BiblioVault - Books about Natural history

Faith in a Seed

The Dispersion Of Seeds And Other Late Natural History Writings

Henry D. Thoreau; Edited by Bradley P. Dean; Foreword by Gary Paul Nabhan; Introduction by Robert D. Richardson

Island Press, 1993

Faith in a Seed contains the hitherto unpublished work The Dispersion of Seeds, one of Henry D. Thoreau's last important research and writing projects, and now his first new book to appear in 125 years.

With the remarkable clarity and grace that characterize all of his writings, Thoreau describes the ecological succession of plant species through seed dispersal. The Dispersion of Seeds, which draws on Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection, refutes the then widely accepted theory that some plants spring spontaneously to life, independent of roots, cuttings, or seeds. As Thoreau wrote: "Though I do not believe a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."

Henry D. Thoreau's Faith in a Seed, was first published in hardcover in 1993 by Island Press under the Shearwater Books imprint, which unifies scientific views of nature with humanistic ones. This important work, the first publication of Thoreau's last manuscript, is now available in paperback. Faith in a Seed contains Thoreau's last important research and writing project, The Dispersion of Seeds, along with other natural history writings from late in his life. Edited by Bradley P. Dean, professor of English at East Carolina University and editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin, these writings demonstrate how a major American author at the height of his career succeeded in making science and literature mutually enriching.

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Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky

Brushes with Nature's Wisdom

Trudy Dittmar

University of Iowa Press, 2003

"[Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky] is, in fact, the most intelligent, thoughtful, original, challenging, and highly entertaining work of nature writing since Barry Lopez's Artic Dreams. . . . It is her broad scope of contemplation, combined with her fiercely beautiful and detailed renderings of passion, natural and human, that give Trudy Dittmar's first but fully mature book its remarkable originality and considerable power." --Robert Finch,Los Angeles Times Book Review "Honest self-scrutiny is irresistible, especially when told with a knack for diction of place, as this author demonstrates on every page. She is both of the landscape and an informed observer of it, willing to examine her conflicts between the experiences that play in her imagination and the scientific knowledge she's gleaned through training and reading." --The Bloomsbury Review "Trudy Dittmar is an elegant stylist and an acute observer. She's read everything there is to read about the physics of rainbows, the habits of the porcupine, the winter survival skills of the moose and the orbits of the planets, but even her learning is outdistanced by her patient powers of looking, smelling, hearing, touching and tasting. Her originality arises out of this patience. And, magically, she is able to read into and out of the rich, endangered natural world an Emersonian understanding of self. This is at once the most objective and subjective book I have ever read." --Edmund White, author of A Boy's Own Story "Dittmar writes about life with the precision of a scientist and the introspective lyricism of a poet, illuminating for us those parts of the world we barely remember to notice...from the complex emotional lives of cows and pronghorns to the dazzling leaves of a silver maple to the teeming hidden pools of bright salamanders. Reading this book is like finding a geode in a stream bed--crack it open and it sparkleso--Jo Ann Beard "Dittmar, who won a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer' Award in 2000 and whose writings have appeared in numerous publications . . . provides a fascinating look at natural and personal history in these ten essays on animals, plants, and other natural phenomena. . . . An excellent choice for both public and academic libraries." --Library Journal In essays with settings that range from the Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, to the mountain town of Leadville, Colorado, to the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, Trudy Dittmar weaves personal experience with diverse threads of subject matter to create unexpected connections between human nature and nature at large. Life stories, elegantly combined with mindful observations of animals, plants, landscape and the skies, theories in natural science, environmental considerations, and touches of art criticism and popular culture, offer insights into the linked analogies of nature and soul. A glacial pond teeming with salamanders in arrested development is cause for reflection on the limits of a life that knows only bounty. The hot blue lights of celestial phenomena are a metaphor for fast, flashy men--he loves of a life--and a romantic career is interpreted. Watching a pronghorn buck battling for, and ultimately losing, his harem leads to a meditation on a kind of immortality. Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky is testimony to the bearing and consequence of nature in one life, and to the richness of understanding it can bring to all human lives. Trudy Dittmar was born and raised in New Jersey farm country. In addition to holding an MA in English literature from the University of Chicago, she is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA program in writing and the founder and former director of a writing program at Brookdale Community College in New Jersey. Her work has appeared in such publications as The Norton Book of Nature Writing, Pushcart XXI, Georgia Review, and Orion. She divides her time between her family home in New Jersey and her cabin in Wyoming.

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Fear Falls Away

and Other Essays from Hard and Rocky Places

Janice Emily Bowers

University of Arizona Press, 1997

Jan Bowers lives in the right place. A lover of nature and the outdoors, an avid hiker and backpacker, she is surrounded by mountain ridges, peaks, and canyons of almost every description. In this book, she invites us to come along and find out why some of these places are special, why some of them stay in her mind long after she has returned to the workaday world of the city. Readers have come to expect the best from this writer, termed "a rare talent. . . uncommonly good at the craft" by Wilderness magazine. Her new book is filled with creeks and meadows, tiny ferns and towering oaks, bears and butterflies and Red-tailed Hawks. We see gray clouds clogging the sky in a canyon, "wildly, almost tastelessly romantic, as full of clouds as a tea kettle with steam," and we startle a female grouse and her half-dozen fuzzy chicks "exploding from underfoot like billiard balls scattered with a cue stick."

Faced with the prospect of moving to another place, Bowers finds herself thinking about the familiar world in new and unfamiliar ways. Through her eyes, too, we see how an interest in nature and the outdoors developed from early childhood and how simple curiosity has led her to the most surprising discoveries. At odd and unexpected moments, her work also seems to bring new insights into herself and her life as a writer, a wife, and a mother. These pages promise a new adventure at every turn in the trail. For sheer terror, there's a climb up the face of Baboquivari, for laughs, there's the great bagworm caper, and for some quiet truths, there are themes of gain and loss, of connection and reconcilliation. Crunching through winter snow or sweating under summer sun, we know we're in the hands of an experienced guide. And we know we couldn't ask for a better companion.

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Field Guide to Oregon Rivers

Tim Palmer

Oregon State University Press, 2024

In this updated edition of his classic Field Guide to Oregon Rivers, Tim Palmer gives us an unprecedented reference, introducing the state’s waterways and offering outdoor enthusiasts and resource professionals an interpretive approach to an extraordinary network of streams. He begins with natural history—geology, climate, hydrology, plants, and wildlife—then profiles 111 Oregon rivers with notes about nature, fish, and conservation, followed by essential tips on where to see each river, hike along the shores, fish, and explore by canoe, kayak, and raft. Illustrations identify riparian plants and animals while more than 150 photographs showcase a magnificent rivers estate. This volume is an essential outdoor companion for Oregonians and visitors alike.

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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 of Vision

Lisa Knopp

University of Iowa Press, 1996

In this contemplative collection of essays, Lisa Knopp moves out from the prairies of Nebraska and Iowa to encompass a fully developed vision of light, memory, change, separateness, time, symbols, responsibility, and unity. Knopp charts a stimulating course among the individual, community, and culture that removes the boundaries between self and other, allowing one to become fully present in the world. Her keen vision sees beyond the ordinary to illuminate the mysteries and meanings of our personal and natural worlds.

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Fields of Sun and Grass

An Artist's Journal of the New Jersey Meadowlands

Quinn, John R

Rutgers University Press, 1997

To all caring and compassionate environmentalists out there, Fields of Sun and Grass, the latest offering by gifted naturalist, writer, and artist John R. Quinn, is a glorious cry of victory via a remarkable portrayal of some of the most durable and stubbornly determined survivors in the faunal and floral kindgdom.

The setting is the New Jersey Meadowlands, a wild and reedy tract located a mere six miles west of New York's Times Square. It is considered by many as nothing more than a "toxic wasteland," but is in fact home to a dazzling array of often overlooked plants and animals. While there is little doubt that many of the life forms that once thrived here are long gone, many others remain, and these are the primary focus of this book. Many, many species are discussed; far too many to list here. Suffice it to say Quinn leaves no stones unturned.

The book has three central parts, respectively called "Yesterday," "Today," and "Tomorrow." Each covers a different time period in the ecological life of the Meadowlands. There also is an "Introduction," a "Starting Point," an "Epilogue," a bibliography, an index, and an interesting sort of "hands-on" chapter called "Exploring the Meadowlands." This will be of particular interest to anyone who lives within traveling distance of the region. It gives helpful and experienced advice on enjoyed the Meadowlands firsthand through boating, fishing, hiking, and the visiting of local parks.

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Fields of Vision

Essays on the Travels of William Bartram

Edited by Kathryn E. Holland Braund and Charlotte M. Porter

University of Alabama Press, 2010

A classic work of history, ethnography, and botany, and an examination of the life and environs of the 18th-century south

William Bartram was a naturalist, artist, and author of Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, the Cherokee Country, the ExtensiveTerritories of the Muscogulees, or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Choctaws. The book, based on his journey across the South, reflects a remarkable coming of age. In 1773, Bartram departed his family home near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as a British colonist; in 1777, he returned as a citizen of an emerging nation of the United States. The account of his journey, published in 1791, established a national benchmark for nature writing and remains a classic of American literature, scientific writing, and history. Brought up as a Quaker, Bartram portrayed nature through a poetic lens of experience as well as scientific observation, and his work provides a window on 18th-century southern landscapes. Particularly enlightening and appealing are Bartram’s detailed accounts of Seminole, Creek, and Cherokee peoples.

The Bartram Trail Conference fosters Bartram scholarship through biennial conferences held along the route of his travels. This richly illustrated volume of essays, a selection from recent conferences, brings together scholarly contributions from history, archaeology, and botany. The authors discuss the political and personal context of his travels; species of interest to Bartram; Creek architecture; foodways in the 18th-century south, particularly those of Indian groups that Bartram encountered; rediscovery of a lost Bartram manuscript; new techniques for charting Bartram’s trail and imaging his collections; and a fine analysis of Bartram’s place in contemporary environmental issues.

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FINDING A CLEAR PATH

JIM MINICK

West Virginia University Press, 2006

Finding a Clear Path intertwines literature, agriculture, and ecology as author Jim Minick takes the reader on many journeys, allowing you to float on a pond, fly with a titmouse, gather ginseng, and grow the lowly potato. The reader visits monarch butterflies and morel mushrooms, encountering beavers, black snakes, and bloodroot along the way. Using his background as a blueberry farmer, gardener and naturalist, Minick explores the Appalachian region and also introduces information that can be appreciated from a scientific point of view, explaining, for example, the ears of an owl, or the problems with the typical Christmas tree. Reading this collection of essays invites you to search for ways to better understand and appreciate this marvelous world, opening paths for journeys of your own.

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Finding Thoreau

The Meaning of Nature in the Making of an Environmental Icon

Richard W. Judd

University of Massachusetts Press, 2018

In his 1862 eulogy for Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson reflected that his friend "dedicated his genius with such entire love to the fields, hills, and waters of his native town, that he made them known and interesting to all reading Americans, and to people over the sea." Finding Thoreau traces the reception of Thoreau's work from the time of his death to his ascendancy as an environmental icon in the 1970s, revealing insights into American culture's conception of the environment.

Moving decade by decade through this period, Richard W. Judd unveils a cache of commentary from intellectuals, critics, and journalists to demonstrate the dynamism in the idea of nature, as Americans defined and redefined the organic world around them amidst shifting intellectual, creative, and political forces. This book tells the captivating story of one writer's rise from obscurity to fame through a cultural reappraisal of the work he left behind.

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Fishcamp

Life On An Alaskan Shore

Nancy Lord

Island Press, 1997

"Summers, I live at fishcamp. June through August, Mondays and Fridays, my partner and I catch and sell salmon that pass our beach on their way to spawning streams. The rest of the week, and parts of May and September, Ken and I mend nets, comb the rocky shoreline for useful poles and cottonwood bark, do a thousand camp chores and projects. We live quite happily in a tiny cabin at the top of the beach." --from Fishcamp

For the past eighteen summers, Nancy Lord and her partner Ken have made a living, and made a life, fishing for salmon off the west side of Cook Inlet on the southern coast of Alaska. In Fishcamp, Lord provides a nuanced and engrossing portrait of their days and months in camp at the inlet.

Beginning with their arrival by plane on a freshly thawed lake, she describes their joys and tribulations as spring gives way to summer and the long months of summer unfold. With poetic cadence and magical tone, Lord draws the reader into life at camp, sharing experiences that range from the mundane to the sublime: the mending of nets; the muscle-wrenching labor of the catch; the exquisite pleasure of an improvised hot-tub; the often unnoticed bounty of the inlet's flora and fauna. Interwoven throughout the descriptions of quotidian adventure are threads of the deeper history of the region -- stories and legends of the native Dena'ina; anecdotes about past and current inlet residents; discussions of the lives of their neighbors, both human and animal, who, like them, live with fish.

Fishcamp is Nancy Lord's eloquent paean to the place she calls home. In clear and richly textured prose, she captures the simple beauty of a life lived with nature, "a part" rather than "apart." As Lord explains, she shows us in Fishcamp "something about what even one place and its infinitely varied life contributes to the connections among us all and to the wholes we call 'world' and 'culture.'...Wherever our places are and whatever we do in them, perhaps we might all begin to pay more attention to the little and big things that do indeed connect in profound ways to all the rest, miles and eons and cultures apart."

Fishcamp is a remarkable combination of personal, cultural, and natural history from what will surely be recognized as one of the most talented new voices of our time.

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Florentine Codex

Book 2: Book 2: The Ceremonies

Bernardino de Sahagun

University of Utah Press, 1981

Two of the world’s leading scholars of the Aztec language and culture have translated Sahagún’s monumental and encyclopedic study of native life in Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. This immense undertaking is the first complete translation into any language of Sahagún’s Nahuatl text, and represents one of the most distinguished contributions in the fields of anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics.

Written between 1540 and 1585, the Florentine Codex (so named because the manuscript has been part of the Laurentian Library’s collections since at least 1791) is the most authoritative statement we have of the Aztecs’ lifeways and traditions—a rich and intimate yet panoramic view of a doomed people.

The Florentine Codex is divided by subject area into twelve books and includes over 2,000 illustrations drawn by Nahua artists in the sixteenth century.

Book Two gives comprehensive accounts of the religious ceremonies and days of feasting during the time of the Aztecs, including prayers, songs, and the duties and roles of Aztecs inside the temples during the ceremonies. This book also details the various tributes and sacrifices given to specific gods.

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For All Seasons

A Big Bend Journal

By Roland H. Wauer

University of Texas Press, 1997

Something about Big Bend National Park draws visitors again and again. Maybe it's the spare beauty of the mountains and desert, the dawn chorus of birds, or the vivid stars in the velvet night. All of these things have made it Roland Wauer's favorite place. In this book, he shares his love of the Big Bend through journal entries that chronicle a year in the life of the park.

Wauer worked as Chief Park Naturalist from 1966 to 1972 and has visited the park frequently ever since. His journal entries span these thirty years, providing not only a composite portrait of a typical year but also a clear sense of how the park's natural history has changed over three decades. He spices his account with anecdotes, often humorous, ranging from stumbling across a herd of javelinas to being trailed by a mountain lion in the dark to discovering new species of plants and animals.

Few authors know the Big Bend as Roland Wauer does or have written about it in a more engaging way. This beautifully illustrated book is the perfect companion for a visit to the park, whether in person or by armchair.

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For Love of the World

Essays on Nature Writers

Sherman Paul

University of Iowa Press, 1992

Along with poets, philosophers, and deep ecologists, nature writers—who may be something of all three—address the world alienation of Western civilization. By example as well as with words, they teach us to turn from the self to the world, from ego to ecos.In these deeply felt meditative essays, Sherman Paul contemplates the cosmological homecoming of nature writers who show us how to reenter the world, participate in it, and recover respect for it.

In For Love of the World Sherman Paul considers Thoreau, John Muir, and Aldo Leopold, major writers in the American tradition of nature writing; Henry Beston and Loren Eiseley, writers not yet so canonical; and Richard Nelson and Barry Lopez, our estimable contemporaries.

Paul's meditative mode follows the practice of naturalists who enter the field, come into the open, and relate their immediate experiences. In the most primary and direct way, his essays belong to our moment in history when nothing is more essential than our reattachment to earthly existence. They will reawaken our love of the world—the necessary eros of ecos—and our wonder at and gratitude for being.

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For the Health of the Land

Previously Unpublished Essays And Other Writings

Aldo Leopold; Edited by J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle; Foreword by Scott Russell Sanders

Island Press, 1999

Aldo Leopold's classic work A Sand County Almanac is widely regarded as one of the most influential conservation books of all time. In it, Leopold sets forth an eloquent plea for the development of a "land ethic" -- a belief that humans have a duty to interact with the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise "the land" in ways that ensure their well-being and survival.

For the Health of the Land, a new collection of rare and previously unpublished essays by Leopold, builds on that vision of ethical land use and develops the concept of "land health" and the practical measures landowners can take to sustain it. The writings are vintage Leopold -- clear, sensible, and provocative, sometimes humorous, often lyrical, and always inspiring. Joining them together are a wisdom and a passion that transcend the time and place of the author's life.

The book offers a series of forty short pieces, arranged in seasonal "almanac" form, along with longer essays, arranged chronologically, which show the development of Leopold's approach to managing private lands for conservation ends. The final essay is a never before published work, left in pencil draft at his death, which proposes the concept of land health as an organizing principle for conservation. Also featured is an introduction by noted Leopold scholars J. Baird Callicott and Eric T. Freyfogle that provides a brief biography of Leopold and places the essays in the context of his life and work, and an afterword by conservation biologist Stanley A. Temple that comments on Leopold's ideas from the perspective of modern wildlife management.

The book's conservation message and practical ideas are as relevant today as they were when first written over fifty years ago. For the Health of the Land represents a stunning new addition to the literary legacy of Aldo Leopold.

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Forest Park

Exploring Portland's Natural Sanctuary

Marcy Cottrell Houle

Oregon State University Press, 2023

Situated in the rugged hills west of downtown Portland, Forest Park is the nation’s premier urban natural sanctuary. It supports essential habitat for hundreds of native plants and animals, including species at risk, and is one of the largest city parks in the world. While extending critical ecosystem services to the region, it offers miles of outstanding hiking trails, all within minutes of the downtown core.

Forest Park: Exploring Portland’s Natural Sanctuary showcases this treasure in a new light, offering a compendium of the most up-to-date and comprehensive information available. Twenty-one hikes covering seventy-five miles bring a full awareness of the park’s outstanding attributes. Hikes are grouped by theme to encourage people to explore Forest Park’s watersheds, geology, lichens and mosses, vegetation, amphibians and reptiles, pollinators, native wildlife, and wildlife corridors. Beautiful photographs and full-color maps accompany each trail description.

Forest Park is a shining example of the Pacific Northwest western hemlock community—an ecosystem unique among all temperate forests of the world. It is also an exciting model for a future Urban Biodiversity Reserve, a concept that would recognize the park’s scientific, natural, and cultural qualities. Forest Park will help all visitors discover the beauty and wonders of this extraordinary natural resource.

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Forgotten Grasslands of the South

Natural History and Conservation

Reed F. Noss

Island Press, 2013

Forgotten Grasslands of the South is a literary and scientific case study of some of the biologically richest and most endangered ecosystems in North America. Eminent ecologist Reed Noss tells the story of how southern grasslands arose and persisted over time and addresses questions that are fundamental for conserving these vital yet poorly understood ecosystems.

The author examines:

the natural history of southern grasslands
their origin and history (geologic, vegetation, and human)
biological hotspots and endangered ecosystems
physical determinants of grassland distribution, including ecology, soils, landform, and hydrology fire, herbivores, and ecological interactions.

The final chapter presents a general conservation strategy for southern grasslands, including prioritization, protection, restoration, and management. Also included are examples of ongoing restoration projects, along with a prognosis for the future.

In addition to offering fascinating new information about these little-studied ecosystems, Noss demonstrates how natural history is central to the practice of conservation. Natural history has been on a declining trajectory for decades, as theory and experimentation have dominated the field of ecology. Ecologists are coming to realize that these divergent approaches are in fact complementary, and that pursuing them together can bring greater knowledge and understanding of how the natural world works and how we can best conserve it.

Forgotten Grasslands of the South explores the overarching importance of ecological processes in maintaining healthy ecosystems, and is the first book of its kind to apply natural history, in a modern, comprehensive sense, to the conservation of biodiversity across a broad region. It sets a new standard for scientific literature and is essential reading not only for those who study and work to conserve the grasslands of the South but also for everyone who is fascinated by the natural world.

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The Forgotten Peninsula

A Naturalist in Baja California

Joseph Wood Krutch

University of Arizona Press, 1986

"The author deftly weaves the materials of natural and human history into a radiant, tightly woven fabric. . . . This classic is a book for all seasons—to be reread and savored over the years."—Latin America in Books

"His superb writing style and the timelessness of his subject (the natural world and the interaction of human beings with it) make this every bit as enjoyable today as it was in the 1960's."—Books of the Southwest

"Well-written and fascinating."—Journal of Arid Environments

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Fragile Giants

A Natural History of the Loess Hills

Cornelia F. Mutel

University of Iowa Press, 1989

Just east of the Missouri River in Iowa and northeastern Missouri, an angular band of rugged, prairie-topped and woodland-cloaked hills spans the otherwise uneventful skyline. These are the Loess Hills, recognized throughout the United States for their distinctive natural features. With clarity and thoroughness, Fragile Giants gives us a complete natural history of this area, including three auto tours and a comprehensive listing of public-use areas and educational programs.

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Frog Mountain Blues

Charles Bowden; Photographs by Jack Dykinga; Foreword by Alison Hawthorne Deming

University of Arizona Press, 2018

The Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson—whose summit is called Frog Mountain by the Tohono O’odham—offers up to the citizens of the basins below a wilderness in their own backyard.

When it was first published in 1987, Frog Mountain Blues documented the creeping sprawl of new development up the Catalinas’ foothills. Today, that development is fully visible, but Charles Bowden’s prescience of the urgency to preserve and protect a sacred recreational space remains as vivid as ever. Accompanied by Jack W. Dykinga’s photographs from the original work, this book continues to convey the natural beauty of the Catalinas and warns readers that this unique wilderness could easily be lost.

As Alison Hawthorne Deming writes in the new foreword, “Frog Mountain Blues continues to be an important book for learning to read this place through the eyes of experience and history, and Bowden remains a sobering voice for facing our failures in protecting what we love in this time of global destruction, for taking seriously the power of language to set ourselves right again with the enormous task of living with purpose and presence and care on the land.”

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Frog Mountain Blues

Charles Bowden; Photographs by Jack W. Dykinga

University of Arizona Press, 1994

The Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson—whose summit is called “Frog Mountain” by native Tohono O’odham people—offer citizens of a major metropolis a wilderness in their own backyard. Today recreational facilities dot the Catalinas’ peaks, while housing developments creep up their foothills. Charles Bowden and Jack W. Dykinga here convey the natural beauty of the Catalinas and warn readers that this unique wilderness could easily be lost through easy access and overuse.

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Full House

The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin

Stephen Jay Gould

Harvard University Press, 2011

Gould shows why a more accurate way of understanding our world is to look at a given subject within its own context, to see it as a part of a spectrum of variation and then to reconceptualize trends as expansion or contraction of this “full house” of variation, and not as the progress or degeneration of an average value, or single thing.

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