Download or read book Ancient Skies Ancient Trees written by and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photographer Beth Moon revisits the world’s oldest trees in the darkest places on earth, using color photography to capture vibrant nighttime skies. Throughout much of the world, night skies are growing increasingly brighter, but the force that protects the remaining naturally dark sky, unpolluted by artificial light, is the same that saves its ancient trees—isolation. Staking out some of the world’s last dark places, photographer Beth Moon uses a digital camera to reveal constellations, nebulae, and the Milky Way, in rich hues that are often too faint to be seen by the naked eye. As in her acclaimed first volume, Ancient Trees: Portraits of Time, these magnificent images encounter great arboreal specimens, including baobabs, olive trees, and redwoods, in such places as South Africa, England, and California. In her artist’s statement, Beth Moon describes the experience of shooting at night in these remote places. An essay by Jana Grcevich, postdoctoral fellow of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History, provides the perspective of a scientist racing to study the stars in a world growing increasingly brighter. Clark Strand, the author of Waking Up to the Dark: Ancient Wisdom for a Sleepless Age, takes a different tack, illuminating the inherent spirituality of trees.
Download or read book Ancient Trees written by Beth Moon and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2014-09-09 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Captivating black-and-white photographs of the world’s most majestic ancient trees. Beth Moon’s fourteen-year quest to photograph ancient trees has taken her across the United States, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Some of her subjects grow in isolation, on remote mountainsides, private estates, or nature preserves; others maintain a proud, though often precarious, existence in the midst of civilization. All, however, share a mysterious beauty perfected by age and the power to connect us to a sense of time and nature much greater than ourselves. It is this beauty, and this power, that Moon captures in her remarkable photographs. This handsome volume presents nearly seventy of Moon’s finest tree portraits as full-page duotone plates. The pictured trees include the tangled, hollow-trunked yews—some more than a thousand years old—that grow in English churchyards; the baobabs of Madagascar, called “upside-down trees” because of the curious disproportion of their giant trunks and modest branches; and the fantastical dragon’s-blood trees, red-sapped and umbrella-shaped, that grow only on the island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa. Moon’s narrative captions describe the natural and cultural history of each individual tree, while Todd Forrest, vice president for horticulture and living collections at The New York Botanical Garden, provides a concise introduction to the biology and preservation of ancient trees. An essay by the critic Steven Brown defines Moon’s unique place in a tradition of tree photography extending from William Henry Fox Talbot to Sally Mann, and explores the challenges and potential of the tree as a subject for art.
Download or read book Baobab written by Beth Moon and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A spectacular oversize photo book celebrating Africa’s most majestic trees—which are now facing an unprecedented ecological threat. Baobabs are one of Africa’s natural wonders: they can live more than 2,000 years, and their massive, water-storing trunks can grow to more than one hundred feet in circumference. They serve as a renewable source of food, fiber, and fuel, as well as a focus of spiritual life. But now, suddenly, the largest baobabs are dying off , literally collapsing under their own weight. Scientists believe these ancient giants are being dehydrated by drought and higher temperatures, likely the result of climate change. Photographer Beth Moon, already responsible for some of the most indelible images of Africa’s oldest and largest baobabs, has undertaken a new photographic pilgrimage to bear witness to this environmental catastrophe and document the baobabs that still survive. In this oversize volume, Moon presents breathtaking new duotone tree portraits of the baobabs of Madagascar, Botswana, South Africa, and Senegal. She recounts her eventful journey to visit these monumental trees in a moving diaristic text studded with color travel photos. This book also includes an essay by Adrian Patrut, leader of a research team that has studied Africa's largest baobabs and alerted the world tot he threat these majestic trees are facing. Baobab is not only a compelling photo book and travel narrative, but also a timely ecological warning.
Download or read book Elderflora written by Jared Farmer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 438 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The epic story of the planet’s oldest trees and the making of the modern world Humans have always revered long-lived trees. But as historian Jared Farmer reveals in Elderflora, our veneration took a modern turn in the eighteenth century, when naturalists embarked on a quest to locate and precisely date the oldest living things on earth. The new science of tree time prompted travelers to visit ancient specimens and conservationists to protect sacred groves. Exploitation accompanied sanctification, as old-growth forests succumbed to imperial expansion and the industrial revolution. Taking us from Lebanon to New Zealand to California, Farmer surveys the complex history of the world’s oldest trees, including voices of Indigenous peoples, religious figures, and contemporary scientists who study elderflora in crisis. In a changing climate, a long future is still possible, Farmer shows, but only if we give care to young things that might grow old.
Download or read book Echoes of the Ancient Skies written by E. C. Krupp and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular, authoritative look at the world of archaeoastronomy, the study of ancient peoples' observation of the skies and its role in their cultural evolution. 208 illustrations.
Download or read book A Natural History of North American Trees written by Donald Culross Peattie and published by Trinity University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-10 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A volume for a lifetime" is how The New Yorker described the first of Donald Culross Peatie's two books about American trees published in the 1950s. In this one-volume edition, modern readers are introduced to one of the best nature writers of the last century. As we read Peattie's eloquent and entertaining accounts of American trees, we catch glimpses of our country's history and past daily life that no textbook could ever illuminate so vividly. Here you'll learn about everything from how a species was discovered to the part it played in our country’s history. Pioneers often stabled an animal in the hollow heart of an old sycamore, and the whole family might live there until they could build a log cabin. The tuliptree, the tallest native hardwood, is easier to work than most softwood trees; Daniel Boone carved a sixty-foot canoe from one tree to carry his family from Kentucky into Spanish territory. In the days before the Revolution, the British and the colonists waged an undeclared war over New England's white pines, which made the best tall masts for fighting ships. It's fascinating to learn about the commercial uses of various woods -- for paper, fine furniture, fence posts, matchsticks, house framing, airplane wings, and dozens of other preplastic uses. But we cannot read this book without the occasional lump in our throats. The American elm was still alive when Peattie wrote, but as we read his account today we can see what caused its demise. Audubon's portrait of a pair of loving passenger pigeons in an American beech is considered by many to be his greatest painting. It certainly touched the poet in Donald Culross Peattie as he depicted the extinction of the passenger pigeon when the beech forest was destroyed. A Natural History of North American Trees gives us a picture of life in America from its earliest days to the middle of the last century. The information is always interesting, though often heartbreaking. While Peattie looks for the better side of man's nature, he reports sorrowfully on the greed and waste that have doomed so much of America's virgin forest.
Download or read book Trees in Paradise written by Jared Farmer and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2013-10-28 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes how the first settlers in California changed the brown landscape there by creating groves, wooded suburbs and landscaped cities through planting eucalypts in the lowlands, citrus colonies in the south and palms in Los Angeles.
Download or read book A History of Ancient Egypt written by John Romer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2013-08-20 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ancient world comes to life in the first volume in a two book series on the history of Egypt, spanning the first farmers to the construction of the pyramids. Famed archaeologist John Romer draws on a lifetime of research to tell one history's greatest stories; how, over more than a thousand years, a society of farmers created a rich, vivid world where one of the most astounding of all human-made landmarks, the Great Pyramid, was built. Immersing the reader in the Egypt of the past, Romer examines and challenges the long-held theories about what archaeological finds mean and what stories they tell about how the Egyptians lived. More than just an account of one of the most fascinating periods of history, this engrossing book asks readers to take a step back and question what they've learned about Egypt in the past. Fans of Stacy Schiff's Cleopatra and history buffs will be captivated by this re-telling of Egyptian history, written by one of the top Egyptologists in the world.
Download or read book Ancient Earth Journal The Early Cretaceous written by Juan Carlos Alonso and published by Walter Foster Jr. This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A 2016 Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12 (National Science Teachers Association-Children's Book Council The Early Cretaceous brings readers closer to prehistoric life than ever before. What it would be like to see a living, breathing dinosaur? The Early Cretaceous brings readers closer to prehistoric life than ever before. By combining the latest paleontological findings with highly detailed, intimate drawings of wildlife from the Early Cretaceous, readers will look into the eyes of some of the most fascinating creatures to ever inhabit the earth. Written and illustrated in the style of a naturalist's notebook, the viewer will be given a first-hand account of what it is like to stand alongside everything from the first birds to flying dinosaurs to some of the largest creatures ever to walk the earth. Through detailed illustrations and descriptive narrative, readers will discover how some dinosaurs survived polar blizzards, while others were able to pump blood five stories high to reach their brains. While many books on prehistoric life lump dinosaurs into the general timeline of the Mesozoic Period, no book currently dissects plant and animal life during one specific period. This allows the book to explore wildlife seldom featured in publications, many of them recent discoveries. The Early Cretaceous is backed by the research of one of paleontology's most acclaimed theorists, giving the book the most up to date scientific interpretation regarding animal behaviors, interactions, and recreations. "The illustrations and artistic layout are exceptionally beautiful. This is a book children will cherish, keep, and remember, and adults will be delighted to add to their collection." - Sylvia Czerkas, Author and Director The Dinosaur Museum, Utah "The illustrations are fantastic! The Nigersaurus 'grazing' is one of the nicest reconstructions of a rebbachisaurid I've ever seen." - Matthew C. Lamanna, Ph.D., Assistant Curator, Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History "Fantastic artwork!" - Andrew Milner, Paleontologist and Curator at St. George Dinosaur Discovery Site "The art is amazing" - Phil Hore, National Dinosaur Museum, Australia "I *love* it! The style reminds me of a very cool sci-fi book that I had as a kid (and still have), Dougal Dixon's After Man: A Zoology of the Future. Dixon's book is a wonderful, lavishly illustrated introduction to evolutionary principles that helped set me on the path to becoming a professional paleontologist. I suspect your book is going to be similarly inspirational to many of today's aspiring scientists." - Matthew C. Lamanna, Ph.D., Assistant Curator, Section of Vertebrate Paleontology, Carnegie Museum of Natural History
Download or read book Exploring Ancient Skies written by David H. Kelley and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2005-12-06 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring Ancient Skies brings together the methods of archaeology and the insights of modern astronomy to explore the science of astronomy as it was practiced in various cultures prior to the invention of the telescope. The book reviews an enormous and growing body of literature on the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, the Far East, and the New World (particularly Mesoamerica), putting the ancient astronomical materials into their archaeological and cultural contexts. The authors begin with an overview of the field and proceed to essential aspects of naked-eye astronomy, followed by an examination of specific cultures. The book concludes by taking into account the purposes of ancient astronomy: astrology, navigation, calendar regulation, and (not least) the understanding of our place and role in the universe. Skies are recreated to display critical events as they would have appeared to ancient observers - events such as the supernova of 1054, the 'lion horoscope' or the 'Star of Bethlehem.' Exploring Ancient Skies provides a comprehensive overview of the relationships between astronomy and other areas of human investigation. It will be useful as a reference for scholars and students in both astronomy and archaeology, and will be of compelling interest to readers who seek a broad understanding of our collective intellectual history.
Download or read book Finding the Mother Tree written by Suzanne Simard and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.
Download or read book Literary Chickens written by and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2018-10-23 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the best-selling photographer of Ancient Trees, an arresting collection of black-and-white chicken portraits paired with quotations from classic literature Fierce, funny, and flamboyant, fifty-two heritage-breed chickens assess the camera with a keen gaze. By focusing on the faces of her avian subjects, Beth Moon reveals them to us not just as beautiful and exotic creatures, but as individuals in their own right. Moon’s intimate portraits capture a startling range of emotions and personalities, underscored by excerpts from literature. A martial Spanish White Face is flanked by a passage from Beowulf; a fantastical Buff-Laced Polish, by a line from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland; and a refined Blue Polish, by a character sketch from Swann’s Way. An essay by chicken keeper and best-selling author Melissa Caughey and cultural critic Collier Brown sheds additional light on this fresh and remarkable body of work, which will appeal to animal lovers and literature buffs alike.
Download or read book As An Oak Tree Grows written by G. Brian Karas and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This inventive picture book relays the events of two hundred years from the unique perspective of a magnificent oak tree, showing how much the world can transform from a single vantage point. From 1775 to the present day, this fascinating framing device lets readers watch as human and animal populations shift and the landscape transitions from country to city. Methods of transportation, communication and energy use progress rapidly while other things hardly seem to change at all. This engaging, eye-opening window into history is perfect for budding historians and nature enthusiasts alike, and the time-lapse quality of the detail-packed illustrations will draw readers in as they pore over each spread to spot the changes that come with each new era. A fact-filled poster is included to add to the fun.
Download or read book Stories of the Ancient Greeks written by Charles Dannelly Shaw and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book What Did the Tree See written by Charlotte Guillain and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2021-06-22 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'This beautifully drawn book is a delightful launchpad for home learning' – Sunday Times Told in gentle rhyming verse, this beautiful non-fiction picture book follows the story of an oak tree on a hilltop as it witnesses life changing around it over the course of hundreds of years. From the time when hunters chased deer through the woodland, to when trees were cleared for farmland, to the smog and factories emerging during the industrial revolution., one majestic oak has seen it all, and now we can too. Accompanying pages at the end of the book include a timeline of events in world history across the periods featured in the poem, the life cycle of an oak tree, and prompts to help parents and children explore their own local history.
Download or read book Cosmography and the Idea of Hyperborea in Ancient Greece written by Renaud Gagné and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-22 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follows the extraordinary record of ancient Greek thought on Hyperborea as a case study of cosmography and anthropological philology.
Download or read book Shining in the Ancient Sea written by Laurin R. Johnson and published by Multonomah House. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
