Download or read book The Remarkable Baobab written by Thomas Pakenham and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2004 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed historian Thomas Pakenham-who has dramatized in photographs and words the sheer majesty of trees throughout the world-now trains his lens on the most mysterious of trees, the baobab, with spectacular results. His search for the world's most striking baobabs has led him over the last eight years on a trail from sub-Saharan Africa to Madagascar and Australia, the Caribbean, and the United States. Here, in The Remarkable Baobab, Pakenham records his personal encounters with these mysterious giants, tracing their mythologies, their natural grandeur, and their origins, as well as their chances of survival in an uncertain environment. As Pakenham notes, the baobab may indeed be one of the oldest life forms on the planet, and many of the specimens still standing today have been alive for well over a thousand years. Standing tall on the savannahs of Africa and the sunburned plains of Australia, they are tremendous in size and have provided food, medicine, and places of refuge and worship to many, even serving as prisons, tombs, and ossuaries on occasion. Over the last one thousand years they have gained mythical status among many peoples, due in no small part to their appearance-without leaves, the branches of the trees look like roots growing into the sky. The Remarkable Baobab also includes a special section devoted to two famous baobabs in North America-one which is now over twenty feet in girth and is planted on a private Florida estate, the other a breathtaking specimen on the campus of the University of Arizona that was brought to the United States by smugglers. These stories are but two examples provided by Thomas Pakenham in The Remarkable Baobab, a book that is as visually bewitching as the baobab itself. Book jacket.
Download or read book The Abandoned Baobab written by Ken Bugul and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite its unflinching look at our darkest impulses, and at the stark facts of being a colonized African, the book is ultimately inspirational, for it exposes us to a remarkable sensibility and a hard-won understanding of one's place in the world.CARAF Books: Caribbean and African Literature Translated from French
Download or read book Remarkable Trees of the World written by and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2002 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A landmark volume celebrating the most remarkable trees on the planet, Pakenham takes readers on a voyage across four continents and introduces them to arbors of all shapes and sizes--dwarfs, giants, aliens, and monuments. Full-color photos.
Download or read book The Expedition to the Baobab Tree written by Wilma Stockenstrom and published by Archipelago. This book was released on 2014-04-15 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learning to survive in the harsh interior of Southern Africa, a former slave seeks shelter in the hollow of a baobab tree. For the first time since she was a young girl her time is her own, her body is her own, her thoughts are her own. In solitude, she is finally able to reflect on her own existence and its meaning, bringing her a semblance of inner peace. Scenes from her former life shuttle through her mind: how owner after owner assaulted her, and how each of her babies were taken away as soon as they were weaned, their futures left to her imagination. We are the sole witnesses to her history: her capture as a child, her tortured days in a harbor city on the eastern coast as a servant, her journey with her last owner and protector, her flight, and the kaleidoscopic world of her baobab tree. Wilma Stockenström's profound work of narrative fiction, translated by Nobel Prize winner J.M. Coetzee, is a rare, haunting exploration of enslavement and freedom.
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 Baobab written by John Rashford and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-06-28 with total page 390 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern humans, descendants of a founding population that separated from chimpanzees some five to eight million years ago, are today the only living representative of a branching group of African apes called hominins. Because of its extraordinary size and shape, the baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) has long been identified as the most striking tree of Africa’s mosaic savanna, the landscape generally regarded as the environment of hominin evolution. This book makes the case for identifying the baobab as the tree of life in the hunter-gatherer adaptation that was the economic foundation of hominin evolution. The argument is based on the significance of the baobab as a resource-rich environment for the Hadza of northeastern Tanzania, who continue to be successful hunter-gatherers of the African savanna.
Download or read book Baobabs of the World written by Andry Petignat and published by Penguin Random House South Africa. This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Photographic masterpiece about baobabs, found only in Madagascar, Africa, Australia; interesting introduction followed by detailed discussions of all eight species, with photos and line drawings.
Download or read book Paper Graveyards written by Eduardo Cadava and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2021-10-26 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A generously illustrated training manual for reading images, discussing work by Félix Nadar, Roland Barthes, Fazal Sheikh, Susan Meiselas, and others. Paper Graveyards is neither a work of traditional art history nor one of literary criticism. It is not strictly a history of ideas either, notwithstanding its very obvious erudition. Rather, in drawing upon all of these methods and approaches—and with extraordinary attention to language and style—Cadava’s writing examines the spectacular explosion of images during the last twenty years as a prompt to discuss not simply specific images but the role and place of these images in our everyday life. Considering work by Félix Nadar, Roland Barthes, Leon Golub, Nancy Spero, Fazal Sheikh, Susan Meiselas, and others, Cadava delineates different modes of reading that, taking their point of departure from the conviction that the past, the present, and the future are always bound together, provide us with a training manual of sorts for understanding visual material in the twenty-first century. In the process, these generously illustrated essays actively expand our sense of literacy by reconstructing the networks of relations that inhabit the plural worlds of images, and create a critical genealogy of what we still call “an image,” even when, with every day that passes, we perhaps understand less and less what this might mean.
Download or read book In Search of Remarkable Trees written by Thomas Pakenham and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thomas Pakenham in search of the oldest, most unusual and most impressive trees of Southern Africa.
Download or read book Remarkable Trees written by Christina Harrison and published by Thames & Hudson. This book was released on 2024-08-29 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A celebration of the beauty, diversity, importance and sheer wonder of the most remarkable trees, with exquisite illustrations from the incomparable collections of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. More than 60,000 species of trees are found in an amazing variety of forms, sizes and habitats. Every tree has its own story and here are over 60, selected for their particular resonance and connection with humankind and representing most of the world's major zones and ecologies. In this compact edition, portraits that combine vivid cultural and historical narrative with a firm scientific grounding, the authors reveal the details of trees from around the world, both familiar and strange. We use timbers for building and creating, have discovered which tree fruits and seeds taste delicious, and which can kill or cure us, and which species can add colour and spirituality to our lives - from the timber of mahogany to the delights of chocolate and pomegranate, from the medicinal tea tree to the deadly manchineel, and from fragrant frankincense to the highly prized dragon's blood tree. Artists and botanists alike have been inspired by trees for centuries, and a varied and beautiful range of images from the unrivalled archive at Kew illustrate the stories, to create this enlightening and enchanting book.
Download or read book Timber and Wood working Machinery written by and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Lonely Planet Madagascar written by Lonely Planet and published by Lonely Planet. This book was released on with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Baobabs Pachycauls of Africa Madagascar and Australia written by G.E. Wickens and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2008-03-02 with total page 535 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the only comprehensive account of all eight species in the genus Adansonia. It describes the historical background from the late Roman period to the present. It covers the extraordinary variety of economic uses of baobabs. There are also appendices on vernacular names, gazetteer, economics, nutrition and forest mensuration. This book fills a gap in the botanical literature. It deals with a genus that has fascinated and intrigued scientists and lay persons for centuries.
Download or read book Herbal Principles in Cosmetics written by Bruno Burlando and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2010-06-23 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interest in the molecular and mechanistic aspects of cosmetic research has grown exponentially during the past decade. Herbal Principles in Cosmetics: Properties and Mechanisms of Action critically examines the botanical, ethnopharmacological, phytochemical, and molecular aspects of botanical active ingredients used in cosmetics. Along with dermato
Download or read book Dark Green Religion written by Bron Raymond Taylor and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 357 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A love of green may be a human universal. Deepening the palette of green scholarship, Bron Taylor proves remarkably to be both an encyclopedist and a visionary."--Jonathan Benthall, author of Returning to Religion: Why a Secular Age is Haunted by Faith "This important book provides insight into how a profound sense of relation to nature offers many in the modern world a vehicle for attaining a spiritual wholeness akin to what has been historically associated with established religion. In this sense, Dark Green Religion offers both understanding and hope for a world struggling for meaning and purpose beyond the isolation of the material here and now."--Stephen Kellert, Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies "In this thought-provoking volume, Bron Taylor explores the seemingly boundless efforts by human beings to understand the nature of life and our place in the universe. Examining in depth the ways in which influential philosophers and naturalists have viewed this relationship, Taylor contributes to the further development of thought in this critically important area, where our depth of understanding will play a critical role in our survival."--Peter H. Raven, President, Missouri Botanical Garden "Carefully researched, strongly argued, originally conceived, and very well executed, this book is a vital contribution on a subject of immense religious, political, and environmental importance. It's also a great read."--Roger S. Gottlieb, author of A Greener Faith: Religious Environmentalism and our Planet's Future "A fascinating analysis of our emotional and spiritual relationship to nature. Whether you call it dark green religion or something else, Bron Taylor takes us through our spiritual relationship with our planet, its ecosystems and evolution, in an enlightened and completely undogmatic manner."--Dr. Claude Martin, Former Director General, World Wildlife Fund "An excellent collection of guideposts for perplexed students and scholars about the relationships of nature religions, spirituality, animism, pantheism, deep ecology, Gaia, and land ethics--and for the environmentalist seeking to make the world a better place through green religion as a social force."--Fikret Berkes, author of Sacred Ecology: Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Resource Management "Dark Green Religion shows conclusively how nature has inspired a growing religious movement on the planet, contesting the long reign of many older faiths. Taylor expertly guides us through an astonishing array of thinkers, past and present, who have embraced, in part or whole, the new religion. I was thoroughly convinced that this movement has indeed become a major force on Earth, with great potential consequences for our environmental ethics."--Donald Worster, University of Kansas "In this exceptionally interesting and informative book, Bron Taylor has harvested the fruits of years of pioneering research in what amounts to a new field in religious studies: the study of how religious/spiritual themes show up in the work of people concerned about nature in many diverse ways. Taylor persuasively argues that appreciation of nature's sacred or spiritual dimension both informs and motivates the work of individuals ranging from radical environmentalists and surfers, to eco-tourism leaders and museum curators. I highly recommend this book for everyone interested learning more about the surprising extent to which religious/spiritual influences many of those who work to protect, to exhibit, or to represent the natural world."--Michael E. Zimmerman, Director, Center for Humanities and the Arts, University of Colorado at Boulder
Download or read book The South African Herbal Pharmacopoeia written by Alvaro Viljoen and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2022-11-24 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The South African Herbal Pharmacopeia: Monographs of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants is a collection of 25 original monographs of medicinal plants that are currently under commercialization or have the potential for commercialization into herbal medicinal products for the global marketplace. Chapters include a general overview covering synonyms, common names, conservation status, botany, geographical distribution, ethnopharmacology, commercialization, pharmacological evaluation, chemical profiling and quality control, including HPTLC fingerprint analysis, UPLC analysis, gas chromatography and mid-infrared spectroscopy analysis. Academics researching pharmacy and analytical chemistry will benefit from the detailed chemical profile on each species presented. Industrial manufacturers of herbal products, herbal medicines, cosmetics, food supplements, and national and international policymakers and regulators will benefit from the overview provided at the beginning of each chapter. Provides a comprehensive, up-to-date literature review on 25 medicinal plants of South Africa Documents quality control protocols for chemical fingerprinting and biomarker identification in plant material Includes updated safety profiles of medicinal plants
Download or read book Lost Crops of Africa written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2008-02-25 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the third in a series evaluating underexploited African plant resources that could help broaden and secure Africa's food supply. The volume describes 24 little-known indigenous African cultivated and wild fruits that have potential as food- and cash-crops but are typically overlooked by scientists, policymakers, and the world at large. The book assesses the potential of each fruit to help overcome malnutrition, boost food security, foster rural development, and create sustainable landcare in Africa. Each fruit is also described in a separate chapter, based on information provided and assessed by experts throughout the world. Volume I describes African grains and Volume II African vegetables.
