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A biography of a staple grain we often take for granted, exploring how wheat went from wild grass to a world-shaping crop.
At breakfast tables and bakeries, we take for granted a grain that has made human civilization possible, a cereal whose humble origins belie its world-shaping power: wheat. Amber Waves tells the story of a group of grass species that first grew in scattered stands in the foothills of the Middle East until our ancestors discovered...
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Plants have been used to treat disease throughout human history. On a clay slab that dates back approximately five thousand years, the Sumerians recorded medicinal recipes that made use of hundreds of plants, including poppy, henbane, and mandrake. During the Middle Ages, monks commonly grew and prescribed plants such as sage, anise, and mint in their monasteries. And as the market for herbal remedies and natural medicine grows, we continue to search...
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Of all our childhood memories, few are quite as thrilling, or as tactile, as those of climbing trees. Scampering up the rough trunk, spying on the world from the cool green shelter of the canopy, lying on a limb and looking up through the leaves at the summer sun almost made it seem as if we were made for trees, and trees for us.Even in adulthood, trees retain their power, from the refreshing way their waves of green break the monotony of a cityscape...
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From Galileo, who used the hollow stalks of grass to demonstrate the idea that peripherally located construction materials provide most of the resistance to bending forces, to Leonardo da Vinci, whose illustrations of the parachute are alleged to be based on his study of the dandelion's pappus and the maple tree's samara, many of our greatest physicists, mathematicians, and engineers have learned much from studying plants. A symbiotic relationship...
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In this wide-ranging exploration of the role of forests in Western thought, Robert Pogue Harrison enriches our understanding not only of the forest's place in the cultural imagination of the West, but also of the ecological dilemmas that now confront us so urgently. Consistently insightful and beautifully written, this work is especially compelling at a time when the forest, as a source of wonder, respect, and meaning, disappears daily from the earth.
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A vividly illustrated meeting with thirty plants and their inspiring namesakes
Shakespeare famously asserted that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," and that's as true for common garden roses as it is for the Megacorax, a genus of evening primroses. Though it may not sound like it, the Megacorax was actually christened in honor of famed American botanist Peter Raven, its name a play on the Latin words for "great raven."
In this...
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At the tips of our forks and on our dinner plates, a buffet of botanical dalliance awaits us. Sex and food are intimately intertwined, and this relationship is nowhere more evident than among the plants that sustain us. From lascivious legumes to horny hot peppers, most of humanity's calories and other nutrition come from seeds and fruits-the products of sex-or from flowers, the organs that make plant sex possible. Sex has also played an arm's-length...
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A whirlwind journey through fungus frontiers that underscores how appreciating fungi is key to understanding our planet's power and fragility.
What can we learn from the lives of fungi? Splitting time between the northern and southern hemispheres, ecologist Alison Pouliot ensures that she experiences two autumns per year in the pursuit of fungi-from Australia's deserts to Iceland's glaciers to America's Cascade Mountains. In Meetings with Remarkable...
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An illustrated visit to the tropical arctic of 205 million years ago when Greenland was green.
While today's Greenland is largely covered in ice, in the time of the dinosaurs the area was a lushly forested, tropical zone. Tropical Arctic tracks a ten-million-year window of Earth's history when global temperatures soared and the vegetation of the world responded.
A project over eighteen years in the making, Tropical Arctic is the result of a unique...
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Cultivate Inner Peace Through Positive Affirmations and Spiritual Meditation
"52 Ways to Live the Course in Miracles is a compact rendition of how to live with love and forgiveness at the center of our lives." ─Allyson Gracie, Retailing Insight
#1 Best Seller in Spiritualism
Find the path to inner peace through a weekly guide of spiritual meditations and positive affirmations.
Use Karen Casey's 52 positive affirmations and meditations...
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