BiblioVault - Books about Field Notes

Field Notes on Science and Nature

Michael R. Canfield

Harvard University Press, 2011

Once in a great while, as the New York Times noted recently, a naturalist writes a book that changes the way people look at the living world. John James Audubon’s Birds of America, published in 1838, was one. Roger Tory Peterson’s 1934 Field Guide to the Birds was another. How does such insight into nature develop?

Pioneering a new niche in the study of plants and animals in their native habitat, Field Notes on Science and Nature allows readers to peer over the shoulders and into the notebooks of a dozen eminent field workers, to study firsthand their observational methods, materials, and fleeting impressions.

What did George Schaller note when studying the lions of the Serengeti? What lists did Kenn Kaufman keep during his 1973 “big year”? How does Piotr Naskrecki use relational databases and electronic field notes? In what way is Bernd Heinrich’s approach “truly Thoreauvian,” in E. O. Wilson’s view? Recording observations in the field is an indispensable scientific skill, but researchers are not generally willing to share their personal records with others. Here, for the first time, are reproductions of actual pages from notebooks. And in essays abounding with fascinating anecdotes, the authors reflect on the contexts in which the notes were taken.

Covering disciplines as diverse as ornithology, entomology, ecology, paleontology, anthropology, botany, and animal behavior, Field Notes offers specific examples that professional naturalists can emulate to fine-tune their own field methods, along with practical advice that amateur naturalists and students can use to document their adventures.

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Field Notes on the Visual Arts

Edited by Karen Lang

Intellect Books, 2019

What is the relation of art and history? What is art today? Why does art affect us? In Field Notes on the Visual Arts, seventy-five scholars, curators, and artists traverse chronology and geography to reveal the meanings and dilemmas of art. Organized under seven major headings—anthropomorphism, appropriation, contingency, detail, materiality, time, and tradition—the contributions are written by historians of art, literature, culture, and science, as well as archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, curators, and artists. By bringing together voices that are generally separated both inside and outside the academy, Field Notes on the Visual Arts makes clear that the work of art is both meaningful and resistant to meaning.

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Future Arctic

Field Notes from a World on the Edge

Edward Struzik

Island Press, 2015

In one hundred years, or even fifty, the Arctic will look dramatically different than it does today. As polar ice retreats and animals and plants migrate northward, the Arctic landscape is morphing into something new and very different from what it once was. While these changes may seem remote, they will have a profound impact on a host of global issues, from international politics to animal migrations. In Future Arctic, journalist and explorer Edward Struzik offers a clear-eyed look at the rapidly shifting dynamics in the Arctic region, a harbinger of changes that will reverberate throughout our entire world.

Future Arctic reveals the inside story of how politics and climate change are altering the polar world in a way that will have profound effects on economics, culture, and the environment as we know it. Struzik takes readers up mountains and cliffs, and along for the ride on snowmobiles and helicopters, sailboats and icebreakers. His travel companions, from wildlife scientists to military strategists to indigenous peoples, share diverse insights into the science, culture and geopolitical tensions of this captivating place. With their help, Struzik begins piecing together an environmental puzzle: How might the land’s most iconic species—caribou, polar bears, narwhal—survive? Where will migrating birds flock to? How will ocean currents shift? What fundamental changes will oil and gas exploration have on economies and ecosystems? How will vast unclaimed regions of the Arctic be divided?

A unique combination of extensive on-the-ground research, compelling storytelling, and policy analysis, Future Arctic offers a new look at the changes occurring in this remote, mysterious region and their far-reaching effects.

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I Wore Babe Ruth's Hat

Field Notes from a Life in Sports

David Zang

University of Illinois Press, 2015

David W. Zang played junior high school basketball in a drained swimming pool. He wore a rubber suit to bed to make weight for a wrestling meet. He kept a log as an obsessive runner (not a jogger). In short, he soldiered through the life of an ordinary athlete.

Whether pondering his long-unbuilt replica of Connie Mack Stadium or his eye-opening turn as the Baltimore Ravens' mascot, Zang offers tales at turns poignant and hilarious as he engages with the passions that shaped his life. Yet his meditations also probe the tragedy of a modern athletic culture that substitutes hyped spectatorship for participation. As he laments, American society's increasing scorn for taking part in play robs adults of the life-affirming virtues of games that challenge us to accomplish the impossible for the most transcendent of reasons: to see if it can be done.

From teammates named Lop to tracing Joe Paterno's long shadow over Happy Valley, I Wore Babe Ruth's Hat reports from the everyman's Elysium where games and life intersect.

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Seven Words for Wind

Essays and Field Notes from Alaska's Pribilof Islands

Sumner MacLeish

University of Alaska Press, 2008

Far off the coast of mainland Alaska lie the remote Pribilof Islands—a fiercely isolated wilderness surrounded by a wild, rich sea. The largest island, St. Paul, is just fourteen miles long and eight wide; despite its small size and relative self-enclosure, Sumner MacLeish lived and worked on the island, coming to love its rugged weather, abundant wildlife, and 600 native Aleuts. Her spare, imagistic prose illuminates the unforgiving darkness and unimaginable beauty of this subarctic landscape, and the pieces in Seven Words for Wind relate her own experience with attentive, open curiosity that finds light, humor, and companionship where it might least be expected.

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Surfaces and Superposition

Field Notes on some Geometrical Excavations

Ernest W. Adams

CSLI, 2001

Buildings appear to rest on top of the earth's surface, yet the surface is actually permeated by the buildings' foundations-out of view. If a foundation's blueprints are unavailable, as in archaeology, excavation would be needed to discover what actually supports a specific building. Analogously, the fields of geometry and topology have easily observable concepts resting on the surface of theoretical underpinnings that have not been completely discovered, unearthed or understood. Moreover, geometrical and topological principles of superposition provide insight into probing the connections between accessible superstructures and their hidden underpinnings. This book develops and applies these insights broadly, from physics to mathematics to philosophy. Even analogies and abstractions can now be seen as foundational superpositions.

This book examines the dimensionality of surfaces, how superpositions can make stable frameworks, and gives a quasi-Leibnizian account of the relative `spaces' that are defined by these frameworks. Concluding chapters deal with problems concerning the spatio-temporal frameworks of physical theories and implications for theories of visual geometry. The numerous illustrations, while surprisingly simple, are satisfyingly clear.

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Wildland Sentinel

Field Notes from an Iowa Conservation Officer

Erika Billerbeck

University of Iowa Press, 2020

In America’s Midwest, where “wilderness” is in short supply, working to defend what’s left of Iowa’s natural resources can be both a daunting and an entertaining task. In Wildland Sentinel, Erika Billerbeck takes readers along for the ride as she and her colleagues sift through poaching investigations, chase down sex offenders in state parks, search for fugitives in wildlife areas, haul drunk boaters to jail, perform body recoveries, and face the chaos that comes with disaster response. Using an introspective personal voice, this narrative nonfiction work weaves stories of Iowa’s natural history with a cast of unforgettable characters. Wildland Sentinel touches on what it means to be a woman working in the male-dominated field of conservation law enforcement.

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