A World on the Wing: The Global Odyssey of Migratory Birds

Author: Scott Weidensaul
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393608913
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 383

Book Description
New York Times Bestseller Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize A Library Journal Best Science and Technology Book of the Year An exhilarating exploration of the science and wonder of global bird migration. In the past two decades, our understanding of the navigational and physiological feats that enable birds to cross immense oceans, fly above the highest mountains, or remain in unbroken flight for months at a stretch has exploded. What we’ve learned of these key migrations—how billions of birds circumnavigate the globe, flying tens of thousands of miles between hemispheres on an annual basis—is nothing short of extraordinary. Bird migration entails almost unfathomable endurance, like a sparrow-sized sandpiper that will fly nonstop from Canada to Venezuela—the equivalent of running 126 consecutive marathons without food, water, or rest—avoiding dehydration by "drinking" moisture from its own muscles and organs, while orienting itself using the earth’s magnetic field through a form of quantum entanglement that made Einstein queasy. Crossing the Pacific Ocean in nine days of nonstop flight, as some birds do, leaves little time for sleep, but migrants can put half their brains to sleep for a few seconds at a time, alternating sides—and their reaction time actually improves. These and other revelations convey both the wonder of bird migration and its global sweep, from the mudflats of the Yellow Sea in China to the remote mountains of northeastern India to the dusty hills of southern Cyprus. This breathtaking work of nature writing from Pulitzer Prize finalist Scott Weidensaul also introduces readers to those scientists, researchers, and bird lovers trying to preserve global migratory patterns in the face of climate change and other environmental challenges. Drawing on his own extensive fieldwork, in A World on the Wing Weidensaul unveils with dazzling prose the miracle of nature taking place over our heads.

Living on the Wind

Author: Scott Weidensaul
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780865475915
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 436

Book Description
Scott Weidensaul follows hawks over the Mexican coastal plains, Bar-tailed Godwits that hitchhike on gale winds 7,000 miles nonstop across the Pacific from Alaska to New Zealand, and the Myriad Songbirds whose numbers have dwindled so dramatically in recent years.

The Wing on a Flea

Author: Ed Emberley
Publisher: Little Brown
ISBN: 9780316234870
Category : Geometry
Languages : en
Pages : 50

Book Description
Originally published 40 years ago, this book uses vivid illustrations and simple rhyming text by a noted author/illustrator to introduce the concept of shapes and sizes to curious young readers as he suggests how they can view the world in a new and exciting way. Full-color illustrations.

Vesper Flights

Author: Helen Macdonald
Publisher: Grove Press
ISBN: 0802146694
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 282

Book Description
The New York Times–bestselling author of H is for Hawk explores the human relationship to the natural world in this “dazzling” essay collection (Wall Street Journal). In Vesper Flights, Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

Tentacle and Wing

Author: Sarah Porter
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 1328707334
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 275

Book Description
Twelve-year-old Ada is a Chimera, one of a number of children born with human and animal DNA thanks to a genetic experiment gone wrong. When she is shipped off to a quarantined school for other kids like herself, she senses that the facility is keeping a secret.

The Global Right Wing and the Clash of World Politics

Author: Clifford Bob
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139503952
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages :

Book Description
This book is an eye-opening account of transnational advocacy, not by environmental and rights groups, but by conservative activists. Mobilizing around diverse issues, these networks challenge progressive foes across borders and within institutions. In these globalized battles, opponents struggle as much to advance their own causes as to destroy their rivals. Deploying exclusionary strategies, negative tactics and dissuasive ideas, they aim both to make and unmake policy. In this work, Clifford Bob chronicles combat over homosexuality and gun control in the UN, the Americas, Europe and elsewhere. He investigates the 'Baptist-burqa' network of conservative believers attacking gay rights, and the global gun coalition blasting efforts to control firearms. Bob draws critical conclusions about norms, activists and institutions, and his broad findings extend beyond the culture wars. They will change how campaigners fight, scholars study policy wars, and all of us think about global politics.

The Bird Is on the Wing

Author: James R. Hansen
Publisher: Texas A&M University Press
ISBN: 9781585442430
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 292

Book Description
The airplane ranks as one of history's most ingenious and phenomenal inventions--and surely one of the most world-shaking. How ideas about its aerodynamics first came together and how the science and technology evolved to forge the airplane into the revolutionary machine it became is the epic story James R. Hansen tells in The Bird Is on the Wing. Just as the airplane is a defining technology of the twentieth century, aerodynamics has been the defining element of the airplane. Hansen provides an engaging, easily understandable introduction to the role of aerodynamics in the design of such historic American aircraft as the DC-3, X-1, and 747. Recognizing the impact individuals have had on the development of the field, he conveys not only a history of aircraft technology, but also a collective biography of the scientists, engineers, and designers who created the airplanes. From da Vinci, whose understanding of what it took to fly was three centuries too early for practical use, to the invention of the airplane by the Wright brothers, Hansen explores the technological matrix from which aeronautical engineering emerged. He skillfully guides the reader through the development of such critical aerodynamic concepts as streamlining, flutter, laminar-flow airfoils, the mythical "sound barrier," variable-sweep wing, supersonic cruise, blended body, and much more. Hansen's explanation of how vocabulary and specifications were developed to fill the gap between the perceptions of pilots and the system of engineers will fascinate all those interested in how human beings have used aerodynamics to move among, and even beyond, birds on the wing.

The Invention of Wings

Author: Sue Monk Kidd
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0698175247
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Book Description
The newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection: this special eBook edition of The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd features exclusive content, including Oprah’s personal notes highlighted within the text, and a reading group guide. Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world. Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women. Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love. As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements. Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better. This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved. Please note there is another digital edition available without Oprah’s notes. Go to Oprah.com/bookclub for more OBC 2.0 content

Nighthawk's Wing

Author: Charles Fergus
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1951627504
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 284

Book Description
** "Set in 1836, Fergus’s superior sequel . . . brings the period to life as he expertly melds setting and plot." Starred Publishers Weekly ** For Fans of Madeline Miller and Geraldine Brooks, and Historical Mysteries Involving Witchcraft, Second Sight, and Amish, Mennonite, and Pennsylvania Dutch Communities. In this thrilling second in the Gideon Stoltz Mystery series that Booklist called “An appealing debut that deserves a boost from enthusiastic hand-sellers,” it’s now 1836 in the fast-growing town of Adamant. The young Pennsylvania Dutch sheriff Gideon has a new case when a beautiful woman—suspected of witchcraft and residing in a nearby German settlement—is murdered. Suffering from a head injury after a fall off his horse, Gideon can’t recall anything that happened at the time of the woman’s death. As flashes of memory return, he realizes that not only did he know the victim, he was with her the night she died. As Gideon delves into the investigation, he must include himself in the list of suspects. When Gideon uncovers another dead body, he’s launched on a path to discover the truth, no matter the outcome. Gideon’s estranged wife, True, has her own reluctant methods of investigation. Gifted with unwelcome powers of second sight, True realizes that her husband’s life is in danger—and puts her own life on the line to save him. Nighthawk’s Wing unflinchingly examines the oppressed status of women in the 1830 and like the first in the series, it has “an atmospheric setting and a strong sense of place” (Library Journal). Nighthawk’s Wing beckons all readers who crave authenticity in early American historical novels, including those intrigued by witchcraft, spells, and visions. This compelling mystery glides along the edge between the gritty reality of the early 1800s and —a parallel world of spirits and haunted souls.

Take Wing and Fly Here

Author: Priyanka Kumar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781890932442
Category : Bird watching
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
J.K. is juggling a Big Year race - to see the most number of bird species in L.A. County in one year - with trying to complete a doctorate in physics. Rick, the president of the bird society, is nipping at J.K.'s heels in the Big Year count, always just two or three bird sightings behind him. As Trip Chair, J.K. is also under pressure to organize birding trips for the society. A Big Year is a "race against time," and as the year unfolds, J.K. finds it harder to concentrate on the last important paper he needs to publish to get his Ph.D. Yet he desires a postdoctoral position at Princeton, which would also keep his East-Coast girlfriend Anne Marie happy. With the Alpena Bird Society near bankruptcy as it stumbles into its Centennial year, and its members interested only in gawking at birds, Hospitality Queen Karen decides that the senseless killing of cowbirds in Joss Canyon, Alpena's last remaining wild land, must stop. Karen starts out with the bird society as an outlet for her ten-year-old son who has a birding mania, but as the novel progresses she's more and more frustrated by the society's lackadaisical approach to its Centennial and to bird conservation. That J.K.'s girlfriend is not a birder hasn't been a big problem so far, but as the Big Year draws to a close, the stresses on their relationship begin to show. J.K. counts on his physics supervisor to mentor his postdoctoral search, but his job prospects grow bleak. Rick's problem is that his wife Meg is suspicious of Karen's interest in Rick and jealous of the time he spends Big Year birding. Rick spends much energy on Machiavellian ruminations about how to indulge his passion for the Big Year while placating Meg. Karen does have a special fondness for Rick, but she's busy saving the cowbirds in Joss Canyon, which is now threatened by developers. Meanwhile J.K.'s "safety net" begins to dismantle until he discovers that he doesn't have the support structure to achieve the success he'd hoped for. Disappointed, J.K. retreats to the mountains. But he has one last promise to keep - to attend the bird society's Centennial.