The Sound Of The Sea Seashells And The Fate Of The Oceans

Download or read book The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans written by Cynthia Barnett and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-07-06 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Science Friday Best Science Book of the Year A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of the Year A Library Journal Best Science and Technology Book of the Year A Tampa Bay Times Best Book of the Year A stunning history of seashells and the animals that make them that "will have you marveling at nature…Barnett’s account remarkably spirals out, appropriately, to become a much larger story about the sea, about global history and about environmental crises and preservation" (John Williams, New York Times Book Review). Seashells have been the most coveted and collected of nature’s creations since the dawn of humanity. They were money before coins, jewelry before gems, art before canvas. In The Sound of the Sea, acclaimed environmental author Cynthia Barnett blends cultural history and science to trace our long love affair with seashells and the hidden lives of the mollusks that make them. Spiraling out from the great cities of shell that once rose in North America to the warming waters of the Maldives and the slave castles of Ghana, Barnett has created an unforgettable history of our world through an examination of the unassuming seashell. She begins with their childhood wonder, unwinds surprising histories like the origin of Shell Oil as a family business importing exotic shells, and charts what shells and the soft animals that build them are telling scientists about our warming, acidifying seas. From the eerie calls of early shell trumpets to the evolutionary miracle of spines and spires and the modern science of carbon capture inspired by shell, Barnett circles to her central point of listening to nature’s wisdom—and acting on what seashells have to say about taking care of each other and our world.

Download or read book The State You're In written by Craig Pittman and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-08-09 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jump into the wacky, wild world of Florida For more than 30 years, investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author Craig Pittman has chronicled the wildest stories Florida has to offer. Featuring a selection of columns that have appeared in the Tampa Bay Times and other outlets throughout Pittman’s career, this book highlights just how strange and wonderful Florida can be. With a folksy style, an eye for the absurd, and a passion for the history and environment of his home state, Pittman describes some of Florida’s oddest wildlife as well as its quirkiest people. The State You’re In includes a love story involving the most tattooed woman in the world, a deep dive into the state’s professional mermaid industry, and an investigation of a battle between residents of a nudist resort and the U.S. Postal Service. Pittman introduces readers to a who’s who of Florida crime fiction, a what’s what of exotic animals, and an array of beloved places he’s seen change rapidly in his lifetime. Many of these stories are funny, some are serious, and several offer rare insights into the heart of the Sunshine State. For Pittman, Florida is both inspiring and dangerous—an “evolutionary test” for those who live in it. Together these pieces paint a complex picture of a fascinating state longing for an identity beyond palm trees and punchlines.

Download or read book Heating & Cooling: 52 Micro-Memoirs written by Beth Ann Fennelly and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-10-10 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A surprisingly maximalist portrait of a life.” —New York Times Book Review The 52 micro-memoirs in genre-defying Heating & Cooling offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Alternatingly wistful and wry, ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these micro-memoirs build on one another to shape a life from unexpectedly illuminating moments.

Download or read book The Burning Girl: A Novel written by Claire Messud and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2017-08-29 with total page 143 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist "[A] masterwork of psychological fiction.… Messud teases readers with a psychological mystery, withholding information and then cannily parceling it out." —Chicago Tribune Julia and Cassie have been friends since nursery school. They have shared everything, including their desire to escape the stifling limitations of their birthplace, the quiet town of Royston, Massachusetts. But as the two girls enter adolescence, their paths diverge and Cassie sets out on a journey that will put her life in danger and shatter her oldest friendship. The Burning Girl is a complex examination of the stories we tell ourselves about youth and friendship, and straddles, expertly, childhood’s imaginary worlds and painful adult reality—crafting a true, immediate portrait of female adolescence. Claire Messud, one of our finest novelists, is as accomplished at weaving a compelling fictional world as she is at asking the big questions: To what extent can we know ourselves and others? What are the stories we create to comprehend our lives and relationships? Brilliantly mixing fable and coming-of-age tale, The Burning Girl gets to the heart of these matters in an absolutely irresistible way. The Burning Girl was named one of the best books of the year by the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, NPR, Financial Times, Town & Country, Kirkus Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Refinery29, and Literary Hub.

Download or read book Pearl written by Fiona Lindsay Shen and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2022-10-24 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From their creation in the maw of mollusks to lustrous objects of infatuation and conflict, a revealing look at pearls’ dark history. This book is a beautifully illustrated account of pearls through millennia, from fossils to contemporary jewelry. Pearls are the most human of gems, both miraculous and familiar. Uniquely organic in origin, they are as intimate as our bodies, created through the same process as we grow bones and teeth. They have long been described as an animal’s sacrifice, but until recently their retrieval often entailed the sacrifices of enslaved and indentured divers and laborers. While the shimmer of the pearl has enticed Roman noblewomen, Mughal princes, Hollywood royalty, mavericks, and renegades, encoded in its surface is a history of human endeavor, abuse, and aspiration—pain locked in the layers of a gleaming gem.

Download or read book Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party written by Edward Dolnick and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2024-08-06 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling author of The Clockwork Universe and The Writing of the Gods, a historical adventure story about the eccentric Victorians who discovered dinosaur bones, leading to a whole new understanding of human history. In the early 1800s the world was a safe and cozy place. But then a twelve-year-old farm boy in Massachusetts stumbled on a row of fossilized three-toed footprints the size of dinner plates—the first dinosaur tracks ever found. Soon, in England, Victorians unearthed enormous bones—bones that reached as high as a man’s head. No one had ever seen such things. Outside of myths and fairy tales, no one had even imagined that creatures like three-toed giants had once lumbered across the land. And if anyone had somehow conjured up such a scene, they would never have imagined that all those animals could have vanished, hundreds of millions years ago. The thought of sudden, arbitrary disappearance from life was unnerving and forced the Victorians to rethink everything they knew about the world. Now, in Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party, celebrated storyteller and historian Edward Dolnick leads us through a compelling true adventure as the paleontologists of the first half of the 19th century puzzled their way through the fossil record to create the story of dinosaurs we know today. The tale begins with Mary Anning, a poor, uneducated woman who had a sixth sense for finding fossils buried deep inside cliffs; and moves to a brilliant, eccentric geologist named William Buckland, a kind of Doctor Doolittle on a mission to eat his way through the entire animal kingdom; and then on to Richard Owen, the most respected and the most despised scientist of his generation. Entertaining, erudite, and featuring an unconventional cast of characters, Dinosaurs at the Dinner Party tells the story of how the accidental discovery of prehistoric creatures upended humanity’s understanding of the world and their place in it, and how a group of paleontologists worked to bring it back into focus again.

Download or read book Once Upon a Time in Florida written by Jacki Levine and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-10-24 with total page 606 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curated from the archives of FORUM, the award-winning magazine of Florida Humanities, this anthology presents 50 often surprising and always intriguing stories of life in Florida by some of the nation’s most talented writers and scholars  Once Upon a Time in Florida transports readers into the eventful life and times of this remarkable state through 50 stories vividly rendered by some of the nation’s most acclaimed writers and scholars, along with 150 evocative images. This collection opens more than 14,000 years ago with the first people to inhabit the peninsula and continues through the state’s territorial beginnings, the era of slavery, statehood, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow period, and Florida’s transformation into a complex, powerful megastate.  Throughout, readers will encounter the unexpected: The myth-busting truths behind Ponce de Leon’s search for the Fountain of Youth; the real First Thanksgiving; the first legally sanctioned free Black town; the revealing wartime letters of novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; the Jacksonville principal who penned the lyrics now known as the Black National Anthem; and the little-known story of how Mary McLeod Bethune saved World War II‒era Daytona Beach. The stories also highlight Florida as a magnet for dreamers and doers, featuring the heady days of the Space Age seen through the eyes of a teenager; the secretive mission that brought Walt Disney to Orlando; the music culture that has churned out a stream of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers; and a look at how Florida’s glossy image has been indelibly shaped through the eyes of Hollywood.  Told through the lens of the humanities, at its heart this anthology is the story of what it means to be a Floridian. In these pages, folklorist Stetson Kennedy travels the back roads with novelist Zora Neale Hurston, capturing vanishing stories and songs. Former U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the first Latina in Congress, remembers her family’s early days as Cuban refugees. Novelist Lauren Groff describes how the writings of literary giants taught her to love Florida. Columnist Bill Maxwell and novelist Beverly Coyle, who grew up in the waning days of Jim Crow, share clear-eyed memories of experiences as different as black and white. And southern grit writer Harry Crews tells of a family memory evoked by the Suwannee River.  There is much more to discover in this vibrant anthology, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of Florida Humanities, the state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and presents selections from the timeless and treasure-filled archives of Florida Humanities’ award-winning FORUM magazine. Contributors: Jerald T. Milanich | J. Michael Francis | Michael Gannon | Kathleen Deagan | Darcie A. MacMahon | Larry Eugene Rivers | Robert A. Taylor | Casey Blanton | Rick Kilby | Gary R. Mormino | Stetson Kennedy | Betty Jean Steinshouer | Gordon Patterson | Rick Edmonds | Andrea Brunais | Steven Noll | Richard Foglesong | Eric Deggans | Bill Maxwell | Beverly Coyle | David R. Colburn | Nila Do Simon | Stephen J. Whitfield | Willie Johns | Ron Cunningham | Jon Wilson | Dalia Colón | Bill DeYoung | Maude Heurtelou | Lauren Groff | Maurice J. O’Sullivan | Michele Currie Navakas | Craig Pittman | Thomas Hallock | Edna Buchanan | Philip Caputo | Gary Monroe | Peter B. Gallagher | Bob Kealing | Jack E. Davis | Charlie Hailey | Terry Tomalin | Bill Belleville | Cynthia Barnett | Jack E. Davis | Jeff Klinkenberg | Harry Crews Distributed on behalf of Florida Humanities