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Showing 1 - 20 of 703 items
The golden spruce: A True Story Of Myth, Madness And Greed
By John Vaillant. 2005
In 1997, when a shattered kayak and camping gear are found on an Alaskan island north of the Canadian border,…
they reignite a mystery surrounding a shocking act of protest. The author braids together the strands of this mystery and brings to life the historical collision of Europeans and the Haida and the harrowing world of logging. Canada Reads 2012. Winner of the 2005 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Bestseller. 2005.Paris 1919: six months that changed the world
By Margaret MacMillan. 2001
Analyzes the failure of the Versailles Peace Conference after World War I. Focuses on the nationalistic goals of American president…
Woodrow Wilson, French premier Georges Clemenceau, and British Prime Minister David Lloyd George - the author's great-grandfather - as they reorganized the defeated empires and created the League of Nations. Foreword by Richard Holbrooke. Bestseller. Winner of the 2003 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Canada Reads 2012. 2001. Uniform title: PeacemakersOne soldier's story: a memoir
By Robert J Dole. 2005
Former senator from Kansas describes his enlistment into the elite U.S. Army 10th Mountain Division as a lieutenant during World…
War II. Chronicles the April 14, 1945, battle in Italy that paralyzed him, his long recovery, first marriage, and entry into civilian life and the political sphere. Bestseller. 2005.Marley and me: life and love with the world's worst dog
By John Grogan. 2005
A columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer reminisces about the untrainable Labrador retriever that he and his wife acquired as Florida…
newlyweds. Recalls Marley's hilarious escapades and his capacity for love as the Grogans become the parents of three kids. Bestseller. 2005.Trudeau and our times: Volume 1, the magnificent obsession
By Stephen Clarkson, Christina McCall. 1990
Examines the formative influences on Pierre Trudeau's childhood, his knight-errant youth, his charismatic ascent to the Liberal Party leadership, and…
his dramatic first decade as prime minister. Concludes with his bittersweet triumphs in fighting off the separatists in the 1980 referendum campaign and his battle with provincial premiers to patriate the Canadian constitution. Followed by "Trudeau and our times. v. 2: the heroic delusion". Winner of the 1990 Governor General's Award for Non-fiction. Bestseller. 1990.Aunt Erma's cope book: how to get from Monday to Friday ... in 12 days
By Erma Bombeck. 1979
Comedy of the how-to-self-help mania that zooms in on favourite national pastimes and preoccupations. When Erma finally comes out of…
the kitchen, she no longer feels guilty if the sun sets on an empty crock pot, nor does she care that she flunked her paper towel test. Bestseller. 1979.My friend Leonard
By James Frey. 2005
Continues the memoir begun in "A Million Little Pieces" (EB73831). Author Frey describes his emotional instability after being released from…
prison at age twenty-three. Relates seeking help from Leonard, his closest friend, a mobster who calls Frey "my son." Some descriptions of violence and strong language. Bestseller. 2005.Neither here nor there: travels in Europe
By Bill Bryson. 1991
Bryson retraces his journeys through Europe in 1972 and 1973, when he and a high school buddy backpacked through the…
continent. Bryson revisits many of those places, and describes the changes in the sites and within himself. As the interests of Bryson and his buddy were quite different then, Bryson blends the accounts of the two journeys, offering insight into the various countries as well as his own life. Bestseller. 1991.Blink: the power of thinking without thinking
By Malcolm Gladwell. 2005
How do we think without thinking? Why are some people brilliant decision makers, following their instincts to success, while others…
are consistently inept? Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience and psychology, the author reveals that great decision makers aren't those who process the most information or spend the most time deliberating, but those who have perfected the art of filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables. Bestseller. 2005.High tide in Tucson: essays from now or never
By Barbara Kingsolver. 1995
Autobiographical essays from novelist Kingsolver, "Pigs in Heaven". In the title selection, Kingsolver, returning from an ocean vacation, inadvertently brings…
a hermit crab back to her desert home. After puzzling over his odd behavior, she decides her new pet is reacting to the tides of Tucson! Other selections discuss being a writer, a mother, and a desert dweller. Bestseller. 1995.A walk in the woods: rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail
By Bill Bryson. 1997
Bryson relates the adventures and misadventures of two totally unfit hikers, as he and longtime friend Stephen Katz traverse the…
2,100-mile Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine. Returning from more than twenty years in Britain, he set out to rediscover his homeland, but the two men find themselves awed by the terrain and stymied by the unfamiliar local culture. His gruelling yet fascinating trek gave him a rare perspective on American life. Some strong language. Bestseller.Furious hours: murder, fraud, and the last trial of Harper Lee /
By Casey N. Cep. 2019
Reverend Willie Maxwell was a rural preacher accused of murdering five of his family members for insurance money in the…
1970s. With the help of a savvy lawyer, he escaped justice for years until a relative shot him dead at the funeral of his last victim. Despite hundreds of witnesses, Maxwell's murderer was acquitted--thanks to the same attorney who had previously defended the Reverend. Sitting in the audience during the vigilante's trial was Harper Lee, who had traveled from New York City to her native Alabama with the idea of writing her own In Cold Blood, the true-crime classic she had helped her friend Truman Capote research seventeen years earlier. Lee spent a year in town reporting, and many more working on her own version of the case. Now Casey Cep brings this nearly inconceivable story to life, from the shocking murders to the courtroom drama to the racial politics of the Deep South. At the same time, she offers a deeply moving portrait of one of the country's most beloved writers and her struggle with fame, success, and the mystery of artistic creativity. Bestseller. 2019.Two Trees Make a Forest: Travels Among Taiwan's Mountains & Coasts in Search of My Family's Past
By Jessica J. Lee. 2020
An exhilarating, anti-colonial reclamation of nature writing and memoir, rooted in the forests and flatlands of Taiwan, from the winner…
of the RBC Taylor Prize for Emerging Writers. "Two Trees Make a Forest is a finely faceted meditation on memory, love, landscape--and finding a home in language. Its short, shining sections tilt yearningly toward one another; in form as well as content, this is a beautiful book about the distance between people and between places, and the means of their bridging." --Robert Macfarlane, author of Underland. A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities.Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre-shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories. Winner of the 2020 Roger’s Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Canada Reads 2021.Fossils: The Key to the Past
By Richard A. Fortey. 1982
A guide for amateur fossil collectors and general readers to how fossils came about, how to find and identify them,…
and their economic and practical importance. Emphasizes fossils easy to find. Includes a short glossary without pronunciation.On the basis of thermodynamic considerations and the Earth s historical processes this book argues the physical…
inevitability of life s generation and evolution i e Why did life generate Why does life evolve Following an introduction to the problem the hypothesis Darwinian Evolution of Molecules is proposed which explains how when and where life was instigated through successive chemical reactions and the survival of selected molecules The individual processes described are all scientifically reasonable being verifiable by experiment The hypothesis is supported by extensive reference to the scientific literature published in academic journals including some experimental reports from the author s own research group The readers of this book will learn that the decreasing temperature of the early Earth led to a reduction in its entropy inducing the Earth s materials to order which entailed ordering of the light elements as organic molecules with subsequent further ordering i e evolution to systems that can be considered alive i e life Researchers and students as well as the non-academic audience interested in the interdisciplinary problem of the origin of life will find suggestions and possible approaches to the scientific and conceptual problems they may be facingApes and Human Evolution
By Russell H. Tuttle. 2014
In this masterwork, Russell H. Tuttle synthesizes a vast research literature in primate evolution and behavior to explain how apes…
and humans evolved in relation to one another, and why humans became a bipedal, tool-making, culture-inventing species distinct from other hominoids. Along the way, he refutes the influential theory that men are essentially killer apes--sophisticated but instinctively aggressive and destructive beings. Situating humans in a broad context, Tuttle musters convincing evidence from morphology and recent fossil discoveries to reveal what early primates ate, where they slept, how they learned to walk upright, how brain and hand anatomy evolved simultaneously, and what else happened evolutionarily to cause humans to diverge from their closest relatives. Despite our genomic similarities with bonobos, chimpanzees, and gorillas, humans are unique among primates in occupying a symbolic niche of values and beliefs based on symbolically mediated cognitive processes. Although apes exhibit behaviors that strongly suggest they can think, salient elements of human culture--speech, mating proscriptions, kinship structures, and moral codes--are symbolic systems that are not manifest in ape niches. This encyclopedic volume is both a milestone in primatological research and a critique of what is known and yet to be discovered about human and ape potential.Quantifying the Evolution of Early Life
By James D. Schiffbauer, Marc Laflamme, Stephen Q. Dornbos. 2010
This volume provides a detailed description of a wide range of numerical, statistical or modeling techniques and novel instrumentation separated…
into individual chapters written by paleontologists with expertise in the given methodology. Each chapter outlines the strengths and limitations of specific numerical or technological approaches, and ultimately applies the chosen method to a real fossil dataset or sample type. A unifying theme throughout the book is the evaluation of fossils during the prologue and epilogue of one of the most exciting events in Earth History: the Cambrian radiation.Early Miocene Paleobiology in Patagonia
By Sergio F. Vizcaíno, Richard F. Kay, M. Susana Bargo. 2012
Coastal exposures of the Santa Cruz Formation in southern Patagonia have been a fertile ground for recovery of Early Miocene…
vertebrates for more than 100 years. This volume presents a comprehensive compilation of important mammalian groups which continue to thrive today. It includes the most recent fossil finds as well as important new interpretations based on 10 years of fieldwork by the authors. A key focus is placed on the paleoclimate and paleoenvironment during the time of deposition in the Middle Miocene Climatic Optimum (MMCO) between 20 and 15 million years ago. The authors present the first reconstruction of what climatic conditions were like and present important new evidence of the geochronological age, habits and community structures of fossil bird and mammal species. Academic researchers and graduate students in paleontology, paleobiology, paleoecology, stratigraphy, climatology and geochronology will find this a valuable source of information about this fascinating geological formation.Giants of the Lost World: Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Monsters of South America
By Donald R Prothero. 2016
More than a hundred years ago, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a novel called The Lost World with the exciting…
premise that dinosaurs and other prehistoric beasts still ruled in South America. Little did Conan Doyle know, there were terrifying monsters in South America--they just happened to be extinct. In fact, South America has an incredible history as a land where many strange creatures evolved and died out. In his book Giants of the Lost World: Dinosaurs and Other Extinct Monsters of South America, Donald R. Prothero uncovers the real science and history behind this fascinating story. The largest animal ever discovered was the huge sauropod dinosaur Argentinosaurus, which was about 130 feet long and weighed up to 100 tons. The carnivorous predator Giganotosaurus weighed in at more than 8 tons and measured more than 47 feet long, dwarfing the T. rex in comparison. Gigantic anacondas broke reptile records; possums evolved into huge saber-toothed predators; and ground sloths grew larger than elephants in this strange, unknown land. Prothero presents the scientific details about each of these prehistoric beasts, provides a picture of the ancient landscapes they once roamed, and includes the stories of the individuals who first discovered their fossils for a captivating account of a lost world that is stranger than fiction.Applications of Palaeontology
By Robert Wynn Jones. 2011
Palaeontology, the scientific study of fossils, has developed from a descriptive science to an analytical science used to interpret relationships…
between earth and life history. This book provides a comprehensive and thematic treatment of applied palaeontology, covering the use of fossils in the ordering of rocks in time and in space, in biostratigraphy, palaeobiology and sequence stratigraphy. Robert Wynn Jones presents a practical workflow for applied palaeontology, including sample acquisition, preparation and analysis, and interpretation and integration. He then presents numerous case studies that demonstrate the applicability and value of the subject to areas such as petroleum, mineral and coal exploration and exploitation, engineering geology and environmental science. Specialist applications outside of the geosciences (including archaeology, forensic science, medical palynology, entomopalynology and melissopalynology) are also addressed. Abundantly illustrated and referenced, Applications of Palaeontology provides a user-friendly reference for academic researchers and professionals across a range of disciplines and industry settings.