Author: Bill Schutt
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307381137
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature’s vampires into a healthy respect for evolution’s power to fill every conceivable niche.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature’s strangest creatures—the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Examining the substance that sustains nature’s vampires, Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into relatively modern times. Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder—currently devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly weird—vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish) is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.
Dark Banquet
Author: Bill Schutt
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307381137
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature’s vampires into a healthy respect for evolution’s power to fill every conceivable niche.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature’s strangest creatures—the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Examining the substance that sustains nature’s vampires, Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into relatively modern times. Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder—currently devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly weird—vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish) is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307381137
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 338
Book Description
“A witty, scientifically accurate, and often intensely creepy exploration of sanguivorous creatures.”—San Francisco Chronicle “Bill Schutt turns whatever fear and disgust you may feel towards nature’s vampires into a healthy respect for evolution’s power to fill every conceivable niche.”—Carl Zimmer, author of Parasite Rex and Microcosm: E. coli and the New Science of Life For centuries, blood feeders have inhabited our nightmares and horror stories, as well as the shadowy realms of scientific knowledge. In Dark Banquet, zoologist Bill Schutt takes us on a fascinating voyage into the world of some of nature’s strangest creatures—the sanguivores. Using a sharp eye and mordant wit, Schutt makes a remarkably persuasive case that blood feeders, from bats to bedbugs, are as deserving of our curiosity as warmer and fuzzier species are—and that many of them are even worthy of conservation. Examining the substance that sustains nature’s vampires, Schutt reveals just how little we actually knew about blood until well into the twentieth century. We revisit George Washington on his deathbed to learn how ideas about blood and the supposedly therapeutic value of bloodletting, first devised by the ancient Egyptians and Greeks, survived into relatively modern times. Dark Banquet details our dangerous and sometimes deadly encounters with ticks, chiggers, and mites (the latter implicated in Colony Collapse Disorder—currently devastating honey bees worldwide). Then there are the truly weird—vampire finches. And if you thought piranha were scary, some people believe that the candiru (or willy fish) is the best reason to avoid swimming in the Amazon. Enlightening and alarming, Dark Banquet peers into a part of the natural world to which we are, through our blood, inextricably linked.
Darkness and Dawn
Author: Frederic William Farrar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome
Languages : en
Pages : 292
Book Description
Darkness and Dawn, Or, Scenes in the Days of Nero
Author: Frederic William Farrar
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Rome
Languages : en
Pages : 380
Book Description
Banquet for the Damned
Author: Adam Nevill
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447240944
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Few believed Professor Coldwell could communicate with spirits. But in Scotland's oldest university town something has passed from darkness into light. Now, the young are being haunted by night terrors and those who are visited disappear. This is certainly not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and burned-out explorer have of surviving their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it? A chilling occult thriller from award-winning author Adam Nevill, Banquet for the Damned is both a homage to the great age of British ghost stories and a pacey modern tale of Devil worship and witchcraft.
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 1447240944
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 400
Book Description
Few believed Professor Coldwell could communicate with spirits. But in Scotland's oldest university town something has passed from darkness into light. Now, the young are being haunted by night terrors and those who are visited disappear. This is certainly not a place for outsiders, especially at night. So what chance do a rootless musician and burned-out explorer have of surviving their entanglement with an ageless supernatural evil and the ruthless cult that worships it? A chilling occult thriller from award-winning author Adam Nevill, Banquet for the Damned is both a homage to the great age of British ghost stories and a pacey modern tale of Devil worship and witchcraft.
Our Lady of Darkness
The Last Banquet
Author: Jonathan Grimwood
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1609451511
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, the delectable decadence of Versailles, and the French Revolution, The Last Banquet is an intimate epic that tells the story of one man’s quest to know the world through its many and marvelous flavors. Jean-Marie d’Aumout will try anything once, with consequences that are at times mouthwatering and at others fascinatingly macabre (Three Snake Bouillabaisse anyone? Or perhaps some pickled Wolf's Heart?). When he is not obsessively searching for a new taste d’Aumout is a fast friend, a loving husband, a doting father, and an imaginative lover. He befriends Ben Franklin, corresponds with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, becomes a favorite at Versailles, thwarts a peasant uprising, improves upon traditional French methods of contraception, plays an instrumental role in the Corsican War of Independence, and constructs France’s finest menagerie. But d’Aumout’s every adventurous turn is decided by his at times dark obsession to know all the world’s flavors before that world changes irreversibly. As gripping as Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, as gloriously ambitious as Daniel Kehlman’s Measuring the World, and as prize-worthy as Andrew Miller’s Pure, The Last Banquet is a hugely appealing novel about food and flavor, about the Age of Reason and the ages of man, and our obsessions and about how, if we manage to survive them, they can bequeath us wisdom and consolation in old age.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1609451511
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 259
Book Description
Set against the backdrop of the Enlightenment, the delectable decadence of Versailles, and the French Revolution, The Last Banquet is an intimate epic that tells the story of one man’s quest to know the world through its many and marvelous flavors. Jean-Marie d’Aumout will try anything once, with consequences that are at times mouthwatering and at others fascinatingly macabre (Three Snake Bouillabaisse anyone? Or perhaps some pickled Wolf's Heart?). When he is not obsessively searching for a new taste d’Aumout is a fast friend, a loving husband, a doting father, and an imaginative lover. He befriends Ben Franklin, corresponds with the Marquis de Sade and Voltaire, becomes a favorite at Versailles, thwarts a peasant uprising, improves upon traditional French methods of contraception, plays an instrumental role in the Corsican War of Independence, and constructs France’s finest menagerie. But d’Aumout’s every adventurous turn is decided by his at times dark obsession to know all the world’s flavors before that world changes irreversibly. As gripping as Patrick Suskind’s Perfume, as gloriously ambitious as Daniel Kehlman’s Measuring the World, and as prize-worthy as Andrew Miller’s Pure, The Last Banquet is a hugely appealing novel about food and flavor, about the Age of Reason and the ages of man, and our obsessions and about how, if we manage to survive them, they can bequeath us wisdom and consolation in old age.
Our Banquet
An Exposition Upon the Epistle of Jude
Author: William Jenkyn
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 854
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Bible
Languages : en
Pages : 854
Book Description
Dark Banquet
Author: Lincoln Child
Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9780312182335
Category : Ghost stories, American
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
Publisher: New York : St. Martin's Press
ISBN: 9780312182335
Category : Ghost stories, American
Languages : en
Pages : 255
Book Description
Touch of Darkness
Author: Christina Dodd
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440638853
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
From New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd comes the second book of Darkness Chosen, a seductive series about an ancient, dark evil that lives in the modern world... Handsome, powerful Rurik Wilder battles darkness—the darkness without and the darkness within. He possesses the power to transform himself into a fierce bird of prey, and that gift has caused death and destruction. At last he is offered the chance to redeem himself and break the evil pact that has held his family in thrall for centuries. Only one woman stands in his way—Tasya Hunnicutt, a writer determined to wreak revenge on the assassins who murdered her family. Assassins, it’s been rumored, who have powers no human should ever possess...
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1440638853
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 264
Book Description
From New York Times bestselling author Christina Dodd comes the second book of Darkness Chosen, a seductive series about an ancient, dark evil that lives in the modern world... Handsome, powerful Rurik Wilder battles darkness—the darkness without and the darkness within. He possesses the power to transform himself into a fierce bird of prey, and that gift has caused death and destruction. At last he is offered the chance to redeem himself and break the evil pact that has held his family in thrall for centuries. Only one woman stands in his way—Tasya Hunnicutt, a writer determined to wreak revenge on the assassins who murdered her family. Assassins, it’s been rumored, who have powers no human should ever possess...