Author: Bernd Heinrich File Type: epub Amazon.com ReviewBook DescriptionIn Summer World A Season of Bounty, Bernd Heinrich brings us the same bottomless reserve of wonder and reverence for the teeming animal life of backwoods New England that he brought us in Winter World The Ingenuity of Animal Survival. Now he is focusing on the animal kingdom in the extremes of the warmer months, with all its feeding, nesting, fighting, and mating. Whether presenting disquisitions on ant wars, the predatory characteristics of wasps, the mating rituals of woodpeckers, or describing an encounter with a road full of wood frogs, Summer World never stops observing the beautifully complex interactions of animals and plants with nature, giving extraordinary depth to the relationships between habitat and the warming of the earth. How can cicadas surviveand thriveat temperatures pushing 115F? Do hummingbirds know what theyre up against before they migrate over the Gulf of Mexico? Why do some trees stop growing taller even when three months of warm weather remain? With awe and unmatched expertise, Heinrich explores hundreds of questions like these. Exquisitely illustrated with dozens of the authors own drawings, Summer World is Bernd Heinrichs most engaging book to date, a fascinating work from one of our very best science writers. On Summer World An Amazon Exclusive Essay by Bernd HeinrichSummer, as I experience it, is not just one time. In terms of living, it is a time of courting, birthing, foraging and feeding, avoiding being eaten, growing, and lastly preparing for winter. Furthermore, unlike in winter or life under severe desert conditions, nothing is static. Most of us live in a world where timing is everything. Here in Vermont and Maine where I live, there is about a week to prepare the soil, another to plant the peas, another to put in the tomato plants. There is a week where the bees pollinate the apple trees and a week for us to harvest the fruit, and another to dig the potatoes. All nature is on a tight schedule. The wood frogs mate in mid-April, the robins return late April, the blueberries bloom in May, and the geese migrate north the second week in October. Summer as we know it is not a uniform struggle against excessive heat and lack of water. It is instead a continually shifting schedule of living where the lives of one species adjust to those of others.So, as I set out to write Summer World, my focus changed. One potential approach was to discuss various topics such as mating, nesting, feeding and predator avoidance. Instead, it seemed possibly more engaging to concentrate on conspicuous aspects of the lives of common, every-day animals and plants that we tend to take for granted but that are marvelous because of their hidden agendas and concealed complexities.It seems to me that we are in a perpetual crisis mode where attention is rightly focused on what is wrong with the world, although too little appreciation is given to what is right with it. Nature is always right. It always bats last it is the final arbiter of all things that concern every living thing. So I focused on the first thing I saw that captured my attention mating wood frogs. This species breeds in large crowds that gather for a one- to several-day orgy in almost every temporary little pool, of which there are more that a dozen within my neighborhood. It was a joy to watch the frogs antics, and I tried to trick them to find out what they respond to, and to then contemplate and figure out their various stratagems. The frogs were strange, comical and counter-intuitive. The noisy males were not only competing fiercely to catch any female they could but also unknowingly, I presume, cooperating in attracting them. Nothing that they did was obvious to me without first delving into their detailed life histories.From Publishers WeeklyIn his pursuit of actively observing his camp in the forests of western Maine and the woods, beaver bog and gardens around his Vermont home, Heinrich (_The Trees in My Forest_) delights with the surprising activities of local flora and faunaand his own scientific antics with a pet grackle named Crackle, he raids wasp nests to see what the red-eyed vireo will do with the paper and builds platforms in trees to find out who visits the sapsucker lick (hummingbirds, hawks and warblers). For entertainment, he recommends, There is a solution that beats... a television set with 100 channels, by a mile watching ants and other critters. The book features such mysteries as the significance of the mating habits of wood frogs and the eating patterns of caterpillars, but Heinrich also takes time to observe Homo sapiens, remarking that, like birds, we live in a perpetual summer, not by strenuous biannual migrations but by creating and retreating into climate bubbles, reminding readers that they need clear vision and also a spiritual imperative so that we will focus on the ultimate ecology, not the proximate economy. (Apr.) br Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Author: David Rylaarsdam File Type: pdf Contrary to the portrayals of Chrysostom as a theologically impaired, moralizing sophist, this book argues that his thinking is remarkably coherent when it is understood on his own terms and within his culture. Chrysostom depicts God as a teacher of philosophy who adaptably guides people toward salvation. Since the theme of divine adaptability influences every major area of Chrysostoms thought, tracing this concept provides a thorough introduction to his theology. It also explains, at least in part, several striking features of his homilies, including his supposed inconsistencies, his harsh rhetoric and apparent political naivete, his intentionally abridged and exoteric theological discussions, and his lack of allegiance to an Antiochene school. In addition to illuminating such topics, the concept of adaptability stands at one of the busiest intersections of Late Antique culture, for it is an important idea found in rhetoric and discussions about the best methods of teaching philosophy. Consequently, adaptability is an ingredient in the classical project of paideia, and Chrysostom is a Christian philosopher who seeks to transform this powerful tradition of formation. He gives his Christianized paideia a theological foundation by adapting and seamlessly integrating traditional pedagogical methods into his reading and communication of Scripture. David Rylaarsdam provides an in-depth case study of one prominent leaders attempt to transform culture by forming a coherent theological discourse that was adapted to the level of the masses. **

Author: Rose George File Type: epub On ship-tracking Web sites, the waters are black with dots. Each dot is a ship each ship is laden with boxes each box is laden with goods. In postindustrial economies, we no longer produce but buy, and so we must ship. Without shipping there would be no clothes, food, paper, or fuel. Without all those dots, the world would not work. Yet freight shipping is all but invisible. Away from public scrutiny, it revels in suspect practices, dubious operators, and a shady system of flags of convenience. And then there are the pirates. Rose George, acclaimed chronicler of what we would rather ignore, sails from Rotterdam to Suez to Singapore on ships the length of football fields and the height of Niagara Falls she patrols the Indian Ocean with an anti-piracy task force she joins seafaring chaplains, and investigates the harm that ships inflict on endangered whales. Sharply informative and entertaining, Ninety Percent of Everything reveals the workings and perils of an unseen world that holds the key to our economy, our environment, and our very civilization.

Author: Jeremiah Curtin File Type: pdf The remarkably accurate original translations of Native American myths from one of 19th-century Americas foremost linguists. Introduction by scholar Karl Kroeber offers new insight into the significance of Curtins collection for understanding the creation myth system of Native America Contains original translations of the system of creation myths as told to Curtin by members of the Yana and Wintu tribes**About the Author Karl Kroeber is a Mellon Professor in the humanities in the Department of English at Columbia University, New York, NY.