The Flight of the Iguana

The Flight of the Iguana PDF

Author: David Quammen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1998-02-16

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0684836262

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

The Flight of the Iguana

The Flight of the Iguana PDF

Author: David Quammen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2012-10-16

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 1476728739

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The award-winning author of The Song of the Dodo examines weird and wonderful aspects of nature in this collection of wise, witty, and insightful essays. From tales of vegetarian piranha fish and voiceless dogs to the scientific search for the genes that threaten to destroy the cheetah, David 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.

The Thing with Feathers

The Thing with Feathers PDF

Author: Noah Strycker

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2015-03-03

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 159463341X

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"[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.

My Backyard Jungle

My Backyard Jungle PDF

Author: James Barilla

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2013-04-22

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0300185995

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DIVFor James Barilla and his family, the dream of transforming their Columbia, South Carolina, backyard into a haven for wildlife evoked images of kids catching grasshoppers by day and fireflies at night, of digging up potatoes and picking strawberries. When they signed up with the National Wildlife Federation to certify their yard as a wildlife habitat, it felt like pushing back, in however small a way, against the tide of bad news about vanishing species, changing climate, dying coral reefs. Then the animals started to arrive, and Barilla soon discovered the complexities (and possible mayhem) of merging human with animal habitats. What are the limits of coexistence, he wondered?/divDIV /divDIVTo find out, Barilla set out across continents to explore cities where populations of bears, monkeys, marmosets, and honeybees live alongside human residents. My Backyard Jungle brings these unique stories together, making Barilla’s yard the centerpiece of a meditation on possibilities for coexistence with animals in an increasingly urban world. Not since Gerald Durrell penned My Family and Other Animals have readers encountered a naturalist with such a gift for storytelling and such an open heart toward all things wild./div

Going Places

Going Places PDF

Author: Robert Burgin

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2013-01-08

Total Pages: 837

ISBN-13:

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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.

Ten Million Aliens

Ten Million Aliens PDF

Author: Simon Barnes

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2015-02-17

Total Pages: 480

ISBN-13: 1476730350

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"Originally published in 2014 in Great Britain by Short Books."--Title page verso.

The Flight of the Vernacular

The Flight of the Vernacular PDF

Author: Maria Cristina Fumagalli

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 336

ISBN-13: 9789042014664

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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 Vernacular, 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 language is a living alphabet bound to the "opened ground" of the world.

The Green Iguana Manual

The Green Iguana Manual PDF

Author: Philippe De Vosjoli

Publisher: Fox Chapel Publishing

Published: 2012-08-14

Total Pages: 113

ISBN-13: 162008029X

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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.

The Flight Risk

The Flight Risk PDF

Author: Pendleton Parrish

Publisher: Trafford Publishing

Published: 2012-11

Total Pages: 407

ISBN-13: 146696622X

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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 cartel's 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.