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A Natural

Author: Ross Raisin

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2017-10-17

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 0525508783

From dreams of soccer glory to the realities of the minor leagues, the high-stakes world of English football comes to life in this vivid coming-of-age novel for fans of Nick Hornby and The Art of Fielding. After his unceremonious release from a Premier League academy at nineteen, Tom feels his bright future slipping away. The only contract offer he receives is from a lower-level club. Away from home for the first time, Tom struggles on and off the field, anxious to avoid the cruel pranks and hazing rituals of his teammates. Then a taboo encounter upends what little stability he has, forcing Tom to reconcile his suppressed desires with his drive to succeed. Meanwhile, the team’s popular captain, Chris, is in denial about the state of his marriage. His wife, Leah, has almost forgotten the dreams she once held for her career. As her husband is transferred from club to club, and raising their first child practically on her own, she is lost, disillusioned with where life has taken her. A Natural delves into the heart of a professional soccer club: the pressure, the loneliness, the threat of scandal, the fragility of the body, and the struggle of conforming to the person everybody else expects you to be. Praise for A Natural “This is a bold novel. [Raisin has a] deep and unwavering empathy for others, and an ability to find flashes of beauty in life’s unforgiving ugliness. His language might be spare, but his turn of phrase is strikingly elegant. . . . The way is lit by his keen perceptions; the novel suggests the frustrations that arise when lived experience fails to align with what was imagined, and analyzes the gap between spectatorship and participation. . . . If Raisin has chosen to focus on that which stifles rather than frees us, he has done so to demonstrate precisely why we need all the things that society and circumstance suppress. . . . The confidence and skill with which he pursues his vision is not just persuasive, it’s powerful.”—The New York Times Book Review “Raisin’s transporting and acutely observed novel speaks to us all. First-rate.”—Booklist (starred review) “An intimate picture of life in the lower reaches of professional British football . . . a bold theme . . . is rendered with restraint and sympathy. . . . [A Natural] is a sensitive treatment of very different kinds of solitude and pain.”—Kirkus Reviews

Water

Author: Alice Outwater

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2008-08-06

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 0786725818

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An environmental engineer turned ecology writer relates the history of our waterways and her own growing understanding of what needs to be done to save this essential natural resource. Water: A Natural History takes us back to the diaries of the first Western explorers; it moves from the reservoir to the modern toilet, from the grasslands of the Midwest to the Everglades of Florida, through the guts of a wastewater treatment plant and out to the waterways again. It shows how human-engineered dams, canals and farms replaced nature's beaver dams, prairie dog tunnels, and buffalo wallows. Step by step, Outwater makes clear what should have always been obvious: while engineering can de-pollute water, only ecologically interacting systems can create healthy waterways. Important reading for students of environmental studies, the heart of this history is a vision of our land and waterways as they once were, and a plan that can restore them to their former glory: a land of living streams, public lands with hundreds of millions of beaver-built wetlands, prairie dog towns that increase the amount of rainfall that percolates to the groundwater, and forests that feed their fallen trees to the sea.

You

Author: William B. Irvine

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-09-07

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0190869216

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What are you? Obviously, you are a person with human ancestors that can be plotted on a family tree, but you have other identities as well. According to evolutionary biologists, you are a member of the species Homo sapiens and as such have ancestral species that can be plotted on the tree of life. According to microbiologists, you are a collection of cells, each of which has a cellular ancestry that goes back billions of years. A geneticist, though, will think of you primarily as a gene-replication machine and might produce a tree that reveals the history of any given gene. And finally, a physicist will give a rather different answer to the identity question: you can best be understood as a collection of atoms, each of which has a very long history. Some have been around since the Big Bang, and others are the result of nuclear fusion that took place within a star. Not only that, but most of your atoms belonged to other living things before joining you. From your atoms' point of view, then, you are just a way station on a multibillion-year-long journey. You: A Natural History offers a multidisciplinary investigation of your hyperextended family tree, going all the way back to the Big Bang. And while your family tree may contain surprises, your hyperextended history contains some truly amazing stories. As the result of learning more about who and what you are, and about how you came to be here, you will likely see the world around you with fresh eyes. You will also become aware of all the one-off events that had to take place for your existence to be possible: stars had to explode, the earth had to be hit 4.5 billion years ago by a planetesimal and 65 million years ago by an asteroid, microbes had to engulf microbes, the African savanna had to undergo climate change, and of course, any number of your direct ancestors had to meet and mate. It is difficult, on becoming aware of just how contingent your own existence is, not to feel very lucky to be part of our universe.

A Natural History of the Future

Author: Rob Dunn

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-01-20

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1399800159

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Over the past century, our species has made unprecedented technological innovations with which we have sought to control nature. In A Natural History of the Future, biologist Rob Dunn argues that such efforts are futile. We may see ourselves as life's overlords, but we are instead at its mercy. In the evolution of antibiotic resistance, the power of natural selection to create biodiversity, and even the surprising life of the London Underground, Dunn finds laws of life that no human activity can annul. When we create artificial islands of crops, dump toxic waste, or build communities, we provide new materials for old laws to shape. Life's future flourishing is not in question. Ours is. A Natural History of the Future sets a new standard for understanding the diversity and destiny of life itself.

A Natural Law Approach to Normativity

Author: Bebhinn Donnelly

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 9780754643135

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Exploring the relationship between natural law theory and the philosophy of law, Bebhinn Donnelly proposes a new approach to natural law theory - one which addresses some of the tradition's shortcomings, and advances further the approach to Hume's dichotomy. This volume will be of interest to academics in philosophy of law, moral/political philosophy, natural law theorists, and students of jurisprudence internationally.

A Natural History of Natural Theology

Author: Helen De Cruz

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-12-19

Total Pages: 265

ISBN-13: 0262028549

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An examination of the cognitive foundations of intuitions about the existence and attributes of God. Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality.

A Natural Philosophy

Author: George Payn Quackenbos

Publisher:

Published: 1860

Total Pages: 484

ISBN-13:

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A Natural Philosophy

Author: G. Quackenbos

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2023-04-19

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 3382503212

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Reprint of the original, first published in 1874. The publishing house Anatiposi publishes historical books as reprints. Due to their age, these books may have missing pages or inferior quality. Our aim is to preserve these books and make them available to the public so that they do not get lost.

British Columbia: A Natural History

Author: Richard Cannings

Publisher: Greystone Books Ltd

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 1771640731

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Explores British Columbia's stunning ecology with a focus on climate change. The province's geological history, updated information on the mountain pine beetle and the future of B.C.'s biodiversity. This edition includes new illustrations, photos, sidebars, and new and revised maps. A must for anyone who wants detailed and uptodate information about British Columbia's dazzling natural world.

Dragonflies and Damselflies - a Natural History

Author: Dennis Paulson

Publisher:

Published: 2019-01-26

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0691180369

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A lavishly illustrated introduction to the world's dragonflies and damselflies Dragonflies and damselflies are often called birdwatchers' insects. Large, brightly colored, active in the daytime, and displaying complex and interesting behaviors, they have existed since the days of the dinosaurs, and they continue to flourish. Their ancestors were the biggest insects ever, and they still impress us with their size, the largest bigger than a small hummingbird. There are more than 6,000 odonate species known at present, and you need only visit any wetland on a warm summer day to be enthralled by their stunning colors and fascinating behavior. In this lavishly illustrated natural history, leading dragonfly expert Dennis Paulson offers a comprehensive, accessible, and appealing introduction to the world's dragonflies and damselflies. The book highlights the impressive skills and abilities of dragonflies and damselflies--superb fliers that can glide, hover, cruise, and capture prey on the wing. It also describes their arsenal of tactics to avoid predators, and their amazing sex life, including dazzling courtship displays, aerial mating, sperm displacement, mate guarding, and male mimicry. Dragonflies and Damselflies includes profiles of more than fifty of the most interesting and beautiful species from around the world. Learn about the Great Cascade Damsel, which breeds only at waterfalls, the mesmerizing flight of Blue-winged Helicopters, and how the larva of the Common Sanddragon can burrow into sand as efficiently as a mole. Combining expert text and excellent color photographs, this is a must-have guide to these remarkable insects. A lavishly illustrated, comprehensive, and accessible natural history that reveals the beauty and diversity of one of the world's oldest and most popular insect groups Offers a complete guide to the evolution, life cycles, biology, anatomy, behavior, and habitats of dragonflies and damselflies Introduces the 39 families of dragonflies and damselflies through exemplary species accounts Features tips on field observation and lab research, and information on threats and conservation