Hidden Natural Histories PDF Download

Author: Kim Hurst
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022624699X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Behind the pungent aroma of garlic and the cool, palate-cleansing taste of mint in our toothpaste are untold stories of human interactions with the natural world. Celebrating the human heritage of these and other natural phenomena, the new Hidden Natural Histories series offers fascinating insight into the cultivation and use of the bits of nature we take for granted in our daily lives. In Herbs, Kim Hurst concocts a delightful tale of the leafs, seeds, and flowers that for millennia have grown in our gardens, provided savor to our stews, and been used to treat our ailments. Many of herbs’ uses will surprise: rosemary, renowned for its piney flavor, has also been used to protect homes from thieves, aid memory, preserve youth, cure depression, and attract helpful garden elves. Packed with informative and beautiful illustrations—both new and from historical archives—Herbs will charm and enlighten anyone interested in our relationship with the natural world and will be a special delight for every chef, gourmand, gardener . . . or purveyor of garden elves.

Author: Noel Kingsbury
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022621589X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Behind the cedar scent of fresh pencil shavings and the slightly bitter tang of orange in our marmalade are untold stories of human interactions with the natural world. Celebrating the human heritage of these and other natural phenomena, the new Hidden Natural Histories series offers fascinating insight into the cultivation and use of the bits of nature we take for granted in our daily lives. In Trees, noted garden writer Noel Kingsbury turns his pen—or pencil—to the leafy life-forms that have warmed our hearths, framed our boats for ocean voyaging, and provided us shade on summer afternoons. From the fortitude of the ancient ginkgo tree to artistic depictions of quince fruit in the ruins of Pompeii, Kingsbury explores the culinary, medicinal, cultural, and practical uses of a forest of tree species. Packed with informative and beautiful illustrations—both new and from historical archives—Trees will charm and enlighten anyone interested in our relationship with the natural world and will be a special delight for every gardener, chef, and climber of trees.

Author: Bernard Heuvelmans
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317845692
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
First published in 2007. This work was composed under the direction of the author, Dr Bernard Heuvelmans, President of the International Society of Cryptozoology, before his death in 2001. The contents have been drawn from his various works, including unpublished manuscripts, as well as his scientific articles.

Author: Robert B. Silvers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 218

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Book Description
Five top writers on science have collaborated to produce this book which looks at the ways that major discoveries in biology, physics and medicine have been suppressed or misunderstood. Stephen Jay Gould gives a summary of his critique of conventional progressive pictures of evolutionary change. Richard Lewontin rejects the attempt to reduce the complexity of living things to the simplicity of physics. Oliver Sacks offers a tour of scientific roads not taken, or taken too late. Daniel Kevles recounts the strange story of resistance to the idea that viruses can cause cancer. And Jonathan Miller shows how the discredited panacea of hypnotism could have helped to reveal a non-Freudian view of the unconscious.

Author: Emily Hawkins
Publisher: Frances Lincoln Children's Books
ISBN: 0711247668
Category : Fairies
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description
Fairies are all around us--you just need to look carefully and you'll see signs of them everywhere. Written and compiled by the esteemed botanist Professor Arbour, prepare to be amazed as we discover everything there is to know about the natural history of fairies.

Author: Kelly Brenner
Publisher: Mountaineers Books
ISBN: 1680512080
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
With wonder and a sense of humor, Nature Obscura author Kelly Brenner aims to help us rediscover our connection to the natural world that is just outside our front door--we just need to know where to look. Through explorations of a rich and varied urban landscape, Brenner reveals the complex micro-habitats and surprising nature found in the middle of a city. In her hometown of Seattle, which has plowed down hills, cut through the land to connect fresh- and saltwater, and paved over much of the rest, she exposes a diverse range of strange and unknown creatures. From shore to wetland, forest to neighborhood park, and graveyard to backyard, Brenner uncovers how our land alterations have impacted nature, for good and bad, through the wildlife and plants that live alongside us, often unseen. These stories meld together, in the same way our ecosystems, species, and human history are interconnected across the urban environment.

Author: David R. Montgomery
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393244415
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"Sure to become a game-changing guide to the future of good food and healthy landscapes." —Dan Barber, chef and author of The Third Plate Prepare to set aside what you think you know about yourself and microbes. The Hidden Half of Nature reveals why good health—for people and for plants—depends on Earth’s smallest creatures. Restoring life to their barren yard and recovering from a health crisis, David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé discover astounding parallels between the botanical world and our own bodies. From garden to gut, they show why cultivating beneficial microbiomes holds the key to transforming agriculture and medicine.

Author: Harry Gratwick
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614231346
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
Discover 400 years of New England history you won’t find in guidebooks in this collection of true stories and colorful characters from The Pine Tree State. Maine wouldn’t be the magical place it is today without the contributions of little-known individuals whose inspiring and adventuresome lives make up the story of Maine's "hidden history." Journalist and Maine historian Harry Gratwick presents vividly detailed portraits of these Mainers, from the controversial missionary Sebastien Rale to Woolwich native William Phips, whose seafaring attacks against French Canada earned him the first governorship of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Gratwick also profiles inventors such as Robert Benjamin Lewis, an African American from Gardiner who patented a hair growth product in the 1830s, and Margaret Knight, a York native who defied nineteenth-century sexism to earn the nickname "the female Edison." From soprano Lillian Nordica, who left Farmington to become the most glamorous American opera singer of her day, to slugger George "Piano Legs" Gore, the only Mainer to ever win a Major League Baseball batting championship, Hidden History of Maine reveals the men and women who made history without making it into history books.

Author: Mary-Ann Ochota
Publisher: Frances Lincoln
ISBN: 0711240086
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
For the times when you’re driving past a lumpy, bumpy field and you wonder what made the lumps and bumps; for when you’re walking between two lines of grand trees, wondering when and why they were planted; for when you see a brown heritage sign pointing to a ‘tumulus’ but you don’t know what to look for… Entertaining and factually rigorous, Hidden Histories will help you decipher the story of our landscape through the features you can see around you. This Spotter’s Guide arms the amateur explorer with the crucial information needed to ‘read’ the landscape and spot the human activities that have shaped our green and pleasant land. Photographs and diagrams point out specific details and typical examples to help the curious Spotter ‘get their eye in’ and understand what they’re looking at, or looking for. Specially commissioned illustrations bring to life the processes that shaped the landscape - from medieval ploughing to Roman road building - and stand-alone capsules explore interesting aspects of history such as the Highland Clearances or the coming of Christianity. This unique guide uncovers the hidden stories behind the country's landscape, making it the perfect companion for an exploration of our green and pleasant land.

Author: Guadalupe Nettel
Publisher: Seven Stories Press
ISBN: 1609805526
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 76

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Book Description
Siamese fighting fish, cockroaches, cats, a snake, and a strange fungus all serve here as mirrors that reflect the unconfessable aspects of human nature buried within us. The traits and fates of these animals illuminate such deeply natural, human experiences as the cruelty born of cohabitation, the desire to reproduce and the impulse not to, and the inexplicable connection that can bind, eerily, two beings together. Each Nettel tale creates, with tightly wound narrative tension, a space wherein her characters feel excruciatingly human, exploring how the wounds we incur in life manifest themselves within us, clandestinely, irrevocably, both unseen and overtly. In a precise writing style that is both subtle and spellbinding, Nettel renders the ordinary unsettling, and the grotesque exquisite. Natural Histories is the winner of the 3rd Ribera del Duero International Award for Short Narratives, an important Spanish literature prize.