A dynamic and fresh exploration of the naturalist Mark Catesby—who predated John James Audubon by nearly a century— and his influence on how we understand American wildlife. In 1722, Mark Catesby stepped ashore in Charles Town in the Carolina colony. Over the next four years, this young naturalist made history as he explored deep into America’s natural wonders, collecting and drawing plants and animals which had never been seen back in the Old World. Nine years later Catesby produced his magnificent and groundbreaking book, The Natural History of Carolina, the first-ever illustrated account of American flora and fauna. In Nature’s Messenger, acclaimed writer Patrick Dean follows Catesby from his youth as a landed gentleman in rural England to his early work as a naturalist and his adventurous travels. A pioneer in many ways, Catesby’s careful attention to the knowledge of non-Europeans in America—the enslaved Africans and Native Americans who had their own sources of food and medicine from nature—set him apart from others of his time. Nature’s Messenger takes us from the rice plantations of the Carolina Lowcountry to the bustling coffeehouses of 18th-century England, from the sun-drenched islands of the Bahamas to the austere meeting-rooms of London’s Royal Society, then presided over by Isaac Newton. It was a time of discovery, of intellectual ferment, and of the rise of the British Empire. And there on history’s leading edge, recording the extraordinary and often violent mingling of cultures as well as of nature, was Mark Catesby. Intensively researched and thrillingly told, Nature’s Messenger will thrill fans of exploration and early American history as well as appeal to birdwatchers, botanists, and anyone fascinated by the natural world.

W.D.Hamilton (1936-2000) was responsible for a revolution in thinking about evolutionary biology - a revolution that changed our understanding of life itself. He played a central role in the realization that what matters in evolution is not the survival of the individual but of the survival of its genes. This provided the solution to the long standing problem of animal altruism that vexed even Darwin himself, and in due course resulted in terms like selfish genes, kin selection, and sociobiology becoming familiar to a wider public. Hamilton went on to solve many more major problems, and open up ever new fields - he shaped much of our currentunderstanding of central problems including the evolution of sexual reproduction and ageing. He became world famous and garnered international prizes.But this is all in hindsight. In fact, Hamiltons recognition came late - his career is a classic case of misunderstood genius. In this illuminating and moving biography Ullica Segerstrale documents Hamiltons extraordinary life and work, revealing a man of immense intellectual curiosity, an uncompromising truth-seeker, a naturalist and jungle explorer, a risk-taker, an unconventional scientist with a poets soul and a deep concern for life on earth and mankinds future.

A leading evolutionary thinker, biologist, and medical researcher asks the question: "Could life elsewhere be substantially different from life on Earth?"--and builds a step-by-step argument for human inevitability. 65 illustrations and photos.

A lively and endlessly fascinating deep-dive into nature and the many groundbreaking human inventions inspired by the wild. "Delightful."—The Guardian "Fans of Helen Scales won't want to miss this."—Publishers Weekly STARRED Review When astronomers wanted a telescope that could capture X-rays from celestial bodies, they looked to the lobster. When doctors wanted a medication that could stabilize Type II diabetic patients, they found their muse in a lizard. When scientists wanted to drastically reduce emissions in cement manufacturing, they observed how corals construct their skeletons in the sea. This is biomimicry in action: taking inspiration from nature to tackle human challenges. In Nature’s Wild Ideas, Kristy Hamilton goes behind the scenes of some of our most unexpected innovations. She traverses frozen waterfalls, treks through cloudy forests, discovers nests in the Mojave desert, scours intertidal zones and takes us to the deepest oceans and near volcanoes to introduce us to the animals and plants that have inspired everything from cargo routing systems to non-toxic glues, and the men and women who followed that first spark of “I wonder” all the way to its conclusion, sometimes against all odds. While the joy of scientific discovery is front and center, Nature’s Wild Ideas is also a love letter to nature—complete with a deep message of conservation: If we are to continue learning from the creatures around us, we must protect their untamed homelands.

This is a full-length study of incest in English Renaissance and Restoration drama. Richard McCabe's comprehensive survey offers a literary history of this theme, informed by an investigation of the intellectual background, with particular emphasis on changing concepts of natural law, and consequent reassessments of classical tradition. It examines a wide range of theological, philosophical, legal and literary sources, in the context of modern psychological and sociological theories of family development. Extensive comparisons with classical models and contemporary European dramatists, from Tasso to Corneille and Racine, explore the volatile association between dramatic form and emotional content, structural experiment and sexual ambivalence. The centrality of the family to all human relationships, and the mutual reflection of familial politics and the patriarchal state make incest a powerful metaphor for the ambivalence of all concepts of 'natural' authority, and for various forms of social and political revolt.

'Using Nature's Shuttle' is a suspenseful, by turns comic or tragic, but always lively account of how young, idealistic scientists - often the first of their families to go to a university - engaged in basic research that led them to make history in the new fields of plant microbiology and molecular biology. The book passes on the true story of what young scientists in a public Belgian university learned about a million-year-old single cell soil bacterium. This bacterium was able to genetically modify certain plants to produce food that only that bacterium strain could eat. These scientists and their colleagues and rivals figured out how to use that knowledge to genetically modify a variety of plants to make them safer and healthier for man, beast, and the environment. Their genetic modifications made plants cheaper and easier for farmers to grow as well as capable of improving the health and welfare of people in the Third World. The author, Judith M. Heimann, a former diplomat and writer of three published non-fiction books and contributor to two TV documentaries based on them, tells this multi-sided story chiefly through the information she gathered by conducting intensive interviews of each of more than two dozen of the scientists involved. She sees this book as presenting the actual science, as opposed to the current rash of anti-science on this subject, and as encouraging a new generation of young people to opt for careers in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics subjects).