Download or read book A Natural History of Families written by Scott Forbes and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2007-01-02 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do baby sharks, hyenas, and pelicans kill their siblings? Why do beetles and mice commit infanticide? Why are twins and birth defects more common in older human mothers? A Natural History of Families concisely examines what behavioral ecologists have discovered about family dynamics and what these insights might tell us about human biology and behavior. Scott Forbes's engaging account describes an uneasy union among family members in which rivalry for resources often has dramatic and even fatal consequences. In nature, parents invest resources and control the allocation of resources among their offspring to perpetuate their genetic lineage. Those families sometimes function as cooperative units, the nepotistic and loving havens we choose to identify with. In the natural world, however, dysfunctional familial behavior is disarmingly commonplace. While explaining why infanticide, fratricide, and other seemingly antisocial behaviors are necessary, Forbes also uncovers several surprising applications to humans. Here the conflict begins in the moments following conception as embryos struggle to wrest control of pregnancy from the mother, and to wring more nourishment from her than she can spare, thus triggering morning sickness, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Mothers, in return, often spontaneously abort embryos with severe genetic defects, allowing for prenatal quality control of offspring. Using a broad sweep of entertaining examples culled from the world of animals and humans, A Natural History of Families is a lively introduction to the behavioral ecology of the family.
Download or read book The Iris Family written by Peter Goldblatt and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Irises and their relatives are lily-like plants related to the orchid and narcissus families, with whom they share a propensity for large, brightly colored, attractive flowers. Many have longlasting flowersÑIris, Gladiolus, and Freesia are among the most important cut-flower crops in the world. The intricate flowers of the iris family are finely adapted for pollination by a variety of animals, including hummingbirds, sunbirds, beetles, butterflies, moths, wasps, and bees. This intimate connection between flower form and pollination biology reveals how the marvelous range of flower colors, shapes, and scents are vital to the lives of the species. The diversity of Iridaceae is illustrated in more than 200 superb photographs supplemented by expert line drawings. A lifetime of work by the world's expert on Iridaceae is distilled in this definitive account. Botanists, ecologists, naturalists, and gardeners will find this an essential reference.
Download or read book Late Migrations written by Margaret Renkl and published by Milkweed Editions. This book was released on 2019-07-09 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the New York Times columnist, a portrait of a family and the cycles of joy and grief that mark the natural world: “Has the makings of an American classic.” —Ann Patchett Growing up in Alabama, Margaret Renkl was a devoted reader, an explorer of riverbeds and red-dirt roads, and a fiercely loved daughter. Here, in brief essays, she traces a tender and honest portrait of her complicated parents—her exuberant, creative mother; her steady, supportive father—and of the bittersweet moments that accompany a child’s transition to caregiver. And here, braided into the overall narrative, Renkl offers observations on the world surrounding her suburban Nashville home. Ringing with rapture and heartache, these essays convey the dignity of bluebirds and rat snakes, monarch butterflies and native bees. As these two threads haunt and harmonize with each other, Renkl suggests that there is astonishment to be found in common things: in what seems ordinary, in what we all share. For in both worlds—the natural one and our own—“the shadow side of love is always loss, and grief is only love’s own twin.” Gorgeously illustrated by the author’s brother, Billy Renkl, Late Migrations is an assured and memorable debut. “Magnificent . . . Readers will savor each page and the many gems of wisdom they contain.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Download or read book The Kiwi written by John Lockyer and published by Raupo. This book was released on 2000 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes the attributes, habitat, and life cycle of the kiwi and reasons why it is endangered.
Download or read book A Natural History of Family Cancer written by Wayne A. Beach and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Family members and cancer patients routinely talk about and through cancer on the telephone. Yet little is known about the social organization of these conversations. This title offers an examination of the natural history of one family's 13 month journey through a wife/mother/sister's terminal cancer.
Download or read book Spiders of the World written by Norman Platnick and published by Ivy Press. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Learn all about the world of spiders in this complete and comprehensive guide, filled with stunning facts, beautiful photography and diagrams to help you understand everything you ever needed to know about arachnids! Bark spiders spin webs ten times stronger than Kevlar. Jumping spiders are capable of learning, recognizing, and remembering colours. Recluse spiders can tolerate six months of extreme drought and have a toxin-laden bite that can necessitate skin grafts. These are just some of the many amazing facts which you will discover in Spiders of the World, the perfect guide to one of natures most fascinating and varied creatures. This title explores the huge diversity of spider species and their fascinating traits. An introduction outlining the spider’s natural history is followed by 117 illustrated profiles spanning the taxonomic spider families. Beautiful close-up photographs of species from each family are shown, along with population distribution maps, tables of essential information, and commentaries revealing notable characteristics. The family profiles are also organized phylogenetically, and the commentaries in each account reflect different aspects of a spider’s biology.
Download or read book Natural History for the Use of Schools and Families written by Worthington Hooker and published by . This book was released on 1860 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Refuge written by Terry Tempest Williams and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-03-18 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the spring of 1983 Terry Tempest Williams learned that her mother was dying of cancer. That same season, The Great Salt Lake began to rise to record heights, threatening the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge and the herons, owls, and snowy egrets that Williams, a poet and naturalist, had come to gauge her life by. One event was nature at its most random, the other a by-product of rogue technology: Terry's mother, and Terry herself, had been exposed to the fallout of atomic bomb tests in the 1950s. As it interweaves these narratives of dying and accommodation, Refuge transforms tragedy into a document of renewal and spiritual grace, resulting in a work that has become a classic.
Download or read book Act Natural written by Jennifer Traig and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2019-01-08 with total page 623 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a distinctive, inimitable voice, a wickedly funny and fascinating romp through the strange and often contradictory history of Western parenting Why do we read our kids fairy tales about homicidal stepparents? How did helicopter parenting develop if it used to be perfectly socially acceptable to abandon your children? Why do we encourage our babies to crawl if crawling won’t help them learn to walk? These are just some of the questions that came to Jennifer Traig when—exhausted, frazzled, and at sea after the birth of her two children—she began to interrogate the traditional parenting advice she’d been conditioned to accept at face value. The result is Act Natural, hilarious and deft dissection of the history of Western parenting, written with the signature biting wit and deep insights Traig has become known for. Moving from ancient Rome to Puritan New England to the Dr. Spock craze of mid-century America, Traig cheerfully explores historic and present-day parenting techniques ranging from the misguided, to the nonsensical, to the truly horrifying. Be it childbirth, breastfeeding, or the ways in which we teach children how to sleep, walk, eat, and talk, she leaves no stone unturned in her quest for answers: Have our techniques actually evolved into something better? Or are we still just scrambling in the dark?
Download or read book A Natural History of Human Thinking written by Michael Tomasello and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-09 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tool-making or culture, language or religious belief: ever since Darwin, thinkers have struggled to identify what fundamentally differentiates human beings from other animals. Michael Tomasello weaves his twenty years of comparative studies of humans and great apes into a compelling argument that cooperative social interaction is the key to our cognitive uniqueness. Tomasello maintains that our prehuman ancestors, like today's great apes, were social beings who could solve problems by thinking. But they were almost entirely competitive, aiming only at their individual goals. As ecological changes forced them into more cooperative living arrangements, early humans had to coordinate their actions and communicate their thoughts with collaborative partners. Tomasello's "shared intentionality hypothesis" captures how these more socially complex forms of life led to more conceptually complex forms of thinking. In order to survive, humans had to learn to see the world from multiple social perspectives, to draw socially recursive inferences, and to monitor their own thinking via the normative standards of the group. Even language and culture arose from the preexisting need to work together and coordinate thoughts. A Natural History of Human Thinking is the most detailed scientific analysis to date of the connection between human sociality and cognition.
Download or read book Approaches to the History of the Western Family 1500 1914 written by Michael Anderson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1995-09-28 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past thirty years family history has been one of the most important and controversial growth areas in the development of social history. In this guide to the burgeoning literature on the Western family Professor Anderson reviews the main findings of historians and considers them in the light of the problems inherent in the interpretation of family history. He focuses particularly on the strengths and limitations of the different approaches that have been adopted, showing that although this variety of method has complicated matters, it has also produced a more rounded understanding of the history of the family. Updated to include work published between 1980 and 1994, this book will be invaluable to students of family history, and to scholars who are non-specialist in the field.
Download or read book A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert written by Steven J. Phillips and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 676 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A Natural History of the Sonoran Desert provides the most complete collection of Sonoran Desert natural history information ever compiled and is a perfect introduction to this biologically rich desert of North America."--BOOK JACKET.
Download or read book A Natural History of Parenting written by Susan Allport and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anyone who has ever held a baby—or observed a nesting bird—will find much to inform and entertain in this enchantingly written and thoroughly researched book. Allport revels in the marvelous diversity of care in the animal world. She shows us our place in that world with great humor, knowledge, and common sense.
Download or read book Natural History For the Use of Schools and Families written by Worthington Hooker and published by . This book was released on 1883 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Natural History of Love written by Caroline Petit and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2022-04-26 with total page 434 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fans of Elizabeth Gilbert's The Signature of All Things and Pip Williams' The Dictionary of Lost Words, The Natural History of Love is based upon the true story of 19th century French explorer, naturalist and diploma the Count de Castelnau and his lover Madame Fonçeca; a sweeping historical narrative set in the wilds of Brazil, salons of Paris and the early days of Melbourne's settlement. When Melbourne lawyer Nathan Smithson takes on the case of mad, wealthy Edward Fonçeca's inheritance trial against his ruthless brother in 1902, he must unearth long-buried family secrets to have any chance of winning. Brazil, 1852: François, the Count de Castelnau and French Consul to Bahia falls dangerously ill on a naturalist expedition and is delivered by a rainforest tribesman to the Fonçeca household. Carolina Fonçeca is 16 years old and longing to leave the confines of her family's remote Brazilian sugar plantation. With a head full of Balzac and dreams of Parisian life, she is instantly beguiled by the middle-aged Frenchman. What Carolina doesn't know is that François has a wife and son back in France. Desperate for a new life, she makes a decision that will haunt her forever.
Download or read book Flowering Plant Families of the World written by Vernon Hilton Heywood and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flowering plant families of the world is the successor to Flowering plants of the world (1978).
Download or read book Career and Family written by Claudia Goldin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, the author builds on decades of complex research to examine the gender pay gap and the unequal distribution of labor between couples in the home. The author argues that although public and private discourse has brought these concerns to light, the actions taken - such as a single company slapped on the wrist or a few progressive leaders going on paternity leave - are the economic equivalent of tossing a band-aid to someone with cancer. These solutions, the author writes, treat the symptoms and not the disease of gender inequality in the workplace and economy. Here, the author points to data that reveals how the pay gap widens further down the line in women's careers, about 10 to 15 years out, as opposed to those beginning careers after college. She examines five distinct groups of women over the course of the twentieth century: cohorts of women who differ in terms of career, job, marriage, and children, in approximated years of graduation - 1900s, 1920s, 1950s, 1970s, and 1990s - based on various demographic, labor force, and occupational outcomes. The book argues that our entire economy is trapped in an old way of doing business; work structures have not adapted as more women enter the workforce. Gender equality in pay and equity in home and childcare labor are flip sides of the same issue, and the author frames both in the context of a serious empirical exploration that has not yet been put in a long-run historical context. This book offers a deep look into census data, rich information about individual college graduates over their lifetimes, and various records and sources of material to offer a new model to restructure the home and school systems that contribute to the gender pay gap and the quest for both family and career. --
