Download or read book The Garden of Invention written by Jane S. Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-04-16 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The wide-ranging and delightful history of celebrated plant breeder Luther Burbank and the business of farm and garden in early twentieth- century America At no other time in history has there been more curiosity or concern about the food we eat-and genetically modified foods, in particular, have become both pervasive and suspect. A century ago, however, Luther Burbank's blight-resistant potatoes, white blackberries, and plumcots-a plum-apricot hybrid-were celebrated as triumphs in the best tradition of American ingenuity and perseverance. In his experimental grounds in Santa Rosa, California, Burbank bred and cross-bred edible and ornamental plants-for both home gardens and commercial farms-until they were bigger, hardier, more beautiful, and more productive than ever before. A fascinating portrait of an American original, The Garden of Invention is also a colorful and engrossing tale of the intersection of gardening, science and business in the years between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
Download or read book The Garden of Invention written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Garden of Invention written by Jane S. Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle of the life of the celebrated plant breeder evaluates the ways in which his achievements influenced the agricultural industry in early twentieth-century America, in a history that discusses the formative years of bioengineering and agribusiness as they were directly shaped by Burbank's gardening accomplishments.
Download or read book An Inventor in the Garden of Eden written by Eric Roberts Laithwaite and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1994-09 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author presents the inventor's view of Nature. A book for all thinking people.
Download or read book Founding Gardeners written by Andrea Wulf and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-04-03 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Invention of Nature, a fascinating look at the Founding Fathers like none you've seen before. “Illuminating and engrossing.... The reader relives the first decades of the Republic ... through the words of the statesmen themselves.” —The New York Times Book Review For the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation. Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.
Download or read book Steven Caney s Invention Book written by Steven Caney and published by . This book was released on 1985 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A project book for the would-be inventor with activities, a list of "contraptions" in need of invention, and the stories behind thirty-six existing inventions.
Download or read book Garden of Invention written by Jane S. Smith and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Garden of Invention written by George M. F. Drower and published by . This book was released on 2003 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The real heroes of the gardening world.
Download or read book A World of Gardens written by John Dixon Hunt and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2014-05-14 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Japanese garden is immediately distinct to the eye from the traditional gardens of an English manor house, just as the manicured topiaries of Versailles contrast with the sharp cacti of the American Southwest. Though gardening is beloved the world over, the style of gardens themselves varies from region to region, determined as much by culture as climate. In this series of illustrated essays, John Dixon Hunt takes us on a world tour of different periods in the making of gardens. Hunt shows here how cultural assumptions and local geography have shaped gardens and their meaning. He explores our continuing responses to land and reworkings of the natural world, encompassing a broad range of gardens, from ancient Roman times to early Islamic and Mughal gardens, from Chinese and Japanese gardens to the invention of the public park and modern landscape architecture. A World of Gardens looks at key chapters in garden history, reviewing their significance past and present and tracing the recurrence of different themes and motifs in the design and reception of gardens throughout the world. A World of Gardens celebrates the idea that similar experiences of gardens can be found in many different times and places, including sacred landscapes, scientific gardens, urban gardens, secluded gardens, and symbolic gardens. Featuring two hundred images, this book is a treasure trove of ideas and inspiration, whether your garden is a window box, a secluded backyard, or a daydream.
Download or read book The Invention Tree written by Jerome J. McGann and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Poetry. Art. Text by Jerome McGann with drawings by Susan Bee. "This delightful book plays with words and non-words, phonetics, and poetic conventions such as metrics, rhyme scheme, and figurative language to cleverly reflect on the much debated, long troublesome, ever wonderful process of artistic creation. Jerome McGann weaves a fantasyland complete with oceans and islands, lords and ladies, demons and creatures, and the familiar trope of the tree in the garden here it is one of invention. The imaginative nature of the work, and its mastery of allegory liken it to the whimsical cousin of Spenser's Faerie Queene in miniature. Where Spenser discussed religious morality, McGann's work is a parable of the joys and trials of the creative process, and the dilemmas an artist will inevitably encounter on the journey to inspiration. Susan Bee's artwork provides a colorful compliment to McGann's poetry, the images joining in a medley of whimsy that reinforces his charmingly quirky style." Sarah Caitlin Ghusson"
Download or read book The Humane Gardener written by Nancy Lawson and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this eloquent plea for compassion and respect for all species, journalist and gardener Nancy Lawson describes why and how to welcome wildlife to our backyards. Through engaging anecdotes and inspired advice, profiles of home gardeners throughout the country, and interviews with scientists and horticulturalists, Lawson applies the broader lessons of ecology to our own outdoor spaces. Detailed chapters address planting for wildlife by choosing native species; providing habitats that shelter baby animals, as well as birds, bees, and butterflies; creating safe zones in the garden; cohabiting with creatures often regarded as pests; letting nature be your garden designer; and encouraging natural processes and evolution in the garden. The Humane Gardener fills a unique niche in describing simple principles for both attracting wildlife and peacefully resolving conflicts with all the creatures that share our world.
Download or read book The Invention of the Park written by Karen R. Jones and published by Polity. This book was released on 2005-07-11 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The word 'park' conjures a kaleidoscope of bucolic images. Childhood frolics in urban playgrounds. Strolls through the country estates of Stourhead and Versailles. Wilderness adventures in the Serengeti. White-knuckle thrill rides at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Coney Island. The Invention of the Park explores our fascination with making parks. In a broad-ranging environmental and social history, authors Karen Jones and John Wills search for a common set of ideas that inform park design. From Greek philosophers wandering sacred groves in the ancient world to today's kids watching Mickey Mouse in Disney's Magic Kingdom, the park has inspired and thrilled in equal measure. In a work spanning all five continents and several thousand years, Jones and Wills chart the evolution of the park idea. They ponder the intersection of the green pleasure ground with notions of democracy and freedom, welfare and consumption, conservation and nature. They forward the principle of a universal park idea malleable enough to survive war and revolution. Contributing to a growing literature on global environmental history, the Invention of the Park explores how the park idea has come to transcend national boundaries and found appeal among a worldwide audience. Jones and Wills situate the park as a complex product of natural and cultural forces. Their work is of interest not just to students and scholars of environmental philosophy, history, and landscape design, but to amateur gardeners, rollercoaster 'adrenalin junkies' and all those who like to take a 'walk in the park.'
Download or read book Garden of Invention written by George Ower and published by . This book was released on 2001-01-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Garden Physic written by Sylvia Legris and published by New Directions Publishing. This book was released on 2021-11-02 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A musical celebration of the garden, from chaff to grass, and all of its lowly weeds, herbs, and creatures Sylvia Legris’s Garden Physic is a paean to the pleasures and delights of one of the world’s most cherished pastimes: Gardening! “At the center of the garden the heart,” she writes, “Red as any rose. Pulsing / balloon vine. Love in a puff.” As if composed out of a botanical glossolalia of her own invention, Legris’s poems map the garden as body and the body as garden—her words at home in the phytological and anatomical—like birds in a nest. From an imagined love-letter exchange on plants between garden designer Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson to a painting by Agnes Martin to the medicinal discourse of the first-century Greek pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides, Garden Physic engages with the anaphrodisiacs of language with a compressed vitality reminiscent of Louis Zukofsky’s “80 Flowers.” In muskeg and yard, her study of nature bursts forth with rainworm, whorl of horsetail, and fern radiation—spring beauty in the lines, a healing potion in verse.
Download or read book The Invention of Nature written by Andrea Wulf and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2016-10-04 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The acclaimed author of Founding Gardeners reveals the forgotten life of Alexander von Humboldt, the visionary German naturalist whose ideas changed the way we see the natural world—and in the process created modern environmentalism. "Vivid and exciting.... Wulf’s pulsating account brings this dazzling figure back into a dazzling, much-deserved focus.” —The Boston Globe Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859) was the most famous scientist of his age, a visionary German naturalist and polymath whose discoveries forever changed the way we understand the natural world. Among his most revolutionary ideas was a radical conception of nature as a complex and interconnected global force that does not exist for the use of humankind alone. In North America, Humboldt’s name still graces towns, counties, parks, bays, lakes, mountains, and a river. And yet the man has been all but forgotten. In this illuminating biography, Andrea Wulf brings Humboldt’s extraordinary life back into focus: his prediction of human-induced climate change; his daring expeditions to the highest peaks of South America and to the anthrax-infected steppes of Siberia; his relationships with iconic figures, including Simón Bolívar and Thomas Jefferson; and the lasting influence of his writings on Darwin, Wordsworth, Goethe, Muir, Thoreau, and many others. Brilliantly researched and stunningly written, The Invention of Nature reveals the myriad ways in which Humboldt’s ideas form the foundation of modern environmentalism—and reminds us why they are as prescient and vital as ever.
Download or read book Papyrus written by Irene Vallejo and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2022-10-18 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A rich exploration of the importance of books and libraries in the ancient world that highlights how humanity’s obsession with the printed word has echoed throughout the ages • “Accessible and entertaining.” —The Wall Street Journal Long before books were mass-produced, scrolls hand copied on reeds pulled from the Nile were the treasures of the ancient world. Emperors and Pharaohs were so determined to possess them that they dispatched emissaries to the edges of earth to bring them back. When Mark Antony wanted to impress Cleopatra, he knew that gold and priceless jewels would mean nothing to her. So, what did her give her? Books for her library—two hundred thousand, in fact. The long and eventful history of the written word shows that books have always been and will always be a precious—and precarious—vehicle for civilization. Papyrus is the story of the book’s journey from oral tradition to scrolls to codices, and how that transition laid the very foundation of Western culture. Award-winning author Irene Vallejo evokes the great mosaic of literature in the ancient world from Greece’s itinerant bards to Rome’s multimillionaire philosophers, from opportunistic forgers to cruel teachers, erudite librarians to defiant women, all the while illuminating how ancient ideas about education, censorship, authority, and identity still resonate today. Crucially, Vallejo also draws connections to our own time, from the library in war-torn Sarajevo to Oxford’s underground labyrinth, underscoring how words have persisted as our most valuable creations. Through nimble interpretations of the classics, playful and moving anecdotes about her own encounters with the written word, and fascinating stories from history, Vallejo weaves a marvelous tapestry of Western culture’s foundations and identifies the humanist values that helped make us who we are today. At its heart a spirited love letter to language itself, Papyrus takes readers on a journey across the centuries to discover how a simple reed grown along the banks of the Nile would give birth to a rich and cherished culture.
Download or read book Mother of Invention written by Katrine Marçal and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2021-10-19 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An illuminating and maddening examination of how gender bias has skewed innovation, technology, and history—now in paperback It all starts with a rolling suitcase. Though the wheel was invented some 5,000 years ago, and the suitcase in the 19th century, it wasn’t until the 1970s that someone successfully married the two. What was the holdup? For writer and journalist Katrine Marçal, the answer is both shocking and simple: because “real men” carried their bags, no matter how heavy. Mother of Invention is a fascinating and eye-opening examination of business, technology, and innovation through a feminist lens. Because it wasn’t just the suitcase. Drawing on examples from electric cars to tech billionaires, Marçal shows how gender bias stifles the economy and holds us back, delaying innovations, sometimes by hundreds of years, and distorting our understanding of our history. While we talk about the Iron Age and the Bronze Age, we might as well talk about the Ceramic Age or the Flax Age, since these technologies were just as important. But inventions associated with women are not considered to be technology in the same way as those associated with men. Mother of Invention is a sweeping tour of the global economy with a powerful message: If we upend our biases, we can unleash our full potential.
