Predator: Life and Death in the African Bush

Book Description

With his phenomenal photographs of the five great predators of the African bushÂ—lions, cheetahs, leopards, hyenas, and crocodilesÂ—Mark Ross takes the reader on a wild safari. He shares his unparalleled knowledge and in-depth insight into the morphology, behaviors, daily activities, and livelihoods of the large carnivores that prowl the plains, woodlands, and rivers of Africa.

Along with a removable, fold-out guide containing a predator Â“cheat sheetÂ” of various traits and statistics as well as tips on how to best observe and photograph the animals, Predator overflows with information that both enlightens the reader and dispels popular misconceptions. Compelling and sometimes violent, RossÂ's text and images capture the true life-and-death scenarios that are played out every day against the backdrop of the magnificent African landscape.

An Appalachian Tragedy: Air Pollution and Tree Death in the Eastern Forests of North America

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Important read

An Appalachian Tragedy: Air Pollution and Tree Death in the Eastern Forests of North America

Manufacturer: Sierra Club Books for Children
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Customer Reviews:

Important read.......1998-11-07

Photographers: note the photos, and the stark parallel images of trees versus factory stacks. They make the point of the entire book in dramatic thought-provoking images that make you want to go out and stop every smoke-producer in the world.

Programmed Cell Deaths in Plants (Biological Sciences Series)

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Programmed Cell Deaths in Plants (Biological Sciences Series)
John Gray
Manufacturer: CRC Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0849319803

Book Description

The recognition of cell death as an active process has changed the way in which biologists view living things. Geneticists are now re-evaluating long-known mutants, redesigning research strategies, and searching for new model systems. Plant biologists now apply this new perspective in the investigation of programmed cell death (PCD) in plants. For the first time in a single volume, Programmed Cell Death in Plants draws together new information from researchers worldwide, enabling readers to develop new insights into this emerging topic. The book refers to relevant PDC paradigms in other organisms, describes the cell death events in reproductive tissues, and discusses PCD events in vegetative tissues and the evidence that links PCD regulation to cell cycle regulation. It also investigates the important role of PCD in plant responses to biotic stress. The author distills the difficult literature on this topic and summarizes the various signaling pathways involved, clarifying a subject critical to plant breeding. This volume concludes by stating how new model systems, careful assessment of cell death events, and markers specific to plant PCD are each required for additional insight into plant PCD processes.

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Death Valley National Park

Manufacturer: Companion Press (Santa Barbara, CA)
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0944197515

Small Deaths: Photographs (Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography Series)

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Sorrowful and Enchanting
Award Winner for Book Design
Disappointing
An Artistic Sensitivity of the Natural World.

Small Deaths: Photographs (Wittliff Gallery of Southwestern and Mexican Photography Series)

Manufacturer: University of Texas Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0292709013

Book Description

Small lives end every day—the unfledged bird fallen from its nest, the unwary lizard caught by a cat—as unnoticed in dying as they were living. Deeply moved by these small deaths since her childhood in South Australia, photographer-artist Kate Breakey has been photographing found animal remains since the mid-1990s, creating stunning, oversized, hand-colored images that—paradoxically—glow with life.

This volume is the first book-length work devoted to the photographs of Kate Breakey. It gathers color images from her ongoing "Small Deaths" series. These birds, flowers, lizards, and insects vividly express Breakey's desire to preserve each lost creature—to "freeze it in time, suspend it in space, immortalize it so that its beauty and its death are memorialized." In a brief afterword, Breakey traces the origins of her art to a childhood spent among domestic and rescued animals on the Australian coast. In the introduction, noted art critic A. D. Coleman links Breakey's work to the larger traditions of still-life painting and the postmortem photography of the nineteenth century.

Customer Reviews:

Sorrowful and Enchanting.......2007-01-19

There is a great deal of juxtaposition in Kate Breakey's work, and to great effect; though her photographs capture often pitiable subjects, particularly the birds, they portray them with a magnificence of color they could only dream of in life. Breakey's photography is excellent and evocative, and her skillful application of color to each image only heightens the experience. Soft focus and a saturated palette produce a dreamlike quality to many of her pieces. As I turned the pages of the book, I felt sadness for the small creatures that go unnoticed, but I was also moved by the quiet dignity they have in death. Breakey's treatment of her subject matter elevates it from the mundane to the transcendent, and it's an utterly captivating journey.

Award Winner for Book Design.......2002-07-22

This book has received the Southern Books Competition 2001 Award of Overall Excellence for book design. "Truly enchanting, this is a wonderful example of how valuable intellectual content is enhanced and enriched by thoughtful book design. From the breathtaking front and back covers to the informative colophon at the end, this is an exceptional book. Color continuity from jacket to the text pages rewards the reader and enhances legibility. The dramatic frontispiece dazzles, and the title page is clear and elegant. Section openings mirror the title page opening. Plates and captions combine in bright, clean two-page spreads that inform and reward the viewer." Congratulations to the author, designers D.J. Stout & Julie Savaska of Pentagram Design, and the University of Texas Press.

Disappointing.......2002-06-30

I bought this book after not being able to find any other images online except the cover. I was really looking forward to owning it; I'm one of those people who collect things like tiny bird bodies, egg shells, nests....
It's a beautiful concept, but the format of the book was extemely disappointing; too much white space framed the images, keeping the viewer at a distance instead of inviting intimacy, empathy. The creatures in the photographs often looked posed.

The images also would have been more touching if they hadn't seemed so manipulated in color. It was like the photographer hadn't truly been recording the beauty of the "insignificant" deaths but seeking and exploiting them by forcing unnatural aspects on them.

I also expected this book to be filled with the record of the deaths of bird, rodents, lizards.... not the many images of dying flora that looked like pop culture greeting cards.

An Artistic Sensitivity of the Natural World........2001-12-13

A beautiful book of an art form created with a heartfelt sensitivity for some of nature's smaller creatures.

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Plant Cell Death Processes
Larry D., Ed. Nooden
Manufacturer: Academic Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0125209150

Book Description

Programmed cell death is a common pattern of growth and development in both animals and plants. However, programmed cell death and related processes are not as generally recognized as central to plant growth. This is changing fast and is becoming more of a focus of intensive research. This edited work will bring under one cover recent reviews of programmed cell death, apoptosis and senescence.

Summaries of the myriad aspects of cell death in plants
Discussion of the broadest implications of these disparite results
A unification of fields where there has been no cross talk
Enables easy entry into diverse but related lines of research

Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (The Lyndhurst Series on the South)

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A Very Realistic Approach from a Former Employee
Makes large economic forces take a human face
Extremely touching photos on a poignant subject.

Closing: The Life and Death of an American Factory (The Lyndhurst Series on the South)
Bill Bamberger , and Cathy N. Davidson
Manufacturer: W W Norton & Co Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Love My Rifle More Than You: Young and Female in the U.S. Army

ASIN: 0393045684

Book Description

The story of the White Furniture Company--a century-old, family-owned business that was bought out by a huge corporate conglomerate and later closed--puts a human face on the economic realities of the 1990s. Bill Bamberger took his revealing and powerful photographs during the last four months of operation on the factory floor, working side by side with the White employees. Cathy Davidson's text focuses on six people who represent every economic level in the American workforce: CEO, executive assistant, middle manager, supervisor, skilled artisan, and manual laborer. All speak the same language of craft, commitment, and community.

Customer Reviews:

A Very Realistic Approach from a Former Employee.......1999-03-06

This book does an excellent job of demonstrating the effects of a factory closing in a small southern town. As a former resident of the town (childhood home) and a former worker in the machine room and rubbing room of White's Furniture Factory, I was amazed at the depth of analysis and truthfulness in this book. This book demonstrated how the closing of a factory not only affects the workers, but prior workers, and the entire population of the town. I was surprised to see the pictures that were included that told a story all to themselves. This book is highly recommended for college professors wishing to pursue the effects of a factory closing and other downsizing efforts on a small town's population. A great story line supplemented by outstanding pictures as the authors take the reader through the last years of a 100+ year factory that the entire town centered their lives around. Highly recommended for those interested in the effects of a closing on the local population.

Makes large economic forces take a human face.......1998-10-01

a reasonably balanced view of a factory closing that doesn't make the owner out to be a devil (although some former workers clearly feel that way). Shows the human side of what happens when decisions are made based on the aseptic "bottom line". If anything, the book is not hard enough on the original family, the 1st generation that admirably built the company and the second generation that let it deteriorate (the book details how the 2 family members at the top didn't even talk to one another and used separate entrances to the building! Is it any wonder the financials deteriorated and they had to sell?)

The only thing missing is an interview with the capitalist that closed the plant. If they tried and he refused the book ought to say so, otherwise it seems that at least a few pages could have been devoted to his side of the story.

All in all, though, a great book to read, as a counterbalance for all of us that invest thru our 401Ks and retirement accounts expecting great returns and divorced from how those returns are obtained (and at what cost to some people).

Extremely touching photos on a poignant subject........1998-09-15

This book, and a traveling exhibit due at Yale this fall and The Smithsonian in early next year, captures the feelings and human aspect of what happens when a family owned furniture factory is closed due to a hostile takeover. The pictures and accompaning text document from an historical and extremely personal perspective the lives of workers in a small town in North Carolina, dependant on each other and the factory, and the devastation that occurs when big city, outside forces make an impersonal decision regarding people 1000 miles away.

In a Desert Garden: Love and Death Among the Insects

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Story of a Front Yard
Nature, neighbours and night quests
Fabulous, witty, insightful

In a Desert Garden: Love and Death Among the Insects
John Alcock
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

An elegant combination of meticulous science and nature reverie that draws its reader into the diverse, competitive, and even seductive world of desert plants and insects. With canny insight and bone-dry wit, John Alcock, a specialist in the ecology of the American Southwest, introduces us to the lives and loves of desert insects as they forage through his backyard oasis. Creating his own desert garden behind his suburban home in Tempe, Arizona, Alcock scrutinizes every square inch of soil detailing the exotic plant life he finds and offering tips on its peccadilloes and preservation. The true heroes of this story, however, are the bugs of Alcock's backyard. We are drawn into complex plots almost biblical in nature of life and love, survival and death. Two male earwigs caught in each other's pincers battle for a prized female. A female mantis finishes copulating, beheads her mate, and cannibalizes his body for its precious protein. With each detail, Alcock pieces together the entire ecosystem of his desert paradise. Always amusing and instructive, and sometimes dramatic, In a Desert Garden provides an eye-opening meditation on the joys of planting, weeding, pruning, and, most of all, bug-hunting.

Customer Reviews:

Story of a Front Yard.......2005-07-14

This book relates some of the observations that Alcock made when he converted his grassy lawn in front of his Arizona house from grass to desert flora. In his neighborhood, residents dutifully maintained wide swaths of green grass through continuous fertilizing, watering, cutting, and trimming. They controlled pests and weeds through spraying, but if they missed one chemical treatment or watering, unwanted species would begin to take over. When Alcock first moved to the area, he went along with local custom for several years. Finally, he asked himself why he was working so hard to maintain grass at such high economic and environmental costs, when it was really the desert surroundings that he enjoyed. It took some effort to kill his lawn and replace it with a yard filled with thriving desert species, but maintenance eventually became much easier and cheaper once he had landscaping fit for the local environment.

As an entomologist, Alcock greatly enjoys observing the insect life in his new yard. In this book, as well as describing how he transformed his yard, he also describes such insects as ladybugs, praying mantises, earwigs, desert termites, paper wasps, bees, grasshoppers, inchworms, whiteflies, mayflies, and aphids. The book is arranged into chapters by topic, including chapters on insects that control pests, compost lovers, insects that sting, camouflage experts, alien insects, and migrating insects. In reading the book, I was struck by how fascinating the lowly insect species can be. The book is written in an informal style appropriate for general readers. It is illustrated with black and white drawings by Turid Forsyth. Scientific sources are listed in a bibliography at the end of the book (but not referenced directly in the text), and there is an index.

Nature, neighbours and night quests.......2004-04-14

John Alcock loves Nature. Sometimes, though, getting from a suburban home to the wilderness he relishes can be tedious. So he brought some of his favoured Sonoran Desert environment to his front yard. Using a ramshackle Kubota tractor, he stripped away the layer of Bermuda grass surrounding his house. Over time, and with no little effort, he transformed that yard into a little pocket of desert environment. All this was more than an exercise in redecorating, however. Alcock studies insects, especially their mating rituals, and this transplanted environment gave him ample opportunity. Even if his practice of crouching over desert shrubbery at odd hours raised a few neighbourhood eyebrows.

Alcock loves what he does, imparting his passion to us with lively prose. His academic background merges with his expressions of feeling to keep this book a delight to read. This blending places his writing skills in a comfortable [and comforting] niche somewhere between E. O. Wilson and John McPhee or David Quammen. He keeps you at ease as he builds the desert floor, inserts shrubbery and vegetables, and welcomes the bird and insect visitors to his creation. He protects the native species of plants and animals where possible, but doesn't summarily reject harmless exotics. And he carefully explains how to tell the difference.

The underlying reason for the garden's transformation was to attract insects. Alcock is at his best in watching, analysing and explaining the life styles of desert bees, wasps, beetles and the rest. How did they develop those behaviours? What do their activities it mean to us humans, who are too often ardently killing the ones in our own gardens. He poses his questions with the puzzlement of fresh discovery. Then, adroitly picking through the available evidence - while calling out for further studies - he sifts through the optional answers to deliver the most likely, and most logical scenario. Yet, at no point are you being "lectured to". Instead, you are introduced to some of the awesome array of variation nature offers. This is no specialist's daunting lecture, but the confessions of a man who finds wonder in small things. It's also, of course, an example for any reader to enter his own yard to consider restoring it some state of origins instead of developer's artificiality.

Alcock's view of his environment isn't wholly without concerns, however. There's no question of his concern for the impact of unrestricted "development". Phoenix, the urban hub of his home in Tempe, is one of the fastest growing cities in the US. With reconstructed landscapes, imported species, proliferating golf courses and a staggering consumption of water, this emblem of "progress" is another urban blight on the landscape. Alcock is uncomfortable with this situation, but nearly helpless to block it. His example of bringing some of the countryside into the city and restoring a bit of balance at a time is an example we should all consider carefully. His book's photo collection will make every gardener smile knowingly. The illustrations portray the object of his studies. With this combination he has produced an example of what a single individual [with some spousal support] can achieve, and told us all about it in this fine book. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

Fabulous, witty, insightful.......1999-07-03

I thoroughly enjoyed this intersting, thought provoking book from John Alcock. His thoughts on the modern American lawn should be required reading in the suburbs. The world would be a better place if all would read and comprehend his thoughts on connecting ourselves to the myriad wonders that go on all around us every day.

Cell Biology and Instrumentation: UV Radiation, Nitric Oxide and Cell Death in Plants: Volume 371 NATO Science Series: Life and Behavioural Sciences (Nato ... Series, Life and Behavioural Sciences)

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Cell Biology and Instrumentation: UV Radiation, Nitric Oxide and Cell Death in Plants: Volume 371 NATO Science Series: Life and Behavioural Sciences (Nato ... Series, Life and Behavioural Sciences)

Manufacturer: IOS Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Product Description

Cellular processes, signaled by UV radiation, contribute to the behavior of plants under various and different stresses in the environment. The importance of the free radical, nitric oxide (NO) was identified as a key early signal in this process. Stress-induced NO can be protective, produce physiological disorders, DNA damage, and programmed cell death (apoptosis). This volume is divided into three parts; (I) Instrumentation and Ecological Aspects; which evaluates case histories, and introduces new instruments for the non-invasive sensing and imaging of UV-stress-related damage in vegetation. (II) Effects of UV Radiation, Nitric oxide and Plant stress; this identifies the cell biological hazards of UV radiation coupled to other environmental stresses, and (III) Plant Stress and Programmed Cell Death; Examining how UV light may relate to the production of NO by plants in terms of DNA damage, error-prone repair cell cycles, and the multiple mechanisms of programmed cell death. The main aim in this publication is to introduce new theoretical developments and instrumentation for cell biology, to update our understanding of the effects of UV radiation, and to evaluate how plants use UV signals to protect against damage and enhance their productivity.

Death Valley: A Quest For Life (A Pocket Portfolio BookÂ©) (Pocket Portfolio)

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Death Valley: A Quest For Life (A Pocket Portfolio BookÂ©) (Pocket Portfolio)
Lynn Wilson , and Jeff Nicolas
Manufacturer: Sierra Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Perfect Paperback

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ASIN: 0939365650
Release Date: 2005-09-15

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