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Natural Coincidence: The Trip from Kalamazoo
by Bil GilbertBil Gilbert is one of America's most preeminent and popular essayists and nature writers. If you've ever opened a copy of Smithsonian, Audubon, or Sports Illustrated magazines, you've likely come across an article by Gilbert. In the past four decades, more than 350 of his articles and essays have appeared in places ranging from Esquire to the New York Times. Natural Coincidence collects some of Bil Gilbert's finest writing, covering a diverse range of subjects that include investigations of the biology of Tasmanian devils, the lives and loves of snapping turtles, and an appreciation of the intelligence of crows. Perfectly suiting this eclectic choice of angles is Gilbert's unique writing style, a blend of unprepossessing erudition, wit, and honesty that has been compared to Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. The collection opens with a memoir of a childhood Christmas in western Michigan, before Gilbert's fascination with the natural world drew him to more exotic locales like Tasmania, Alaska, Nova Scotia, and Manhattan to write about such topics as the javelina, bigfoot, buffalo, and ringtails. "More than 50 years ago," writes Gilbert, "without a clear notion about why or where I was going, I set off on a trip from Kalamazoo, Michigan. I am still traveling toward an unknown destination. But along the way, much more for reasons of good luck than thoughtful planning, I have met many wonderful beings and happenings. The essays appearing in Natural Coincidence represent an attempt to describe some of these wonders. I like to think, or at least pretend, that the inspiration for and theme of this book is gratitude."
Natural Hazard: The Diary of an Accident-Prone Golf Watcher
by Norman DabellNorman Dabell, journalist, broadcaster and notorious jinx, has been covering the European golf circuit for over 20 years, though after reading this hilarious account of his mishaps, you may well come to wonder how he has managed to survive for so long.Join Norman as he retraces his pursuit of the travelling circus of the golf world from St Andrews to Sun City, Malaga to Morocco, encountering all the great faces of the modern game. Woods, Ballesteros, Faldo, Montgomerie, Westwood, Lyle, Woosnam, Langer, Olazabal, Garcia... they have all made the headlines. Dabell is there to make sure they do - while also trying to survive another day. Golf isn't really meant to be fun, they say, and sometimes it can be toture. But Danbell's rib-tickling (and his have been more than tickled) account will have even the most serious enthusiast in stitches. Fate has caused him many a tumble, broken bone and on-air gaffe, and Dabell's presence inside the ropes has been known to make even the toughest tour professional blanche. However, he is a favourite of Major-winner Vijay Singh, who might have never have got his career on the road if his ball had plummeted out of bounds instead of ricocheting onto the fairway off Dabell's head in Spain in 1990. Singh made a birdie instead of a possible double-bogey, won the tournament and ten years later went on to beat the world at Augusta. Just one of a thousand escapades which happened to a living, breathing Natural Hazard.
The Natural History of Selborne
by Anne Secord'I was much entertained last summer with a tame bat, which would take flies out of a person's hand.' Gilbert White's Natural History of Selborne (1789) reveals a world of wonders in nature. Over a period of twenty years White describes in minute detail the behaviour of animals through the changing seasons in the rural Hampshire parish of Selborne. He notes everything from the habits of an eccentric tortoise to the mysteries of bird migration and animal reproduction, with the purpose of inspiring others to observe their own surroundings with the same pleasure and attention. Written as a series of letters, White's book has all the immediacy of an exchange with friends, yet it is crafted with compelling literary skill. His gossipy correspondence has delighted readers from Charles Darwin to Virginia Woolf, and it has been read as a nostalgic evocation of a pastoral vision, a model for local studies of plants and animals, and a precursor to modern ecology. This new edition includes contemporary illustrations, a contextualizing introduction, and an appendix of literary responses to the book. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World's Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford's commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.
A Natural Life
by David BellamyDavid Bellamy is a natural story teller whose memoir is packed full of funny anecdotes and observations. He depicts wonderfully a childhood of discovery and adventure growing up in Carshalton during the second world war. Despite rationing and evacuation, these were happy days of tremendous freedom spent roaming the wonderland of the surrounding countryside searching for bugs, beetles and bits of old shrapnel which young Bellamy and his brother would smuggle home to their father's shed for their firework-making sessions. His growing love of nature is interwoven with loving, often hilarious, portraits of the various characters he meets along the way. From his days as a student in fifties London to his trial by fire lectureship at Durham University with a young wife and ever-growing family to support, Bellamy reveals his many great loves from sports cars to ballet. He also writes of his more serious concerns, with his reputation for being outspoken and undeterred in the face of big enterprises and corporations revealed in his battles and campaigns.
A Natural Woman: A Memoir
by Carole KingA memoir by the iconic singer-songwriter chronicling her story from her beginnings in Brooklyn through her remarkable success as one of the world's most acclaimed musical talents, to her present day as a leading performer and activist. From her marriage to Gerry Goffin, with whom she wrote dozens of songs that hit the charts, to her own achievements, notably with 'Tapestry', which remained on the charts for more than six years, to her experiences as a mother, this memoir chronicles one of music's most successful and fascinating stars. The book includes dozens of photos from King's childhood, her own family, and behind-the-scenes images from her performances over the years.
The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood
by Kathryn AaltoA New York Times Bestseller This charmingly illustrated book explores the real landscape of the Ashdown Forest, A. A. Milne's inspiration for the Hundred Acre Wood, the magical realm in which Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends lived and played.
Naturally Tan: A Memoir
by Tan France'The book is meant to spread joy, personal acceptance, and most of all understanding. Each of us is living our own private journey, and the more we know about each other, the healthier and happier the world will be.'Growing up gay in a traditional South Asian family in South Yorkshire, Tan France could never have imagined he’d become part of a worldwide phenomenon. One of the few people of colour at his school, he experienced racist bullies, found solace at his grandad’s denim factory and eventually discovered his true calling at fashion college. Told with his trademark humour, for the first time Tan reveals the experiences that have made him the witty, compassionate man he is today.From meeting the love of his life Rob (a Mormon cowboy from Salt Lake City) to juggling three demanding businesses, Tan charts the highs and lows on his path to Queer Eye. And of course he can’t help but pepper this book with fashion dos and don’ts. Full of candid observations about US and UK cultural differences, celebrity encounters, and behind-the-scenes revelations about Queer Eye, Naturally Tan gives us Tan’s unique perspective on the happiness to be found in being yourself.
Nature Cure
by Richard MabeyIn the last year of the old millennium, Richard Mabey, Britain's foremost nature writer, fell into a severe depression. The natural world – which since childhood had been a source of joy and inspiration for him – became meaningless. Then, cared for by friends, he moved to East Anglia and he started to write again. Having left the cosseting woods of the Chiltern hills for the open flatlands of Norfolk, Richard Mabey found exhilaration in discovering a whole new landscape and gained fresh insights into our place in nature. Structured as intricately as a novel, a joy to read, truthful, exquisite and questing, Nature Cure is a book of hope, not just for individuals, but for our species.
Nature Shock: Getting Lost in America
by Jon T. ColemanAn award†‘winning environmental historian explores American history through wrenching, tragic, and sometimes humorous stories of getting lost The human species has a propensity for getting lost. The American people, inhabiting a mental landscape shaped by their attempts to plant roots and to break free, are no exception. In this engaging book, environmental historian Jon Coleman bypasses the trailblazers so often described in American history to follow instead the strays and drifters who went missing. From Hernando de Soto’s failed quest for riches in the American southeast to the recent trend of getting lost as a therapeutic escape from modernity, this book details a unique history of location and movement as well as the confrontations that occur when our physical and mental conceptions of space become disjointed. Whether we get lost in the woods, the plains, or the digital grid, Coleman argues that getting lost allows us to see wilderness anew and connect with generations across five centuries to discover a surprising and edgy American identity.
Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick
by Jenny UglowThomas Bewick wrote A History of British Birds at the end of the eighteenth century, just as Britain fell in love with nature. This was one of the wildlife books that marked the moment, the first 'field-guide' for ordinary people, illustrated by woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. But it was far more than that, for in the vivid vignettes scattered through the book Bewick drew the life of the country people of the North East - a world already vanishing under the threat of enclosures.In this superbly illustrated biography, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer's son from Tyneside who revolutionised wood-engraving and influenced book illustration for a century to come. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life and the beauty of the wild - a journey to the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world. Nature's Engraver won the National Arts Writers Award in 2007. Jenny Uglow is the author of, among others, A Gambling Man: Charles II and the Restoration, which was shortlisted for the 2010 Samuel Johnson Prize, Lunar Men and In These Times. 'The most perfect historian imaginable' Peter Ackroyd
Nature's Engraver: A Life of Thomas Bewick
by Jenny UglowThomas Bewick’s (1753–1828) History of British Birds was the first field guide for ordinary people, illustrated with woodcuts of astonishing accuracy and beauty. In Nature’s Engraver, Jenny Uglow tells the story of the farmer’s son from Tyneside who became one of Britain’s greatest and most popular engravers. It is a story of violent change, radical politics, lost ways of life, and the beauty of the wild—a journey to the beginning of our lasting obsession with the natural world. “A refined and engaging biography, as beautifully wrought, in its way, as Bewick’s woodcuts.”—New York Times “Uglow’s clear prose sparkles like Bewick’s River Tyne.”—Los Angeles Times “This is a lovely book, not just in the quality and sympathy of the writing but in the care of its design and illustration. [Uglow] has turned a rich but undramatic life into a vignette as full of interest and details as one of Bewick’s own woodcuts.”—Sunday Telegraph “A splendid biography. But it becomes an endearing one by the scattered presence of so many of Bewick’s woodcuts.”—Washington Post “Another triumph for England’s most innovative biographer, and a marvelous treat for fans of Bewick’s beguiling work.”—Kirkus Reviews
NAUSHADNAMA The Life and Music of Naushad: The Life And Music Of Naushad
by Raju BharatanNaushad is by popular consent the greatest among our film music composers, having been active for 65 years! For twenty years during that period, he ruled the field: from Rattan in 1944, he was the standard against whom every other composer tried to match himself! He didn't have much to show by way of originality after Mughal e Azam (1961), though his music never became base : it was only that the stars for whom he composed declined, the public taste changed, he became trapped in his own image as the custodian of the classical mould in film sangeet. It is a measure of the great man that he steadily refused to succumb to the market pressure. His composing abilities were never in question, but he could not give 'hits" or tunes that would appeal.When he tried to adjust, he was pathetic. Raju Bharatan is such an authority on Naushad and our film music, with so much first hand knowledge and information, a book from him on Naushad is likely to be the last word as an account of his professional life. But this book covers so much more: what the cine music filed was like from inside, how the composers were competing , how they were bad-mouthing Naushad in private, in spite of the show of public bonhomie, what devious games were played to corner awards and limelight, etc. The point is not the filmi world was so dirty; the point is that the composers created great music even in such atmosphere.
Navi Pillay: Realising Human Rights for All (Black Amber Inspirations Ser.)
by Sam NaiduPillay, a trailblazer in Human Rights Law, was born in 1941 to a humble Indian family in apartheid South Africa. She faced enormous obstacles to her aspirations for further education and a meaningful career. However, in 1967 she was the first black woman in South Africa to set up a law practice which she used to defend many anti-apartheid activists. She also used her skills to protect the rights of political prisoners and remarkably, in 1973, she succeeded in obtaining legal representation and basic amenities for the inmates of Robben Island.In 1995 when the first democratic government was formed in South Africa, Nelson Mandela nominated Pillay as the first black female judge in the Supreme Court. In the same year she joined the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Since then Pillay has become one the world's leading advocates in the field of human rights.The biography of Navi Pillay is part of Arcadia's BlackAmber Inspiration series edited by Rosemarie Hudson, founder of BlackAmber. These pocket-sized biographies, aimed at students and general readers alike, celebrate African, Caribbean and Asian heroes.
Navigate Your Stars
by Jesmyn WardAs an adult, I learned this: persist. Work hard. Face rejection, weather the setbacks, until you meet the gatekeeper who will open a door for you. Jesmyn Ward grew up in a poor, rural community in Mississippi. Today, as the first woman to win the National Book Award twice, she is celebrated as one of America's greatest living writers.Navigate Your Stars is a stirring reflection on the value of hard work and the importance of respect for oneself and others. First delivered as a 2018 commencement address at Tulane University, it captures Ward's inimitable voice as she reflects on her experiences as a Southern black woman, addressing the themes of grit, adversity and the importance of family bonds.Beautifully illustrated in full colour, this is a meditative and profound book that will inspire all readers preparing for the next chapter in their lives.
Nazaré: Life and Death with the Big Wave Surfers
by Matt MajendieLONGLISTED FOR THE 2023 WILLIAM HILL SPORTS BOOK OF THE YEAR JOIN THE QUEST TO SURF THE BIGGEST WAVE IN HISTORY.In a small fishing village on the coast of Portugal, a select band of surfers take unimaginable risks, pushing the boundaries of their death-defying sport as they seek to go bigger than ever before.Their goal? To ride the Everest of the ocean - the 100-foot wave.Sports journalist Matt Majendie is welcomed into the inner circle of Nazaré's tight community of big-wave surfers and extreme thrill-seekers, living among them for a season as he chronicles their incredible highs and terrifying lows.Follow the endeavours of Britain's leading big-wave surfer, a former plumber from Devon, Andrew Cotton; trailblazing Brazilian female surfer Maya Gabeira; current World Record holder German Sebastian Steudtner; Portuguese Nic von Rupp and jet-ski driver Sérgio Cosme, nicknamed 'the Guardian Angel of Nazaré' for his daring rescues, in this gripping read.
Nazi Billionaires: The Dark History Of Germany's Wealthiest Dynasties
by David de Jong‘Lucid and damning … an absorbing – and infuriating – tale of complicity, coverup and denial’ PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE, author of EMPIRE OF PAIN A groundbreaking investigation of how the Nazis helped German tycoons make billions from the horrors of the Third Reich and World War II – and how the world allowed them to get away with it.
Nazi Gold: The Sensational Story of the World's Greatest Robbery – and the Greatest Criminal Cover-Up
by Douglas Botting Ian SayerIn 1945, as Allied bombers continued their final pounding of Berlin, the panicking Nazis began moving the assets of the Reichsbank south for safekeeping. Vast trainloads of gold and currency were evacuated from the doomed capital of Hitler's 'Thousand-year Reich'. Nazi Gold is the real-life story of the theft of that fabulous treasure - worth some 2,500,000,000 at the time of the original investigation. It is also the story of a mystery and attempted whitewash in an American scandal that pre-dated Watergate by nearly 30 years. Investigators were impeded at every step as they struggled to uncover the truth and were left fearing for their lives. The authors' quest led them to a murky, dangerous post-war world of racketeering, corruption and gang warfare. Their brilliant reporting, matching eyewitness testimony with declassified Top Secret documents from the US Archives, lays bare this monumental crime in a narrative which throngs with SS desperadoes, a red-headed queen of crime and American military governors living like Kings. Also revealed is the authors' discovery of some of the missing treasure in the Bank of England.
Nazi Literature in the Americas
by Roberto BolañoFeaturing several mass-murdering authors, two fraternal writers at the head of a football-hooligan ring and a poet who crafts his lines in the air with sky writing, Roberto Bolaño's Nazi Literature in the Americas details the lives of a rich cast of characters from one of the most extraordinary imaginations in world literature. Written with sharp wit and virtuosic flair, this encyclopaedic group of fictional pan-American authors is the terrifyingly humorous and remarkably inventive masterpiece which made Bolaño famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world.
Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology
by Gunther StentWhat prompts a well-renowned scientist in molecular biology to write memoirs about a part of his life? In the case of Gunther Stent, it was not to reflect on his career as a scientist, but to come to an understanding of his own soul. In his seventies, he had come to see that he had been, throughout his life, an emotional sleepwalker, especially as regards women and, in addition, that he had been troubled by Jewish self-hatred. His story may have more to do with St. Augustine's Confessions than with a scientist's memoirs. Stent provides insight into the power of political correctness, and the ability of a government to establish a perverse vision of reality. For readers interested in bioethics, Stent's memoirs help to explain how Germany could have been the first country to enact an all-encompassing protection for human research subjects while it was also the country that produced the medical experiments of the Nazis and the greatest perversion of medical morality in history. Stent is a person of intelligence and subtlety, an accomplished writer, a deep and wise man, and a loyal friend. His narrative is centered emotionally on a youth spent in Berlin in the Nazi period. As a boy of fourteen he was an eyewitness of the horrors of the Kristallnacht pogrom.On New Year's Eve 1938 he escaped from Germany across the "green frontier." He came to America in his teens, only to return to Berlin at the end of World War II as a scientific consultant for the U.S. Military. On his return to the States, Stent participated in the exciting early scientific breakthroughs of molecular biology that transformed the twentieth-century life sciences. His Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology is a piercing self-examination, and as its review in Science Newsletter says, "an act of self-exposure, abnegation, contrition, and expiation." It will be of keen interest to those who have inhabited Stent's worlds or shared his experiences, as well as those who wish to learn more about them. Gunther S. Stent is professor emeritus of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of such classic texts as Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses and Molecular Genetics, as well as philosophical books, such as The Coming of the Golden Age, Paradoxes of Progress, and, most recently (2002), Paradoxes of Free Will.
Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology
by Gunther StentWhat prompts a well-renowned scientist in molecular biology to write memoirs about a part of his life? In the case of Gunther Stent, it was not to reflect on his career as a scientist, but to come to an understanding of his own soul. In his seventies, he had come to see that he had been, throughout his life, an emotional sleepwalker, especially as regards women and, in addition, that he had been troubled by Jewish self-hatred. His story may have more to do with St. Augustine's Confessions than with a scientist's memoirs. Stent provides insight into the power of political correctness, and the ability of a government to establish a perverse vision of reality. For readers interested in bioethics, Stent's memoirs help to explain how Germany could have been the first country to enact an all-encompassing protection for human research subjects while it was also the country that produced the medical experiments of the Nazis and the greatest perversion of medical morality in history. Stent is a person of intelligence and subtlety, an accomplished writer, a deep and wise man, and a loyal friend. His narrative is centered emotionally on a youth spent in Berlin in the Nazi period. As a boy of fourteen he was an eyewitness of the horrors of the Kristallnacht pogrom.On New Year's Eve 1938 he escaped from Germany across the "green frontier." He came to America in his teens, only to return to Berlin at the end of World War II as a scientific consultant for the U.S. Military. On his return to the States, Stent participated in the exciting early scientific breakthroughs of molecular biology that transformed the twentieth-century life sciences. His Nazis, Women and Molecular Biology is a piercing self-examination, and as its review in Science Newsletter says, "an act of self-exposure, abnegation, contrition, and expiation." It will be of keen interest to those who have inhabited Stent's worlds or shared his experiences, as well as those who wish to learn more about them. Gunther S. Stent is professor emeritus of neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of such classic texts as Molecular Biology of Bacterial Viruses and Molecular Genetics, as well as philosophical books, such as The Coming of the Golden Age, Paradoxes of Progress, and, most recently (2002), Paradoxes of Free Will.
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
by Svante PääboA preeminent geneticist hunts the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes to answer the biggest question of them all: how did our ancestors become human?Neanderthal Man tells the riveting personal and scientific story of the quest to use ancient DNA to unlock the secrets of human evolution. Beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010, Neanderthal Man describes the events, intrigues, failures, and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient DNA. We learn that Neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our ancient relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of where language came from as well as why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct. Pääbo redrew our family tree and permanently changed the way we think about who we are and how we got here. For readers of Richard Dawkins, David Reich, and Hope Jahren, Neanderthal Man is the must-read account of how he did it.
Neanderthal Man: In Search of Lost Genomes
by Svante PääboA preeminent geneticist, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in medicine, hunts the Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes to answer the biggest question of them all: how did our ancestors become human?Neanderthal Man tells the riveting personal and scientific story of the quest to use ancient DNA to unlock the secrets of human evolution. Beginning with the study of DNA in Egyptian mummies in the early 1980s and culminating in the sequencing of the Neanderthal genome in 2010, Neanderthal Man describes the events, intrigues, failures, and triumphs of these scientifically rich years through the lens of the pioneer and inventor of the field of ancient DNA, Svante Pääbo. We learn that Neanderthal genes offer a unique window into the lives of our ancient relatives and may hold the key to unlocking the mysteries of where language came from as well as why humans survived while Neanderthals went extinct. Pääbo redrew our family tree and permanently changed the way we think about who we are and how we got here. For readers of Richard Dawkins, David Reich, and Hope Jahren, Neanderthal Man is the must-read account of how he did it.
Nearer the Heart's Desire: Poets of the Rubaiyat: A Dual Biography of Omar Khayyam and Edward FitzGerald
by Robert D. RichardsonWritten in Persian in the eleventh century, Omar Khayyam's quatrains, known as rubai, were written individually for an audience at court, and explored the meanings of life, love, and friendship. They were almost completely unknown in the West until Edward FitzGerald--himself a relatively obscure critic--translated and organized some one hundred of them into a unified whole that he called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, which he published anonymously in 1859. Ignored initially, it soon became a sensation--and FitzGerald with it, his work now translated into seventy languages--and one of the most-read works of literature of all time.Deftly and eloquently recounting in turn the life stories of Khayyam and FitzGerald, linking them over the span of eight centuries, acclaimed biographer Robert Richardson has crafted the story of the legendary Rubaiyat itself, illuminating a literary classic and reinforcing its place in the canon of great world literature.
The Nearly Departed: Or, My Family and Other Foreigners
by Brenda CullertonCullerton's parents were always eccentric. Her mother gardened in curlers, pop beads, and black satin underpants, while her father hid wads of cash in shoes in the garage. This is a haunting, heartbreaking, and incredibly funny book that is a love letter to parents, family, and home -- however strange they may be.
Nearly Famous: Adventures Of An After-dinner Speaker
by Bob BevanFirmly established in the world of entertainment, The Cat's route to fame has been through corporate and sporting dinners. He grew up loving sport and perservered despite having only one eye and an almost total absence of natural ability. His reputation as a figure of fun and his readiness to laugh at his own failures have reaped rich rewards.How many of us have played football with Bobby Moore and George Best at Wembley, or played at Lord's, or written a poem teasing the Duke of Edinburgh for never recognising us? In Nearly Famous, The Cat writes hilariously of the many famous people he has worked with - everyone from Colin Cowdrey, Bobby Robson and Terry Venables to Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, Billy Connolly, Eric Morcambe and Brian Johnston - and the highs and lows of that most serious of businesses: making people laugh.