BiblioVault - Books about Origin

Paleontology

A Brief History of Life

Ian Tattersall

Templeton Press, 2010

"Endlessly absorbing and informative. It would be hard to imagine a better introduction to this most important and fascinating field.”—Bill Bryson, author of A Short History of Nearly Everything

Paleontology: A Brief History of Life is the fifth title published in the Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties.

In this volume, Ian Tattersall, a highly esteemed figure in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, and paleontology, leads a fascinating tour of the history of life and the evolution of human beings.

Starting at the very beginning, Tattersall examines patterns of change in the biosphere over time, and the correlations of biological events with physical changes in the Earth’s environment. He introduces the complex of evolutionary processes, situates human beings in the luxuriant diversity of Life (demonstrating that however remarkable we may legitimately find ourselves to be, we are the product of the same basic forces and processes that have driven the evolutionary histories of all other creatures), and he places the origin of our extraordinary spiritual sensibilities in the context of the exaptational and emergent acquisition of symbolic cognition and thought.

Concise and yet comprehensive, historically penetrating and yet up-to-date, responsibly factual and yet engaging, Paleontology serves as the perfect entrée to science's greatest story.

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Possessing Polynesians

The Science of Settler Colonial Whiteness in Hawai`i and Oceania

Maile Arvin

Duke University Press, 2019

From their earliest encounters with Indigenous Pacific Islanders, white Europeans and Americans asserted an identification with the racial origins of Polynesians, declaring them to be racially almost white and speculating that they were of Mediterranean or Aryan descent. In Possessing Polynesians Maile Arvin analyzes this racializing history within the context of settler colonialism across Polynesia, especially in Hawai‘i. Arvin argues that a logic of possession through whiteness animates settler colonialism, by which both Polynesia (the place) and Polynesians (the people) become exotic, feminized belongings of whiteness. Seeing whiteness as indigenous to Polynesia provided white settlers with the justification needed to claim Polynesian lands and resources. Understood as possessions, Polynesians were and continue to be denied the privileges of whiteness. Yet Polynesians have long contested these classifications, claims, and cultural representations, and Arvin shows how their resistance to and refusal of white settler logic have regenerated Indigenous forms of recognition.

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Prehistoric Food Production in North America

Edited by Richard I. Ford

University of Michigan Press, 1985

As Richard I. Ford explains in his preface to this volume, the 1980s saw an “explosive expansion of our knowledge about the variety of cultivated and domesticated plants and their history in aboriginal America.” This collection presents research on prehistoric food production from Ford, Patty Jo Watson, Frances B. King, C. Wesley Cowan, Paul E. Minnis, and others.

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The Prehistory of Polynesia

Jesse D. Jennings

Harvard University Press, 1979

Promethean Fire

Reflections on the Origin of the Mind

Charles J. Lumsden and Edward O. Wilson

Harvard University Press, 1983

Protostars and Planets

Tom Gehrels

University of Arizona Press, 1979

Originally published in 1979, at the time of it's publication this work was a unique source book on star formation and the origin of planetary systems from some 35 distinguished authors. Topics include the formation of stars from the cloudy to the stellar to the planetary state. Special emphasis on stars believed capable of producing planets. This foundational work sought to define a new discipline and set the course for the University of Arizona Space Science series.

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Protostars and Planets II

David C. Black

University of Arizona Press, 1985

Based on meetings held in Tucson, Arizona in 1984, this volume brought up-to-date recent advances and research on the cosmogony of stars and planets. This book presents the written thoughts of the principle speakers (and their colleagues) from the 1984 meeting. This work continued work started in 1978 to investigate the problems of star formation and the formation of the solar system.

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Protostars and Planets VI

Edited by Henrik Beuther, Ralf S. Klessen, Cornelis P. Dullemond, and Thomas Henning

University of Arizona Press, 2014

The revolutionary discovery of thousands of confirmed and candidate planets beyond the solar system brings forth the most fundamental
question: How do planets and their host stars form and evolve? Protostars and Planets VI brings together more than 250 contributing authors at the forefront of their field, conveying the latest results in this research area and establishing a new foundation for advancing our understanding of stellar and planetary formation.

Continuing the tradition of the Protostars and Planets series, this latest volume uniquely integrates the cross-disciplinary aspects of this broad field. Covering an extremely wide range of scales, from the formation of large clouds in our Milky Way galaxy down to small chondrules in our solar system, Protostars and Planets VI takes an encompassing view with the goal of not only highlighting what we know but, most importantly, emphasizing the frontiers of what we do not know.

As a vehicle for propelling forward new discoveries on stars, planets, and their origins, this latest volume in the Space Science Series is an indispensable resource for both current scientists and new students in astronomy, astrophysics, planetary science, and the study of meteorites.

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