason and the vexing problem of reliably finding hansom cabs in the city.
Author: M. Ross Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP ISBN: 0773565035 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 464
Book Description
In 1818 John Ross led an expedition to search for the Northwest Passage. He got as far as Baffin Bay, but when he reached the only practicable entrance to the passage he declared it to be no more than a bay enclosed by mountains. In subsequent years he was widely derided for that error and carried the scars of public and professional humiliation for the rest of his life. In 1829 he mounted a private expedition to search for the passage, during which he became trapped in the Canadian Arctic and survived a four-year ordeal of isolation and hardship. He proved that whatever his shortcomings as an explorer, he could never be accused of lacking courage. James Clark Ross was one of the most experienced and respected explorers of his day. He led or took part in eight expeditions to the Arctic, including John Ross' 1818 and 1829 expeditions and three with the great explorer William Edward Parry. He also led a highly successful scientific expedition to the Antarctic in 1839-43. His many important discoveries included locating the North Magnetic Pole, and he ensured the presence of the Ross family name throughout both polar regions: Ross Island, Ross Ice Shelf, and Ross Sea in the Antarctic; James Ross Strait, Ross Bay, Ross Point, and Rossøya in the Arctic. Drawing on family papers and extensive research, M.J. Ross traces the careers of these two very different men, highlighting their achievements and defeats, and presents a detailed picture of their private lives.
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis Publisher: ISBN: Category : Penguins Languages : en Pages : 116
Book Description
Penguins have a curious magnetism that compels us to love them. Is this because they seem like us? They walk like us. They dress in tuxedoes like us. And perhaps, because of this, we think they should act like us. We've created a human image of penguins; cute clones that marry for life and live happily ever after as devoted parents, rearing their families in a world of snow and ice. Zoologist Lloyd Spencer Davis dispels this fairytale view of penguins, replacing it with startling revelations about their lifestyles, seduction techniques and survival secrets. These are not colourless little polar people; these are raunchy birds that want to be fish. The author's clear-eyed, direct style has a zest and wit that conveys the complexity of the natural world; the world where these birds lead such astonishing lives. His enthusiasm, his sense of wonder and beauty are delightfully infectious, his dynamic advocacy of the conservationist's cause wholly persuasive.
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Author: Milkyway Media
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Author: Alison Lurie
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis
Author: Marcel Proust
Author: Lilith Saintcrow
Author: M. Ross
Author: Lloyd Spencer Davis