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Barbara Stafford is a pioneering art historian whose research has long helped to bridge the divide between the humanities and cognitive sciences. In A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field, she marshals a distinguished group of thinkers to forge a ground-breaking dialogue between the emerging brain sciences, the liberal arts, and social sciences.

Stafford’s book examines meaning and mental function from this dual experimental perspective. The wide-ranging essays included here—from Frank Echenhofer’s foray into shamanist hallucinogenic visions to David Bashwiner’s analysis of emotion and danceability—develop a common language for implementing programmatic and institutional change. Demonstrating how formerly divided fields are converging around shared issues, A Field Guide to a New Meta-Field maps a high-level, crossdisciplinary adventure from one of our leading figures in visual studies.

A Manual of Aquatic Plants can be said to be a classic; it made the identification of aquatic plants in sterile as well as in flowering or fruiting condition as simple as possible, and covers a region from Minnesota to Missouri and eastward to the Gulf of St. Lawrence and Virgina.

The paleoecological history of the Americas is as complex as the region is broad: stretching from the Arctic Circle to Tierra del Fuego, the New World features some of the most extraordinary vegetation on the planet. But until now it has lacked a complete natural history. Alan Graham remedies that with A Natural History of the New World. With plants as his scientific muse, Graham traces the evolution of ecosystems, beginning in the Late Cretaceous period (about 100 million years ago) and ending in the present, charting their responses to changes in geology and climate.

            By highlighting plant communities’ roles in the environmental history of the Americas, Graham offers an overdue balance to natural histories that focus exclusively on animals. Plants are important in evolution’s splendid drama. Not only are they conspicuous and conveniently stationary components of the Earth’s ecosystems, but their extensive fossil record allows for a thorough reconstruction of the planet’s paleoenvironments. What’s more, plants provide oxygen, function as food and fuel, and provide habitat and shelter; in short, theirs is a history that can speak to many other areas of evolution.

A Natural History of the New World is an ambitious and unprecedented synthesis written by one of the world’s leading scholars of botany and geology. 

In A Reverence for Rivers, Kurt Fausch draws on his experience as a stream ecologist, his interest in Indigenous cultures, and a thoughtful consideration of environmental ethics to explore human values surrounding freshwater ecosystems. Focusing on seven rivers across the globe—from the Salmon River in Oregon to the Sarufutsu River in Japan—he examines the growing ethical dilemmas threatening our rivers, including increasing demands for water, habitat fragmentation, overfishing, and deepening climate change.

How do we decide which rivers deserve legal protection? What is our right to water as humans? And how do we foster resilient rivers? Through a combination of scientific expertise and thoughtful observations of the natural world, Fausch translates the science of rivers into accessible language for readers and begins to address these questions. He weaves deep Indigenous histories throughout the book and includes personal visits to tribal lands to explore the traditional values held by several Indigenous groups. Fausch reminds us that our connection to rivers is personal and grounded in specific places, flowing from the stories we carry about our relationships with and responsibilities to these rivers.

In a final essay Fausch ponders Aldo Leopold’s statement that “nothing so important as an ethic is ever written,” but instead evolves in the minds of a thinking community. A Reverence for Rivers speaks to both the mind and the heart, offering perspectives so that we might begin to imagine and create an ethic for living with and caring for the running waters on which we rely for so much.

An eye-opening, unexpected year of animals' most intimate encounters.

It was a chance meeting with mating silverfish behind her bathroom cabinet that made biologist Julie Feinstein more curious about, well, the birds and the bees. How do other animals have sex? How do turtles do it? Or starfish without obvious sex organs? What about dangerous animals, like alligators? Or those historically associated with sex, like an oyster or a stork? What if all the animals that we see in zoos, TV ads, and children’s books, she wondered, had sex lives as seemingly strange as those of silverfish?

Feinstein’s humorous, accessible, and deeply researched text answers these and other questions on nature’s most surprising sexual behaviors, including firefly suitors bearing nutritious “nuptial gifts” and post-copulatory slug penis amputations. She raises an eyebrow at all the mammals—from goats to giraffes—that incorporate urine into courtship. She explains the complex interactions of amorous cockroaches and their equally complex genitalia. She laments that dyeing poison dart frog tadpoles sometimes commit cannibalism for a better shot at growing up and then, eventually, coupling up. In this little black book of animal sex, Feinstein guides readers through the year, drawing connections that illuminate the associations between animals’ mating behaviors and our monthly calendars. She details some animals’ peak bursts of activity, such as Atlantic white shrimp spawning in July, porcupines breeding in October, and bald eagles, decorators extraordinaires, working on their nests in December. Scorpions enter whimsically under the astrological sign of Scorpio in November, and when a holiday nears, she explains the mating nitty-gritty of species with deep cultural connections to a specific day, like New Year storks, Thanksgiving turkeys, or Christmas reindeer. Presenting a pair of animals for each month, Feinstein offers an entertaining and illuminating Noah’s ark and a year of wacky, unbelievable, truly wild sex.

Alaska Halibut History—the latest installment in James Mackovjak’s Alaska fisheries series—chronicles one of the grandest and most storied fisheries in the region. Author of Alaska Codfish Chronicle and Alaska Herring History, Mackovjak tells the story of the flatfish that has long been a favorite among chefs globally. A staple in the diet of many Native populations, the halibut has also played a key role in Indigenous mythology across the northern Pacific region. Tracing the evolution of Alaska’s halibut fishery over time, Mackovjak reveals the cultural, economic, and environmental impact of halibut fishing in Alaska and the fish’s vital role in commercial, sport, and subsistence fishing within the state.

Mackovjak considers the organization and chronology of halibut fishery as well as the various factors that have affected fishery management over the years, such as bycatch (the portion of commercial fishing catch that includes animals other than the target species), guided sportfishing, fishermen’s unionization, technological and environmental changes, and major world events. Through detailed analysis and exploration of government reports and fisheries publications, Alaska Halibut History offers a glimpse into the development of the modern-day halibut fishery and the nuances of and challenges behind providing the fish so often seen on a menu. It is an indispensable work for anyone interested in the halibut and fishing in the northern Pacific region.