Sounds Wild and Broken

Author: David George Haskell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1984881566
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
Finalist for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction and the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Winner of the Acoustical Society of America's 2023 Science Communication Award “[A] glorious guide to the miracle of life’s sound.” —The New York Times Book Review A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music, and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rain forests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From birds in the Rocky Mountains and on the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to beings as different as snapping shrimp, toadfish, and whales. In the startlingly divergent sonic vibes of the animals of different continents, we experience the legacies of plate tectonics, the deep history of animal groups and their movements around the world, and the quirks of aesthetic evolution. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. In mammoth ivory flutes from Paleolithic caves, violins in modern concert halls, and electronic music in earbuds, we learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell takes us to threatened forests, noise-filled oceans, and loud city streets, and shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just, and beautiful. The appreciation of the beauty and brokenness of sound is therefore an important guide in today’s convulsions and crises of change and inequity. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong, and act.

Sounds Wild and Broken

Author: David George Haskell
Publisher: Black Inc.
ISBN: 1743822200
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 446

Book Description
The Earth’s sounds are wonderfully diverse, complex and beautiful – but they are under threat. A lyrical exploration of the diverse sounds of our planet, the creative processes that produced these marvels, and the perils that sonic diversity now faces We live on a planet alive with song, music and speech. David Haskell explores how these wonders came to be. In rainforests shimmering with insect sound and swamps pulsing with frog calls, we learn about evolution’s creative powers. From the Rocky Mountains to the streets of Paris, we discover how animals learn their songs and adapt to new environments. Below the waves, we hear our kinship to underwater beings. Starting with the origins of animal song and traversing the whole arc of Earth history, Haskell illuminates and celebrates the emergence of the varied sounds of our world. We learn that human music and language belong within this story of ecology and evolution. Yet we are also destroyers, now silencing or smothering many of the sounds of the living Earth. Haskell shows that sonic crises are not mere losses of sensory ornament. Sound is a generative force, and so the erasure of sonic diversity makes the world less creative, just and beautiful. Sounds Wild and Broken is an invitation to listen, wonder, belong and act. ‘Sounds Wild and Broken is a symphony, filled with the music of life. It is fascinating, heartbreaking, and beautifully written.’ —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction Longlisted, 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award Finalist, 2023 Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction

The Songs of Trees

Author: David George Haskell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143111302
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 306

Book Description
WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING “Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture.” —Science Friday The author of Sounds Wild and Broken and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s most magnificent networkers — trees David Haskell has won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, he brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees, exploring connections with people, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. He takes us to trees in cities (from Manhattan to Jerusalem), forests (Amazonian, North American, and boreal) and areas on the front lines of environmental change (eroding coastlines, burned mountainsides, and war zones.) In each place he shows how human history, ecology, and well-being are intimately intertwined with the lives of trees. Scientific, lyrical, and contemplative, Haskell reveals the biological connections that underpin all life. In a world beset by barriers, he reminds us that life’s substance and beauty emerge from relationship and interdependence.

The Forest Unseen

Author: David George Haskell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143122940
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award “Injects much-needed vibrancy into the stuffy world of nature writing.” —Outside, “The Outdoor Books That Shaped the Last Decade” The biologist and author of Sounds Wild and Broken combines elegant writing with scientific expertise to reveal the secret world hidden in a single square meter of old-growth forest In this wholly original book, biologist David Haskell uses a one-square-meter patch of old-growth Tennessee forest as a window onto the entire natural world. Visiting it almost daily for one year to trace nature's path through the seasons, he brings the forest and its inhabitants to vivid life. Each of this book's short chapters begins with a simple observation: a salamander scuttling across the leaf litter; the first blossom of spring wildflowers. From these, Haskell spins a brilliant web of biology and ecology, explaining the science that binds together the tiniest microbes and the largest mammals and describing the ecosystems that have cycled for thousands- sometimes millions-of years. Each visit to the forest presents a nature story in miniature as Haskell elegantly teases out the intricate relationships that order the creatures and plants that call it home. Written with remarkable grace and empathy, The Forest Unseen is a grand tour of nature in all its profundity. Haskell is a perfect guide into the world that exists beneath our feet and beyond our backyards.

A Road Running Southward

Author: Dan Chapman
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1642831948
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 258

Book Description
"Engaging hybrid - part lyrical travelogue, part investigative journalism and part jeremiad, all shot through with droll humor." --The Atlanta Journal Constitution In 1867, John Muir set out on foot to explore the botanical wonders of the South, from Kentucky to Florida. One hundred and fifty years later, veteran Atlanta reporter Dan Chapman recreated Muir's journey to see for himself how nature has fared since Muir's time. He uses humor, keen observation, and a deep love of place to celebrate the South's natural riches. But he laments the long-simmering struggles over misused resources and seeks to discover how Southerners might balance surging population growth with protecting the natural beauty Muir found so special. A Road Running Southward is part travelogue, part environmental cri de coeur--a passionate appeal to save one of the loveliest and most biodiverse regions of the world by understanding what we have to lose if we do nothing.

Smash It! Crash It! Launch It!

Author: Rain Newcomb
Publisher: Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.
ISBN: 9781600595097
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 84

Book Description
Science.

Geomagnetism

Author: Nathani Basavaiah
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400704038
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 502

Book Description
With the awareness that the Earth has a magnetic field, its mathematical description, discovery of remanent magnetisation in rocks and discovery of the periodic reversals of the geomagnetic field polarity, geomagnetism within geophysics became an interesting field of study. This is primarily due to advances in measurement technology and improved understanding of the magnetic field and its fluctuations in the geospace. Several important aspects of solid Earth geomagnetism are elaborated in the book. The first six chapters cover the basics of magnetism, magnetic minerals, biomagnetics, instrumentation and the behavior of geomagnetic field, while the rest of the book is devoted to practical applications with carefully selected examples and illustrations. Well-written and easy to read, the book vividly describes modern techniques in the subject matter covered, adequately supported by graphical explanations for complex mathematical concepts.

Flotsametrics and the Floating World

Author: Curtis Ebbesmeyer
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061558419
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 310

Book Description
Pioneering oceanographer Curtis Ebbesmeyer unravels the mystery of marine currents, uncovers the astonishing story of flotsam, and changes the world's view of trash, the ocean, and our global environment. Curtis Ebbesmeyer is no ordinary scientist. He's been a consulting oceanographer for multinational firms and a lead scientist on international research expeditions, but he's never held a conventional academic appointment. He seized the world's imagination as no other scientist could when he and his worldwide network of beachcomber volunteers traced the ocean's currents using thousands of sneakers and plastic bath toys spilled from storm-tossed freighters. Now, for the first time, Ebbesmeyer tells the story of his lifelong struggle to solve the sea's mysteries while sharing his most surprising discoveries. He recounts how flotsam has changed the course of history—leading Viking mariners to safe harbors, Columbus to the New World, and Japan to open up to the West—and how it may even have made the origin of life possible. He chases icebergs and floating islands; investigates ocean mysteries from ghost ships to a spate of washed-up severed feet on Canadian beaches; and explores the enormous floating "garbage patches" and waste-heaped "junk beaches" that collect the flotsam and jetsam of industrial society. Finally, Ebbesmeyer reveals the rhythmic and harmonic order in the vast oceanic currents called gyres—"the heartbeat of the world "—and the threats that global warming and disintegrating plastic waste pose to the seas . . . and to us.

When Animals Dream

Author: David M. Peña-Guzmán
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691227063
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Book Description
A spellbinding look at the philosophical and moral implications of animal dreaming Are humans the only dreamers on Earth? What goes on in the minds of animals when they sleep? When Animals Dream brings together behavioral and neuroscientific research on animal sleep with philosophical theories of dreaming. It shows that dreams provide an invaluable window into the cognitive and emotional lives of nonhuman animals, giving us access to a seemingly inaccessible realm of animal experience. David Peña-Guzmán uncovers evidence of animal dreaming throughout the scientific literature, suggesting that many animals run “reality simulations” while asleep, with a dream-ego moving through a dynamic and coherent dreamscape. He builds a convincing case for animals as conscious beings and examines the thorny scientific, philosophical, and ethical questions it raises. Once we accept that animals dream, we incur a host of moral obligations and have no choice but to rethink our views about who animals are and the interior lives they lead. A mesmerizing journey into the otherworldly domain of nonhuman consciousness, When Animals Dream carries profound implications for contemporary debates about animal cognition, animal ethics, and animal rights, challenging us to regard animals as beings who matter, and for whom things matter.

The Leak

Author: Robert P. Crease
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262370905
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 315

Book Description
How the discovery of a harmless leak of radiation sparked a media firestorm, political grandstanding, and fearmongering that closed a vital scientific facility. In 1997, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory found a small leak of radioactive water near their research reactor. Brookhaven was—and is—a world-class, Nobel Prize–winning lab, and its reactor was the cornerstone of US materials science and one of the world’s finest research facilities. The leak, harmless to health, came from a storage pool rather than the reactor. But its discovery triggered a media and political firestorm that resulted in the reactor’s shutdown, and even attempts to close the entire laboratory. A quarter century later, the episode reveals the dynamics of today’s controversies in which fears and the dismissal of science disrupt serious discussion and research of vital issues such as vaccines, climate change, and toxic chemicals. This story has all the elements of a thriller, with vivid characters and dramatic twists and turns. Key players include congressmen and scientists; journalists and university presidents; actors, supermodels, and anti-nuclear activists, all interacting and teaming up in surprising ways. The authors, each with insider knowledge of and access to confidential documents and the key players, reveal how a fact of no health significance could be portrayed as a Chernobyl-like disaster. This compelling exposé reveals the gaps between scientists, politicians, media, and the public that have only gotten more dangerous since 1997. Peter Bond is a retired physicist who worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory for 43 years in a wide variety of roles, including interim laboratory director during much of the period covered by this book.