The Museum of Whales You Will Never See

Author: A. Kendra Greene
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0143135465
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
“Filled with charming illustrations, this delightful book about Iceland’s 265 museums is as quirky and mesmerizing as the country’s dreamscape itself.” —Forbes Mythic creatures, natural wonders, and the mysterious human impulse to collect are on beguiling display in this poetic tribute to the museums of an otherworldly island nation, for readers of Atlas Obscura and fans of the Mütter Museum, the Morbid Anatomy Museum, and the Museum of Jurassic Technology. Iceland is home to only 330,000 people (roughly the population of Lexington, Kentucky) but more than 265 museums and public collections. They range from the intensely physical, like the Icelandic Phallological Museum, which collects the penises of every mammal known to exist in Iceland, to the vaporously metaphysical, like the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, which poses a particularly Icelandic problem: How to display what can't be seen? In The Museum of Whales You Will Never See, A. Kendra Greene is our wise and whimsical guide through this cabinet of curiosities, showing us, in dreamlike anecdotes and more than thirty charming illustrations, how a seemingly random assortment of objects--a stuffed whooper swan, a rubber boot, a shard of obsidian, a chastity belt for rams--can map a people's past and future, their fears and obsessions. "The world is chockablock with untold wonders," she writes, "there for the taking, ready to be uncovered at any moment, if only we keep our eyes open."

The Museum of Whales You Will Never See

Author: A. Kendra Greene
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143135465
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 274

Spying on Whales

Author: Nick Pyenson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735224587
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
“A palaeontological howdunnit…[Spying on Whales] captures the excitement of…seeking answers to deep questions in cetacean science.” —Nature Called “the best of science writing” (Edward O. Wilson) and named a best book by Popular Science, a dive into the secret lives of whales, from their four-legged past to their perilous present. Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. They evolved from land-roaming, dog-sized creatures into animals that move like fish, breathe like us, can grow to 300,000 pounds, live 200 years and travel entire ocean basins. Whales fill us with terror, awe, and affection--yet there is still so much we don't know about them. Why did it take whales over 50 million years to evolve to such big sizes, and how do they eat enough to stay that big? How did their ancestors return from land to the sea--and what can their lives tell us about evolution as a whole? Importantly, in the sweepstakes of human-driven habitat and climate change, will whales survive? Nick Pyenson's research has given us the answers to some of our biggest questions about whales. He takes us deep inside the Smithsonian's unparalleled fossil collections, to frigid Antarctic waters, and to the arid desert in Chile, where scientists race against time to document the largest fossil whale site ever found. Full of rich storytelling and scientific discovery, Spying on Whales spans the ancient past to an uncertain future--all to better understand the most enigmatic creatures on Earth.

Skunk and Badger (Skunk and Badger 1)

Author: Amy Timberlake
Publisher: Algonquin Young Readers
ISBN: 1643750054
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 133

Book Description
Learn how Skunk and Badger first became roommates before embarking on their latest adventure, Egg Marks the Spot, now on sale! A Best Book of 2020: People * Kirkus Reviews * Booklist * School Library Journal * Publishers Weekly * Shelf Awareness for Readers * New York Public Library * Chicago Public Library * Evanston Public Library Wallace and Gromit meets Winnie-the-Pooh in a fresh take on a classic odd-couple friendship, from Newbery Honor author Amy Timberlake with full-color and black-and-white illustrations throughout by Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen. No one wants a skunk. They are unwelcome on front stoops. They should not linger in Important Rock Rooms. Skunks should never, ever be allowed to move in. But Skunk is Badger’s new roommate, and there is nothing Badger can do about it. When Skunk plows into Badger’s life, everything Badger knows is upended. Tails are flipped. The wrong animal is sprayed. And why-oh-why are there so many chickens? “Nooooooooooooooooooooo!” Newbery Honor author Amy Timberlake spins the first tale in a series about two opposites who need to be friends. New York Times bestselling author/illustrator and Caldecott Medalist Jon Klassen completes the book with his signature lushly textured art. This beautifully bound edition contains both full-color plates and numerous black-and-white illustrations. Skunk and Badger is a book you’ll want to read, reread, and read out loud . . . again and again.

Anatomy of a Museum

Author: A. Kendra Greene
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781939781260
Category : Penis
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Lyric Essay. Museum Studies. Travel Writing. ANATOMY OF A MUSEUM visits the Icelandic Phallological Museum in its final months under the direction of its original collector, to trace how what started as a gag gift evolved over decades into a museum known around the world. By its own estimation, the Icelandic Phallological Museum is the only institution in the world to seek a collection of phallic specimens from every mammal species in one country and since the recent demise of a human donor, the collection is now complete. But for all its originality, the IPM proves to be an illuminating part of both long-standing museum traditions and the particular bloom of Icelandic institutions since the 1990s, demonstrating the island's uncanny knack of turning private collections into public museums."

At the Water's Edge

Author: Carl Zimmer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684856239
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 304

Book Description
Everybody Out of the Pond At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us. We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution -- microevolution -- but it could only point us toward a complete explanation, still to come, of the engines of macroevolution, the transformation of body shapes across millions of years. Now, drawing on the latest fossil discoveries and breakthrough scientific analysis, Carl Zimmer reveals how macroevolution works. Escorting us along the trail of discovery up to the current dramatic research in paleontology, ecology, genetics, and embryology, Zimmer shows how scientists today are unveiling the secrets of life that biologists struggled with two centuries ago. In this book, you will find a dazzling, brash literary talent and a rigorous scientific sensibility gracefully brought together. Carl Zimmer provides a comprehensive, lucid, and authoritative answer to the mystery of how nature actually made itself.

The Whale

Author: Philip Hoare
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061976202
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 482

Book Description
From his childhood fascination with the gigantic Natural History Museum model of a blue whale, to his abiding love of Moby-Dick, to his adult encounters with the living animals in the Atlantic Ocean, the acclaimed writer Philip Hoare has been obsessed with whales. The Whale is his unforgettable and moving attempt to explain why these strange and beautiful animals exert such a powerful hold on our imagination.

Ice Whale

Author: Jean Craighead George
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110161269X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 146

Book Description
From the most celebrated children’s nature writer of our time comes a posthumous new novel in the tradition of her Newbery award-winning Julie of the Wolves In 1848, a young boy witnesses a rare sight—the birth of a bowhead, or ice whale, he calls Siku. Years later, he unwittingly brings about the death of an entire pod of whales, and only Siku survives. For this act, the boy receives a curse of banishment. Through the generations, this curse is handed down: Siku returns year after year, in reality and dreams, to haunt the boy’s descendants. Told in alternating voices, both human and whale, Jean Craighead George’s last novel shows the interconnectedness of humankind and the animals they depend on. “It’s a bold, wistful, and heartfelt coda to a distinguished career.”—School Library Journal

Vagrants & Uncommon Visitors

Author: A. Kendra Greene
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781939781345
Category : Birds
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Literary Nonfiction. Museum Studies. VAGRANTS AND UNCOMMON VISITORS traces the origins, impact, and significance of a bird collection turned museum on the shores of Iceland's Lake M�vatn. The lake supports a eutrophic ecology that, among other things, gives life to an all-but-complete collection of Icelandic birds. The birds, or maybe their collection, give purpose to Sigurgeir, a native son who has been sighting birds and gathering eggs on the lakeside family farm since childhood. When Sigurgeir is killed in an accident on the lake, his family begins a decade-long struggle to make a museum. In this gorgeously illustrated, long-form lyric essay, VAGRANTS AND UNCOMMON VISITORS concerns itself with family, gender, and memorials as it examines the grief, natural history, and accomplishment of Sigurgeir's Bird Museum.

Fathoms

Author: Rebecca Giggs
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
ISBN: 198212069X
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
Winner of the 2020 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction * Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction * Finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award A “delving, haunted, and poetic debut” (The New York Times Book Review) about the awe-inspiring lives of whales, revealing what they can teach us about ourselves, our planet, and our relationship with other species. When writer Rebecca Giggs encountered a humpback whale stranded on her local beachfront in Australia, she began to wonder how the lives of whales reflect the condition of our oceans. Fathoms: The World in the Whale is “a work of bright and careful genius” (Robert Moor, New York Times bestselling author of On Trails), one that blends natural history, philosophy, and science to explore: How do whales experience ecological change? How has whale culture been both understood and changed by human technology? What can observing whales teach us about the complexity, splendor, and fragility of life on earth? In Fathoms, we learn about whales so rare they have never been named, whale songs that sweep across hemispheres in annual waves of popularity, and whales that have modified the chemical composition of our planet’s atmosphere. We travel to Japan to board the ships that hunt whales and delve into the deepest seas to discover how plastic pollution pervades our earth’s undersea environment. With the immediacy of Rachel Carson and the lush prose of Annie Dillard, Giggs gives us a “masterly” (The New Yorker) exploration of the natural world even as she addresses what it means to write about nature at a time of environmental crisis. With depth and clarity, she outlines the challenges we face as we attempt to understand the perspectives of other living beings, and our own place on an evolving planet. Evocative and inspiring, Fathoms “immediately earns its place in the pantheon of classics of the new golden age of environmental writing” (Literary Hub).