A fond remembrance of growing up in Miami, Florida during the 1950s. A boys life and the values taught to him by family and friends and the adventures he encountered.

Congo-Zaire contains Africa's largest remaining tracts of intact rain forest, making it one of the most important regions for biodiversity conservation. Its Ituri Forest is home to plants and animals native to nowhere else on earth, including the elusive and little-known okapi. In this popularly written book, three long-time observers of the okapi present a complete, contemporary natural history of this appealing relative of the giraffe. They recount its discovery by European explorers and describe its appearance and life cycle. They also discuss current efforts to preserve the species, both in the wild and at zoos around the world. Illustrated with charming line drawings, The Okapi will be a valuable resource for conservationists and zoo visitors alike-indeed anyone fascinated by the mysterious animal of Congo-Zaire.

When a young, financially challenged lab demonstrator named Fred is approached by a mysterious professor, Dr. Smith, to help write up his notes from research he did on the okapi in the Congo, Fred is delighted. Not only will it give him a chance to get to know the enigmatic prof, the extra pay will also go a long way toward solving his financial woes. However, Fred’s situation soon becomes complicated. After making a number of regrettable decisions, he embarks on a promising romance with Esther, a student from his hometown. Meanwhile, the more he gets to know Dr. Smith, the deeper Fred, Esther—and virtually everyone else in their orbit—are pulled into a dark secret from Dr. Smith’s past. Soon, the same mystery that ties them all together also threatens to tear their lives apart.

From yaks and vultures to whales and platypuses, animals have played central roles in the history of British imperial control. The contributors to Animalia analyze twenty-six animals—domestic, feral, predatory, and mythical—whose relationship to imperial authorities and settler colonists reveals how the presumed racial supremacy of Europeans underwrote the history of Western imperialism. Victorian imperial authorities, adventurers, and colonists used animals as companions, military transportation, agricultural laborers, food sources, and status symbols. They also overhunted and destroyed ecosystems, laying the groundwork for what has come to be known as climate change. At the same time, animals such as lions, tigers, and mosquitoes interfered in the empire's racial, gendered, and political aspirations by challenging the imperial project’s sense of inevitability. Unconventional and innovative in form and approach, Animalia invites new ways to consider the consequences of imperial power by demonstrating how the politics of empire—in its racial, gendered, and sexualized forms—played out in multispecies relations across jurisdictions under British imperial control. Contributors. Neel Ahuja, Tony Ballantyne, Antoinette Burton, Utathya Chattopadhyaya, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Peter Hansen, Isabel Hofmeyr, Anna Jacobs, Daniel Heath Justice, Dane Kennedy, Jagjeet Lally, Krista Maglen, Amy E. Martin, Renisa Mawani, Heidi J. Nast, Michael A. Osborne, Harriet Ritvo, George Robb, Jonathan Saha, Sandra Swart, Angela Thompsell

Taking as its narrative engine the hunt for an animal that is legendarily rare, Richard Girling writes an engaging and highly informative history of humankind's interest in hunting and collecting – what prompts us to do this? what good might come of our need to catalog all the living things of the natural world? Girling, named Environmental Journalist of the Years 2008 and 2009, has here chronicled – through the hunt for the Somali golden mole – the development of the conservation movement, the importance of diversity in the animal kingdom, including humankind within this realm, as well as a hard look at extinction. The Somali mole of the title, first descibed in print in a text book published in 1964, had as sole evidence of its existence only the fragment of a jaw bone found in an owl pellet, a specimen that seemed to have vanished as Girling began his exploration. Intrigued by the elusiveness of this creature and what the hunt for the facts of its existence might tell us about extinction, he was drawn to the dusty vaults of museums of natural history where the most rare artifacts are stored and catalogued, as he found himself caught up in the need to track it down. Part quest, part travelog, the book that results not only offers an important voice to the scientific debate about extinction and biodiversity it becomes an environmental call to arms.

Acclaimed and coveted by both naturalists and lovers of wildlife illustration, Jonathan Kingdon's seven-volume East African Mammals has become a classic of modern natural history. This paperback edition makes Kingdon's remarkable artistic and scientific achievement—his hundreds of drawings and perceptive study of all the mammals in East Africa's species-rich fauna—available to the wide audience it deserves. Volume IIIB celebrates the large mammals for which the African plains are so famous—elephants, rhinos, zebras, bushpigs, and warthogs, hippopotamuses, camels, chevrotains, giraffes. Kingdon brings his artist's eye to such puzzles as the zebra's stripes and the giraffe's spots, making original observations throughout the seven volumes about the evolutionary and functional significance of coat color, facial expressions, and curious forms and markings. The beauty of the animals, so vivid in these incomparable drawings, is made more poignant by the acknowledgment of their increasingly endangered status. Kingdon discusses the inevitable problems posed by large mammal communities in a developing continent and includes numerous maps indicating their declining ranges and populations.

The woman did not move. Her head had turned to the side, and there was about her body that quiet calm of final release. The big man did not move for that moment, nor did he display any emotion. He felt the thin wrist, put his head to the breast, remained motionless for a moment, the arose, he looked for the last time at the face he adored, bent over and kissed her, and then pulled the sheet up over her head… Jim Fletcher, missionary to Bambuti, felt that the bottom of life had dropped out for him, with the loss of his beloved Ruth. He was ready to call it quits and return to the homeland. Then he became involved with life outside of the tribe which he had been trying to reach for many years. Three strangers, a white man and woman and a black man, entered his village, the resulting complication swept Fletcher up into the middle of violent situation, and he could no longer center his thought on himself and his own personal loss. Garden of the Okapi is a sensitively drawn portrait of a missionary, dedicated and dynamic, who was frustrated by failure – failure that seemed to do this every step, in spite of his consecration and commitment. While he had won a certain acceptance among the people he was trying to reach, somehow there was a barrier that he could not surmount. His wife has almost penetrated this barrier - but then she was gone. Now, it seemed that the only thing to do was to return to Stated and take up other work. That was before God (seemingly) took a hand for the events of the next several weeks proves to Jim Fletcher that for was still active and able to overcome in the circumstances of life. As he came to the end of himself, and began to realize what reliance up God really meant, the gaunt missionary began to see God work – not only in his own life, but in the live of some very unlikely “saints” Perceptive…probing…starkly real…strikingly open... all these and more describe Garden of Okapi, with its violent action and stirringly emotional impact Here is missionary life de- glamorized and presented as it really is, with all its frustrations, failures, heartbreaking and sorrow – but its victory and conquering spirit despite discouragement. If you enjoyed books like Flame of Anger, Code Name Sebastian, and others based on real life, you will dine Garden of Okapi a tremendously moving reading experience – as well as an astonishingly heart-warming adventure