The Flight of the Iguana PDF Download

Author: David Quammen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1476728739
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
From the award-winning author of The Tangled Tree and The Song of the Dodo comes a collection of essays in which various weird and wonderful aspects of nature are examined. From tales of vegetarian piranha fish and voiceless dogs to the scientific search for the genes that threaten to destroy the cheetah, Quammen captures the natural world with precision. Throughout, he illuminates the surprising intricacies of the natural world, and our human attitudes towards those intricacies. A distinguished essayist, Quammen’s reporting is masterful and thought provoking and his curiosity and fascination with the world of living things is infectious.

Author: David Quammen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684836262
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 324

View

Book Description
The author brings to life the weird and wonderful pageant of nature in essays ranging from tales of vegetarian piranha to dogs without voices.

Author: Maria Cristina Fumagalli
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042014763
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 332

View

Book Description
In this book, Dante, Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott engage in an eloquent and meaningful conversation. Dante's capacity for being faithful to the collective historical experience and true to the recognitions of the emerging self, the permanent immediacy of his poetry, the healthy state of his language, which is so close to the object that the two are identified, and his adamant refusal to get lost in the wide and open sea of abstraction - all these are shown to have affected, and to continue to affect, Heaney's and Walcott's work. The Flight of the Vemacular, however, is not only a record of what Dante means to the two contemporary poets but also a cogent study of Heaney's and Walcott's attitude towards language and of their views on the function of poetry in our time. Heaney's programmatic endeavour to be adept at dialect and Walcott's idiosyncratic redefinition of the vernacular in poetry as tone rather than as dialect - apart from having Dantean overtones - are presented as being associated with the belief that poetry is a social reality and that langauge is a living alphabet bound to the opened ground of the world.

Author: David Quammen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439124965
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 706

View

Book Description
“Compulsively readable—a masterpiece, maybe the masterpiece of science journalism.” —Bill McKibben, Audubon A brilliant, stirring work, breathtaking in its scope and far-reaching in its message, The Song of the Dodo is a crucial book in precarious times. Through personal observation, scientific theory, and history, David Quammen examines the mysteries of evolution and extinction and radically alters our understanding of the natural world and our place within it. In this landmark of science writing, we learn how the isolation of islands makes them natural laboratories of evolutionary extravagance, as seen in the dragons of Komodo, the elephant birds of Madagascar, the giant tortoises of the Galapagos. But the dark message of island studies is that isolated ecosystems, whether natural or human-made, are also hotbeds of extinction. And as the world’s landscapes, from Tasmania to the Amazon to Yellowstone, are carved into pieces by human activity, the implications of this knowledge are more urgent than ever. An unforgettable scientific adventure, a fascinating account of an eight-year journey of discovery, and a wake-up call for our time, David Quammen’s The Song of the Dodo is an exquisitely written book that takes the reader on a globe-circling tour of wild places and extraordinary ideas.

Author: David Quammen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439125430
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 288

View

Book Description
From “one of the most fascinating and thought-provoking writers of natural history” (The Seattle Times), a collection of enduring essays that form a bestiary of wondrous creatures and a gallery of the human faces that peer at them. The Boilerplate Rhino brings together twenty-six of David Quammen’s most thoughtful and engaging essays from his column for Outside magazine, gifting readers with an irrepressible assortment of ideas to explore, conundrums to contemplate, and wondrous creatures to behold. In lucid, penetrating, and often quirkily idiosyncratic prose, David Quammen takes his readers with him as he explores the world. His travels lead him to rattlesnake handlers in Texas; a lizard specialist in Baja; the dinosaur museum in Jordan, Montana; and halfway across Indonesia in search of the perfect Durian fruit. He ponders the history of nutmeg in the southern Moluccas, meditates on bioluminescent beetles while soaking in the waters of the Amazon, and delivers “The Dope on Eggs” from a chicken ranch near his hometown in Montana. Quammen's travels are always jumping-off points to explore the rich and sometimes horrifying tension between humankind and the natural world, in all its complexity and ambivalence. The result is another irrepressible assortment of ideas to explore, conundrums to contemplate, and wondrous creatures to behold.

Author: David Quammen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

View

Book Description

Author: Noah Strycker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159463341X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 305

View

Book Description
"[Strycker] thinks like a biologist but writes like a poet." -- Wall Street Journal An entertaining and profound look at the lives of birds, illuminating their surprising world—and deep connection with humanity. Birds are highly intelligent animals, yet their intelligence is dramatically different from our own and has been little understood. As we learn more about the secrets of bird life, we are unlocking fascinating insights into memory, relationships, game theory, and the nature of intelligence itself. The Thing with Feathers explores the astonishing homing abilities of pigeons, the good deeds of fairy-wrens, the influential flocking abilities of starlings, the deft artistry of bowerbirds, the extraordinary memories of nutcrackers, the lifelong loves of albatrosses, and other mysteries—revealing why birds do what they do, and offering a glimpse into our own nature. Drawing deep from personal experience, cutting-edge science, and colorful history, Noah Strycker spins captivating stories about the birds in our midst and shares the startlingly intimate coexistence of birds and humans. With humor, style, and grace, he shows how our view of the world is often, and remarkably, through the experience of birds. You’ve never read a book about birds like this one.

Author: Pendleton Parrish
Publisher: Trafford Publishing
ISBN: 1466966238
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 407

View

Book Description
CIA counterterrorism agent Jack Swift is a top operative within the agency. He is assigned to bring down key terrorists on a worldwide basis. He began his career working cross Mexican/US border terrorism with the agency. During a stint in the Middle East working with the Mossad, he manages to take down a well-known Iranian nuclear physicist. Through forensics and paper evidence, Swift and his team uncover an elaborate scheme to funnel radioactive material, money, and weapons to drug cartel gangsters operating throughout South America, Central America, and Mexico. This is a new kind of enemy for the agency, one right in their backyard. Through quick thinking and great knowledge of the cartels operation, working closely with other government and state agencies, Swift and his team manage to avert a major catastrophe scheduled to be undertaken on the anniversary date of 9/11.

Author: Robert Burgin
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 837

View

Book Description
Successfully navigate the rich world of travel narratives and identify fiction and nonfiction read-alikes with this detailed and expertly constructed guide. Just as savvy travelers make use of guidebooks to help navigate the hundreds of countries around the globe, smart librarians need a guidebook that makes sense of the world of travel narratives. Going Places: A Reader's Guide to Travel Narratives meets that demand, helping librarians assist patrons in finding the nonfiction books that most interest them. It will also serve to help users better understand the genre and their own reading interests. The book examines the subgenres of the travel narrative genre in its seven chapters, categorizing and describing approximately 600 titles according to genres and broad reading interests, and identifying hundreds of other fiction and nonfiction titles as read-alikes and related reads by shared key topics. The author has also identified award-winning titles and spotlighted further resources on travel lit, making this work an ideal guide for readers' advisors as well a book general readers will enjoy browsing.

Author: Philippe de Vosjoli
Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing
ISBN: 162008029X
Category : Pets
Languages : en
Pages : 113

View

Book Description
It’s hard to resist a friendly dinosaur, and the green iguana’s enormous popularity rests on that amusing truism. This large lizard presents few difficulties and for keepers and can live for a couple of decades. One of the authors’ purposes of The Green Iguana Manual is to promote responsible ownership for this noble lizard that can grow to be the size of a medium size dog with an unusually long, leathery tail! The Green Iguana Manual takes a close look at the characteristics of this species that have made these attractive lizards so amazingly popular in the pet world as well as their lifelong requirements. Author and herp expert Philippe de Vosjoli is joined by iguana specialists Dr. Roger Klingenberg, Dr. Susan Donoghue, and David Blair, who each contribute special chapters to this up-to-date and authoritative guide. This colorfully illustrated guide provides excellent general guidelines for keepers who wish to add a green iguana to their vivarium and maintain their “prehistoric” pet in excellent health and condition. The authors provide an introduction to basic iguana characteristics including distribution, size, longevity, and varieties and morphs, to help beginners better understand the anatomy and behavior of these fascinating lizards. This Advanced Vivarium Systems title includes information about selecting a healthy green iguana, handling, housing needs, breeding, and life stages. Dr. Donoghue provides the chapter “Diet and Feeding Management,” which discusses food sources, supplementation, and feeding guidelines for green iguanas of all ages. Dr. Klingenberg provides the chapter on diseases and disorders, which covers nutritional and metabolic disorders, infectious diseases, reproductive disorders, parasites, and environmental issues. The chapter concludes with a very useful five-page troubleshooting chart for common disorders. The book also discusses the iguanas of the West Indies (chapter by Blair) as well as seven other iguanid lizards, such as the spiny-tailed iguana, Fiji Island iguana, and chuckwallas.