Science/Nature Writing from The Vespiary Book Restoration & Bindery

In a thought-provoking manifesto, the best-selling author of The End of Nature challenges the current view of our economy to call for a dramatic shift in focus from growth to prosperity that promotes environmental awareness, emphasizes the individual as a member of a larger community, and offers a new way to think about our food, energy, money, purchases, and values.

On a cold day in December 1667 the renegade physician Jean Denis transfused ten ounces of calf's blood into Antoine Mauroy, a madman. Several days and several transfusions later, Mauroy was dead and Denis was framed for murder. A riveting and wide-reaching history, Blood Workshows how blood transfusion became swept up in personal vendettas, international intrigues, and the war between… Ler mais sobre este item

"I was struck by a boyhood suspicion that rivers and mountains are myself turned inside out," writes David James Duncan. "I'd heard at church that the kingdom of heaven is within us and thought, Yeah, sure. But the first time I walked up a trout stream, fly rod in hand, I didn't feel I was 'outside' at all: I was… Ler mais sobre este item

For centuries, parasites have lived in nightmares, horror stories, and in the darkest shadows of science. Yet these creatures are among the world's most successful and sophisticated organisms. In Parasite Rex, Carl Zimmer deftly balances the scientific and the disgusting as he takes readers on a fantastic voyage. Traveling from the steamy jungles of Costa Rica to the fetid parasite… Ler mais sobre este item

When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be… Ler mais sobre este item

Reef Madness describes a 35-year argument that took place in the late 1800s between Charles Darwin and a younger scientist, Alexander Agassiz, over how coral reefs formed. That's the issue at its simplest — a scientific conflict. But it's also a story of intense personal and philosophical conflicts: of a son trying to deal with the huge legacy of a… Ler mais sobre este item

In the parched and seemingly lifeless heart of the Sahara desert, earthworms find enough moisture to survive. Four major mountain ranges interrupt the flow of dunes and gravel plains, and at certain times waterfalls cascade from their peaks. Even the sand amazes: massive dunes can appear almost overnight, and be gone just as quickly. We think we know the Sahara,… Ler mais sobre este item

In The Life of the Skies, Jonathan Rosen explores the significance of this timeless pursuit, chronicling his own birding adventures alongside those of John James Audubon, Teddy Rooseevelt, and others.

This easy-to-use field guide features 794 species of plants commonly found along the Pacific coast from Oregon to Alaska, including trees, shrubs, wildflowers, aquatic plants, grasses, ferns, mosses and lichens. Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast covers the coastal region from shoreline to alpine, including the western Cascades.

An award-winning ecology writer goes looking for the wilderness we've forgotten Many people believe that only an ecological catastrophe will change humanity's troubled relationship with the natural world. In fact, as J.B. MacKinnon argues in this unorthodox look at the disappearing wilderness, we are living in the midst of a disaster thousands of years in the making—and we hardly notice it.… Ler mais sobre este item

A product of William Leach's lifelong love of butterflies, this engaging and elegantly illustrated history shows how Americans from all walks of life passionately pursued butterflies, and how through their discoveries and observations they transformed the character of natural history. Leach focuses on the correspondence and scientific writings of half a dozen pioneering lepidopterists who traveled across the country and… Ler mais sobre este item

In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we've learned of these key migrations—how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an… Ler mais sobre este item

Edward Abbey lived for three seasons in the desert at Moab, Utah, and what he discovered about the land before him, the world around him, and the heart that beat within, is a fascinating, sometimes raucous, always personal account of a place that has already disappeared, but is worth remembering and living through again and again.

Hidden away in foggy, uncharted rain forest valleys in Northern California are the largest and tallest organisms the world has ever sustained the coast redwood trees, Sequoia sempervirens. Ninety-six percent of the ancient redwood forests have been destroyed by logging, but the untouched fragments that remain are among the great wonders of nature. The biggest redwoods have trunks up to… Ler mais sobre este item

This epic story offers a sweeping tale of the wild horse in the culture, history, and popular imagination of the American West.

When Joe Hutto began his experiment in imprinting two dozen wild turkey-in the tradition of the great animal behaviorist, Konrad Lorenz-he had no idea that it would change his life. Told with skill and humor, and vibrating with the natural wonders of the Florida flatwoods, Illumination in the Flatwoods will amaze and enrich all who share this season with the… Ler mais sobre este item

When Catherine Raven finished her PhD in biology, she built herself a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana. She was as emotionally isolated as she was physically, but she viewed the house as a way station, a temporary rest stop where she could gather her nerves and fill out applications for what she hoped would be… Ler mais sobre este item

With the finely honed skills of an essayist, the heightened sensibility of a naturalist, and the carefully reasoned mind of a philosopher, Kathleen Dean Moore examines our connections to what we hold most dear. In a quest for the metaphorical holdfast-the structures at the end of seaweed strands that attach to rocks with a grip that even ocean gales cannot… Ler mais sobre este item

A lovely period piece on natural history and God's creation, beautiful illustrated with b&w photographs.

The acclaimed National Book Award winner gives us a collection of spellbinding essays that, read together, form a jigsaw-puzzle portrait of an extraordinary man. Here is far-flung travel (the beauty of remote Hokkaido Island, the over-explored Galápagos, enigmatic Bonaire); a naturalist's contention (Why does our society inevitably strip political power from people with intimate knowledge of the land small-scale farmers, Native… Ler mais sobre este item