Two-legged goats, Siamese twins and Cyclops infants, these 'freaks of nature' have shocked and fascinated people for centuries. This book explores the reasons and the insights they are beginning to provide about the deepest complexities of evolutionary biology, genetics and development.

In Freaks of Nature, Mark S. Blumberg turns a scientist's eye on the oddities of nature, showing how a subject once relegated to the sideshow can help explain some of the deepest complexities of biology.

Grizzliness is out there. Every child has the makings of mischievousness, and can be lured into committing dastardly deeds. The six stories in each of the Grizzly Tales books show the rise and hard fall of vile and villainous children. We have completely reinvented Grizzly Tales for today's readers - ingenious concepts to link the separate stories, new design and illustrations, new accessible formats, but still capturing Jamie Rix's legendary brilliance for creating stories that linger in the mind long after the lights go out at night! The wicked children in the fourth book thought they'd take on Mother Nature, but as they learned to their eternal cost, she is not the sort of mother you can easily challenge!

Ben Wireman is partially deaf and completely insecure. The only two things that make him feel normal are being a soccer goalie and hanging out with his best friend, Tyler Nuson. Tyler is the golden boy, worshiped by girls and guys alike, and he no longer seems interested in Ben. Without Tyler, Ben isn't sure who he is anymore, or if Tyler is really as "normal" as Ben thought he was. Maybe hanging out with freaks like Ilona Pierce, who has tattoos, blue hair, and almost no friends, is what he needs. This captivating novel explores the shifting dynamics of friendships and complex art of growing up.

I knew today would be ugly… It’s the first day of high school for Mena, and already her world looks bleak: she’s an outcast, all her former friends hate her, even her parents barely speak to her anymore. Why? Because she tried to do the right thing. And then everything went wrong. But can a cute, nerdy lab partner; his bossy, outspoken sister; and an unconventional, imaginative science teacher be just what Mena needs to turn her life around? Or will the combination of all of them only make things worse? As Mena is about to find out... It’s the freaks of nature who survive. *Named Best Fiction for Young Adults by the American Library Association

Includes 20 experiments for the sink, bathtub, and backyard! Are you intrigued by the effects of smog or methane clouds, the “Harry Potter” dinosaur, the Australian blue bird that screeches chainsaw noises, ocean “snot,” or the pink tentacles in the Korean dish where they swallow wriggling tentacles? Then strap on your hat for adventure and learn how planet Earth has been modified by the crazy chemistry of birdbrained biology and foolhardy physics of humans. The Young Scientist’s Guide to Faulty Freaks of Nature is your guide to some of the strangest science ever seen, and in it you’ll discover that some of the things scientists told you were “wrong” were actually right! Fictional hobbits? They are real! You’ll even meet an all-new creature called a “spider-goat.” So if you have a thirst for the weird, the wonderful, and the downright wacky, then this is the science book for you. James Doyle lives and works in Belfast, Ireland (most times!). You won’t find him on any social network sites and you won’t be able to track him. He is an expert in remaining “invisible” to the general public and the last eyewitness account of his whereabouts placed him at a remote outpost in the Himalayan mountains where he was setting out in search of the legendary Abominable Snowman. Andrew Brozyna is a book designer and illustrator living in Boulder County, Colorado. He nearly fell off a cliff while hiking, and he crashed the only two times he went mountain biking.

This cultural history of the travelling freak show in America chronicles the rise and fall of the industry as attitudes about disability evolved. From 1840 until 1940, hundreds of freak shows crisscrossed the United States, from the smallest towns to the largest cities, exhibiting their casts of dwarfs, giants, Siamese twins, bearded ladies, savages, snake charmers, fire eaters, and other oddities. By today’s standards such displays would be considered cruel and exploitative—the pornography of disability. Yet for one hundred years the freak show was widely accepted as one of America’s most popular forms of entertainment. Robert Bogdan’s fascinating social history brings to life the world of the freak show and explores the culture that nurtured and, later, abandoned it. In uncovering this neglected chapter of show business, he describes in detail the flimflam artistry behind the shows, the promoters and the audiences, and the gradual evolution of public opinion from awe to embarrassment. Freaks were not born, Bogdan reveals; they were manufactured by the amusement world, usually with the active participation of the freaks themselves. Many of the "human curiosities" found fame and fortune, until the ascent of professional medicine transformed them from marvels into pathological specimens.

This book traces how the American freak show has re-emerged in new visual forms in the 21st century. It explores the ways in which moving image media transmits and contextualizes, reinterprets and appropriates, the freak show model into a “new American freak show.” It investigates how new freak representations introduce narratives about sex, gender, and cultural perceptions of people with disabilities. The chapters examine such representations found in horror films, including a prolonged look at Freaks (1932) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), documentaries such as Murderball (2005) and TLC’s Push Girls (2012-2013), disability pornography including the pornographic documentary Sick: The Life and Death of Bob Flanagan Supermasochist (1997), and the music icons Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga in their portrayals of disability and freakishness. Through this book we learn that the visual culture that has emerged takes the place of the traditional freak show but opens new channels of interpretation and identification through its use of mediated images as well as the altered freak-norm relationship that it has fostered. In its illumination of the relationship between normal and freakish bodies through different media, this book will appeal to students and academics interested in disability studies, gender studies, film theory, critical race theory, and cultural studies.

Illuminates the far-reaching harms of believing that natural means “good,” from misinformation about health choices to justifications for sexism, racism, and flawed economic policies. People love what’s natural: it’s the best way to eat, the best way to parent, even the best way to act—naturally, just as nature intended. Appeals to the wisdom of nature are among the most powerful arguments in the history of human thought. Yet Nature (with a capital N) and natural goodness are not objective or scientific. In this groundbreaking book, scholar of religion Alan Levinovitz demonstrates that these beliefs are actually religious and highlights the many dangers of substituting simple myths for complicated realities. It may not seem like a problem when it comes to paying a premium for organic food. But what about condemnations of “unnatural” sexual activity? The guilt that attends not having a “natural” birth? Economic deregulation justified by the inherent goodness of “natural” markets? In Natural, readers embark on an epic journey, from Peruvian rainforests to the backcountry in Yellowstone Park, from a “natural” bodybuilding competition to a “natural” cancer-curing clinic. The result is an essential new perspective that shatters faith in Nature’s goodness and points to a better alternative. We can love nature without worshipping it, and we can work toward a better world with humility and dialogue rather than taboos and zealotry.