front cover of Texas Bobwhites
Texas Bobwhites
A Guide to Their Foods and Habitat Management
By Jon A. Larson, Timothy E. Fulbright, Leonard A. Brennan, Fidel Hernández, and Fred C. Bryant
University of Texas Press, 2010

Northern bobwhites are one of the most popular game birds in the United States. In Texas alone, nearly 100,000 hunters take to the field each fall and winter to pursue wild bobwhite quail. Texas is arguably the last remaining state with sufficient habitat to provide quail-hunting opportunities on a grand scale, and Texas ranchers with good bobwhite habitat often generate a greater proportion of their income from fees paid by quail hunters than from livestock production. Managing and expanding bobwhite habitat makes good sense economically, and it benefits the environment as well. The rangelands and woodlands of Texas that produce quail also support scores of other species of wildlife.

Texas Bobwhites is a field guide to the seeds commonly eaten by northern bobwhites, as well as a handbook for conserving and improving northern bobwhite habitat. It provides identifying characteristics for the seeds of 91 species of grasses, forbs, woody plants, and succulents. Each seed description includes a close-up and a scale photo of the seed and the plant that produces it, along with a range map. Using this information, hunters can readily identify concentrations of plants that are most likely to attract quail. Landowners and rangeland managers will greatly benefit from the book's state-of-the-art guidance for habitat management and restoration, including improving habitat dominated by invasive and nonnative grasses.

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To Test or Not To Test
A Guide to Genetic Screening and Risk
Zallen, Dorris Teichler
Rutgers University Press, 2008
Tests are a standard part of modern medicine. We willingly screen our blood, urine, vision, and hearing, and submit to a host of other exams with names so complicated that we can only refer to them by their initials: PET, ECG, CT, and MRI. Genetic tests of our risks for disease are the latest trend in medicine, touted as an approach to informed and targeted treatment. They offer hope for some, but also raise medical, ethical, and psychological concerns for many including when genetic information is worth having.

To Test or Not to Test arms readers with questions that should be considered before they pursue genetic screening.

  • Am I at higher risk for a disorder?
  • Can genetic testing give me useful information?
  • Is the timing right for testing?
  • Do the benefits of having the genetic information outweigh the problems that testing can bring?

Determining the answers to these questions is no easy task. In this highly readable book, Doris Teichler Zallen provides a template that can guide individuals and families through the decision-making process and offers additional resources where they can gain more information. She shares interviews with genetic specialists, doctors, and researchers, as well as the personal stories of nearly 100 people who have faced genetic-testing decisions. Her examples focus on genetic testing for four types of illnesses: breast/ovarian cancer (different disorders but closely connected), colon cancer, late-onset Alzheimer's disease, and hereditary hemochromatosis. From the more common diseases to the rare hereditary conditions, we learn what genetic screening is all about and what it can tell us about our risks.

Given that we are now bombarded with ads in magazines and on television hawking the importance of pursuing genetic-testing, it is critical that we approach this tough issue with an arsenal of good information. To Test or Not to Test is an essential consumer tool-kit for the genetic decision-making process.

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The Total Survey Error Approach
A Guide to the New Science of Survey Research
Herbert F. Weisberg
University of Chicago Press, 2005
In 1939, George Gallup's American Institute of Public Opinion published a pamphlet optimistically titled The New Science of Public Opinion Measurement. At the time, though, survey research was in its infancy, and only now, six decades later, can public opinion measurement be appropriately called a science, based in part on the development of the total survey error approach.

Herbert F. Weisberg's handbook presents a unified method for conducting good survey research centered on the various types of errors that can occur in surveys—from measurement and nonresponse error to coverage and sampling error. Each chapter is built on theoretical elements drawn from specific disciplines, such as social psychology and statistics, and follows through with detailed treatments of the specific types of error and their potential solutions. Throughout, Weisberg is attentive to survey constraints, including time and ethical considerations, as well as controversies within the field and the effects of new technology on the survey process—from Internet surveys to those completed by phone, by mail, and in person. Practitioners and students will find this comprehensive guide particularly useful now that survey research has assumed a primary place in both public and academic circles.
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Traditions of the Bible
A Guide to the Bible As It Was at the Start of the Common Era
James L. Kugel
Harvard University Press, 1998

James Kugel's The Bible As It Was (1997) has been welcomed with universal praise. Here now is the full scholarly edition of this wonderfully rich and illuminating work, expanding the author's findings into an incomparable reference work.

Focusing on two dozen core stories in the Pentateuch--from the Creation and Tree of Knowledge through the Exodus from Egypt and journey to the Promised Land--James Kugel shows us how the earliest interpreters of the scriptures radically transformed the Bible and made it into the book that has come down to us today. Kugel explains how and why the writers of this formative age of interpretation--roughly 200 B.C.E. to 150 C.E.--assumed such a significant role. Mining their writings--including the Dead Sea Scrolls, works of Philo and Josephus and letters of the Apostle Paul, and writings of the Apostolic Fathers and the rabbinic Sages--he quotes for us the seminal passages that uncover this crucial interpretive process.

For this full-scale reference work Kugel has added a substantial treasury of sources and passages for each of the 24 Bible stories. It will serve as a unique guide and sourcebook for biblical interpretation.

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Trails of Central Arkansas
A Guide to Central Arkansas' Land and Water Trails
Johnnie Chamberlin
Parkhurst Brothers, Inc., 2012
Chock-full of informative detail,
Trails of Central Arkansas delivers:
 
*  Sixty trails in 36 parks or locations from Benton and Bryant to Cabot, from Wrightsville to Conway
*  Color maps of every trail
*  GPS coordinates for every trailhead
*  Color-coded distinctions between paved and unpaved trails
*  Level of difficulty ratings
*  Scenery Scores
*  Top-ten lists: Most Scenic, Trails for Kids, and Trails for Solitude
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Transforming History
A Guide to Effective, Inclusive, and Evidence-Based Teaching
Mary Jo Festle
University of Wisconsin Press, 2020
Teaching history well is not just a matter of knowing history—it is a set of skills that can be developed and honed through practice. In this theoretically informed but eminently practical volume, Mary Jo Festle examines the recent explosion of research on the teaching and learning of history. Illuminated by her own work, Festle applies the concept of "backward design" as an organizing framework to the history classroom. She provides concrete strategies for setting up an environment that is inclusive and welcoming but still challenging and engaging.
Instructors will improve their own conceptual understandings of teaching and learning issues, as well as receive guidance on designing courses and implementing pedagogies consistent with what research tells us about how students learn. The book offers practical illustrations of assignments, goals, questions, grading rubrics, unit plans, and formats for peer observation that are adaptable for courses on any subject and of any size. Transforming History is a critical guide for higher and secondary education faculty—neophytes and longtime professionals alike—working to improve student learning.
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Traveling Through Time
A Guide to Michigan's Historical Markers
Laura Rose Ashlee, Editor
University of Michigan Press, 2005
Traveling Through Time is the definitive illustrated guide to nearly 1,500 historic Michigan sites. With this book, travelers can journey through the state to discover the historical markers in Michigan's neighborhoods, along its highways, and in city centers.

Since 1955 the state of Michigan has erected historical markers throughout the state. In this revised edition of Traveling Through Time, Laura Rose Ashlee collects the histories that appear on these markers together into one handy guidebook---a great desk reference for researchers and armchair historians alike.

Some of the book's special features include:

o Location and full text of each marker

o Arranged alphabetically within county chapters

o More than 85 historic and color photographs

o Special section on Michigan historical markers placed outside Michigan
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front cover of Treasure Map
Treasure Map
A Guide to the Delian Inventories
Richard Hamilton
University of Michigan Press, 2015
In the fourth century BC, the Athenians introduced to the sacred isle of Delos the habit of making marble inscriptions that noted inventories of goods in religious precincts. These inscriptions are now quite damaged and badly preserved, but they offer a trove of information about religious practice on this most unusual island. Richard Hamilton has tackled the difficult task of examining and analyzing these inscriptions and provides a wealth of information about the inventories and the island of Delos.

Hamilton offers detailed insight into the workings of one of the most important Greek sanctuaries, bringing together information that is otherwise widely scattered in a number of modern and ancient languages. He offers English translations of the inventories and presents extensive notes on objects recorded, on how the inventories were listed and weighed, and on aspects of Delian life and politics.

Treasure Map is a major resource for scholars and students of Greek religion and history, epigraphy, ancient economics, and politics.
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Trees in Your Pocket
A Guide to Trees of the Upper Midwest
Thomas Rosburg
University of Iowa Press, 2012
Valued for their lumber, their shade, and the beauty of their flowers and foliage as well as the nuts that nourish wildlife and humans alike, trees play important economic, ecological, and aesthetic roles in our lives. From honey and black locusts to white and chinkapin oaks to yellow and river birches, Trees in Your Pocket gives us identification and natural history information for about forty prominent deciduous species found in the Upper Midwest states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa, and Missouri.
 
Botanist Tom Rosburg provides diagnostic color photographs of leaves, acorns and other fruits, and bark along with descriptions of leaves, fruits, and measurements of blades. The composition, arrangement, shape, and margin of leaves are most important for tree identification. Fruits can help confirm identification of species with similar leaves. The bark of a tree can be very helpful for identifying some species; as a tree ages, older bark (lower on the tree) can be quite different from younger bark (higher and on branches). In addition to these essential markers, Rosburg gives information about the range, habitat—savannas, moist forests, dry slopes, sandy soils, and so on—life-span, and tolerance of shade, fire, drought, and flood.
 

Each state in this region maintains a Big Tree program that honors the largest individual tree of each species. Champion trees are determined by adding together measurements of trunk circumference, height, and canopy spread. Rosburg identifies the trees with the largest diameter and the tallest trees among the champion trees in the Upper Midwest by their county and state. Together his superb photographs and key information make this guide the perfect companion for enjoying the diversity of trees in all kinds of environments. 

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front cover of Turtles in Your Pocket
Turtles in Your Pocket
A Guide to Freshwater and Terrestrial Turtles of the Upper Midwest
Terry VanDeWalle
University of Iowa Press, 2011
From the hefty alligator snapping turtle—the largest freshwater turtle in North America and the only turtle in the world with a predatory lure in its mouth—to the wood turtle, which uses “worm stomping” to catch earthworms, to the lovely ornate box turtle, which closes its shell completely for self-defense, the slow-but-sure turtle is an intriguing reptile. Terry VanDeWalle provides a complete description of each species, both male and female, along with distinguishing characteristics for fourteen subspecies, information about range and habitat, and natural history notes about behavior, hibernation, diet, and nesting. Two panels devoted to hatchlings provide short descriptions of the young of each species as well as photographs of some commonly seen young turtles.
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front cover of Twayblades and Adder's-mouth Orchids in Your Pocket
Twayblades and Adder's-mouth Orchids in Your Pocket
A Guide to the Native Liparis, Listera, and Malaxis Species of the Continental United States and Can
Paul Martin Brown
University of Iowa Press, 2008
Native orchids are increasingly threatened by pressure from population growth and development but, nonetheless, still present a welcome surprise to observant hikers in every state and province. Compiled and illustrated by long-time orchid specialist Paul Martin Brown, these pocket guides to the twayblades and adder’s-mouths form part of a series that will cover all the wild orchids of the continental United States and Canada.
     Brown provides general distributional information, time of flowering, and habitat requirements for each species as well as a complete list of hybrids and the many different growth and color forms that can make identifying orchids so intriguing. For the twayblades and adder’s-mouths he includes information on 21 species, 1 additional variety, and 2 hybrids.
     Most twayblades and adder’s-mouths are relatively small plants with tiny green flowers, but a few have richly colored blooms or particularly interesting habits that attract the native orchid enthusiast. Most of these species are easy to identify based upon their general appearance, range, and time of flowering. Answering three simple questions—when, where, and how does it grow?—and comparing the living plant with the striking photos in the backpack-friendly laminated guide should enable both professional and amateur naturalists to achieve the satisfaction of identifying a specific orchid.

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