Download or read book Dirt The Ecstatic Skin of the Earth written by William Bryant Logan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2007-01-17 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A gleeful, poetic book…Like the best natural histories, Dirt is a kind of prayer." —Los Angeles Times Book Review "You are about to read a lot about dirt, which no one knows very much about." So begins the cult classic that brings mystery and magic to "that stuff that won't come off your collar." John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Saint Phocas, Darwin, and Virgil parade through this thought-provoking work, taking their place next to the dung beetle, the compost heap, dowsing, historical farming, and the microscopic biota that till the soil. Whether William Bryant Logan is traversing the far reaches of the cosmos or plowing through our planet’s crust, his delightful, elegant, and surprisingly soulful meditations greatly enrich our concept of "dirt," that substance from which we all arise and to which we all must return.
Download or read book Dirt written by David R. Montgomery and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-05-14 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Dirt, soil, call it what you want—it's everywhere we go. It is the root of our existence, supporting our feet, our farms, our cities. This fascinating yet disquieting book finds, however, that we are running out of dirt, and it's no laughing matter. An engaging natural and cultural history of soil that sweeps from ancient civilizations to modern times, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations explores the compelling idea that we are—and have long been—using up Earth's soil. Once bare of protective vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit, slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime but fast enough over centuries to limit the lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology and geology, Dirt traces the role of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward. We see how soil has shaped us and we have shaped soil—as society after society has risen, prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt. David R. Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.
Download or read book Sprout Lands Tending the Endless Gift of Trees written by William Bryant Logan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2019-03-26 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2021 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Natural History Writing "This deeply nourishing book invites us to reclaim reciprocity with the living world." —Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass Once, farmers and rural people knew how to prune hazel to foster abundance: both of edible nuts and of straight, strong, flexible rods for bridges, walls, and baskets. Townspeople felled their beeches to make charcoal to fuel ironworks. Shipwrights shaped oaks to make hulls. No place could prosper without its inhabitants knowing how to cut their trees so they would sprout again. Pruning the trees didn’t destroy them. Rather, it created the healthiest, most sustainable and diverse woodlands that we have ever known. Arborist William Bryant Logan offers us both practical knowledge about how to live with trees to mutual benefit and hope that humans may again learn what the persistence and generosity of trees can teach. He recovers the lost tradition that sustained human life and culture for ten millennia.
Download or read book Oak The Frame of Civilization written by William Bryant Logan and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2006-06-27 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the role that the oak tree has played throughout history and in shaping the modern world.
Download or read book Soil Science Simplified written by Helmut Kohnke and published by Waveland Press. This book was released on 1994-12-09 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A concise, inexpensive treatment! Soil Science Simplified, 4/E was written to acquaint students with the basic concepts and scientific principles of soils without the burden of an extensive study. This useful, well-priced handbook includes discussions of soil classification, soil morphology, and soil and the environment. In addition, a chapter on soil surveys helps readers understand soil resources and apply the information presented in soil surveys to managing the soil environment. Outstanding features: 1) provides essential coverage of factors of soil formation; 2) outlines the most current principles of soil taxonomy; 3) provides an assortment of helpful tables, maps, and line drawings; 4) includes an expanded glossary.
Download or read book Eating Dirt written by Charlotte Gill and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2011 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charlotte Gill spent twenty years working as a tree planter in Canadian forests. In this book, she examines the environmental impact of logging and celebrates the value of forests from a perspective of some one whose work caught them between environmentalists and loggers.
Download or read book The Book of Joan written by Lidia Yuknavitch and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-04-18 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book • BuzzFeed 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read this Year • New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice • National Bestseller “Brilliant and incendiary.” — Jeff VanderMeer, New York Times Book Review "Stunning. . . . Yuknavitch understands that our collective narrative can either destroy or redeem us, and the outcome depends not just on who’s telling it, but also on who’s listening.” — O, The Oprah Magazine “[A] searing fusion of literary fiction and reimagined history and science-fiction thriller and eco-fantasy.” — NPR Books The bestselling author of The Small Backs of Children offers a vision of our near-extinction and a heroine—a reimagined Joan of Arc—poised to save a world ravaged by war, violence, and greed, and forever change history In the near future, world wars have transformed the earth into a battleground. Fleeing the unending violence and the planet’s now-radioactive surface, humans have regrouped to a mysterious platform known as CIEL, hovering over their erstwhile home. The changed world has turned evolution on its head: the surviving humans have become sexless, hairless, pale-white creatures floating in isolation, inscribing stories upon their skin. Out of the ranks of the endless wars rises Jean de Men, a charismatic and bloodthirsty cult leader who turns CIEL into a quasi-corporate police state. A group of rebels unite to dismantle his iron rule—galvanized by the heroic song of Joan, a child-warrior who possesses a mysterious force that lives within her and communes with the earth. When de Men and his armies turn Joan into a martyr, the consequences are astonishing. And no one—not the rebels, Jean de Men, or even Joan herself—can foresee the way her story and unique gift will forge the destiny of an entire world for generations. A riveting tale of destruction and love found in the direst of places—even at the extreme end of post-human experience—Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Book of Joan raises questions about what it means to be human, the fluidity of sex and gender, and the role of art as a means for survival.
Download or read book Nothing Daunted written by Dorothy Wickenden and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-06-21 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of The Agitators, the acclaimed and captivating true story of two restless society girls who left their affluent lives to “rough it” as teachers in the wilds of Colorado in 1916. In the summer of 1916, Dorothy Woodruff and Rosamond Underwood, bored by society luncheons, charity work, and the effete men who courted them, left their families in Auburn, New York, to teach school in the wilds of northwestern Colorado. They lived with a family of homesteaders in the Elkhead Mountains and rode to school on horseback, often in blinding blizzards. Their students walked or skied, in tattered clothes and shoes tied together with string. The young cattle rancher who had lured them west, Ferry Carpenter, had promised them the adventure of a lifetime. He hadn’t let on that they would be considered dazzling prospective brides for the locals. Nearly a hundred years later, Dorothy Wickenden, the granddaughter of Dorothy Woodruff, found the teachers’ buoyant letters home, which captured the voices of the pioneer women, the children, and other unforgettable people the women got to know. In reconstructing their journey, Wickenden has created an exhilarating saga about two intrepid women and the “settling up” of the West.
Download or read book To Speak for the Trees written by Diana Beresford-Kroeger and published by Timber Press. This book was released on 2021-10-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Diana Beresford-Kroeger's startling insights into the hidden life of trees have sparked a quiet revolution. In this captivating account, she shows us how forests can not only heal us, but can also save the planet.
Download or read book Seriously I m Kidding written by Ellen DeGeneres and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2011-10-04 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ~b~>With the winning, upbeat candor that has made her show on of the most popular and honored daytime shows on the air, beloved talk show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres shares her views on life, love, and American Idol. "I've experienced a whole lot the last few years and I have a lot to share. So I hope that you'll take a moment to sit back, relax and enjoy the words I've put together for you in this book. I think you'll find I've left no stone unturned, no door unopened, no window unbroken, no rug unvacuumed, no ivories untickled. What I'm saying is, let us begin, shall we?" Seriously... I'm Kidding is a lively, hilarious, and often sweetly poignant look at the life of the much-loved entertainer as she opens up about her personal life, her talk show, and more. PRAISE FOR Seriously... I'm Kidding "DeGeneres's amiably oddball riffs on everything from kale to catwalks to Jesus will make fans smile." -- People "Whatever the topic, DeGeneres's compulsively readable style will appeal to fans old and new." - Publishers Weekly "Fans will not be disappointed...[DeGeneres's] trademark wit and openness shine through and through." -- Kirkus/DIVspan
Download or read book Postcolonial Love Poem written by Natalie Diaz and published by Graywolf Press. This book was released on 2020-03-03 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN POETRY FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR POETRY Natalie Diaz’s highly anticipated follow-up to When My Brother Was an Aztec, winner of an American Book Award Postcolonial Love Poem is an anthem of desire against erasure. Natalie Diaz’s brilliant second collection demands that every body carried in its pages—bodies of language, land, rivers, suffering brothers, enemies, and lovers—be touched and held as beloveds. Through these poems, the wounds inflicted by America onto an indigenous people are allowed to bloom pleasure and tenderness: “Let me call my anxiety, desire, then. / Let me call it, a garden.” In this new lyrical landscape, the bodies of indigenous, Latinx, black, and brown women are simultaneously the body politic and the body ecstatic. In claiming this autonomy of desire, language is pushed to its dark edges, the astonishing dunefields and forests where pleasure and love are both grief and joy, violence and sensuality. Diaz defies the conditions from which she writes, a nation whose creation predicated the diminishment and ultimate erasure of bodies like hers and the people she loves: “I am doing my best to not become a museum / of myself. I am doing my best to breathe in and out. // I am begging: Let me be lonely but not invisible.” Postcolonial Love Poem unravels notions of American goodness and creates something more powerful than hope—in it, a future is built, future being a matrix of the choices we make now, and in these poems, Diaz chooses love.
Download or read book The Books of Jacob written by Olga Tokarczuk and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2022-02-01 with total page 993 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORKER “ESSENTIAL READ” “Just as awe-inspiring as the Nobel judges claimed.” – The Washington Post “Olga Tokarczuk is one of our greatest living fiction writers. . . This could well be a decade-defining book akin to Bolaño’s 2666.” –AV Club “Sophisticated and ribald and brimming with folk wit. . . The comedy in this novel blends, as it does in life, with genuine tragedy.” –Dwight Garner, The New York Times LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, TIME, THE NEW YORKER, AND NPR The Nobel Prize–winner’s richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe. In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank—a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day—is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries—those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is—The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence. In a nod to books written in Hebrew, The Books of Jacob is paginated in reverse, beginning on p. 955 and ending on p. 1 – but read traditionally, front cover to back.
Download or read book A Book of Golden Deeds written by Charlotte Mary Yonge and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 1927 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Drawing in the Dust written by Zoe Klein and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2009-07-07 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scorned for agreeing to help an Arab couple excavate allegedly haunted grounds under their house, archaeologist Page Brookstone finds what may be the tomb of the prophet Jeremiah, as well as the remains of a woman, and intriguing scrolls documenting their relationship.
Download or read book The Night and Its Moon written by Piper CJ and published by Sourcebooks, Inc.. This book was released on 2022-09-20 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An addictive fantasy romance from TikTok sensation Piper CJ, now newly revised and edited. Two orphans grow into powerful young women as they face countless threats to find their way back to each other. Farleigh is just an orphanage. At least, that's what the church would have the people believe, but beautiful orphans Nox and fae-touched Amaris know better. They are commodities for sale, available for purchase by the highest bidder. So when the madame of a notorious brothel in a far-off city offers a king's ransom to purchase Amaris, Nox ends up taking her place — while Amaris is drawn away to the mountains, home of mysterious assassins. Even as they take up new lives and identities, Nox and Amaris never forget one thing: they will stop at nothing to reunite. But the threat of war looms overhead, and the two are inevitably swept into a conflict between human and fae, magic and mundane. With strange new alliances, untested powers, and a bond that neither time nor distance could possibly break, the fate of the realms lies in the hands of two orphans — and the love they hold for each other.
Download or read book The Forever Song written by Julie Kagawa and published by Harlequin. This book was released on 2017-03-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These vampires don’t sparkle…they bite. Book 3 of the Blood of Eden trilogy by Julie Kagawa, New York Times bestselling author of The Iron Fey, concludes the explosive dark fantasy series where vampires rule, humans are prey, and one girl will become what she hates most to save all she loves. Is she more human…or monster? With the death of her beloved, Allison Sekemoto has her answer: MONSTER. Now she will embrace her cold vampire side to hunt down and end Sarren, the irredeemable vampire who murdered him. But the trail is bloody and long, and Sarren has left many shocking surprises along the way. The trail leads Allie and her companions toward the one place they must protect at any cost—Eden, the last vampire-free zone on earth. And Sarren has one final, brutal shock in store for Allie. In this ruined world where no life is sacred and former allies can turn on you in a heartbeat, Allie will make her final stand. But even if she succeeds, triumph is short-lived in the face of surviving forever alone. “A bloody good way to end a trilogy.” —Kirkus Reviews Books in the Blood of Eden series: The Immortal Rules The Eternity Cure The Forever Song
Download or read book Trauma Farm written by Brian Brett and published by Greystone Books Ltd. This book was released on 2009-10-01 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The acclaimed author transforms a single day on his small farm into a “gorgeously thoughtful meditation on the natural world” and our place in it (Vancouver Sun). The acclaimed poet and author Brian Brett takes readers on an irreverent and illuminating journey through a day in the life of his small island farm in British Columbia, affectionately named Trauma Farm. With fascinating ruminations on everything from the natural history of farming to the horrors of industrial slaughterhouses, Brett’s day of tending to his farm becomes a Joycean epic of agrarian life. Brett moves from the tending of livestock, poultry, orchards, gardens, machinery, and fields to the social intricacies of rural communities and, finally, to an encounter with a magnificent deer in the silver moonlight of a magical field. Brett understands both tall tales and rigorous science as he explores the small mixed farm—meditating on the perfection of the egg and the nature of soil while also offering a scathing critique of agribusiness. Whether discussing the uses and misuses of gates, examining the energy of seeds, or bantering with his family, farm hands, and neighbors, Brett remains aware of the miracles of life, birth, and death that confront the rural world every day. Trauma Farm was a 2009 book of the year in the Times Literary Supplement and the Globe & Mail, and winner of Writers’ Trust Canadian Non-Fiction Prize.
